This work is the first systematic study of the presidency of the European Commission. Drawing upon cases of attempted leadership by Jacques Delors, the Commission President from 1985-95, it examines the leadership capacity of the office-holder. This points to the inherently shared and contingent nature of Commission President's leadership in a Union where the leadership sources are widely dispersed. While this is essentially an empirical study, Endo addresses some of the theoretical implications of its findings and resulting issues.
The challenges that have been facing the European Union in recent years have given rise to the question: who leads the EU? This book offers a systematic analysis of political leadership in the EU. This volume offers a theoretical and conceptual analysis of political leadership in the EU. It deals with questions such as what kind of leadership is there in the different domains (such as climate change or central banking). It also examines how various EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament) exert or have exerted leadership. Furthermore, it examines the role of the presidents of some of these institutions, such as the European Commission the European Council, the European Central Bank, but also of selected national leaders. Although the book does not advance a single leadership concept, the findings of the individual case studies show that the EU is by no means leaderless. The chapters originally published as a special issue in the Journal of European Integration.
The EU's pluralistic, nonhierarchical system of multilevel governance lacks clear structures of both government and opposition. According to the EU treaties, the presidency of the European Commission is thus not explicitly expected to exercise political leadership. However, the position cannot effectively be exercised without any demonstration of such leadership due to its many leadership functions. Examining this curious mix of strong political demands, weak institutional powers, and need for political leadership, this book systematically analyses the political leadership performance of the presidents of the European Commission throughout the process of European integration. The basic argument is that Commission presidents matter not only in the process of European integration, but that their impact varies according to how the different incumbents deal with the institutional structure and the situational circumstances, and thus their available strategic choices. The primary research question is thus, What makes political leadership in European governance successful and to what extent (and why) do Commission presidents differ in their leadership performance? In addressing this question, this book departs from existing research on EU leadership, which has to date often analysed either the EU's institutional structure and its potential for leadership or mainly focused on only the most recent incumbents in case study analyses. Focusing on the multiterm European Commission presidents Walter Hallstein, Jacques Delors, and Jos� Manuel Barroso, this book conceptualizes their political leadership as a performance, and thus systematically analyzes their agenda-setting, mediative-institutional, and public outreach performance over the entire course of their presidential terms.
This volume is the first comprehensive analysis of women's ascendance to leadership positions in the European Union as well as their performance in such positions. It provides a new theoretical and analytical framework capturing both positional and behavioural leadership and the specific hurdles that women encounter on their path to and when exercising leadership. The volume encompasses a detailed set of single and comparative case studies, analyzing women's representation and performance in the core EU institutions and their individual pathways to and exercise of power in top-level functions, as well as comparative analyses regarding the position and behaviour of women in relation to men. Based on these individual studies, the volume draws overarching conclusions about women's leadership in the EU. Regarding positional leadership, women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions, they more often hold less prestigious portfolios in such positions, and manifold structural hurdles hamper their access to power. Furthermore, huge variations exist across EU institutions, with the intergovernmental bodies being the hardest to access. Regarding behavioural leadership, women acting in powerful EU positions generally perform excellently. They successfully exercise a combined leadership style that integrates attributes of leadership considered to be 'masculine' and 'feminine'. This is not to argue that women per se are the better leaders. Yet more often than men they are exposed to stronger selection processes and their prevalent practice of a combined leadership style tends to best meet the requirements of modern democratic systems and particularly those of the highly fragmented EU.
Small States and EU Governance shows that the EU's rotating Council presidency and small states' capacity to make use of it have been underestimated. It examines the political objectives the presidency serves and presents a systematic and comparative assessment of its nature and influence in internal market and foreign policy issues.
Co-authored by an international team of researchers and drawing on interviews with senior officials, The European Commission of the Twenty-First Century tests, challenges and refutes many widely held myths about the Commission and the people who work for it.
Postavení prezidenta v jiných než prezidentských politických systémech patří k méně analyzovaným aspektům politiky. V zemích střední a východní Evropy může přitom existovat určitá diskrepance mezi formálním a reálným postavením hlav států. Předkládaná, anglicky psaná kniha mapuje, zda se zde po roce 1989 objevily tendence k většímu zapojení či osobnímu angažmá prezidentů v každodenní politice, co bylo jejich příčinou, jak se projevovaly a zda je můžeme vysvětlit spíše osobností prezidenta, nebo strukturou politických příležitostí, která nabídla prezidentovi větší prostor pro osobní politickou realizaci.
"Political leaders are the most universal, recognized, and talked about element of political life. However, the general analysis of political leadership has been little advanced. In this book Professor Blondel provides a general framework for the systematic study of leadership to make possible future empirical study and comparative analysis of political leadership. After examining the current state of political leadership studies, Professor Blondel categorizes the leaders of the world taking into account both their goals and the constraints and opportunities resulting from the environment. Important features and influences on leadership are identified: the sources of personal power, the role of leaders' own psychology and perspective, the instruments of power available to leaders, their relationship with subordinates and citizens, the influence of institutions on leadership and the impact of leaders"--Provided by publisher.
In this 2006 book, Jonas Tallberg offers a novel perspective on some of the most fundamental questions about international cooperation and European Union politics. Offering the first systematic theoretical and empirical exploration of the influence wielded by chairmen of multilateral negotiations, Tallberg develops a rationalist theory of formal leadership and demonstrates its explanatory power through carefully selected case studies of EU negotiations. He shows that the rotating Presidency of the EU constitutes a power platform that grants governments unique opportunities to shape the outcomes of negotiations. His provocative analysis establishes that Presidencies, while performing vital functions for the EU, simultaneously exploit their privileged political position to favour national interests. Extending the scope of the analysis to international negotiations on trade, security and the environment, Tallberg further demonstrates that the influence of the EU Presidency is not an isolated occurrence but the expression of a general phenomenon in world politics - the power of the chair.
