European integration and electoral democracy: How the European Union constrains party competition in the Member States

The assignment of policy competencies to the European Union has reduced the divergence of party policy positions nationally, leaving the electorate with fewer policy options. Building upon insights from spatial proximity theories of party competition, the convergence argument predicts convergence particularly in policy domains with increasing EU competence. As the policy commitments that derive from EU membership increase, parties become more constrained in terms of the feasible policy alternative they can implement when in office. The analysis uses manifesto data at the country‐party system level for nine policy domains. It uses ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation with country fixed effects, a lagged dependent variable and country corrected standard errors. Controlling for other factors that could plausibly explain policy convergence, the models also assess whether the convergent effect of party positions varies across different types of parties. The main finding is that in policy domains where the involvement of the EU has increased, the distance between parties' positions tends to decrease. The constraining impact of EU policy decisions differs between Member and non‐Member States. This effect is more apparent for the policy agendas of larger, mainstream and pro‐EU parties in the Member States.     

Multilevel Governance and Shared Sovereignty: European Union, Member States, and the FCTC

The Westphalian idea of sovereignty in international relations has undergone recent transformation. "Shared sovereignty" through multilevel governance describes the responsibility of the European Union (EU) and its Member States in tobacco control policy. We examine how this has occurred on the EU level through directives and recommendations, accession rules for new members, tobacco control campaigns, and financial support for antitobacco nongovernmental organizations. In particular, the negotiation and ratification of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the participation in the FCTC Conference of the Parties illustrates shared sovereignty. The EU Commission was the lead negotiator for Member States on issues over which it had jurisdiction, while individual Member States, through the EU presidency, could negotiate on issues on which authority was divided or remained with them. Shared sovereignty through multilevel governance has become the norm in the tobacco control policy area for EU members, including having one international organization negotiate within the context of another.     

Accounting for coalition‐building in the European Union: Budget negotiations and the south

Which parameters affect coalition building in budgetary negotiations? In this article, three distinct levels of analysis are identified to account for coalition building patterns, associated with domestic politics, domestic socioeconomic structures and EU politics. At the level of domestic politics, ideology points to cross‐governmental affinity of a partisan nature; at the level of socioeconomic structures, similarity of policy interests, generated by cross‐national socioeconomic convergence with EU policy standards, informs coalition formation patterns; at the EU politics level, the intergovernmental power balance influences the political aspirations of each Member State in the integration process and coalition‐building decisions. Two sets of parameters affect the evolution of EU coalition patterns, corresponding to the integration impact on the EU (new cleavages) and on the Member States (the impact of Europeanisation). This analytical framework is used to examine the southern coalition (Spain, Greece, Portugal) in the four multi‐annual financial frameworks (1988, 1992, 1999 and 2005).     

Divergence or convergence? From ever-growing to ever-slowing European legislative decision making

Abstract.  This article examines different views of the European Union (EU) legislative decision-making process through a quantitative analysis of all Commission proposals initiated between 1984 and 1999. Using the positions of Member States, the analysis is innovative in two respects: the identification of the relative importance of institutions and preferences for the process of EU legislative decision making, and the empirical evaluation of the ongoing theoretical controversy between constructivists and spatial analysts about the converging or diverging effect of Member State positions. The findings reveal that the process of EU legislative integration is significantly slowing down, even though Council qualified majority voting facilitates decision making while parliamentary participation modestly increases the duration. Against the constructivist claims of convergence, the results show that the divergence of Member State positions significantly determines the duration of the legislative process, in particular in the key domains of EU integration: the larger the distance between the Member States' positions, the longer the EU decision-making process takes. This suggests that the accession of countries with diverging positions will slow down the EU's legislative process, but institutional reform of the Council's decision-making threshold is a promising solution for coping with this effect.     

National interest versus the common good: The Presidency in European Council agenda setting

The European Council is an institution which brings together the Heads of State, or Governments of the European Union (EU) Member States. For the Presidency, preparing the agenda of European Council meetings involves a tension between loyalties. Existing research is divided over the question whether the Presidency pushes its domestic policy agenda on the EU level. Using empirical data on the Conclusions of European Council meetings, and national executive speeches presented annually in five Member States, this article investigates the relationship between the policy agendas of the EU and its constituent countries. It tests whether national issue attention of the Presidency holder dominates the European Council agenda. The findings suggest that having the Presidency does not provide a de facto institutional advantage for agenda setting power for any of the countries in the sample. The analysis points out that normative and political constrains limit the leeway of presiding Member States to push for domestic agenda preferences in the European Council.     

