Koji Fukuda, Professor (Waseda University)
The primary feature of European governance is that it functions as if the governance mechanisms of the EU's many institutions and Member States' organizations are closely connected, not only in policy formation processes but also in the implementation processes, as if they constituted one regime. With regard to the policy processes of the EU, coordination and cooperation between the EU administration and member states' administrations has worked successfully for many years. The plural nature of the actors, and the policy processes driven forward by non-hierarchical participation, are thought to be an important example of network governance. The purpose of this comparative study of European public policy is to examine the importance of these dimensions of European cooperation.