1,721,079 research outputs found
Conceptualising the role of national parliaments in the EU system of governance
Full text linkThe function of national parliaments in the European Union has attracted significant
public debate in recent years, particularly in the context of the draft EU Constitutional
Treaty. Much of this has concerned the role of such legislatures in respect of two
issues – scrutiny of EU legislation, and providing a bridge to narrow a perceived gap
between the central EU institutions and the citizens of the member-states. How best
these tasks can be achieved remains subject to considerable discussion and has
resulted in substantial innovation and institutional reconfiguration within the national
parliaments of the Union. In this article, the various patterns and understandings
emerging in the deliberation over the future of national parliaments in the EU system
of governance are explored. It is concluded that the most progressive course of action
for national parliaments in an enlarged EU is to seek methods of shaping the agenda
rather than focusing on securing maximum recognition or veto power within the
Union's wider infrastructure
The role of the 'centre' in public service reform
No full textAmongst his many interests in public administration, the practical and challenging task of implementing and evaluating public service reform has been a consistent feature of the oeuvre of research over Richard Boyle’s career (cf. Boyle and Joyce 1988; Boyle and Lemaire 1999; Boyle 2004; Boyle and MacCarthaigh 2011; Boyle 2016). In this article, the focus is on the role played by the ‘centre’ in public service reform both conceptually and in practice. The chapter first considers what is meant by the centre in Irish political-administrative life, before reflecting on how we might understand different forms of public sector reform governance and then applying them to the Irish case. The centre-led reforms that occurred between the 1960s up to the late-2000s are reviewed, before more recent efforts from 2011 up to the present are presented. A final section summaries the contribution
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