"Socialised into consensus-seeking? Normative commitments to the OMC after the enlargement of the EU"

[From the introduction]. Specialised committees form an important part of the policy-making process in the European Union and are key sites for socialising national bureaucrats to accept certain rules and norms that institutions of the European Union represent or propagate. Paying attention to the socialising potential of such expert committees is especially interesting in the case of new modes of governance like the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC), the acceptance and legitimacy of which is largely contested and debated. This paper focuses on the normative socialisation of committee representatives in one OMC committee, the Social Protection Committee (SPC)