Chapter 12 shows that the Covid-19 emergency and the ensuing suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and its sanctioning mechanisms in 2020 led to crucial changes in the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) regime. For example, the transnational distribution of EU funds, institutionalised by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF) Regulation in 2021, meant that the post-Covid NEG regime no longer mimicked the divisive beggar-thy-neighbour tools that transnational corporations use to steer their subsidiaries and workforce. Even so, EU executives continue to direct the post-Covid NEG regime without much participation by national parliaments and the European parliament or unions and social movements. Instead of using the financial sanctions of the suspended SGP, EU executives use the policy conditionalities attached to RRF funding to reach their objectives, which are in keeping with the overarching commodification script.

In Chapter 13, we provide a preliminary analysis of the policy orientation of the EU’s post-Covid-19 new economic governance (NEG) regime to give policymakers, unionists, and social-movement activists an idea about possible future trajectories of EU governance of employment relations and public services. We do that on the basis of not only the recently adopted EU laws in these two policy areas, such as the decommodifying Minimum Wage Directive, but also EU executives’ post-Covid-19 NEG prescriptions in two areas (employment relations, public services), three public sectors (transport services, water services, healthcare services), and four countries (Germany, Italy, Ireland, Romania). Vertical NEG interventions in national wage policies paradoxically cleared the way for the decommodifying EU Minimum Wage Directive by effectively making wage policy an EU policymaking issue, but, in the area of public services, we see an accentuation of the trend of NEG prescriptions in recent years: more public investments but also much more private sector involvement in the delivery of public services.

Chapter 7 shows that EU leaders had already started in the 1980s to steer the trajectory of national public services in a commodifying direction. The commodifying pressures from direct EU interventions reached a peak in 2004 with the Commission’s draft Services Directive, which failed to become law because of unprecedented transnational protest movements. After the financial crisis however, the EU’s shift to its new economic governance (NEG) regime empowered EU executives to pursue public service commodification by new means. Our analysis reveals that the NEG prescriptions on public services for Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Romania consistently pointed in a commodifying direction, by demanding both a curtailment of public resources for public services and the marketisation of public services. Although our analysis uncovers some decommodifying prescriptions, namely, quantitative ones calling for more investment at the end of the 2010s, they were usually justified with policy rationales subordinated to NEG’s commodification script.

Chapter 8 traces the EU governance of transport services from the Treaty of Rome to the new economic governance (NEG) regime adopted by the EU after the 2008 financial crisis. Initially, European public sector advocates were able to shield transport from commodification, but, over time, the Commission gradually advanced a commodification agenda one transport modality after another. Sometimes, however, the Commission’s draft liberalisation laws encountered enduring resistance and recurrent transnational protests by transport workers, leading the European Parliament and Council to curb the commodification bent of the Commission’s draft directives. After 2008 however, NEG provided EU executives with new means to circumvent resistance. Despite their country-specific methodology, all qualitative NEG prescriptions on transport services issued to Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Romania pointed towards commodification. But the more the Commission succeeded in commodifying transport services, the more the nature of counter-mobilisations changed. Accordingly, the European Transport Workers’ Federation’s Fair Transport European Citizens’ Initiative no longer targeted vertical EU interventions, but rather the social dumping pressures created by the horizontal free movement of services and fellow transport workers. This target made joint transnational collective action more difficult.

Chapter 6 shows that workers’ wages and employment relations were, until the 2008 crisis, shaped by horizontal market pressures rather than direct political vertical EU interventions in the labour policy area. That changed radically after the EU’s shift to its new economic governance (NEG) regime. We found that the EU’s NEG prescriptions on wage levels, collective bargaining, and hiring and firing mechanisms followed a consistent trajectory that furthered the commodification of labour in Italy, Ireland, and Romania, but less so in Germany. Instead, Germany received decommodifying NEG prescriptions on wage policy that were linked to a rebalance-the-EU-economy policy rationale. Although this policy rationale was still compatible with NEG’s overarching commodifying script, the diverging policy orientation of prescriptions in this area across countries made it hard for unions to challenge NEG transnationally.

