"When the welfare state meets the regulatory state: EU occupational pension policy"

The increasing relevance of occupational pensions for the income security of the elderly moves this policy area to the core of the tension between national redistributive welfare states and EU-wide single market regulations. Focusing on the European pension fund directive, the paper investigates whether European occupational pension policies are primarily shaped by the Commission’s and international business’ agenda of market liberalization or the governments’ preferences for national autonomy in social policy. The study finds that the Directive liberalizes the pension market to some extent. Member states largely succeeded in securing the national prerogative in social policy. In explaining this outcome the paper argues that the nature of domestic pension arrangements does not only shape government preferences but also the preferences of the European Parliament and important business actors. Business was too fragmented internally to succeed in establishing a full blown liberal Europe in regard to occupational pensions, although their pressure was sufficient to secure liberal investment principles

If similarity is the challenge - congruence analysis should be part of the answer

Abstract: This contribution to the debate on the challenges to comparative politics largely focuses on the issue of differences versus similarities, the issue that has been raised by both authors: Caramani and Van Kersbergen. I share their concern that too much research focuses on differences between countries and I also join them in locating the sources of this bias in methodological considerations. I do not agree however with some of Caramani’s points, in particular his fundamental claim that explanation necessarily demands variations across cases; a claim that seems also to be made at least implicitly by Van Kersbergen. I argue that the validity of an explanation rather depends on the degree to which empirical evidence is congruent with observable implications of this explanation and is not congruent with implications of rival explanations. It is irrelevant whether these theoretical expectations concern differences or similarities between countries. I therefore advocate a theory-driven rather than a case-driven analysis of national political systems in order to meet the challenge to explain similarities between them. Key words: case study; comparative method; comparative politics; research desig

Bread and butter or bread and circuses? Politicisation and the European Commission in the European Semester

Does domestic contestation of European Union legitimacy affect the behaviour of the European Commission as an economic and fiscal supervisor? We draw on theories of bureaucratic responsiveness and employ multilevel and topic modelling to examine the extent to which the politicisation of European integration affects the outputs of the European Semester: the Country-Specific Recommendations. We develop two competing sets of hypotheses and test these on an original large-N data set on Commission behaviour with observations covering the period 2011–2017. We detect a twofold effect on the Commission's recommendations: member states that experience greater politicisation receive recommendations that are larger in scope but whose substance is less oriented towards social investment. We argue that this effect is best explained as an outcome of the Commission's institutional risk management strategy of regulatory ‘entrenchment’. The supranational agent issues additional recommendations while simultaneously entrenching on a stronger mandate substantively, which allows it to maintain its regulatory reputation and signal regulatory resolve to observing audiences

Bread and butter or bread and circuses? Politicisation and the European Commission in the European Semester

Does domestic contestation of European Union legitimacy affect the behaviour of the European Commission as an economic and fiscal supervisor? We draw on theories of bureaucratic responsiveness and employ multilevel and topic modelling to examine the extent to which the politicisation of European integration affects the outputs of the European Semester: the Country-Specific Recommendations. We develop two competing sets of hypotheses and test these on an original large-N data set on Commission behaviour with observations covering the period 2011–2017. We detect a twofold effect on the Commission's recommendations: member states that experience greater politicisation receive recommendations that are larger in scope but whose substance is less oriented towards social investment. We argue that this effect is best explained as an outcome of the Commission's institutional risk management strategy of regulatory ‘entrenchment’. The supranational agent issues additional recommendations while simultaneously entrenching on a stronger mandate substantively, which allows it to maintain its regulatory reputation and signal regulatory resolve to observing audiences

European Research Reloaded: Cooperation and Integration among Europeanized States

Session 1: Governance in the European UnionThis book argues that a third wave of research on the EU is needed to adequately understand the increased interconnectedness between the European and national political levels. We posit that this third wave should be sensitive to the temporal dimension of European integration and Europeanization. In particular, we seek to link the processes of Europeanization and European integration in a new way by asking the question: how has Europeanization affected current modes of integration and cooperation in the EU? Preparing the ground for the third wave, the first part of the book concerns Europeanization. In order to fully understand the feedback of Europeanization on cooperation and integration it is important to analyze how European integration has had an impact on member states in the first place, in particular indirectly, beyond the direct mechanism of compliance with European policies. The research presented here stresses the role which domestic actors and in particular governments have in guiding the Europeanization impact on the member states. The second part of the book concerns integration and cooperation, in line with what we see as a third wave of research. Here we analyze how prior integration effects, that is Europeanization, influences current preferences for integration. We find that earlier integration effects have had a significant influence on those preferences, resulting however, somewhat surprisingly not always for a preference for closer integration. The multi-faceted interrelationships between the EU level and the national level and the increased interconnectedness between them cast doubt on the appropriateness of traditional readings of central concepts of political science and international relations such as territory, identity and sovereignty. The final section of the book therefore concerns the conceptual challenges faced by the continued development of multi-level governance. These contributions show that a conceptual reorientation is necessary because up until now these concepts have been almost exclusively linked to the nation state. One of the key findings of the book is the astonishing variation in modes of cooperation and integration in the EU. We suggest that this variation can be explained by taking into account the sources of legitimacy at the national and at the EU level on which cooperation and integration are based. We argue that whereas economic integration, in particular the creation of a single market, could be sufficiently backed by output legitimacy, deeper integration in other areas requires a degree of input legitimacy that is currently lacking in the EU. Therefore, non-economic integration is often taking the form of looser types of cooperation, such as the open method of coordination and benchmarking, allowing domestic actors more control over the Europeanization of these policies onto the member state. We elaborate on this speculation in the conclusion and believe that it should be part of the future research agenda of the third wave of European research. This book emerged from the European Research Colloquium of the Netherlands Institute of Government, in which a small group of researchers from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and Denmark met every 6 months over the past three years to debate substantive topics, the choice of research design and methodology, and, in particular, the empirical research presented by each author in this book

