Resumen de Understanding the New Forms of Governance: Mutually Interdependent, Reflexive, Destabilised and Competing Institutions

Inger-Johanne Sand

• Fundamental changes in the functions of law and politics, new forms of governance, and the bases of the legitimacy of contemporary EU institutions, herald the end of ‘state’ monopolies. The dynamics and relations of supranational and national institutions which we are now witnessing, represent qualitatively new patterns and clusters of communications, interaction and competition. The emerging EU constitutional framework is continually being interpreted and negotiated by numerous participating parties. Functional and mutual interdependence has replaced hierarchy as the primary institutional relationship, thus enhancing further the importance of the treaties and leading to an increased politicisation of law. Sovereignty has dissolved into multiple paths of procedures and combinations of institutions. Science and knowledge‐based discourses have generally invaded regulation, with the result that lawyers need to pay increasing attention to transparency, freedom of information, and the establishment of structures which are relatively autonomous from both state and market. The EU is best conceived of as consisting of mutually interdependent, reflexive, destabilised and competing institutions.