Political-economic context and partisan strategies in the German federal elections, 1990–2002

This contribution develops a theory of the impact of differentiation on integration and unity among EU member states and discusses empirical evidence from four policy areas. According to the theory, the centripetal effects of closer co‐operation among willing EU members on initially unwilling non‐participants are strongly influenced by the character of the respective policy area in terms of public goods theory. The eventual participation of initially reluctant member states, which leads to the re‐establishment of long‐run unity despite short run differentiation, is most likely in policy areas involving excludable network effects, and most unlikely in areas dealing with common pool resource problems (the four remaining types of goods ranking in between these two extremes). The theoretical conclusions are supported by empirical evidence from four EU‐related policies: the successful three show strong characteristics of excludable network goods (EMU, Schengen and the Dublin Convention), while the one which has proved extraordinarily difficult so far involves a common pool resource problem (tax harmonisation).     

Are Europeans ready for a more democratic European Union? New evidence on preference heterogeneity,polarisation and crosscuttingness

Some scholars and policy makers argue in favour of increasing democratic contestation for leadership and policy at the European level, for instance by having European‐wide parties campaign for competing candidates for President of the European Commission ahead of European Parliament elections. But do such changes put the survival of the European Union at risk? According to the consociational interpretation of the EU, the near absence of competitive and majoritarian elements has been a necessary condition for the stability of the EU political system given its highly diverse population. This article contributes to the debate in two ways. First, it develops a more precise understanding of ‘problematic’ diversity by examining how three variables – the heterogeneity, polarisation and crosscuttingness of citizen preferences over public polices – affect the risk of democratic contestation generating persistent and systematically dissatisfied minorities. Second, it uses opinion surveys to determine whether the degree of diversity of the European population is problematically high compared to that of established democratic states. It is found that the population of the EU is slightly more heterogeneous and polarised than the population of the average Member State, although policy preferences in several Member States are more heterogeneous and polarised than the EU as a whole. Strikingly, however, policy preference cleavages are more crosscutting in the EU than in nearly all Member States, reducing the risk of persistent minorities. Moreover, policy preferences tend to be less heterogeneous and polarised, and nearly as crosscutting, in the EU as a whole as in the United States. For observers worried about how high polarisation and low crosscuttingness in policy preferences may combine to threaten democratic stability, these findings should be reassuring.     

From Convergence to Deep Integration: Evaluating the Impact of EU Counter-Terrorism Strategies on Domestic Arenas

With the 2001 EU Action Plan and the 2005 EU Counterterrorism Strategy, the European Union has unfolded a roadmap for counter-terrorism measures and an itinerary of actions to be undertaken by the Member States. In some respects, the EU strategies, flanked by the Action Plans in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, as well as more concrete forms of cooperation such as the adoption of the EU Arrest Warrant, the Member States have been encouraged to use the same conceptual apparatus, to adopt the precautionary logic (pre-terrorism), and to adopt similar organizational models (multi-disciplinary cooperation) and tools (surveillance, public-private cooperation, etc.). This may have led to a level of convergence between the national counter-terrorism approaches, in line with what the Action Plan on Organized Crime in 1997 sought to achieve by demanding from Member States that they would adapt their national structures. The number of policy-impulses that has emanated from the EU Counterterrorism strategy and ensuing policy documents has been rather numerous. Moreover, this article seeks to take stock of whether all proposals have led to the full adoption and implementation of instruments. The article assesses whether the EU strategies have encouraged ‘deep integration’ between the Member States in terms of a common threat assessment, pooling resources, sharing intelligence, mutual legal assistance in anti-terrorist investigations, creating joint investigation teams and transferring suspects between Member States. The primary focus of this article will be on levels of legal convergence between six Member States.     

European Union transgovernmental networks: The emergence of a new political space beyond the nation‐state?

