(Re)theorising European Integration under Globalisation:A Political Economy Approach

In the last two decades, the European Union has become wider and deeper. In addition, the number of regional integration arrangements has increased dramatically since early 1990s. Against these developments, the focus of regional and European integration studies has shifted away from the motives for and drivers of the integration process towards policy analysis or the comparative politics or regional blocs. This article attempts to bring the regional integration theory back in by proposing a political economy model that explains the dynamics of European integration, the reasons as to why governments agree to delegate authority to regional (EU) institutions, and the relationship between globalisation and integration

Political Yardstick Competition, Economic Integration, and Constitutional Choice in a Federation

This paper investigates the behavior of rent-seeking politicians in an environment of increasing economic integration. The focus of the paper is on the implications of globalization-induced political yardstick competition for constitutional design with a view to the current discussion in the European Union. In contrast to the established literature, we carefully portray the double-tiered government structure in federal systems. The number of lower-tier governments and the allocation of policy responsibilities to the two levels of government are subject to constitutional choice.Economic Integration, Federalism, Political Economy, Yardstick Competition

A Domino Theory of Regionalism

Regional liberalization sweeps the globe like wildfire while multilateral nude talks proceed at a glacial pace. Why are countries eager to liberalize regionally but reluctant to do so multilaterally? The answer of the GATT-is-dead school is that multilateralism is too cumbersome for contemporary trade issues, This paper proposes a very different answer. Recent regionalism is caused by two idiosyncratic events multiplied by a domino effect. The triggering events - the U.S-Mexico ETA and the EC's 1992 programmes had nothing to do with GATT's health. The domino effect is simple. Political equilibria, which balance anti- and pro-membership forces, determine governments' stances on regional liberalization. Domestic exporters to regional blocs are a powerful pro-membership constituency. An event that triggers closer integration within an existing bloc harms the profits of nonmember exporters, thus stimulating them to boost their promembership political activity. The extra activity alters the political equilibrium, leading some countries to join. This enlargement further harms nonmember exporters since they now face a disadvantage in a greater number of markets. This second round effect brings forth more promembership political activity and a further enlargement of the bloc. The new political equilibrium is marked by larger regional trading blocs. In the meantime regionalism appears to spread like wildfire.

The Impact of Globalization on Global Civil Society Expansion

In recent decades, global civil society (GCS) actors have emerged as important players in global governance. Global civil society organizations have elevated the policy agenda profile of human rights, women’s rights, and environmental concerns. Global civil society has overcome the objections of powerful countries to establish the International Criminal Court and the Mine Ban Treaty and successfully opposed the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and WTO’s Doha Development Round. These notable successes demonstrate the need for a better understanding of global civil society’s motives and its role in international public policy. This dissertation, uses a 29-year panel regression of 122 countries to test four widespread explanations for the dynamic growth in number and influence of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). This dissertation addresses a gap in the literature by assessing how well explanations based on democratic expansion, political integration, economic integration, and national capacity predict the distribution of INGOs globally. While all four theories receive some support from the analysis, the political integration explanation and economic integration explanation generate the most interesting findings. Political integration has an overwhelming influence on the number of INGOs active in a country. Increased political integration brings with it increased administrative responsibility; countries must figure out how to implement and comply with increasing international commitments. Often, INGOs partner with national governments to meet this administrative demand. This finding can be interpreted positively – INGOs mitigate bureaucratic constraints; making programs more responsive to the needs of the beneficiaries. It can also be interpreted from a negatively – INGOs are drawn by available funding; raising fears that these organizations are more accountable to donor demands than the needs of their clients. The economic integration explanation is at the heart of the anti-globalization movement, which triggered important procedural changes at the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. This study finds that economic integration explanation does not effectively predict global civil society distribution and that national income levels further modify its effectiveness. Both the political integration and economic integration findings encourage healthy skepticism about global civil society’s ability to democratize international public policy

