Showing papers in "Journal of European Public Policy in 2016"

The Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent

Abstract: The outcome of the British referendum on European Union (EU) membership sent shockwaves through Europe. While Britain is an outlier when it comes to the strength of Euroscepticism, the anti-immigration and anti-establishment sentiments that produced the referendum outcome are gaining strength across Europe. Analysing campaign and survey data, this article shows that the divide between winners and losers of globalization was a key driver of the vote. Favouring British EU exit, or ‘Brexit’, was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism. While there is no evidence of a short-term contagion effect with similar membership referendums in other countries, the Brexit vote nonetheless poses a serious challenge to the political establishment across Europe.

Power through, over and in ideas: conceptualizing ideational power in discursive institutionalism

Abstract: Owing to the tendency of discursive institutionalists to conflate the notion that ‘ideas matter' for policy-making with the ‘power of ideas’, little has been done to explicitly theorize ideational power. To fill this lacuna, the contribution defines ideational power as the capacity of actors (whether individual or collective) to influence other actors’ normative and cognitive beliefs through the use of ideational elements, and – based on insights from the discursive institutionalist literature – suggests three different types of ideational power: power through ideas, understood as the capacity of actors to persuade other actors to accept and adopt their views through the use of ideational elements; power over ideas, meaning the imposition of ideas and the power to resist the inclusion of alternative ideas into the policy-making arena; and power in ideas, which takes place through the establishing of hegemony or institutions imposing constraints on what ideas are considered.

Ideas as coalition magnets: coalition building, policy entrepreneurs, and power relations

Abstract: One of the most common ways by which ideas influence policy outcomes is by facilitating the construction of a political coalition. The ideas that have this capacity we call coalition magnets, and this contribution explains how coalition magnets open a path for policy reform. The key components of a coalition magnet are the ambiguous or polysemic character of the idea that makes it attractive to groups that might otherwise have different interests, and the power of policy entrepreneurs who employ the idea in their coalition-building efforts. We illustrate the utility of the concept with an examination of three ideas that were creatively employed to construct new policy coalitions: sustainability; social inclusion; and solidarity.

More integration, less federation: the European integration of core state powers

Abstract: We map the pattern and extent of the European integration of core state powers (coercive force, public finance and public administration) and analyse causes and consequences. We highlight two findings: First, in contrast to historical examples of federal state-building, where the nationalization of core state powers precipitated the institutional, territorial and political consolidation of the emerging state, the European integration of core state powers is associated with the institutional, territorial and political fragmentation of the European Union. Second, in contrast to European market integration, state elites and mass publics, not organized business interests, are the prime drivers of integration.

Revisiting the study of policy failure

Abstract: The analysis of policy failures is, by definition, not a neutral endeavour, since policy fiascos are not neutral events. Moreover, they are often, usually implicitly, but sometimes explicitly, permeated with prosecutorial narratives, blame games and a search for culprits. Fiascos do not just ‘happen’. They are constructed, declared, and argued over in labelling processes that are not necessarily ‘evidence–based’. This presents a challenge for any academic endeavour to identify, analyse and explain policy fiascos. Against this backdrop, we assess the study of policy failure as it stands today, and offer some reflections for its further development.

Bureaucratic autonomy of international organizations’ secretariats

Abstract: The contribution advances a theoretical conceptualization of the bureaucratic autonomy of international secretariats and suggests an empirical yardstick for its measurement. The proposed concept of bureaucratic autonomy focuses on administrative structures and provides an indicator-based approximation for the bureaucratic capacities of international organizations in order to systematically reveal variation in intra-organizational potential for autonomous bureaucratic behaviour. The usefulness and limitations of the concept are discussed in light of an empirical examination of 15 international secretariats.

International bureaucracies and their influence on policy-making: a review of empirical evidence

Abstract: Although we find considerable literature on international organizations and their bureaucratic interior, there has been little effort to systematically synthesize empirical research across the different academic disciplines examining how international bureaucracies affect policy-making at an international level. This contribution reviews existing research on the policy influence of international bureaucracies published during the past 50 years. Applying a keyword-based search strategy allows us to identify a core body of 83 books and articles. We find a general consensus in the literature that international bureaucrats do influence policy-making, though this influence varies with the political salience and scope of the decision at question. Yet there is still much disagreement about other context factors, including mechanisms and behavioural assumptions. The contribution advances the state of the art by extracting major disputes – mostly linked to diverging disciplinary perspectives – and existing...