Abstract. Does the European Union (EU) represent a new political order replacing the old nation‐states? The assessment of the real character of political orders requires the identification of political key actors and of the specific structure of their interactions. Transgovernmental networks have been considered to be one of the most important features of EU integration. Unfortunately, the network structures, processes and the impact of these informal horizontal inter‐organisational relations between nation‐states are mostly unknown. The main objective of this article is to measure and explain the selective pattern of informal bilateral relations of high officials of the EU Member States’ ministerial bureaucracies on the occasion of an EU Intergovernmental Conference. The quantitative data used rely on standardised interviews with 140 top‐level bureaucrats. The statistical estimation of network choices is based on recent developments of exponential random graph models.     

The role of civil society in European integration

This paper explores the concept of ‘civic society’ in Western political thought, charting the changing understanding of this concept through history and its manifestation in contemporary political and social life. The paper draws out the inferences for our understanding of the role of government, particularly with the European Union and its relationship with citizens and other representative community‐based and non‐governmental organisations. The paper argues that the fundamental values that are central to civic society underpin the proposed EU Charter on Fundamental Rights and maintains that effective European integration requires responsible participation by Europe's citizens. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Taking stock of policy performance in Central and Eastern Europe: Policy outcomes between policy reform,transitional pressure and international influence

Despite the ever growing body of scholarly work on policy developments in the post‐communist New Member States of the European Union (NMS), systematic comparisons of policy outcome performance and its determinants are still scarce. This article identifies patterns of post‐communist policy outcomes across the fields of economic, social and environmental policy. By employing pooled time‐series cross‐sectional analysis with a Fixed Effects Vector Decomposition (FEVD) estimator it investigates to what extent policy outcome performance is determined by differing policy efforts (outputs or reform tracks), transitional conditions and international influences. Although citizens are still negatively affected by the initial economic recession, especially in the social domain, policy reforms and efforts are decisive in determining the outcome performance of the NMS relative to one another in the longer run. Successful and comprehensive market reforms and steering capabilities prove to be particularly important in this regard. Furthermore, internationalisation has an important, albeit ambiguous, impact. While exposure to the world market is reflected in negative policy performance, interaction with and financial commitment from Western European Union countries promote positive policy outcomes.     

Good governance and differentiated integration: Graded membership in the European Union

The study of European integration has traditionally focused on organisational growth: the deepening and widening of the European Union (EU). By contrast, this article analyses organisational differentiation, a process in which states refuse, or are being refused, full integration but find value in establishing in‐between grades of membership. It describes how the EU's system of graded membership has developed, and it explains the positioning of states in this system. The core countries of the EU set a standard of ‘good governance’. The closer European countries are to this standard, the closer their membership grade is to the core. Some countries fall short of this standard and are refused further integration by the core: their membership grade increases with better governance. Other countries refuse further integration because they outperform the standards of the core countries: their membership grade decreases as governance improves. These conjectures are corroborated in a panel analysis of European countries.     

Integration of Environmental Concerns in a Trans‐Atlantic Perspective: The Case of Renewable Electricity

The issue of integrating environmental concerns into energy policy decision making is increasingly addressed, not least related to climate change. Although the United States, unlike the EU, did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, several U.S. states promote renewable electricity (RES‐E), and some of these initiatives are linked to climate‐change mitigation efforts. The present article assesses in this connection the six New England states of the United States, comparing their efforts of integrating RES‐E with climate change to the Nordic countries in Europe. In order to explain different approaches, the article focuses on the importance of different EU and U.S. multilevel governing structures. The analysis indicates that the New England states' RES‐E promotion thus far has not been substantially integrated with climate‐change concerns, whereas in the EU's more top‐down approach, climate change figures more prominently vis‐à‐vis RES‐E. EU policies represent an increasingly important driver for the Nordic countries. In the United States, on the other hand, it remains an open question as to how future federal policy efforts will relate to existing policies at the state level.     

Package Deals in EU Legislative Politics

This is an article about package deals in EU legislative politics and their effects on policy outcomes. It analyzes interchamber exchange between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The main argument is that package deals allow Member States control over the financial aspects of legislation and ensure its timely adoption. In exchange, the Parliament gains access to some of the EU's most expensive policy areas. Intercameral logrolling is analyzed across all EU legislation completed in the period 1 May 1999–30 April 2007, including 2,369 issues, 1,465 legislative proposals, and 19 policy areas. The results indicate that package deals in the EU are conditional on the distributive nature of proposals and their urgency. In turn, through logrolling, the Parliament extends its influence in distributive policies.     