Toward a Sunny Future? Global Integration in the Solar PV Industry

Policymakers seem to face a trade-off when designing national trade and investment policies related to clean energy sectors. They have pledged to address climate change and accelerate the large-scale deployment of renewable energy technologies, which would benefit from increased global integration, but they are also tempted to nurture and protect domestic clean technology markets to create green jobs at home and ensure domestic political support for more ambitious climate policies. This paper analyzes the global integration of the solar photovoltaic (PV) sector and looks in detail at the industry’s recent growth patterns, industry cost structure, trade and investment patterns, government support policies and employment generation potential. In order to further stimulate both further growth of the solar industry and local job creation without constructing new trade and investment barriers, we recommend the following: (1) Governments must provide sufficient and predictable long-term support to solar energy deployment. Such long-term frameworks bring investments forward and encourage cost cutting and innovation, so that government support can decrease over time. A price on carbon emissions would provide an additional long-term market signal and likely accelerate this process. (2) Policymakers should focus not on solely the manufacturing jobs in the solar industry, but on the total number of jobs that could possibly be created including those in research, project development, installation, operations and maintenance. (3) Global integration and broader solar PV technology deployment through lower costs can be encouraged by keeping global solar PV markets open. Protectionist policies risk slowing the development of global solar markets and provoking retaliatory actions in other sectors. Lowering existing trade barriers—by abolishing tariffs, reducing non-tariff barriers and harmonizing industry standards—would create a positive policy environment for further global integration.Solar PV, climate change, renewable energy, government support, green protectionism, green jobs, global integration

The Causes of Political Integration: An Application to School Districts

This paper examines the forces behind political integration through the lens of school district consolidations, which reduced the number of school districts in the United States from around 130,000 in 1930 to under 15,000 at present. Despite this large observed decline, many districts resisted consolidation before ultimately merging and others never merged, choosing to remain at enrollment levels that nearly any education cost function would deem inefficiently small. Why do some districts voluntarily integrate while others remain small, and how do those districts that do merge choose with which of their neighbors to do so? In addressing these questions, we empirically examine the role of potential economies and diseconomies of scale, heterogeneity between merger partners, and the role of state governments. We first develop a simulation-based estimator that is rooted in the economics of matching and thus accounts for three important features of typical merger protocol: two-sided decision making, multiple potential partners, and spatial interdependence. We then apply this methodology to a wave of school district mergers in the state of Iowa during the 1990s. Our results highlight the importance of economies of scale, diseconomies of scale, state financial incentives for consolidation, and a variety of heterogeneity measures.

Unlocking North Africa’s Potential through Regional Integration : Challenges and Opportunities

Efforts to promote regional integration in North Africa to date have often been constrained by political differences as well as diversity in economic performance, pace of economic reforms and openness, and disparities in legal and regulatory frameworks. Overlapping preferential trade agreements also emerged as a constraint to regional integration efforts on the back of complex rules of origin and a large number of ‘behind the border’ barriers. Together, these impediments have increased transaction costs. Importantly, the existence of these barriers reflects weak commitment to the integration process, as national governments have failed to translate decisions taken at the regional level into action at the country level. In the wake of the Arab Spring, the emerging political landscape in North Africa promises to give new impetus to regional integration efforts, as new democratically-elected governments seek to promote inclusive growth and build institutions for good governance. The diversity of resource endowments in the region, coupled with the existing physical infrastructure, represent an important opportunity to further development through integration. This book examines the key issues and challenges facing regional integration in the North African countries across a number of thematic areas including: (i) energy, (ii) climate change and environment, (iii) financial sector, (iv) trade facilitation and transport, (v) human development and, (vi) information and communication technology. It provides proposals for the Bank’s continued engagement in the region, geared towards exploiting the full potential of regional integration in North Africa for the promotion of a new, inclusive, sustainable economic growth model

Securing the state, undermining democracy: internationalization and privatization of western militaries

