Showing papers in "Journal of Common Market Studies in 2016"

Banking on Bonds: The New Links Between States and Markets

Abstract: © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article examines a neglected structural transformation in European finance: the growing importance of government debt as collateral for Europe's repo markets, where banks borrow cash against collateral. Seduced by the promises of repo market-driven financial integration, the EU institutions and Member States encouraged private finance to generate its own architecture for the European repo market in the early years of the euro, sidelining known problems about systemic fragilities. These fragilities materialized after Lehman Brothers' collapse and were exacerbated by the ECB's collateral policies. The European sovereign debt crisis shows that governments, just like private asset issuers, can rapidly become vulnerable to repo pro-cyclicality and collateral crises.

European Monetary Integration and the Incompatibility of National Varieties of Capitalism

Abstract: The Varieties of Capitalism literature offers two competing hypotheses on institutional resilience. One argues that globalization promotes convergence towards a neo-liberal system. Another stipulates that diverse capitalist regimes promote different comparative advantages, enabling diverse political economies to co-exist. In this article, we argue that the compatibility of diverse models of capitalism is contingent upon monetary regime. We examine how different currency regimes influence the mutual co-existence of export-led growth models (euro core) and domestic demand-led growth models (euro periphery). Under EMU, we find that these two models have become increasing incompatible, as unsustainable divergences in external balances have emerged between them. We hypothesize that external imbalances between these two growth regimes did not emerge prior to EMU because of the presence of two inflation adjustment mechanisms in the real exchange rate; the nominal exchange rate (in soft currency regimes) and national central banks’ promotion of inflation convergence (in hard currency regimes).

The Role of Political Efficacy on Public Opinion in the European Union

Abstract: Recent developments in EU (European Union) support literature confirm that citizen attitudes towards the EU are shaped by both input-oriented factors relating to the procedural fairness of the system (e.g. political representation and identity) and output-oriented factors based on the EU's capacity to yield economic benefits. This article builds on these models by suggesting a theoretical framework of support that is driven by both perceptions of the economy and political efficacy. Using data from the 2013 Eurobarometer 80.1, I find that political efficacy is a key predictor of public opinion towards the EU and that citizens who feel their voice is represented in the EU are more likely to maintain support for the EU even when their perceptions of the economy are poor. The findings in this article have particular significance to the puzzle of declining support for the EU following the onset of the ‘great recession’ in 2008.

Normative Empire Europe: The European Union, its Borderlands, and the ‘Arab Spring’

Abstract: Focusing on the EU's relations with its periphery, this paper takes issue both with persistent ‘normative’ conceptions of the EU's international role in the European Studies literature and with the constructivist–rationalist divide in IR theory. The conceptualization of the EU – a vast, composite and ever-expanding entity with ‘fuzzy’ borders – as an empire of sorts bridges the theoretical divide and offers a powerful explanation of the EU's behaviour vis-a-vis its vicinity. Through the transfer of rules and practices beyond its borders, the EU is indeed engaged in ‘normative’ policies, which however primarily serve the security and economic interests of the EU and its Member States. Thus, the EU's (allegedly) norm-based behaviour is in itself a utility-maximizing strategy, which also serves the construction of a normative identity. The EU's response to the Arab uprisings serves to illustrate the argument, with the concept of ‘empire’ resolving the puzzle of seemingly inconsistent EU policies.

Towards a Practice Turn in EU Studies: The Everyday of European Integration†

Abstract: This article explores how practice theory can be recruited for the study of European integration. New generations of EU researchers are fascinated by the prospect of leaving the armchair and studying the people and artefacts that make the EU on an everyday level. This article surveys key practice-oriented, anthropological and micro-sociological studies of the EU and European integration and shows how their findings challenge more traditional understandings of the dynamics of European integration. Moving beyond a stock-taking, the article distinguishes between ‘ordering’ and ‘disordering’ practices and explores the potential of a practice turn in EU studies for both theory (overcoming dualism, replacing substantialism with processualism and rethinking power) and methods (including unstructured interviews, fieldwork and participant observation). A practice turn will force us to rethink core assumptions about the EU and allow us to grasp otherwise uncharted performances and social activities that are crucial for European integration.

