Theorizing Regionalism: Cooperation, Integration, and Governance

Introduction: The end of the Cold War saw a surge in regionalism. While the number of preferential trading agreements (PTA) exploded (Mansfield and Pevehouse 2013), long-standing regional organizations, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), experienced the delegation of more political authority and policy competencies in the past two decades (Börzel 2013). These two trends of more and deeper regionalism, respectively, are often attributed to processes of diffusion or interdependent decision-making. Regional cooperation and integration spread across time and space once the constraints of geopolitics had ceased to exist (Risse in this volume)

Mapping Governance Transfer by 12 Regional Organizations: A Global Script in Regional Colors

Introduction: Studies on governance transfer by regional organizations (ROs) are on the rise. The extant literature has mainly focused on democracy and human rights (for an overview see Pevehouse forthcoming; McMahon and Baker 2006). Meanwhile, the promotion of other governance standards, such as the rule of law and the fight against corruption, have received far less attention (but see Jakobi 2013a; Zürn et al. 2012) and a systematic comparison of the general patterns of governance transfer by ROs across time, space, and issue areas is still missing

Why Being Democratic is Just Not Enough: The EU’s Governance Transfer

The European Union (EU) is a promoter and protector of ‘good governance’ par excellence. The Europeanization of its member states and attempts at external governance transfer towards third countries have earned the EU the name of a ‘transformative’ or ‘normative’ power (cf. Börzel and Risse 2009; Manners 2006). Yet, in comparison with other regional organizations, the EU has focused on the transformation of domestic governance institutions beyond rather than within its borders. Only recently, has the EU begun to develop policies and instruments that explicitly aim at protecting the very norms and values within its own member states that it has sought to transfer to accession candidates, neighbourhood countries and third states. Not only has the emergence of a comprehensive policy for internal governance transfer lagged behind the establishment of the EU’s external policy by ten years. It is also much weaker than the EU’s rhetoric and its practice of external governance transfer would suggest. This is all the more puzzling since problems with democratic pluralism, the independence of the judiciary, or minority rights, in both old and new member states, question the extent to which the EU has been effective in promoting and protecting governance standards internally. In order to explain the late and rather weak engagement of the EU in internal governance transfer, we argue that the demand only arose with the prospect of the EU’s Eastern enlargement. As a ‘club of democracies’, the EU did not see the need for internal governance transfer for the longest time. Alternative mechanisms, provided internally by infringement 255 proceedings and other instruments at the disposal of the European Commission and externally by the Council of Europe (CoE), were sufficient to protect the ‘community of values’ of the EU in its early years. It was the impending accession of a large number of new and potentially unstable democracies that created the initial demand for formal provisions to protect standards of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in the EU. In particular, member states adopted Article 7 of the Amsterdam Treaty to lock in domestic changes in post-communist countries after their accession to the EU and thereby created specific post-accession instruments. In addition, the diffusion of governance transfer by regional organizations in the 1990s provided a supply for modelling the EU’s democracy clause and for finally adopting its own Fundamental Rights Charter. Yet, the EU’s provisions for internal governance transfer are much weaker compared to other regional organizations, reflecting the old member states’ unwillingness to grant the EU powers to interfere with issues at the core of their political sovereignty. The second part of the chapter will outline the puzzle of the EU’s delayed and weak internal governance transfer. Since the late 1990s, the EU has institutionalized a number of provisions for protecting democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and good governance in member states. However, lacking systematic monitoring and enforcement mechanisms beyond the ‘nuclear option’ or Article 7 and the protection of fundamental rights in the implementation of EU law by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), they seem to be symbolic rather than effective instruments. The third part explains the delayed establishment and weak institutional design of the EU’s internal governance transfer by the functional demand for locking in democratic changes in the new members and the normative concern for the EU’s international legitimacy as a normative power, on the one hand, and the reluctance of old member states to have the EU interfere with their sovereignty over issues of democracy and human rights, on the other. Moreover, regional integration by law has provided the EU with alternative policies and instruments to protect its fundamental values in the member states

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Analyzing European Union Politics

The speed and depth with which the European Communities/ European Union has evolved is breathtaking and has radically shaped the life of the continent. Ever since the beginning of this ambitious economic and political project, scholars around the world have tried to explain the underlying logic behind it and the mechanisms of its functioning. Thus, a plethora of studies developed alongside the evolution of the EU. SENT (Network of European Studies) is an innovative and ambitious project which brought together about 100 partners from the EU member states, candidate and associated countries, and other parts of the world. It was a far reaching project aimed to overcome disciplinary and geographical- linguistic boundaries in order to assess the state of EU studies today, as well as the idea of Europe as transmitted by schools, national politicians, the media, etc. SENT’s main goal was to map European studies, in order to get a comprehensive picture of the evolution of European studies over the last decades in different disciplines and countries. This approach permitted to achieve a better understanding of the direction these studies are now taking. Five disciplines were identified where EU studies have particularly evolved: law, politics, economics, history, and social and cultural studies. The mapping of EU studies thus includes a review of the most studied issues in EU studies today, the main academic schools, the most influential journals and books published, but it also shows how local realities and national identities affect the study and teaching of Europe around the world. In addition, an important work was done in mapping and discussing teaching methodologies in relation to European studies with the aim of introducing and diffusing the most up-to-date techniques

"European Governance – Negotiation and Competition in the Shadow of Hierarchy"

This paper argues that the EU is not as unique a governance system as the Babylonian variety of its labels may suggest. Like its member states, the EU features a combination of different forms of governance that cover the entire range between market and hierarchy. Unlike at the national level, however, this governance mix entails hardly any network forms of governance, which systematically involve private actors. The EU is largely governed by negotiated agreements between inter- and transgovernmental actors. While business, interest groups or civil society organizations are seldom granted a real say in EU policy-making, market-based mechanisms of political competition have gained importance. Thus, the EU is less characterized by network governance but by inter- and transgovernmental negotiations, on the one hand, and political competition between member states and regions, on the other. Both operate in shadow of hierarchy cast by supranational institutions

Venus Approaching Mars? The EU as an Emerging Civilian World Power

This paper does not engage in explanation. Rather, we ask whether the EU’s efforts at the promotion of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, on the one hand, and the ESDP’s increasing role in peace-keeping and post-conflict state-building operations, on the other hand, are actually consistent with these role identities. For reasons explained below, we stick to the older concept of “civilian power” rather than the newer “normative power.” We argue that, yes, the EU’s democracy promotion, peace-keeping, and state-building policies have developed into a fairly consistent and comprehensive approach of an emerging civilian power

Organizing Babylon - On the Different Conceptions of Policy Networks

A 'Babylonian' variety of policy network concepts and applications can be found in the literature. Neither is there a common understanding of what policy networks actually are, nor has it been agreed whether policy networks constitute a mere metaphor, a method, an analytical tool or a proper theory. The aim of this article is to review the state of the art in the field of policy networks. Special attention is given to the German conception of policy networks which is different from the one predominant in the Anglo-Saxon literature. While British and American scholars usually conceive policy networks as a model of state/society relations in a given issue area, German works tend to treat policy networks as an alternative form of governance to hierarchy and market. It is argued that this conception of policy networks goes beyond serving as a mere analytical tool box for studying public policy-making. Yet, both the German and the Anglo-Saxon conception of policy networks face a common challenge: first, it still remains to be systematically shown that policy networks do not only exist but are really relevant to policy-making, and second, the problem of the ambiguity of policy networks has to be tackled, as policy networks can both enhance and reduce the efficiency and legitimacy of policy-making

Non-Compliance in the European Union. Pathology or Statistical Artifact?

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020