Theoretical Perspectives

Academic research on European integration has never been richer (Nelson and Stubb 2003; Wiener and Diez 2004). This book has added to this ever growing literature and has provided new insights into the history, the institutional actors, the main policy areas and the politics of EU competition policy. However, there remains one noticeable gap, which relates to the absence of non-economic theoretical perspectives on the policy’s development. It is only in very recent times that such theoretical contributions have been made (see Blithe and Swank 2005; Doleys 2007; McGowan 2007). Indeed, the first edition of this book deliberately omitted discussion of theoretical approaches. Competition policy is far from being unique in its neglect of theory, however. Indeed, it is striking that many of the core EU market-related policies, such as agriculture, energy, fisheries and trade policy, not only remain marginal to the interests of many political science scholars and students, but have also been underdeveloped theoretically. This observation may be explained by the reluctance of some researchers to venture into highly complex policy arenas where economics, law and politics intermingle. It may also be a consequence of the decline of EU-focused public policy analysis since the late 1990s (Carter and Smith 2008).