The Postcolonial has Moved into Europe: Bordering, Security and Ethno-Cultural Belonging

Abstract: The legacy of European colonialisms and nationalisms has conditioned immigration and citizenship policies that inform the postcolonial move into Europe. This article questions the assumptions that undergird conceptions of boundary, territory and ethno-cultural belonging in the constitution of Europe. In particular, it emphasizes how Europe and European integration must be read within the context of postcolonial globalization, migration and ethnicity in which the concept of postcolonialism is important not only for understanding how the idea of Europe was transferred to postcolonial societies, but also for arguing that colonialism never left Europe unaffected and is still part of European reality. Reading Europe and European integration through a postcolonial lens means taking seriously the challenges involved in the re-assertion of national identities. It also provides a novel attempt to conceptualize the current economic crisis as being as much about contesting ( national) narratives of economic transformations as of contrasting material developments and processes. (Less)

The End of a Noble Narrative? European Integration Narratives after the Nobel Peace Prize

Abstract: The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012 to the EU (European Union) came as a surprise. Not only was the eurozone economic crisis undermining both policy effectiveness and public support for the EU, but it was also seriously challenging the EU's image in global politics. The eurozone crisis, the Nobel Prize and the search for a ‘new narrative for Europe’ demonstrate that the processes of European integration are always narrated as sense-making activities – stories people tell to make sense of their reality. This article argues in favour of a narrative approach to European integration through the construction and application of an analytical framework drawing on different theoretical perspectives. This framework is then applied to six European integration narratives to demonstrate the value of a narrative approach. The article concludes that narrative analysis provides a means of understanding both EU institutional and non-institutional narratives of European integration.

Structural Data on Immigration or Immigration Perceptions? What Accounts for the Electoral Success of the Radical Right in Europe?

Abstract: Targeting immigrants as a threat to employment, security and cultural cohesion, the radical right has averaged 10 percent of the vote in elections. What drives this vote? Are voters affected by the numbers of foreign-born individuals in a geographical region, by negative perceptions about immigrants, or both? In this article, I entertain the possibility that it is not the number of foreigners but citizens’ perceptions about immigrants that explain individuals’ tendencies to vote for the radical right. To test this stipulation, I combine European Social Survey (ESS) data on individual perceptions of immigrants for more than 25,000 individuals with macro-level data on the actual percentage of foreign-born citizens across 200 European regions. Using a bivariate and multivariate framework, I highlight that it is only the individual perceptions of immigration indicator, and not the number of foreign-born citizens, that is positively related to higher support for radical right-wing parties.

Pressure and Expertise: Explaining the Information Supply of Interest Groups in EU Legislative Lobbying†

Abstract: EU politics has long been portrayed as an elite affair in which technocratic deliberation prevails. As a consequence, information supply by interest groups has typically been viewed as part of an expertise-based exchange with policy-makers. Less attention has been devoted to whether the supply of information is also used to exert political pressure. In addition to expertise-based exchanges between interest groups and policy-makers, can we identify the prevalence of information supply that aims to put pressure on EU policy-makers? And under what conditions are different modes of information supply likely to occur? My analysis relies on interviews with 143 lobbyists who were active on a set of 78 legislative proposals submitted by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010. The results demonstrate that expertise-based exchanges are dominant in interactions with civil servants, while political information is predominantly communicated to political officials and often the key substance in outside lobbying tactics.

