Curtin, Deirdre --- "Public Accountability of Translational Rule Making: A View from the European Union and Beyond" [2010] ELECD 288; in Faure, Michael; van der Walt, André (eds), "Globalization and Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Globalization and Private Law

Editor(s): Faure, Michael; van der Walt, André

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447608

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Public Accountability of Translational Rule Making: A View from the European Union and Beyond

Author(s): Curtin, Deirdre

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

2. Public accountability of transnational
rule making: a view from the European
Union and beyond
Deirdre Curtin*

1 INTRODUCTION
Governance beyond the state, in whatever institutional or informal forum it
takes place, largely lies beyond the control of national democracies and consti-
tutional structures. The core problem is that outside the confines of the terri-
torial nation states, executives are only to a very limited extent held to account
for their actions and inactions. National parliaments in particular have not kept
up with what their national executives are doing and not doing. While national
parliaments have stayed put within their own neatly nationally fenced off
compartments, the executive has developed into a strongly interwoven,
complex administrative network, beyond the horizons of many, maybe all
national parliaments. The national executive power operates outside of its own
national political and constitutional level. It is active and engaged in decision
making at the European level and at the international or global level. It has as
a matter of practice surmounted thinking in terms of hierarchical levels and
may even be considered as engaged in a more fluid and composite governance
process.1 This is even more the case for other, private, actors performing
public functions at the transnational or European level. It is moreover relevant
in this context not only that general rule-making processes may fall outside
domestic processes of political accountability but also that there are no coun-
tervailing forces, no or little checks and balances at the regional and global
...