REFGOV Project no CIT3-CT-2005-513420 REFGOV Reflexive Governance in the Public Interest Integrated Project Priority 7 – Citizens and Governance in a knowledge-based society PART I PERIODIC ACTIVITY REPORT 3 June 2007 – May 2008 Period covered from 1/06/2007 to 31/05/2008 Date of preparation Start date of project 1/06/2005 Duration 5 years Project coordinator J. Lenoble name Project coordinator CPDR (Centre de Philosophie du Droit) Revision Organisation name Université catholique de Louvain REFGOV Reflexive Governance in the Public interest Periodic activity report 3 June 2007-May 2008 Contents Section 1 – Project objectives and major achievements during the reporting period.................................................................................................................... 4 Part 1 The REFGOV Research Project: Its General Framework, Hypotheses, Methodology, and Development. 4 1. The specific nature of the REFGOV research project and the hypothesis of reflexive governance 5 2. Review of the methodological organisation and planning of the research project: the scope of the studies conducted between June 2007 and May 2008 18 Part 2 Subnetworks’ objectives and major achievements during the reporting period 22 1. Global Public Services and Common Goods 22 2. Fundamental Rights 25 3. Services of general interest 29 4. Corporate governance 39 5. Institutional Frames for Markets 41 6. Theory of the Norm Unit 47 Section 2 – Workpackages - progress of the period.......................................49 2.1. Workpackages - Services of General Interest 49 Work package 1 description – SGI ...................................................................................... 49 Work package 2 description – SGI ...................................................................................... 51 Work package 3 description – SGI ...................................................................................... 52 Work package 4 description – SGI ...................................................................................... 53 Work package 5 description – SGI ...................................................................................... 55 2.2 Workpackages Global and Public Services 58 Work package 26 description – GPS.................................................................................... 58 Work package 27 description – GPS.................................................................................... 59 2.3 Workpackages Institutional Frames for Markets 62 Work package 11 description – IFM.................................................................................... 62 Work package 12 description – IFM.................................................................................... 63 Work package 13 description – IFM.................................................................................... 64 Work package 14 description – IFM.................................................................................... 65 Work package 15 description – IFM.................................................................................... 67 Work package 16 description – IFM.................................................................................... 69 2.4 Workpackages Corporate Governance 70 Work package 17 description – CG ..................................................................................... 70 Work package 18 description – CG ..................................................................................... 72 Work package 19 description – CG ..................................................................................... 74 Work package 20 description – CG ..................................................................................... 76 2.5 Workpackages Fundamental Rights 78 Work package 28 description – FR...................................................................................... 78 Work package 29 description – FR...................................................................................... 81 Work package 30 description – FR...................................................................................... 84 Work package 31 description – FR...................................................................................... 87 Work package 33 description – FR...................................................................................... 90 2.5 Workpackages Theory of the Norm Unit 94 Coordinated by the Centre for Philosophy of Law – Université catholique de Louvain 2 http://refgov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/ REFGOV Reflexive Governance in the Public interest Periodic activity report 3 June 2007- May 2008 Work package 24 description – TNU................................................................................... 94 Work package 25 description – TNU................................................................................... 97 Work package 35 description – CTS.................................................................................... 99 Section 3 – Tables ............................................................................................101 3.1 Workpackages Table 102 3.2 Deliverables Table 105 Annexes.............................................................................................................110 Annexe 1 : Global Public Services : Overview of the proposed edited volume in the “Politics, Science, and the Environment” series, MIT Press 110 Annexe 2 : Global Public Services : Outline of a collective volume, based on the Cargese workshop 112 Annexe 3 : Global Public Services : Workshop 7th of May 2008, Fondation Universitaire, Bruxelles 114 Annexe 4 : Corporate Governance : list of outputs 116 3 Coordinated by the Centre for Philosophy of Law – Université catholique de Louvain http://refgov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/ REFGOV Reflexive Governance in the Public interest Periodic activity report 3 June 2007- May 2008 Section 1 – Project objectives and major achievements during the reporting period Part 1 The REFGOV Research Project: Its General Framework, Hypotheses, Methodology, and Development. If the scope of the studies conducted in REFGOV during its third year (June 2007 – May 2008) is to be grasped, those studies must be situated within the research project’s general framework. To this end, two points must be recalled: 1. To build on the initial results of the REFGOV research project, it is necessary to specify the broad hypothesis governing the research project and the meaning we ascribe to the expression “reflexive governance”, thereby defining the conditions a collective action must fulfil in order to ensure, to the extent possible, that its members’ normative expectations are “maximised” (that is, in order to ensure what is generally called “governance in the public interest”). 2. Then we should remind the method used to organise the broad investigation being conducted within REFGOV, guaranteeing consistency among the various subnetworks. This will enable us to give an account of the basic unity underlying all the studies being conducted within the various subnetworks, across differing disciplinary approaches and the various empirical fields dealt with in the case studies. Clarifying our methodological procedure will also enable us to recall the way we have organised the research project’s “temporal dynamics”. With this basis, we will give an account of the stages to which the studies conducted between June 2007 and May 2008 correspond and the stages that remain to be completed for the objectives we set for REFGOV to be fulfilled. *** 4 Coordinated by the Centre for Philosophy of Law – Université catholique de Louvain http://refgov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/ REFGOV Reflexive Governance in the Public interest Periodic activity report 3 June 2007- May 2008 1. The specific nature of the REFGOV research project and the hypothesis of reflexive governance The meaning we assign to the expression “reflexive governance” can only be understood if we first recall the project that underpins REFGOV. This project emerged out of an option and an insight. The option consists of how “governance of a collective action” is broached. The insight was that by reconstructing the different current investigations into theory of governance from the angle of their theoretical assumptions about the theory of collective action, we would arrive at an important theoretical result. First, the option. No one doubts the issue designated by the term “governance” is currently dealt with in differing ways depending on the disciplinary instrument used (economic, legal, political-science, and so on) and the level at which a specific issue addressed is situated. Indeed, one is often struck by how difficult it is to integrate all this work into a cohesive inquiry, the issues under study being so diverse and situated at such divergent levels. (For instance, how are we to integrate economic analyses of reform in the management of common goods with political-scientific or legal analyses about multilevel governance or with analyses of new modes of governance inspired by the theories of deliberative democracy?) Thus under the umbrella of a single term – one that designates a common investigation into the question of governance – can be found an aggregation of studies that diverge significantly as regards the issues examined and the methodological approaches used. Besides this, however, even when the studies deal with similar issues, dialogue appears to be impossible. Often discipline-based approaches are developed in one sphere