Is the European Commission Really in Decline

Abstract: In the academic debate on the relative powers and influence of the EU institutions, it has become common to suggest – especially in the case of advocates of the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ – that the European Commission is in decline. In this article we show that while in some limited respects this is indeed the case, the Commission's overall position in the EU system is not one of having become a weaker institutional actor. The extent of the losses of its powers and influence tends to be exaggerated, while in some aspects its powers and influence have actually been strengthened. We show this by focusing on three of the Commission's core functions – agenda-setter, legislative actor and executive – all of which are widely portrayed as being in decline. We incorporate into our analysis both the formal and informal resources available to the Commission in exercising the functions.

Another Theory is Possible: Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe

Abstract: The article argues that dissident voices which attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Dissident voices in European Union studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe. The article briefly examines the discipline of mainstreaming, then surveys the extent of polyphonic engagement in EU studies, before setting out how the special issue contributors move beyond the mainstream. The article will argue the merits of more polyphonic engagement with dissident voices and differing disciplinary approaches for the health and vitality of EU studies and the EU policy field itself. It summarises the special issue's argument that by allowing for dissident voices in theorising Europe, another Europe, and another theory, is possible – indeed, probable.

The Communitarization of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Why Institutional Change does not Translate into Policy Change

Abstract: This article proposes an explanation as to why institutional change – understood as more competences for the European Union's supranational institutions – has rarely led to policy change in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). It draws attention to the constraints that newly empowered actors have faced in the wake of introducing the co-decision procedure. If the key principles of a given AFSJ sub-policy – its ‘policy core’ – were defined before institutional change occurred, the Council (as the dominant actor of the early intergovernmental co-operation) has found it easier to prevail in the altered structural environment and to co-opt or sideline actors with competing rationales. The article compares the importance of the new decision-making procedure with two alternative pathways potentially leading to policy change, namely, the power of litigation and the impact of unexpected external events.

A Banking Union of Ideas? The Impact of Ordoliberalism and the Vicious Circle on the EU Banking Union

Abstract: The establishment of the EU banking union reveals two major shortcomings of liberal intergovernmentalism. First, it fails to explain the preference formation of the most important actor – the German government. The banking sector was divided between public and private banks, and there is no clear-cut pattern about whose interests the German government promoted. Second, material bargaining power cannot account for German concessions despite favourable power asymmetries. This article seeks to demonstrate how an ideational frame can convincingly fill these gaps. Ordoliberal ideas were constitutive for German preferences. The manipulative use of ideas as strategic resources by the German government’s opponents explains why it made significant concessions. Germany’s government publicly acknowledged that breaking the ‘vicious circle’ between banks and sovereigns was the main objective of the banking union. This became a rhetorical trap used by a coalition of Southern European member states to force the German government to make concessions.

Beyond Integration Theory: The (Anti‐)Constitutional Dimension of European Crisis Governance

Abstract: Political science analyses of the governance of the euro crisis largely build on conventional theories of European integration to account for the extent to which institutional developments either reflect supranationalism, inter-governmentalism or historical path-dependencies. This analytical focus captures the usual integration dynamics and institutional design outcomes, but overlooks the constitutional dimension of how the crisis affects the EU's legal order. In this agenda-setting article, I draw attention to legal scholarship that highlights important deviations from the EU's ‘legal normalcy’. Legal studies find that a number of emergency measures were taken on an extra-legal basis and through quasi-autocratic procedures. Normative reconstructions interpret this practice as a form of transnational state of exception which transitions into permanent traits of authoritarianism in the EU's legal order. I argue that their findings offer a new terrain for political science research which transcends the explanatory categories of integration theory.

Risks, costs and labour markets: explaining cross-national patterns of far right party success in European Parliament elections

Abstract: What is the impact of the economy on cross national variation in far right-wing party support? This paper tests several hypotheses from existing literature on the results of the last three EP elections in all EU member states. We conceptualise the economy affects support because unemployment heightens the risks and costs that the population faces, but this is crucially mediated by labour market institutions. Findings from multiple regression analyses indicate that unemployment, real GDP growth, debt and deficits have no statistically significant effect on far right-wing party support at the national level. By contrast, labour markets influence costs and risks: where unemployment benefits and dismissal regulations are high, unemployment has no effect, but where either one of them is low, unemployment leads to higher far right-wing party support. This explains why unemployment has not led to far right-wing party support in some European countries that experienced the 2008 Eurozone crisis.