Powerful rules governing the euro: the perverse logic of German ideas

Abstract: Ideas are at their most powerful as an explanatory variable when they lead agents to go against any broadly reasonable interpretation of their material self-interests. They become even more intriguing when they are instrumental in actually causing a crisis, in which actors undercut their own stated goals and then continue to make matters worse by sticking to those same ideas, even in the light of clear evidence that the policies they inspire are not working. This contribution shows two dynamics between power and ideas to explain Germany's behavior during the euro crisis. The first dynamic examines the changing macroeconomic consensus on how to conduct monetary and fiscal policy that governed the euro from 1999 to 2012. The second dynamic shows how a strict adherence to Germany's ordoliberal ideas of budgetary rules and structural reform turned a containable Greek fiscal problem into a full-blown systemic sovereign debt crisis.

Powering ideas through expertise: professionals in global tax battles

Abstract: This contribution discusses how ideas are powered through expertise and moral authority. Professionals compete with each other to power ideas by linking claims to expertise, how things best work, to moral claims about how things should be. To show how, we draw on a case of battles over global tax policy. Corporate reporting for tax purposes is an area where the European Union, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, large global accountancy firms and non-governmental organizations have been active. The point of contention here is what form of financial reporting multinational corporations should provide to ensure they pay their fair share of tax. Ideas powered by expertise contain shared causal beliefs, as well as principled beliefs about value systems. We demonstrate that professionals can contest the established order when demonstrations of expertise can be fused with claims to moral authority. Such a constellation is more likely when political conditions are ...

Banking on a union: the politics of changing eurozone banking supervision

Abstract: In 2012, the European Union (EU) adopted a transformational change to its banking policy for the eurozone. It replaced the policy model of decentralized supervision and regulatory competition between countries with a single supervisor and a more harmonized approach. Transferring banking supervision to the European level also alters the constitutional order. The process of this transformational change was rapid and highly political, which was different compared to earlier incremental changes. Kingdon's model whereby policy entrepreneurs seize opportunities when the independent streams of solutions, problems and politics converge partly explains the process and timing of this transformation. The study of EU banking policy suggests, however, that the multiple streams framework should pay more attention to the way in which entrepreneurs engineer fluctuations within the streams and thereby contribute to creating opportunities for change. This article identifies the supranational European Central Bank a...

The Bocconi boys go to Brussels: Italian economic ideas, professional networks and European austerity

Abstract: This article shows how a specific set of Italian economic ideas, which were first formulated in the first half of the twentieth century and later espoused by a network of economists from Bocconi University, Milan, came to play an important role in shaping European policy responses to the Great Recession and establishing the doctrine of ‘expansionary austerity.' It argues that two factors – the formalization of these ideas in the language of mainstream economics and the establishment of professional networks that operated across a host of linked ecologies – contributed to their influence. The result was a ‘boomerang effect’, or a transfer of economic ideas from the European periphery to centers of policy-making power and back again. This phenomenon is understudied in the existing political economy literature, which tends to assume that ideational traffic is one-way, with ideas originating in centers of power and travelling from there to the periphery.

Is European integration causing Europe to become more nationalist? Evidence from the 2007–9 financial crisis

Abstract: The European Union's (EU) political and economic integration project has grown dramatically since its inception in 1952. While the ultimate goal of the EU is unclear, one of its aspirations has been to attempt to create European citizens. The idea is that over time, citizens would look towards Europe as their main national identity. While the political and economic integration projects are quite far along, the national identity project has lagged far behind. The number of people who have primarily a European identity is quite small and has not increased much in the past 20 years. There is a far larger number of citizens for whom their national identity is paramount, but a European identity also exists. Since 2005, this group has grown smaller and the number of citizens with only a national identity has grown larger. This article argues that the EU integration project has pushed citizens to value their national identities more and to look to their national governments to protect them. We examine th...