Changes in the field of security since the 1990s triggered off a number of still continuing military transformations in liberal democracies. Since their armed forces were designed for the purposes of the bipolar Cold war security constellation, they have been “redesigned” according to the new tasks as agreed upon in the new NATO strategic concepts or the assignments for the Europeanized forces within the European Union: Conflict prevention, crisis intervention, counter-terrorism have been added to the range of deployment missions. This recent transformation of the armed forces is pushed ahead in the political spirit of new public management well known from other policy areas in the OECD countries. The proclaimed reforms are guided by efficiency and effectiveness principles only, issues of democratic control and integration of the armed forces into the society are marginalized in the political discourse. But integration and cooperation within international organizations is only one of the two trends detrimental to democratic control of the military; increasing contracting with Private Security and Military Companies is the other. Contracting is intended to reduce political and financial costs and risks for Western governments. The authors argue that, in the long run, both trends of privatization and internationalization, though they seem to run into opposite directions from a purely etatist perspective, result in the joint effect of exacerbating democratic control and accountability of security policies. This point is illustrated by the employment of private military companies by the US government agencies and US military and the reform of the German armed forces. -- Seit Ende des Ost-West-Konflikts befinden sich die westlichen Streitkräfte in einem anhaltenden Transformationsprozess. Waren die Streitkräfte zuvor an der bipolaren Sicherheitskonstellation des Kalten Krieges ausgerichtet, werden sie seit 1990 umstrukturiert, um neue Missionen zu erfüllen, wie sie in den strategischen Konzepten der NATO oder den Aufgabenfeldern der Europäischen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik definiert sind. Unter den Vorzeichen eines New Public Managements vorangetrieben, das in den letzten Jahrzehnten als ökonomisch inspiriertes Reformprinzip bereits zahlreiche andere Politikfelder der OECD-Staaten geprägt hat, sind die Umstrukturierungen der Streitkräfte vorwiegend an Effizienz- und Effektivitäts-Gesichtspunkten orientiert. Fragen der demokratischen Kontrolle und der Integration des Militärs in die jeweilige Gesellschaft werden dagegen im politischen Diskurs vernachlässigt. Zwei Entwicklungstrends kennzeichnen derzeit die westliche Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik: die Integration und Kooperation westlicher Streitkräfte im Rahmen von internationalen Organisationen sowie der zunehmende Einsatz privater Sicherheitsunternehmen. Obwohl Internationalisierung und Privatisierung von Sicherheitspolitik in einer staatszentrierten Perspektive auf den ersten Blick gegenläufige Tendenzen einer Stärkung der Exekutive einerseits und der Schwächung des Staates andererseits zu markieren scheinen, tragen jedoch beide zu einer Schädigung der nationalstaatlichen Demokratie bei. Diese These erläutern die Autorinnen anhand des vermehrten Rückgriffs der US-amerikanischen Regierung auf private Sicherheitsanbieter sowie der Transformation der deutschen Streitkräfte.

Toward international peace and security: Addressing the challenge of nuclear proliferation in a globalized world. ACES Working Papers, August 2010

With a growing number of threats to governance in the international system that result from globalization and technological innovation, it is no surprise that states have come to rely more heavily on each other and the global community for support. While the EU is partially constrained by the ultimate outcome of its own integration process, limited knowledge on this issue, and the national interests of its Member States, other governments are also experiencing difficulty in domestic implementation of international resolutions. To better understand the impact of the most recent sanctioning efforts, this paper will explore the development of the non-proliferation regime, examine implementation mechanisms of non-proliferation agreements, and analyze the impact of increased cooperation among states to thwart the spread of WMD technology and material. Case studies of unilateral measures undertaken by the US and EU against Iran will provide insight into the political and economic implications of economic sanctions from individual governments. New and emerging methods for limiting rogue states and non-state actors from acquiring the means to develop WMD will also be discussed in an effort to further discussion for future policy debates on this critical topic

The Court of Justice of the European Union in the Twenty-First Century

LiU har en tradition av att lärare framgångsrikt har sökt och även erhållit, resurser för pedagogiska utvecklingsprojekt på den tiden när sådana medel fördelades i konkurrens på nationell nivå av t.ex. Rådet för grundutbildning, NSHU etc. Sedan 2008, när NSHU lades ner, finns inget sådan nationellt organ utan varje lärosäte har i uppdrag att själva arbeta med sitt interna kvalitetsarbete när det gäller utbildning. Under 2010 utlyste CUL medel för att stimulera sådana utvecklingsprojekt vid LiU, och tio projekt beviljades medel. I denna rapport finns bidrag från Laura Alvarez et.al; Madelaine Johansson et.al och Gunnel Östlund som är resultat av denna satsning. Under samma tid utlystes pedagogiska utvecklingsmedel inom LiTH, och bidragen från Ingrid Andersson och Johan Hedbrant, Henrik Brandén, Johan Renner och Björn Oskarsson är resultat av denna satsning. Utöver dessa personer bidrar också ett antal lärare med arbeten som grundar sig på deras kunskaper och insikter från deltagande i högskolepedagogiska kurser, undervisning och arbete med studenter, t.ex. på biblioteket. Bidrag från Chun-Xia Du, Ann-Sofie Bergeling, Christina Brage et.al och Magnus Dahlstedt är exempel på detta. Bidragen är skrivna på både svenska och engelska och varje författare är ensam ansvarig för innehållet. Vid redigeringen av bidragen har en ambition varit att de skall kunna läsas av icke ämneskunniga personer, men ibland är det svårt att förklara det konkreta genomförandet av kurser utan att använda fackuttryck. Vad gäller sättet att skriva referenser så har riktlinjerna varit att detta skall göras konsekvent, utifrån ett givet system, inom respektive bidrag. Bidragen är organiserade i tre delar: Lärandeideal och utformning av lärmiljöer Betydelsen av hur utbildning och kurser designas – för lärande och undervisning Utveckling och förändring av läraktiviteter och lärares förhållningssät