Regionalism in the World Polity

Preferential and regional trade agreements (PTAs and RTAs) are increasingly ubiquitous and uncertainly effective in the trade regime. We develop a “world polity” account of the emergence of PTAs and RTAs that accounts for the surprisingly high degrees of isomorphism (structural identity) and decoupling (goal-achievement mismatch) so readily observable in this field. After elaborating its implications for the EU, less developed countries (LDCs) and regionalism, we identify a handful of testable implications. Though our aim is primarily theoretical, we offer empirical explorations of these hypotheses. Regionalism, we argue, has become a line in the “script of modernity” which tells other actors how to organize themselves, what goals to seek, and how to behave. These actors, in turn, embrace this newly-scripted expectation as a function of their need for external legitimation and exposure to the carriers of world societal scripts. We expect these world polity factors to complement, rather than substitute for, standard political economy determinants of PTA and RTA formation

It's Not the Economy, Stupid? Analyzing Icelandic Support for EU Membership

What drives support for EU membership? We test the determinants of EU attitudes using original data from Iceland, whose recent woes have received wide attention. Given its crisis, we expect economic anxiety to drive public opinion. We find instead that economic unease is entirely mediated by assessments of the current government and that, despite the dire economic context, cultural concerns predominate. This suggests a potential disconnect between Icelandic elites’ desire for accession and the public will at large. Our results largely confirm prior findings on support for integration, further exposing the conditions under which individuals will evaluate EU membership favorably or negatively. They also highlight the utility of mediation analysis for identifying the mechanisms through which economic evaluations may operate and imply that economic indicators’ apparent insignificance in a host of other research areas may simply be a product of model misspecification

Tying the Hands of its Masters? Interest Coalitions and Multilateral Aid Allocation in the European Union

ABSTRACT This paper provides a political economy theory of multilateral aid allocation. We argue that the allocation of multilateral aid depends on the heterogeneity of its member states' interests as well as on the formation of interest coalitions which can overcome the collective action problems inherent in intergovernmental bodies. Whereas member states delegate aid to multilateral institutions in order to signal neutrality of aid allocation to their domestic populations, states have an incentive to covertly bias the multilateral allocation process towards their strategic interests. When member states' preferences over aid allocation are heterogeneous, the multilateral aid agent can implement multilateral aid according to its organizational goals. However, greater homogeneity of members' goals increases the likelihood that members can form powerful interest coalitions and successfully loosen the grip of their ties, and induce the multilateral aid agency to allocate aid according to their strategic interests. We apply our general theory to multilateral aid allocation in the European Union, the most dominant multilateral aid donor in the world over the last decade. The empirical analysis provides robust support for our theoretical argument

Stretching the IR theoretical spectrum on Irish neutrality: a critical social constructivist framework

In a 2006 International Political Science Review article, entitled "Choosing to Go It Alone: Irish Neutrality in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective," Neal G. Jesse argues that Irish neutrality is best understood through a neoliberal rather than a neorealist international relations theory framework. This article posits an alternative "critical social constructivist" framework for understanding Irish neutrality. The first part of the article considers the differences between neoliberalism and social constructivism and argues why critical social constructivism's emphasis on beliefs, identity, and the agency of the public in foreign policy are key factors explaining Irish neutrality today. Using public opinion data, the second part of the article tests whether national identity, independence, ethnocentrism, attitudes to Northern Ireland, and efficacy are factors driving public support for Irish neutrality. The results show that public attitudes to Irish neutrality are structured along the dimensions of independence and identity, indicating empirical support for a critical social constructivist framework of understanding of Irish neutrality

"Institutions, emergent interests, and bargaining power: The European Community and its member states in global politics"

This paper puts forth an institutionalist account of the ways in which the EC shapes international outcomes. EC decision rules can amplify or attenuate the international bargaining power of certain member states, who are thereby able to effect international outcomes which would not have resulted in the absence of the EC. Unanimity rules in the EC will tend to amplify the international bargaining power of the lowest common denominator EC member state and attenuate the bargaining power of states with median preferences. The opposite conclusions pertain under EC qualified majority voting. Either effect will only occur when member states have greater or lesser ability to shape international outcomes when working through the EC than they would have had as free agents. These expectations are probed with two paired comparisons involving EC activity in international environmental negotiations

“Procedural Politics in the European Union”

In this paper, I take initial steps toward a fuller account of the “dual nature” of institutions, whereby they simultaneously constitute objects of human choice and sources of human constraint (Grafstein 1988). In the following five sections I develop and empirically probe three basic claims: 1) institutions matter; 2) actors have derived preferences over rules as a function of their preferences over outcomes; and 3) actors seek to ensure the usage of rules that favor them in the political process. The first section very briefly surveys current institutional analyses of the EU. The second section analyzes nine EU legislative procedures to assess their impacts on the influence of the Commission, Council, and Parliament as well as on policy outcomes. The third section builds on these findings to generate these actors’ preference rankings over existing procedures. The fourth section conducts a preliminary empirical assessment of the extent to which they act on these procedural preferences. The conclusion sets out an agenda for future research that theorizes the conditions under which, the ways in which, and the effects with which actors manipulate rules for political gain