Neo‐Functional Peace: The European Union Way of Resolving Conflicts

Abstract: The European Union has expanded its role in preventing conflicts and building peace, but its institutional practices remain insufficiently conceptualized. This article argues that, drawing from a strong self-perception toward a neo-functionalist interpretation of its own history, the EU uses 'neo-functional peace’ as an approach for resolving protracted disputes, through deconstructing highly political issues into technical meanings in order to achieve mutually acceptable agreements. This article explores the EU's efforts to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia, and examines the reliance on aspects of neo-functionalism for building peace after protracted disputes. We argue that neo-functional peace has played a crucial role in normalizing political relations and reconciling some of the outstanding disputes between Kosovo and Serbia. Building on this case study, we suggest a theoretical concept of neo-functional peace as a useful means to conceptualize the EU's peace support practices.

Africa–EU Relations and Normative Power Europe: A Decolonial Pan-African Critique

Abstract: The debate on NPE (Normative Power Europe) has flourished for more than a decade. NPE has shaped Africa–EU relations considerably, especially since the founding of the AU (African Union). Yet while the EU aspires to be a post-imperial, normative power, this postcolonial critique suggests NPE is a neo-Kantian, Eurocentric discourse that reinvigorates an outdated European moral paternalism. The article explores the role of NPE in Africa–EU relations through a Foucauldian conceptualization of knowledge in EU foreign policy, and insists particularly on how pan-African regionalization and NPE led to unwarranted optimism about deploying European norms in Africa. To the contrary, a decolonial perspective reveals that AU–EU inter-regional structural and organizational convergence enchains only frail normative convergence, which will diminish as the pan-African project unfolds further.

China, the European Union and the Fragile World Order†

Abstract: The EU (European Union) and China are the two arguably most unusual powers in today's world: the EU as the most integrated regional association of states and China as the largest developing great power. As the post-Cold War American-led liberal world order is facing challenges from forces unleashed by the power transition and power diffusion in the international system, this article will look into the order-shaping roles of the EU and China, to identify their respective visions of a desirable world order and to conceptualize how the EU and China can make themselves ‘building blocks’ of a working world order through parallel, complementary and concerted order-shaping.

Sociological Approaches to the European Union in Times of Turmoil

Abstract: This contribution aims at questioning the explanatory capacity of sociological approaches to European integration in times of crisis. Its main argument is that in times of turmoil – perceived or real – analysis of actors’ strategies and cognitive frames is crucial for understanding the emergence of solutions proposed to remedy the problem. Starting from a sociological definition of crisis, the article illustrates through empirical examples how the cognitive frames in which actors evolve determine their analysis of problems as well as solutions. Sociological approaches to public policy, which reject the basic assumption of actors behaving solely according to a presumed material cost–benefit analysis, help us to better grasp the complexity of decision-making. The main reason for this is that they allow for linking the domestic and European levels when analysing cognitive and decision-making processes, instead of concentrating on either European citizens or European elites separately.

(Not) in the Hands of the Member States: How the European Commission Influences EU Security and Defence Policies

Abstract: The European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is run using special procedures. The Member States have not delegated powers to the supranational institutions. Yet a number of studies challenge the assumption that policy-making lies exclusively with Member States’ governments. The Commission's putative influence within the CFSP, however, remains to be studied systematically from an analytical perspective. Aiming to fill this gap in the literature, this article asks how the Commission de facto influences EU foreign and security policies beyond its delegated powers. Two least likely cases are analysed: the launch of EU naval mission Atalanta and the adoption of an EU Maritime Security Strategy. By adressing this question, the article contributes to a better understanding of the level of EU foreign policy integration. It also adds knowledge on the possible causes of this development, and thus to the EU integration literature more generally.

