Talkin’ bout a revolution? Institutional change in the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility: The case of climate policy

Pierre Bocquillon, Eleanor Brooks, Tomas Maltby

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

The European Union (EU) post-COVID-19 investment and reform programme, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), has been hailed as novel and ambitious, both as a fiscal instrument and as a lever for accelerating progress towards EU climate commitments. Yet, its design also exhibits strong path dependency, drawing on existing processes and commitments. Adapting theories of institutional change and models of hard/soft governance, we argue that the RRF is an example of significant yet gradual change – of evolution rather than revolution – taking place via layering and conversion of existing frameworks, and alteration of their logics of action. We show how the RRF repurposes the European Semester and track continuity and change in climate policy, a key priority area. Our findings suggest that the literature on institutional change should give greater consideration to the interplay between layering and conversion as a mechanism of gradual yet transformative evolution.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1633-1653
Number of pages21
JournalJCMS-Journal of Common Market Studies
Volume62
Issue number6
Early online date15 Aug 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2024

Keywords

  • climate policy
  • crisis
  • European Union
  • institutional change
  • policy conversion
  • policy layering

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