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Abstract:
This article analyzes the emergence of new modes of Governance in EU social and employment policy since the beginning of the 1990s. Developments in two directions are shown: As far as negative integration is concerned, supranational centralization has gained importance. In contrast, positive integration is increasingly characterized by "soft", co-operative modes of governance. If governments fail to reach a consensus on the transfer of competences to the European level, they increasingly resort to non-binding instruments. In particular with regard to Social Dialog a "twofold voluntarism" – on the level of procedures and contents – emerges. Taking both developments into account, we neither find evidence that hierarchy as a relevant mode of EU governance vanishes, nor do we detect a convergence of governance modes in different policy fields.
