EU Social Policy in the 1990s: Towards a Corporatist Policy Community (Routledge Research in European Public Policy, 6)

This book offers an analytical overview of schools of thought on European integration which offer useful insights into EU social politics. Building on this framework, the chapters then examine in detail pre-Maastricht social policy and the 'social partners', the innovations of the Treaty itself, and where EU social policy stands at the end of the 1990s. Case studies of European Works Councils, parental leave, and atypical work, are included to highlight the day-to-day processes at work in social policy formation and the major interest groups and EU institutions involved. This is an up-to-date and accessible study which finds the social policy-making environment in the EU has become increasingly corporatist in the 1990s. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 List of figures and tables......Page 8 Series editor's preface......Page 10 Preface and acknowledgements......Page 12 List of abbreviations......Page 14 Introduction......Page 16 Political theory and EU politics......Page 19 Social policy from Messina to Maastricht......Page 70 Social policy in the Maastricht Treaty......Page 93 Policy-making under the Social Protocol......Page 112 The evolution of social interest intermediation......Page 171 Conclusions and the future......Page 201 Notes......Page 223 References......Page 249 Index......Page 268 EU Social Policy in the 1990s explores the background and development of social policy content and process in the European Union since the policy innovations of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty came into force. This is an up-to-date and accessible study which finds that under the EU's social dimension a corporatist policy community developed in the 1990s. Gerda Falkner concludes by considering the lessons drawn from the EU's experience, both for integration theory and for the future of Europe's social dimension Both the development of EU social policy content and of the social policy-making process will be examined in the empirical parts of this study.