Beyond Networks - Interlocutory Coalitions, the European and Global Legal Orders

This
book explores the activism promoted by organised networks of civil society actors
in opening up possibilities for more democratic supranational governance. It
examines the positive and negative impact that such networks of civil society
actors ¿ named ¿interlocutory coalitions¿ ¿ may have on the convergence of
principles of administrative governance across the European legal system and
other supranational legal systems.

The
book takes two main controversial aspects into account: the first relates to
the convergence between administrative rules pertaining to different
supranational regulatory systems. Traditionally, the spread of methods of
administrative governance has been depicted primarily against the background of
the interactions between the domestic and the supranational arena, both from a
top-down and bottom-up perspective. However, the exploration of interactions
occurring at the supranational level between legal regimes is still not
grounded on adequate empirical evidence. The second controversial aspect
considered in this book consists of the role of civil society actors operating
at the supranational level. In its discussion of the first aspect, the book
focuses on the relations between the European administrative law and the
administrative principles of law pertaining to other supranational regulatory
regimes and regulators, including the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, the Asian Development Bank, and the
Council of Europe. The examination of the second aspect involves the
exploration of the still little examined, but crucial, role of civil society
organised networks in shaping global administrative law. These ¿interlocutory
coalitions¿ include NGOs, think tanks, foundations, universities, and
occasionally activists with no formal connections to civil society organisations.
The book describes such interlocutory coalitions as drivers of harmonized
principles of participatory democracy at the European and global levels.
However, interlocutory coalitions show a number of tensions (e.g. the
governability of coalitions, the competition among them) that may hamper the impact
they have on the reconfiguration of individuals¿ rights, entitlements and
responsibilities in the global arena.