Chapter 11 compares the policy orientation of the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) prescriptions in two policy areas (employment relations, public services), three sectors (transport, water, healthcare), four countries (Germany, Italy, Ireland, Romania) from 2009 to 2019. It reveals that almost all qualitative prescriptions pointed in a commodifying direction. Most quantitative prescriptions tasked governments to curtail wages and public expenditures too, but, over time, they not only became less coercive but also increasingly pointed in a decommodifying direction, tasking governments to invest more. It would, however, still be wrong to speak of a socialisation of NEG, not just given the decommodifying prescriptions’ weak coercive power but also because of their links to policy rationales that are compatible with NEG’s overarching commodification script. Moreover, Chapter 11 shows that NEG prescriptions tasked governments to channel more public resources into the allegedly more productive sectors (transport and water services) rather than into essential social services like healthcare. Given NEG’s country-specific methodology, it is not surprising that there have been only few instances of transnational action on specific NEG prescriptions. By contrast, the share of transnational labour protests targeting EU interventions broadly defined increased after 2008. This suggests that NEG has been altering protest landscapes.

Chapter 14 concludes the book, highlighting its major theoretical and practical insights for the study of EU integration and for the prospects of democracy in Europe. The technocratic design of the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) regime eschewed citizens’ and workers’ political rights to have a say in policymaking; and the commodifying bent of its prescriptions eroded their social rights to be protected from the vagaries of the market. After the pandemic, the technocratic bent in EU economic governance endured, as the National Recovery and Resilience Plans were co-designed by national and EU executives without any meaningful input from unions and social movements, and without national parliaments and the European Parliament making any amendments. The commodifying direction of the NEG regime also endured post-Covid, albeit with some concessions, notably in employment relations. EU executives have had to face the prospect that the hollowing out of social rights that resulted from commodification is pushing electorates towards Eurosceptic parties. In the current unstable context, labour politics matters a lot. Unions and social movements are essential in framing the social and political struggles about the policy direction of EU economic governance along a commodification–decommodification axis rather than a national–EU politics axis.

Chapter 9 analyses the EU governance of water and the countervailing mobilisations against its commodification. Initially, European law decommodified water services through the harmonisation of quality standards that took them out of regulatory competition between member states. However, from the 1990s onwards, the Commission repeatedly attempted to commodify water through liberalising EU laws. When these attempts failed, EU executives tried to advance commodification by new means, namely, through the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) prescriptions. Our analysis revealed that all qualitative prescriptions on water services issued from 2009 to 2019 to Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Romania called for their marketisation, despite recent calls to increase public investment. Like preceding attempts by draft EU directives, the NEG’s consistent commodification script triggered transnational protests by unions and social movements that defended water as a human right and as a public service, namely, under the banner of the successful Right2Water European Citizens’ Initiative.

Chapter 10 traces the EU governance of health services and its discontents. The first European interventions in the health sector facilitated mobile workers’ access to health services in their host countries, thereby decommodifying cross-border care, albeit by recourse to solidaristic mechanisms situated at national rather than EU level. Since the 1990s however, European horizontal market pressures and EU public deficit criteria have led governments to curtail healthcare spending and to introduce marketising reforms. Thereafter, healthcare became a target of EU competition and free movement of services law. In 2006, transnational collective action of trade unions and social movements moved EU legislators to drop healthcare from the scope of the draft EU Services Directive. After the financial crisis of 2008 however, EU executives pursued commodification of healthcare through new means, as shown by our analysis of their new economic governance (NEG) prescriptions for Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Romania. Even when commodifying prescriptions were on occasion accompanied by decommodifying ones, the latter remained subordinated to the former. Although NEG’s country-specific methodology hampered transnational protests, the overarching commodification script of NEG prescriptions led not only to transnational protests by the European Federation of Public Service Unions, but also to the formation of the European Network against the Privatisation and Commercialisation of Health and Social Protection, which unites unionists and social-movement activists.

This chapter demonstrates how transnational counter-terrorism is used to shape, license, and excuse domestic actions that have direct and intimate impacts on the individual and on the relationship between state power and accountability in the counter-terrorism domain. The chapter considers how transnational counter-terrorism disrupts modes of managing the relationship between international and domestic law. It shows that transnational provenance is often used as a proxy for domestic tests of proportionality, constitutionality, and necessity, thus undermining politicisation and national constitutional arrangements. Finally, the chapter considers the impact of transnational counter-terrorism on the relationship between the state and the individual, showing that states routinely capitalise on the impulses and atmosphere of the transnational counter-terrorism order to securitise dissent and opposition, and that transnational counter-terrorism enables states to recast citizens as terrorists whose rights can be treated as forfeited, even where this leaves such citizens in situations of grave vulnerability, including exposure to torture or inhuman treatment.

