Book excerpt: The emergence, execution and evolution of new modes of governance across several policy fields - and encompassing all three pillars of the European Union - are mapped, analyzed and evaluated. In particular, the expert contributors focus on the ways in which these innovative mechanisms and practices interrelate, how they relate to ?old' methods of governance, and what their implications are both for the effectiveness and efficiency of policymaking. Conclusions are drawn in the form of an integrated new framework that explains the dynamics of EU governance with an ?integrative spiral' driven by the interrelation between the legal and the living architecture of the EU. Linking research on modes of governance to the analysis of the basic legal, institutional and procedural features of the EU up to the Lisbon Treaty, this book will prove essential reading for scholars, researchers and policy makers in the fields of European studies, law and economics, and political science and theory.