The performance of international organizations: a policy output approach

Abstract: Many problems confronting today’s societies are transnational in character, leading states to increasingly rely on international organizations (IOs) for policy solutions. Yet, the performance of IOs varies extensively. This contribution suggests that systematic, comparative research is required to advance our understanding of IO performance, and that a policy output approach offers particular advantages for that purpose. This approach privileges the results IOs produce in terms of policies, and is distinct from the main alternative approaches to IO performance, emphasizing either behavioural change by targets (policy outcome) or problem-solving effectiveness (policy impact). The contribution introduces a typology that captures five generic features of policy – volume, orientation, type, instrument and target – and explains how these dimensions may be used to map the output and assess the performance of IOs. The contribution concludes by discussing what methods and theories may be most useful in ex...

Strengthening the European Commission's budgetary and economic surveillance capacity since Greece and the euro area crisis: a study of five Directorates-General

Abstract: Has the executive role of the European Commission changed since the euro area crisis? Intergovernmentalists point to the increased role of the member states and the Council at the expense of the Commission and other supranational institutions. This article examines how the Commission has responded to the expansion of fiscal and economic rules such as the regulations that strengthen the EU's statistical competence and the Six-Pack and Two-Pack. Based on interviews conducted with key staff, we find that these rules have created significant co-ordination, information and analytical demands on the Commission. The latter has enhanced its horizontal and vertical co-ordination efforts, prioritized staff for the Directorate-Generals conducting surveillance activities, added DGs to these efforts, and reorganized their organizational structures to promote a deeper understanding of the member states’ fiscal and economic policies. Using a principal–agent, approach this article explains how the Commission has ...

Policy-making by international public administrations: concepts, causes and consequences

Abstract: As the demand and necessity for greater international and transnational co-operation increase, the bureaucratic bodies of international organizations are receiving ever more scholarly attention. Yet, the relevance of international public administrations (IPAs) for global policy-making remains neither empirically nor theoretically well understood. A heuristic that links considerations of policy scope and policy type is provided to differentiate between the various aims and levels of potential IPA influence. Combining such a distinction with a taxonomy of administrative resources – namely, nodality, authority, treasure and organization – facilitates the development of concepts to systematically study patterns, constellations and conditions of IPA influence.

Panel data analysis and partisan variables: how periodization does influence partisan effects

Abstract: One central result of macro-quantitative studies in comparative public policy is that the importance of partisan politics on policy outputs has strongly decreased in recent decades. This finding may well be a methodological artefact. I argue that ad hoc standards in panel data analysis, especially using country-years as periodization, create estimation problems which potentially influence results against partisan variables. Therefore, I propose a simple and straightforward, as well as theoretically suitable, alternative to test the influence of partisan politics on policies and use cabinets instead of country-years. Using comparative welfare state research as an example, I show that partisan effects are strong and stable when using a cabinet-based periodization and fragile and weak within the standard procedure based on annual data. This article aims at suggesting that annual periods do not need to be the best simplification of time in empirical analyses.

Party politics and education spending: challenging some common wisdom

Abstract: Much literature has analysed parties’ influence on public education spending. We challenge this literature on theoretical, methodological and empirical grounds. It is standard to regress expenditure on cabinet seat-share weighted party family dummies in time-series cross-section regressions using ‘country-year’ data. But using ‘country-year’ data artificially inflates the number of cases and leads to biased estimates, as governments usually do not change annually. Second, using party families as proxies for party preferences assumes that parties within families hold similar positions while they differ across families. But this is empirically often not the case. Finally, a historical institutionalist perspective suggests that we should not expect party effects anymore in the first place. Empirically, we propose a new design, using direct measures of party preferences in analyses on government-term level. We find that the partisan composition of government did not have any significant effects on edu...

When politics prevails: the political economy of a Brexit

Abstract: This article analyses Britain’s quest to negotiate its future membership of the European Union (EU) through the lens of Liberal intergovernmentalism. The article demonstrates that despite the significant economic consequences of a potential Brexit, party political factors have hitherto proven more significant in defining the terrain of the debate than lobby group influence where a cross section of United Kingdom (UK) lobby groups are either actively or passively in favour of remaining within the EU ahead of the referendum.

