European Union transgovernmental networks: The emergence of a new political space beyond the nation-state?

Does the European Union (EU) represent a new political order replacing the old nation-states? The assessment of the real character of political orders requires the identification of political key actors and of the specific structure of their interactions. Transgovernmental networks have been considered to be one of the most important features of EU integration. Unfortunately, the network structures, processes and the impact of these informal horizontal inter-organisational relations between nation-states are mostly unknown.The main objective of this article is to measure and explain the selective pattern of informal bilateral relations of high officials of the EU Member States’ ministerial bureaucracies on the occasion of an EU Intergovernmental Conference. The quantitative data used rely on standardised interviews with 140 top-level bureaucrats. The statistical estimation of network choices is based on recent developments of exponential random graph models. Emerging new political spaces: The fusion of European administrations Does the European Union (EU) represent a new political order replacing the old nation-states? The suggestions of the grand theories of EU integration are well known: for the liberal intergovernmentalist approach of Moravcsik (1998), national governments are and continue to be the ‘masters of the treaty’. Therefore, the author focuses on the making of constitutional rules as representing the most fundamental rules of this intergovernmental regime. He understands the dynamics of integration to be driven mainly by the economic interests of states with defined territories and boundaries. To the contrary, neofunctionalism accentuates the role of civil society, reorienting its demands and support to supranational actors who are supposed to be better able to manage social change (Haas 1961). In this view, functional needs drive the integration process and shape its form. Cross-sectional spillovers expand the political competencies of supranational actors and, eventually, replace the authority of the nation-state. Are these grand theories incommensurable? The assessment of the real character of a political order requires the identification of key political actors European Journal of Political Research ••: ••–••, 2008 1 doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2008.00825.x © 2008 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2008 (European Consortium for Political Research) Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,