The politics of conflict management in EU regulation

Abstract

This article examines how the conflicts latent in EU regulation are managed. First, it looks at how policy issues are framed as positive-sum games, party-political arenas avoided and consensual problem-solving methods of policy-making promoted. Then it addresses the puzzle of the robustness of regulatory conflict management. If challenged in its regulatory endeavour, the EU tends to respond with more regulation. Finally, the article outlines the limitations of regulatory conflict management which are to be found less in outright deadlock than in attenuation of processes, loss of focus, information overload and a tendency to solve small problems while neglecting large ones. ©2009 Taylor & Francis.