Ideas and power: four intersections and how to show them

Abstract: The notion that ideas powerfully shape policies seems highly intuitive. How actors think about policy matters, and their thinking is not just a mechanistic function of uninterpreted conditions around them. Yet turning this intuition into clear claims about the influence of ideas is challenging. This contribution extracts guidelines from the growing literature on ideas to suggest how to best display four common kinds of intersections between ideas and context that make the ideas powerful. We can show that certain ideas gain influence because ‘believers’ obtain power for unrelated reasons; because the ideas somehow empower actors to achieve power; because they make possible new coalitions of actors; or because they inform the crafting or retooling of institutions that matter. The essay highlights what some of the strongest literature on ideas does well and how it can become still more persuasive.

Taxing choices: international competition, domestic institutions and the transformation of corporate tax policy

Abstract: Since the 1980s, notable corporate tax base broadening and rate reductions have occurred throughout the rich democracies. Scholars agree that tax competition for mobile assets shapes this transformation. I address two questions in this article. First, what form has tax competition taken and, second, how have domestic institutions conditioned competition's impact? I build on past work and argue that tax competition is characterized by the (Stackelberg) leadership of the United States as opposed to alternative forms of competition. At the same time, domestic institutions, especially the degree to which the nation is a co-ordinated versus liberal market economy, are central determinants of the pace of reform. I test these propositions with models of 1982–2008 tax rate change in 18 capitalist democracies. I find that rising trade openness and capital mobility place downward pressures on tax rates, the United States' adoption of the neoliberal tax model engenders significant competitive responses from ...

Lessons from the Greek crisis

Abstract: There are two features of the Greek crisis that need explanation: the lopsided outcome where Greece did not achieve any of its stated goals; and the protracted negotiations. I explain these two features as results of two factors: Nested Games (the Greek prime minister was also involved in a game inside his own party); and incomplete information (the Greek government did not understand the weight of unanimity to change the status quo in the EU, and did the best it could to create a unanimity, of all the other countries, against it). The lessons from the crisis are two-sided: for the Greek side not to lose any more time in the application of the agreements (say, with elections); for the EU side to consider different ways of forming and aggregating preferences: having elections (with a wide EU constituency as opposed to national ones), and making decisions (eliminating the unanimity requirement).

An emerging EU energy diplomacy? Discursive shifts, enduring practices

Abstract: The European Union's (EU) external energy policy has been steadily taking shape since the mid-2000s. EU authorities appear to have even taken on functions that could be classified as ‘energy diplomacy’, i.e., the use of foreign policy means to secure access to foreign energy supplies. With the aim of gauging and accounting for these developments, this article undertakes a double analytical move, one conceptual and one theoretical. Conceptually, it distinguishes between energy governance and energy diplomacy as tools for better comprehending the type and scope of policy change. Theoretically, it draws on discursive institutionalism to examine how and why policies change (or endure) by looking at the role of ideas in two dimensions of social action that are not often analysed side by side: policy discourses and policy practices. The article illustrates the practical relevance of this distinction through empirically examining the EU's promotion of diversification of natural gas supplies.

Monetary Disunion: The Domestic Politics of Euroland

Abstract: Regional disparities within the European Union have always been perceived as an impediment to monetary integration. Discussions on a joint currency were linked to compensatory payments in the form of regional policy. Structural assistance increased sharply at the end of the 1980s. Later, however, it had to be shared with the new member states in the East. Moreover, the low-interest credit that Southern European Monetary Union members enjoyed as a result of interest rate convergence is no longer available. We predict that considerable amounts of financial aid will have to be provided in the future by rich to poor member countries, if only to prevent a further increase in economic disparities. We also expect ongoing distributional conflict between payer and recipient countries far beyond current rescue packages. We illustrate the dimension of the conflict by comparing income gaps and relative population size between the centre and periphery in Europe and in two nation-states with high regional dispa...

European and international views of Brexit

Abstract: A British withdrawal from the European Union (EU) would change Britain, the EU, the politics and security of Europe and the place of all three in the international system. To explore these possible changes, this article draws on a series of commissioned analyses that look at the views of Brexit in other EU member states and select third countries outside the EU. Specifically, it examines and maps out the prevailing ideas of what the aforementioned changes could entail. It argues that ideas connected to European unity and integration will define how a Brexit is managed.

