Effects of EU soft law across the multilevel system

该项目旨在通过对软法的性质和影响的纵向分析，超越以危机为中心的研究难题，促进对欧盟多层次制度绩效的理解。欧盟法律影响政府和民众，并直接影响公民的生活。随着治理的转向和布鲁塞尔越来越复杂的决策，立法越来越多地采用软法的形式。这一术语涵盖了不涉及管辖权控制但产生重要法律和实际效果的文书，如建议、准则或来文。然而，我们仍然知之甚少，为什么成员国和欧盟机构选择软法或硬法来治理。欧盟软法在不同政策领域的比例是多少？欧盟软法何时以及为什么在国内实施？一旦实施，它何时以及为什么会反馈到欧盟的政策制定中？这个项目运用当代法律学术对软法和政治学对公共政策分析的洞察力，调查软法是否、何时、为什么以及如何影响欧盟多层次体系的表现。该项目之所以重要，是因为它解决了政治制度的一个中心话题，即法律与政治之间的关系。在对这一软法的性质和效果进行系统、比较和纵向评估方面，该项目超越了现有的说明，这些说明要么乐观地规定了软法在有效决策方面的潜力，要么悲观地指出其法律相关性狭窄、造成不确定性和缺乏问责，往往是基于对法律现象的静态描述。据我们所知，该项目还将首次对软法在政策部门和国家之间的影响进行因果分析，包括对欧盟政策制定的动态反馈。该项目在范围和设计上都是雄心勃勃的。首先，它将通过一份完整的清单来评估欧盟软法的性质，这些文书在15年的时间里在八个政策领域通过，这些领域在欧盟决策的性质和基本政策问题的性质上有所不同。其次，通过对中央政府和法院的调查，以及对在国内实施过程的因果分析和结构化的重点比较，分析部门和国家具体因素对欧盟软法实施的影响。第三，考察软法在超国家层面实施的反馈效应。最后，通过将德国和法国的政治学和法律学者团队结合起来，该项目有可能采用多学科视角和国别专门知识。

This project aims to advance understanding of the performance of the EU multilevel system through a longitudinal analysis of the nature and effect of soft law, beyond a crisis-centred research puzzle. EU law affects governments and populations and has direct influence on the lives of citizens. With the governance turn and ever more complex decision-making in Brussels legislation takes increasingly often the form of soft law. The term captures instruments such as recommendations, guidelines or communications that do not entail jurisdictional control, but produce important legal and practical effects. Yet, we still know relatively little why member states and EU institutions chose either soft or hard law to govern. What is the proportion of EU soft law in different policy areas? When and why is EU soft law implemented at domestic level? Once implemented, when and why does it feed back into EU policy-making? Employing lenses of contemporary legal scholarship on soft law and political science insights on public policy analysis, this project investigates whether, and if so when, why and how soft law affects the performance of the EU multilevel system.The project is important because it addresses a central topic of political systems, namely the relationship between law and politics. In delivering a systematic, comparative and longitudinal assessment of the nature and effects of this soft law, the project goes beyond existing accounts that either optimistically stipulate the potential of soft law for effective policy making or pessimistically point at its narrow legal relevance, the creation of uncertainties and lack of accountability often based on static accounts of a legal phenomenon.The project is original in that it will analytically distinguish hard and soft law in light of two elements: the binding nature of the norm and the enforcement mechanism that ensures compliance with the norm. To our knowledge, this project will be the first to also causally analyse the effects of soft law across policy sectors and countries, including dynamic feedback into EU policy-making.The project is ambitious in its scope and design. First, it will assess the nature of EU soft law through a complete inventory of EU level instruments adopted in eight policy domains that differ in the character of EU policy-making and in the nature of the underlying policy-problem, over a 15 year period. Second, it will analyse the effect of sectoral and country specific factors on the implementation of EU soft law through a survey in central administrations and courts as well as causal analysis and structured focused comparison of 64 domestic implementation processes. Third, it will investigate the feedback effects of soft law implementation at supranational level. Finally, the project makes it possible to employ a multidisciplinary perspective and country expertise by combining a team of German and French political science and legal scholars.