comparing Germany and the UK

This paper qualitatively explores the prospects to restore compliance with EU law against the rigid and eminently strong resistance of the affected member states. An empirical study of Court cases on incorrect legal transposition of EC directives in Germany and the UK reveals that states give in to the European prosecutors early in some cases, but maintain non-compliance for a longer period in others. This paper demonstrates that policy variables such as the interpretational scope of the disputed element, domestic norms, the organizational degree of organized interests, and the strength of domestic non-compliance constituencies influence the settlement dynamics of hard cases

Navigating Regional Regime Complexity: How and Why Does the European Union Cooperate With Regional Organizations?

The number of regional organizations in Europe has increased in the aftermaths of the Second World War and the Cold War. Whenever regional organizations share member states and are equipped with identical policy competencies at the same time, regime complexity comes into play. Unmanaged regime complexity has not only increased over time but can also bring about negative consequences that can reduce the effectiveness of regional governance. To address these challenges, regional organizations can turn into external actors and cooperate with each other. While some of these cooperation agreements are shallow, others are deep and differ in the specification of policy scopes, instruments, and designated arenas. Thus, we pursue the following research questions: (a) How frequently does the EU cooperate with other regional organizations in the regional regime complex? (b) How does the design of cooperation differ? We show that the EU is an active shaper of regime complexes, not only when it comes to constructing them in the first place, but also with respect to navigating complexity. The EU has entered formal cooperative agreements with most of the regional organizations with which it overlaps. The EU concluded many agreements because it possesses the necessary capacities and is able to speak with one voice externally. We show that the design of agreements is influenced by ideological distances with the other regional organizations

Explaining non-compliance dynamics in the EU

1\. Introduction 6 2\. Non-Compliance and Policy-Variation 7 3\. Policy- Explanations 12 4\. Rule-specific Explanations 18 5\. Conclusions 27 Literature 29 Appendix: Operationalization of Power and Capacity 33The European Union’s infringement procedure is highly legalized. Nevertheless, as in other international institutions, non-compliance occurs on a regular basis and its transformation into compliance varies across EU infringement stages and over time. State of the art compliance literature focuses mainly on country-specific explanations, such as power, capacity, and legitimacy. In particular power-capacity models explain a good part of whether non-compliance occurs and how quickly it can be resolved. Yet, these approaches leave substantial parts of the empirical variation that we observe unexplained. This paper argues that policy and, in particular, rule-specific variables – although often neglected – are important for explaining non-compliance. Based on a quantitative analysis, we show that policy matters not only for the frequency with which EU law is violated, but also the persistence of non- compliance over time and over the different stages of the infringement procedure

Policy Matters But How? Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU

The European Union’s infringement procedure is highly legalized. Nevertheless, as in other international institutions, non-compliance occurs on a regular basis and its transformation into compliance varies across EU infringement stages and over time. State of the art compliance literature focuses mainly on country-specific explanations, such as power, capacity, and legitimacy. In particular power-capacity models explain a good part of whether non-compliance occurs and how quickly it can be resolved. Yet, these approaches leave substantial parts of the empirical variation that we observe unexplained. This paper argues that policy and, in particular, rule-specific variables – although often neglected – are important for explaining non-compliance. Based on a quantitative analysis, we show that policy matters not only for the frequency with which EU law is violated, but also the persistence of non-compliance over time and over the different stages of the infringement procedure

Non-Western small states:activists or survivors?

In this introduction to the collection, we explain its focus on non-Western small states. While the terms ‘non-Western’ and ‘small states’ are problematic – we discuss these problems here – the smallness and non-Westerness of the states studied by the contributing authors set them apart in a way that has attracted little academic attention so far. They allow them to operate with fewer normative and practical constraints than their bigger, Western counterparts; offer them a wide range of (often historically forged) political ties; and force them to draw on a diversity of approaches and strategic thinking, and a creativity, that they are too rarely credited for. Non-Western small states, rather than being mere survivors constrained to the world’s periphery, are better understood as activist states intent on existing. The collection offers a range of analytical keys to make sense of these states and their role in the international scene

Social Movements and International Relations: A Relational Framework

Social movements are increasingly recognized as significant features of contemporary world politics, yet to date their treatment in international relations theory has tended to obfuscate the considerable diversity of these social formations, and the variegated interactions they may establish with state actors and different structures of world order. Highlighting the difficulties conventional liberal and critical approaches have in transcending conceptions of movements as moral entities, the article draws from two under-exploited literatures in the study of social movements in international relations, the English School and Social Systems Theory, to specify a wider range of analytical interactions between different categories of social movements and of world political structures. Moreover, by casting social movement phenomena as communications, the article opens international relations to consideration of the increasingly diverse trajectories and second-order effects produced by social movements as they interact with states, intergovernmental institutions, and transnational actors

Uploading Domestic Interests to the European Level: Why Some Small States are More Active than Others

The recent enlargement of the European Union considerably increased the number of small member states. Of the 27 EU countries, 19 have fewer votes in the Council of Ministers than the EU average. They face structural disadvantages in uploading national policies to the EU level due to less bargaining power and less of the financial resources necessary for building up policy expertise and exerting influence via arguing. This paper explores strategic disadvantages of smaller states in advocating their policy interests to the EU and comprehensively maps out their strategies to counterbalance them. A comprehensive survey shows that some states are more active than others. In order to explain activity differences, three sets of explanations on learning, coordination mechanisms and legitimacy are developed and comprehensively tested. This shows that small states are most active in negotiations, if they have noninterrupted administrative work environments, motivated staff, policy expertise, been members of the EU for some time and experienced a learning curve while holding the office of the EU Presidency. By contrast, differences in specific or in diffuse support of EU integration do not influence how active small states are in shaping EU policies

Being Small in a Big Union: Structural Disadvantages, Counterbalancing Strategies, and the Varying Success of Small States in European Policy Making

Compared to big states, small states face resource-related disadvantages in European negotiations. They have fewer votes, less economic power, fewer administrative resources and less staff and experts in policy fields. This leads to disadvantages in negotiations. Yet small states can concentrate their limited resources on issues of great importance and can punch above their weight. This is especially effective through argumentative instead of bargaining-based strategies and requires that arguments resonate well with the views of the Council, the Presidency, the Commission or the Parliament. The Vodka-case illustrates how small states applied a broad variety of policy-shaping strategies and achieved a compromise outcome very close to their wishes and far away from the Commission’s policy proposal, although the UK-led oppositional coalition had more bargaining leverage than the Vodkapurists