Germany's Institutional Power and the EMU Regime after the Crisis: Towards a Germanized Euro Area?†

Abstract: In this article we examine the constraints on Germany’s influence over the reforms of the macroeconomic governance regime of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Drawing on the insights of historical institutionalism, we show that the German government’s control over the process is constrained by the increased sunk costs of European monetary integration and the unintended negative spillovers from its management of the Eurozone crisis. While the German government attempted to promote the domestic societal interests underpinning its creditor preferences by deflecting the burden of macroeconomic and institutional adjustment onto the debtor countries, negative feedback loops linked to the pursuit of these preferences induced it to accept a less orthodox and increasingly accommodative central bank to make the EMU sustainable.

Better Late than Never? On the European Commission's Rule of Law Framework and its First Activation

Abstract: This article first offers an overview of the European Commission's Rule of Law Framework, which was adopted in March 2014. The mechanism's potential effectiveness and the Commission's reasoning to justify its first activation against Poland in January 2016, when it has failed to do so against Hungary, are subsequently analyzed. While the Commission should be commended for seeking to address increasing rule of law backsliding at Member State level, our main submission is that reliance on the Rule of Law Framework alone, if only because of its soft and discursive nature, will not remedy a situation where systemic violations of EU values form part of a governmental plan to set up an 'illiberal' regime.

European Fantasies: On the EU's Political Myths and the Affective Potential of Utopian Imaginaries for European Identity

Abstract: The question of European identity today seems to be all the more pressing, as the current financial crisis is not only quickly developing into one of internal political cohesion for the Union, but has also certainly aggravated the long-standing problem of a lack of identification with the European political project among European populations. This article seeks to discuss this disenchantment with Europe through a concept of political myth. It argues that political myths entail both narrations of communal origins and utopian horizons of the communal future. Drawing on insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis, it connects the utopian dimension of myth to the level of affective investment in political communities, and suggests that the disenchantment with the European project might be partly due to the fact that its original utopian horizon – that of peace in Europe – today seems to have been achieved.

Crisis and Public Support for the Euro, 1990–2014*

Abstract: This article analyses the evolution of public support for the single European currency, the euro, from 1990 to 2014 for a 12-country sample of the euro area (EA-12), focusing on the most recent period of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, starting in 2008. We find that citizens’ support for the euro on average was marginally reduced during the first six years of the crisis, and that support has remained at high levels. While the pronounced increase in unemployment in the EA-12 throughout the crisis has led to a marked decline in trust in the European Central Bank (ECB), it is only weakly related to support for the euro.

The Impact of the Economic Crisis on European Union Environmental Policy

Abstract: The ongoing European economic crisis provides a focus for academics wishing to understand the relationship between major exogenous shocks and changes to environmental protection. Yet, measuring change, particularly to policies, is notoriously fraught with difficulties. This research note explores the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with capturing change in response to the economic crisis in Europe, specifically focusing upon the environment. The environment is typically touted as a European Union success story, but there is good reason to suspect that this policy sector may have been – and continues to be – negatively affected by the economic downturn. We suggest a toolkit of measures that can capture changes to this sector, and which may also be employed by researchers of other policy sectors.

Postmodern EU? Integration between Alternative Horizons and Territorial Angst†

Abstract: In the early 1990s, John Ruggie famously referred to the European Community as an emerging ‘postmodern polity’. This article elaborates on the ‘postmodern promise’ of European integration that Ruggie invoked, and formulates such a promise of European integration as one of radically breaking with the violent practices characteristic of the modern state. We argue that such a promise is immanent albeit historically marginalized in the project of European integration itself, exemplified in the article with a tradition called integral federalism. The article then evaluates such a ‘postmodern promise’ in current practices of European integration against the background of a poststructuralist-informed critique of the violent effects of desires for bordered entities and identities. Such a poststructuralist sensibility enables the article to point to the problems of ‘scaling up’ the state in a project of integration that also set out to challenge and subvert its organizing principles.