Festschrift für Fritz W. Scharpf - MPIfG

102 II · Politik und Demokratie in Europa
ever, there is also some evidence in the sectors examined here, i.e. the liberalized
network industries and public service sectors, which points to the opposite
development. More and more frequently, policy measures are taken
to correct the outcomes of market integration and to contain negative integration.
What is at the root of such a development in European policy-making?
Which factors tend to moderate and modify the strong tendency towards
negative integration? It will be shown that, in the course of time, experience
with market liberalization has caused a more critical attitude about the results
of deregulation and has given rise to re-regulation in order to safeguard
the provision of public services. This would not be possible if the political
dynamic of negative integration prevailed under all circumstances. Two
factors explain why it does not. First, at the member-state level, consumer
movements and, indeed, social movements have voiced political opposition
to the fast pace of liberalization in the public utilities. This protest, which
has been taken up by individual member-state governments or by a minority
of them, was channelled upwards through the internal dynamic of the European
multi-level governmental system. It gains leverage in inter-institutional
decision-making each time the Parliament – as a veto player in supranational
decision-making – can be won over to support market-correcting policy demands.
The second factor – which is not entirely unconnected with the first
– is that, in recent years, the very actors that were once ardent supporters of
liberalization, i.e. the Commission and the Court, have not consistently pursued
deregulation goals. Rather, the Commission has explicitly invoked
market-correcting goals, and the ECJ has allowed more latitude in its rulings
for public service goals in the network industries.
In what follows I will first present Fritz Scharpf’s argument in more detail.
I will then seek to embed the questions raised in a wider theoretical
context and derive propositions that indicate the factors making for a politics
of public service and establishing countervailing tendencies to negative
integration. These will be illustrated by referring to most recent policy developments
in the former public sectors.