The European Commission experienced a ‘subtle disempowerment’ during the Eurozone crisis

How did the Eurozone crisis affect the balance of power between the EU’s institutions? As Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt writes, opinion has been split over whether the crisis strengthened or damaged the European Commission’s role in EU decision-making. She argues that while some authors have highlighted an apparent increase in the Commission’s responsibilities over economic governance during the crisis, the Commission actually experienced a ‘subtle disempowerment’ in relation to other institutions such as the European Central Bank

Taking Actors' Preferences and the Institutional Setting Seriously: the EU Common Fisheries Policy

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The recent bifurcation of European studies into state-centric and new institutionalist camps has resulted in a sterile theoretical debate that says little about an empirical world where bargaining outcomes cover both member states' preferences and the institutional setting. This article is an attempt to move beyond the theoretical debate. It juxtaposes a conceptual framework for analyzing EU negotiations with an analysis of the bargaining process on the settlement of the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy. The conceptual framework will identify a set of variables that can explain the bargaining outcome: preferences of national government representatives, preferences of the European Commission, and the institutional setting.Peer Reviewe

Delegation of Power and Agency Losses in EU Trade Politics

This paper addresses the problem of agency losses (agency shirking and agency slippage) in the process of power delegation in EU trade policy. The central question is whether a conflictual situation exists between the interests of the member states and those of the European Commission (agency shirking), or whether the structure of delegation in itself stimulates the agent to adopt a different position from the principals (agency slippage). Drawing on the principal-agent approach, I argue that agency losses are due to the structure of delegation and that the existence of multiple principals with diverging preferences facilitates agency. I find empirical evidence that the Council-Commission relationship on trade politics has different dynamics depending on the negotiating stage. In the initial negotiating stage, when defining the negotiating mandate of the Commission, the relationship is cooperative. Conflict between the Commission and the Council only breaks out in a latter stage of negotiations, when the Commission makes concessions at the international level.trade policy; agriculture policy; European Council; European Commission

The emergence of UN missions as structures of international interventions. Decoupled organizational processes from a world-society perspective

Eppert K, Sienknecht M, Albert M. UN-Missionen als Strukturen internationaler Interventionen. Organisationale Autonomisierungsprozesse aus weltgesellschaftstheoretischer Perspektive. In: da Conceição-Heldt E, Koch M, Liese A, eds. Internationale Organisationen. Autonomie, Politisierung, interorganisationale Beziehungen und Wandel. Politische Vierteljahresschrift. Sonderheft. Vol 49. Baden-Baden: Nomos; 2015: 81-104

Embedding regional actors in social and historical context: Australia-New Zealand integration and Asian-Pacific regionalism

The regionalisation of the world economy is one of the most important developments in global governance in the past two decades. This process has seen 'inter-regional' economic agreements emerge between two or more regional groupings. Drawing mainly on the European Union's external relations, observers accordingly point to the growing importance of regional actors, explaining their agency (or 'actorness') with regional attributes such as (supranational) institutional design, size, and member state cohesion. This article challenges this dominant explanation of regional agency. It argues that regional actors are socially, politically, and historically 'embedded'. Agency reflects the contingency of regional integration processes, the motivations that underpin those processes, and the specific relationships between regions and third parties. This approach explains an important case of inter-regionalism from the Asia-Pacific: CER-ASEAN relations. Since the early 1990s, Australia and New Zealand have used their 'Closer Economic Relations' trade agreement for relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This reflects the ambitions of Australasian officials to shape processes of Asian-Pacific regionalism, and the interests of ASEAN officials in consolidating their own process of transnational market-making. Here, regional agency owed to a transforming world economy and the reconceptualisation of regions within new networks of trade governance