Building a Multi-Level System

As an emergent political order, the European Union is constantly expanding and altering its institutional structure. This process leads to the creation of additional institutions at the European level that complement the basic structure of the system (see Chapter 7). Within the member states, European decision-making and policy implementation transforms existing institutions and affects the actors involved. These processes primarily incorporate national governments and administrations but, over the long term, they also affect lower level governments, semi-public institutions and agencies, and private actors and their organizations (see Chapter 10). None of these institutional changes is the direct consequence of a concise and coherent strategy to build and expand the European polity. Instead, they are the responses to the contradictions and imperfections of the system itself. Since the member states are not willing to build strong European institutions, even when the pressure to put forth common solutions is intense, they respond to emerging problems by expanding the Union’s institutions in a piecemeal fashion and a decentralized manner. One way to do so consists of involving existing state-level institutions in European affairs. In the long run, these processes inevitably lead to a gradual transformation of national political systems.