Conceptualizing the EU model of governance in world politics

While the field of EU studies has generated a rich theoretical literature, the usefulness of analyses of the EU for broader processes of regional governance has been questioned. At the same time much recent scholarship on the EU has examined the Union’s external relations as opposed to its internal governance. At stake in both of these debates are questions about the nature of the EU, what it represents and how it should be conceptualised. By examining the conceptual literatures on EU ‘actorness’, the governance of EU external relations and policy and academic discourses of comparative regional integration, this paper argues that approaches informed by broadly constructivist insights carry significant promise and can help to answer questions about the EU’s role in world politics that perplex both the policy and the academic imaginations

Open political science, methodological nationalism and European Union studies

The relationship between European integration and political science has always offered a very good case study of the intersection between novel developments in the ‘real world’ and the evolution of the academic study of politics. The area of political science now usually dubbed EU studies has, of course, been driven routinely by the unfolding story of the object it seeks to analyse. Put simply, without the EU there would be no EU studies. The emergence of integration theory in the 1950s and 1960s was a bold attempt to build a general comparative framework out of the inductive study of the European experience that commenced with the inauguration of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. Subsequent bursts of integrative activity such as the single market project of the mid 1980s and the progress towards monetary union and significant enlargement in the 1990s have provided cues for more analysts of politics to ply their trade (at least partly) in relation to the EU. The EU’s importance as a supplier of binding decisions and as perhaps the key agent for the governance of the European economy have demanded the study of the polity/governance system through which such authoritative outputs emerge. By any reckoning, the proliferation of specialist journals and the membership levels of relevant professional associations suggests a field in robust health, even if some sceptics openly question the overall quality or ‘scientific value’ of the aggregated output of EU studies

Europeanization and discourses of globalization: narratives of external structural context in the European Commission

The growth of ‘globalization studies’ in the social sciences has done little to undermine the term’s seemingly essential elasticity. Many academic debates about the veracity of the globalization hypothesis often struggle around meanings of ‘globalization’, yet the concept also possesses a ‘real world’ policy presence. There is evident need, therefore, for the more research on the development and uses of knowledge about globalization – to reflect, in other words, upon the subjective dimensions of processes that are said to be transforming the policy-making environment. This paper positions itself as a contribution to this academic manoeuvre and commences with a discussion of globalization as discourse and considers some problems for theory and method that follow. The second part of the argument offers some preliminary reflections on studying the European Commission as a venue for the discursive dimensions of globalization. The purpose of this discussion is (a) to map the development of ideas about globalization as used within the segmented policy-making structure of the Commission and (b) to dissect the forms of knowledge about ‘globalization’ that are present. In particular, the paper focuses on the distinct ways in which common narratives about a rapidly changing global context are used in terms of agenda setting. At the heart of the paper is the analysis of the proposition that discourses of globalization provide useful ideational ammunition for those seeking to legitimate moves towards European-level economic governance. The purpose of this discussion is (a) to map the development of ideas about globalization as used within the segmented policy-making structure of the Commission and (b) to dissect the forms of knowledge about ‘globalization’ that are present

Technocratic reason in hard times:The mobilisation of economic knowledge and the discursive politics of Brexit

In the context of the debate surrounding and following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, credentialed economic expertise did not enjoy a privileged position within the political and policy debate. Using the contrasting cases of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Economists for Brexit/Free Trade, this paper explores the mobilisation of economic expertise within the discursive politics of Brexit under conditions of pervasive radical uncertainty. It argues that politicisation is an important factor in side-lining technocratic influence over policy choice, but that the particular type of politicisation in play (plebiscitary) meant that the input of technocratic experts was downgraded. It is a politics conducted in another register to the reasoned, evidence-based vernacular of accredited experts and the policy discourses that they work with and through. We also argue that the basic unknowability of the post-Brexit economy further impaired expert input. These limitations were acknowledged by accredited experts themselves, reducing their traction within the policy debate. This unknowability was exploited by forms of counter-expertise mobilised by the Leave campaign. The radical uncertainties of Brexit allowed in heterodox assumptions and approaches to compete on a level playing field with an approximation of what could be presented as prudent best practice

Europe: regional laboratory for a global polity?

Considerable debate exists, in both academic and policy circles, about the utility of the European Union (EU) as a model for regional integration schemes elsewhere. While discussions of this sort remain interesting and important, they frequently run into the problem of the EU’s specificity, which in turn hinders our capacity to make generalisations based upon the experience of European integration. In this paper, we think slightly differently about the relationship between the EU and the global political economy through the exploration of two distinct, but related, sets of questions. The first bundle of issues surrounds the EU’s ‘balance of trade’ in various policy methodologies. Following Helen Wallace, we examine the ways in which the deployment of various styles of governance (including the classical ‘Monnet method’) have impacts upon or relate to the practices of economic governance elsewhere. The second set of questions emerge from the issue of ‘actorness’ in a global polity and the place that entities such as the EU might play in such a world order. In particular, we examine the politics of recognition in the global polity and a series of questions relating to the prerequisites for action in a globalised world