Why EU asylum standards exceed the lowest common denominator: the role of regulatory expertise in EU decision-making

Abstract: While scholars traditionally expected EU policy-making in the area of asylum to produce lowest common denominator standards, recent studies on the first phase of the Common European Asylum System have observed higher asylum standards in some instances. This article aims at explaining this divergence. Drawing on concepts of regulatory expertise and ‘misfit’, it argues that the observed variation in policy output can be explained by the dominance of a few (Northern) member states which were highly successful in inserting their positions in the core EU directives. Government effectiveness and exposure to the phenomenon entailing regulatory expertise provide a powerful explanation for member states being effective policy-shapers. Characterized by low levels of government effectiveness and exposure in the asylum area, Southern European countries were, on the contrary, rather passive during the negotiations and barely left any mark on the EU directives.

Studying macroeconomic indicators as powerful ideas

Abstract: Macroeconomic indicators – especially inflation, gross domestic product growth, public deficits and unemployment – stand central in economic governance. Policy-makers use them to assess their economies’ health. Citizens evaluate politicians’ performance using them as yardsticks. But these indicators defy simple definition, and the formulae underlying them have varied across countries and over time. Particular choices have fundamental distributive consequences. This research agenda outlines how we might study macroeconomic indicators as powerful ideas and ask: why do we measure the economy the way we do? It illustrates the myriad ways in which macroeconomic indicators are embedded in contemporary social and political life, and it outlines how we can uncover both what power rests in these indicators and who has power over them. After path-breaking scholarship has demonstrated how consequential these indicators are, it is imperative to understand better which forces determine our choice for one indic...

The politics of global value chains: import-dependent firms and EU–Asia trade agreements

Abstract: In 2006, the European Commission released its Global Europe Communication, in which it announced a shift from a multilateral to a bilateral trade strategy. One of the key pillars of this new strategy was to strengthen the bilateral trade relations with key Asian countries. In contrast to existing analyses that focus on European Union (EU) decision-makers’ agency, we propose an explanation for this notable shift in the EU's trade policy that stresses the political role of import-dependent firms. In light of the increasing integration of such firms into global value chains, the article argues that a plausible case can be made, both theoretically and empirically, that import-dependent firms had a clear stake in the signing of preferential trade agreements between the EU and Asian countries and that their lobbying efforts significantly affected the EU's decision to start negotiations on such agreements with South Korea, India and Vietnam.

A public policy approach to understanding the nature and causes of foreign policy failure

Abstract: All governments are vulnerable to policy failure but our understanding of the nature and causes of policy failure is highly underdeveloped. This contribution, written from a public policy perspective, sets out a framework for understanding these issues as applied to foreign policy. In doing so, it seeks a cross-disciplinary fertilization of thinking that uses the messy and contested reality of policy failure as fundamentally a key – rather than a barrier – to advancing our understanding of a phenomenon referred to variously as policy fiascos, policy disasters, policy blunders and policy failures.

Telling stories of failure: narrative constructions of foreign policy fiascos

Abstract: The contribution introduces narrative analysis as a discourse analytical method for investigating the social construction of foreign policy fiascos. Based on insights from literary studies and narratology it shows that stories of failure include a number of key elements, including a particular setting which defines appropriate behaviour; the negative characterization of agents; as well as an emplotment of the ‘fiasco’ through the attribution of cause and responsibility. The contribution illustrates this method through a narrative analysis of German media reporting on Germany's abstention in the United Nations Security Council vote on Resolution 1973 in March 2011 regarding the military intervention in Libya.

Closing the regulatory cycle? A meta evaluation of ex-post legislative evaluations by the European Commission

Abstract: Theoretically, ex-post legislative (EPL) evaluations play an important role in the European regulatory cycle. By critically assessing the administration, compliance or outcomes of legislation, they may allow for learning and inform enforcement. At the same time, the European Commission may have incentives not to evaluate, as EPL evaluations may lead to undesired policy change or repeal. Furthermore, the development of systematic, high-quality EPL evaluations is threatened by more technical problems in the sphere of evaluability. Hence, the odds are against the systematic production of high-quality evaluations in the European Union (EU). This article assesses this argument by conducting a meta evaluation of the coverage and quality of ex-post legislative evaluations by the European Commission, using two novel datasets. The main findings are that EPL evaluation coverage indeed is patchy, with no clear upward trend in recent years. EPL evaluation is primarily a matter of legislative obligation instea...