Europäische Integration im Spannungsverhältnis von Zentralisierung und Dezentralisierung

In diesem Artikel wird an Hand zweier EG-Mitgliedstaaten gezeigt, welchen Einfluß die 'Europäisierung' der Regionalpolitik auf die Handlungsspielräume der Kommission und die verschiedenen mitgliedstaatlichen politischen Ebenen haben kann. Dazu wird die Implementation des Europäischen Fonds für Regionale Entwicklung in Großbritannien und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland untersucht. Um die aktuelle Entwicklung im Zeitraum von 1988 bis 1992 besser berücksichtigen zu können, wurden die Regionen West Midlands und Ruhrgebiet als Fallbeispiele ausgewählt. Hier wurden Interviews mit Schlüsselakteuren geführt. Ausgehend von der theoretischen Annahme einer wechselseitigen Ressourcenabhängigkeit der unterschiedlichen politischen Ebenen läßt sich sowohl eine Zentralisierung als auch eine Dezentralisierung der europäischen Regionalpolitik feststellen, eine Entwicklung, die, bezogen auf dieses Politikfeld, auf einen Übergang des souveränen Nationalstaates in ein Mehrebenennetzwerk hindeutet. In Großbritannien gelang den Local Authorities eine Ausweitung der Handlungsspielräume, eine Tendenz, die im augenfälligen Widerspruch zu der allgemeinen Entwicklung der britischen Staat-Kommunen Beziehungen steht. In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (alt) konnten die Länder ihre Position gegenüber dem Bund verbessern. Diese Dezentralisierungstendenz schlug allerdings nicht signifikant auf die Kommunen durch. In beiden Mitgliedstaaten intensivierten sich die Kontakte zwischen der Kommission und subnationalen Akteuren.This paper analyses the impact of the 'europeanization' of regional policy on the discretionary authority of the EC Commission and national and sub-national actors. This is done for the case of the implementation of the European Regional Development Fund in Britain and Germany. Assuming that the various political levels are linked through mutual resource dependency the study found both centralization and decentralization in ERDF implementation. These developments indicate that - at least for this policy field - sovereign nation states as dominant actors are transformed into sector specific multilevel networks, facing an increasing role of the European Commission. British local authorities succeeded in increasing their discretionary authority vis-a-vis the central government, in contrast with the general central-local relations, which have become more centralized. The German Länder were also able to improve their position as against the Federal Government. However, this process of decentralization did not increase the authority of municipal authorities. In both countries contacts between the European Commission and sub-national actors were intensified

Producing salience or keeping silence? An exploration of topics and non-topics of Special Eurobarometers. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 88/2015 February 2015

Public opinion does not fall out of the sky. What passes for public opinion in the European Union is largely the answers of its citizens to questions posed in surveys commissioned and controlled by the European Commission. This paper presents the first systematic mapping of the topics and non-topics of the 400 so-called Special Eurobarometers: reports based on batteries of questions about specific policy issues posed in face-to-face interviews to about 25,000 citizens, constituting nationally representative samples of all member states. This exploration is especially relevant against the background of the increased politicisation of the EU; both given the potential value of public opinion as a “substitute” for a more direct link to the electorate and as a power resource in decision-making. We chart the frequency of Special EBs over time, identify the topics (and non-topics) using the Comparative Agenda Project’s EU codebook, and relate their frequency to the distribution of competencies between the EU and its member states. We also document the variation across DGs in their effort to gauge public opinion. We conclude that the Commission is increasingly seeking public opinion and that it does so in a very broad range of policy areas. We find a curvilinear relationship between the degree of EU competencies and the frequency of Special EBs. Citizen input is less sought in areas where the EU already has far reaching competencies and in areas which are clearly in the national (or even sub-national) domain. The lion’s share of Special EBs is conducted in the realm of shared competencies, with an emphasis on those areas where the EU got involved relatively recently. We also detected only two Special EBs specifically related to the redistribution of resources (e.g., cohesion policy) and none on immigration. We also find a large variation across the DGs on whose behalf Special EBs are conducted. Three DGs are responsible for half of all EBs and nine DGs for less than five percent. These results open up promising avenues for research on the responsiveness of the European Commission and its agenda setting strategies and legitimacy seeking behaviour

Eurobarometer surveys provide an important insight into the European Commission’s role as an agenda setter

Since the early 1970s a series of ‘Eurobarometer’ public opinion surveys have been conducted across the EU on behalf of the European Commission. But can the nature and scope of these surveys provide some insights into the Commission’s role as an agenda setter? Markus Haverland, Minou de Ruiter and Steven Van de Walle present findings from an analysis of 400 Special Eurobarometer reports published between 1970 and 2014. They write that the increasing number of Special Eurobarometers conducted and the topics covered highlight how the Commission’s agenda building and legitimacy enhancing strategies have developed throughout this period

«Картина мира» как функциональная лингвистическая модель представлений об универсуме

В статье освещена проблема функционального определения "картины мира", в частности, соотношение логико-понятийного, тематического и временного показателей модели "картины мира".У статтi висвiтлено проблему функцiонального визначення "картини свiту", зокрема, спiввiдношення логiко-понятiйного, тематичного та часового показникiв моделi "картини свiту".The article deals with the problem of the functional definition "picture of the world", in particular with the correlation of logical conceptual, thematic and temporal indices "picture of the world" model