Giandomenico Majone

Giandomenico Majone (March 27, 1932 - present) is an Italian academic notable in particular for his work on the European Union (EU). The majority of his work in this field has been concerned with theories of delegation and their impact on the perceived democratic deficit in the European Union.

Education

Majone studied at the University of Padua in the early 1950s acquiring a Master of Arts in Political Economy in 1956, before enrolling at the Carnegie Institute of Technology where he received a Master of Science degree in Mathematics in 1960. In the early 1960s he studied at the University of California where he earned a Doctorate in statistics in 1965. In 1986 he was appointed Professor of Public Policy Analysis at the European University Institute (EUI), a post he held until 1995. He currently holds a position as an external professor at the EUI in addition to that of Visiting Distinguished Professor at the EU Center and Graduate School of Public and International Affairs in the University of Pittsburgh. [ [http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/euce/visitors/Majone.html European Union Center: University Center for International Studies ] ]

Academic Contribution

Majone has written on a wide variety of subjects, but his most notable contribution has been concerned with the delegation of regulatory powers in the European Union. In brief, Majone conceives of the delegation of regulatory powers to supranational institutions such as the European Commission as a means for the member states of the EU to engage in credible commitments with respects to matters of integration and the implementation of EU policies. Majone asserts that the scope of EU powers are primarily regulatory and contrasts delegation to the Commission with national forms of delegation such as that to an independent central bank. The member states under Majone's system delegate certain regulatory powers to the Commission to insulate them from democratic pressures which could inhibit optimal policy outcomes. Of these pressures the two most important ones are problems of 'shifting political property rights' whereby the commitments made by one government can be undone by a newly elected government and the problem of 'time inconsistency' where the optimal short term policy may run counter to the optimal long term policy and as such decisions on purely regulatory matters should be made by institutions which are not democratically accountable. The common example given to illustrate this point is that of interest rates, namely that whilst a policy of low inflation over a long period of time might be recognised as the best long term course of action, governments facing elections will often have motivation to lower interest rates and manufacture short term 'booms' in the economy. When this argument is translated to the EU it presents, for Majone, a defence of the perceived undemocratic nature of institutions like the European Commission and a warning against the introduction of democratic reforms such as a directly elected Commission President which could undermine the functions of the supranational institutions. [Giandomenico Majone (2002) The European Commission: The Limits of Centralization and the Perils of Parliamentarization, Governance, Issue 15 (3)]

Publications

*Dilemmas of European Integration, Oxford University Press, 2005.

*Regulating Europe, Routledge, September 1996.

*The European Community as a Regulatory State, published by Nijhoff in the Series of Lectures of the Academy of European Law, 1995.

*Deregulation or Re-regulation? Regulatory Reform in Europe and the United States, London: Francis Pinter, 1990. (Paperback edition 1992).

*L'Europe d'aujourd'hui, Baden Baden, 1989.

*Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. (Paperback edition, 1992). Spanish translation, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1996.

*Guidance, Control and Evaluation in the Public Sector (co-editor and co-author), Berlin: Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1985.

*Pitfalls of Analysis (co-editor and co-author), London: Wiley, 1980.

References