In this chapter I bring together the findings of the five case studies to offer answers to the research questions about the distribution of authority in statistical systems. I also outline the implications of my study for our understanding of practices of knowledge production and utilisation in policymaking, as well as the role of experts in contemporary liberal democracy. Finally, I consider directions for future research stemming from my study findings.

Several approaches have emerged for understanding how policy advisory systems are organised and operate. A dominant early theme in PAS research has been location, focusing on distributional issues about where the supply of advice was located and the ability of a government to control it. Research charted the ascendency and decline of advisory units, with an emphasis on the public service’s changing role, and the impacts on policymaking and governing of new sources of supply and shifting demand. A second approach has been the content of policy advice. This has recognised that, while location was important, the composition, operation, and influence of units within these systems were in part a result of the congruence of the content of advice with demand, regardless of the location or government control. Third are the dynamics linked to the stability and change of individual components or entire systems over time. The main focus has been the externalisation and politicisation of these systems because of their significance and identifiability. Another approach is to examine change according to its magnitude: from overarching frameworks to micro adjustments. Finally, organisational dynamics are considered as types of advisory units rise and fall in significance or change character.

Chapter 5 explores the politically appointed staffs working in ministers’ and prime ministers’ offices. Comparative analysis showcases the flexibility of policy advisory systems (PAS) and the several interpretations of the Westminster tradition. Advisers were added to PAS to extend ministers’ control, address deficiencies in public service advice and increase ministers’ capacity to address the politics of policy work. Their effects have attracted debates about politicisation. At best, advisers identify political risks and help ministers avoid the derailment of policy agendas.They serve as ports of call for officials, interested stakeholders and other ministers, as well as facilitate the circulation of policy advice within government. At worst they have corrosive effects, overstepping boundaries by throwing their weight around and directing public servants without appropriate authority. They act as gatekeepers on the professional advice of the public service before it reaches ministers. There is widespread agreement that partisan advisers have become more prominent and influential. Central political offices have become adept at using them as systemic instruments to secure political alignment and coordination throughout government. Their growing numbers and the specialisation of policy functions have become important for how ministers exert political control and seek contestable policy.

Chapter 8 analyses the patterns of change and the state of the respective systems. Comparative analysis provides an understanding of the types and nature of change, drawing attention to system-wide and localised modifications to advisory instruments. It also highlights distinct types of changes and the shared and distinct trajectories that have impacted the configuration and operation of these systems. The analysis focuses on differences in types of change by adapting Hall’s (1993) three ‘orders’ of change: first-order policy advisory systems (PAS) changes involving routine adjustments to existing practices or units; second-order change addressing the ascendency and decline of categories of advisers and shifts in advisory practices; and third-order macro-level changes. The trajectories of PAS change are distinguished by differences in tempo and sequencing, some being gradual and longer-term (e.g., erosion of public service capacity), while others are abrupt and transformational (e.g., responses to the global financial crisis). The cases feature different sequencing when (de)institutionalisation occurs (e.g., partisan advisers). The dynamics of externalisation and politicisation are reappraised using subtypes that reveal their breadth. The flexibility and adaptability inherent in PAS, government preferences and environmental pressures will lead to continuing change and the need for comprehensive approaches to understand it.

Quality policy advice is essential for good governance, but the advice needed, who provides it and how, have evolved in Westminster policy advisory systems (PAS). The public service role has been transformed as new sources of advice have emerged and ministers have been critiqued for ignoring officials’ advice while focusing on the short term. In a contestable environment, public service advice is replaced by that of consultants, think tanks and political aides. Four themes guided the analysis of advisory systems: the place of advisory work in the Westminster administrative tradition; structural and organisational trends; comparative analysis of advisory systems’ stability and change; and managing PAS and implications for policy making. The main arguments are: PAS is more dynamic and complex than is currently depicted; politicisation and externalisation continue as important dynamics but need to be explained; parallel processes have operated to increase flexibility in using advice instruments and independent agencies; and PAS change has been gradual and endogenous. At the macro level, dimensions of an evolving advisory system are identified based on the directions of change, which indicates a more expansive understanding of PAS that takes into account the complexities of public policy and the centrality of government.