Effects of EU soft law across the multilevel system

该项目旨在通过对软法律的性质和影响的纵向分析，超越以危机为中心的研究难题，促进对欧盟多层次体系绩效的理解。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日益复杂的决策，立法越来越多地采取软法的形式。这一术语涵盖不涉及管辖权控制但产生重要法律的和实际效果的建议、准则或来文等文书。然而，我们仍然对成员国和欧盟机构为什么选择软法律或硬法律来治理知之甚少。欧盟软法在不同政策领域的比重是多少？欧盟软法律何时以及为何在国内层面实施？一旦实施，它何时以及为什么会反馈到欧盟的政策制定中？本项目利用当代法律的学术对软法和政治学对公共政策分析的见解，研究软法是否影响欧盟多层次体系的绩效，以及何时影响欧盟多层次体系的绩效。本项目的重要性在于，它涉及政治体系的一个中心议题，即法律与政治的关系。在对这一软法律的性质和影响进行系统、比较和纵向评估时，该项目超越了现有的观点，这些观点要么乐观地指出软法律在有效决策方面的潜力，要么悲观地指出其狭隘的法律的相关性，创造不确定性和缺乏问责制，往往是基于对法律的现象的静态描述。该项目是原创的，因为它将分析根据两个要素区分硬法律和软法律：规范的约束性和确保遵守规范的执行机制。据我们所知，该项目将是第一个也因果分析软法在政策部门和国家的影响，包括动态反馈到欧盟决策。该项目在其范围和设计雄心勃勃。首先，它将评估欧盟软法律的性质，通过欧盟层面的文书，通过在8个政策领域，不同的欧盟决策的性质和根本的政策问题的性质，在15年的时间内，一个完整的清单。其次，它将通过对中央行政部门和法院的调查以及对64个国内实施过程的因果分析和结构化重点比较，分析部门和国家具体因素对欧盟软法律实施的影响。第三，它将调查在超国家一级实施软法律的反馈效果。最后，该项目通过将德国和法国政治学和法律的学者小组结合起来，使得有可能采用多学科观点和国家专门知识。

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.