Soft Competition: Finland,Sweden and the Northern Dimension of the European Union

In the context of European integration, Sweden and Finland are frequently seen as natural allies. Based on a number of perceived similarities, their shared Nordic heritage, established historical ties and their concurrent accession to the European Union (EU), they are rarely seen as competitors or proponents of diverging points of view. Their alignment within the EU, over sub‐regional issues surrounding Northern Europe in particular, is often rather taken as a given. By focusing on the specific conduct of Sweden and Finland as regional stakeholders in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) and the way they have played this role within the EU, this article seeks to challenge these common assumptions. It shows that Sweden and Finland do not converge in their positions, also in matters concerning the EU's Northern Dimension – that is, a policy that distinctly furthers regional core issues whose promotion within the EU could be in both states' interest. Instead of pooling forces to attain greater leverage within the EU, Sweden and Finland rather compete with each other in this regard. Using the example of the Finnish Northern Dimension initiative, this article shows how Sweden and Finland have promoted sub‐regional matters through different political and organizational channels, keeping bilateral cooperation to a minimum and leaving potential avenues of pooled action at the EU level aside. The article thus concludes that the concept of a Swedish‐Finnish tandem within the EU needs to be looked at more critically when it comes to explaining or predicting their conduct as Member States.     

Actor alignments in the European Union before and after enlargement

What impact has the 2004 enlargement had on legislative decision making in the European Union (EU)? This study answers this question by examining the controversies raised by a broad selection of legislative proposals from before and after the 2004 enlargement. The analyses focus on the alignments of decision‐making actors found on those controversies. Member State representatives, the European Commission and the European Parliament vary considerably in the positions they take on controversial issues before and after enlargement. Consistent patterns in actor alignments are found for only a minority of controversial issues. To the extent that consistent patterns are found, the most common involve differences in the positions of Northern and Southern Member States and old and new Member States. The North‐South alignment was more common in the EU‐15 and reflected Northern Member States' preference for low levels of regulatory intervention. The new‐old alignment that has been evident in the post‐2004 EU reflects new Member States' preference for higher levels of financial subsidies. This study argues that the persistent diversity in actor alignments contributes to the EU's capacity to cope with enlargement.     

From capacity to sovereignty: Legislative politics and differentiated integration in the European Union

The literature suggests that legislative politics among European Union Member States is characterised by economic exchanges, and constrained by the social norms of a European community of legislators. Both views draw a clear line between the legislative process and the conflicts over sovereignty that have left their mark on treaty making and European public opinion since the 1990s. This article suggests revisiting this view, based on an analysis of why Member States have opted out of legislation from the 1970s to today. It argues that differentiation, while once a response to capacity problems of relatively poor countries, has recently become driven by sovereignty concerns of the Union's wealthy and nationally oriented Members that oppose the EU's intrusion into core state powers. The article presents evidence for the impact on legislative outcomes of factors so far thought not to matter. The results indicate greater European‐level legislative responsiveness towards national sovereignty demands than previously recognised. They underline that the nature of European politics has been changing with the EU's push into core state powers.     

Multiple Institutional Embeddedness in Europe: The Case of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Government Officials

The questions posed in the current study are (1) whether, and (2) how, participation within Commission expert committees and Council working parties of the European Union (EU) affects the coordination behaviour of the participants. Based on organizational theory arguments, the coordination role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is arguably weakened by institutional dynamics existing within Commission expert committees. The opposite is argued to be the case within Council working parties. Empirically, this study is based on 160 questionnaires and 47 face-to-face interviews with Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish domestic government officials attending EU committees. Secondly, this study also includes answers from 49 officials at the permanent representation to the EU of these three Scandinavian countries. Being excluded from attending Council working parties, Norwegian civil servants participating within Commission expert committees are shown to coordinate considerably less with the foreign ministry than their Danish and Swedish counterparts. Notwithstanding these observations, this study also reveals how the coordination behaviour evoked by national civil servants reflects their domestic institutional affiliations. In addition to showing how EU committees affect coordination behaviour among the participants, the current analysis also shows how responses to integration requirements are filtered – and even conditioned – by a prior state of affairs at the domestic level of governance.     

Fundamental Rights: An Unsettling EU Competence

For many years, fundamental rights were primarily protected in the European Union (EU) legal order in a negative way; EU institutions and Member States should not infringe fundamental rights when acting within the scope of EU law. However, since the Treaties of Amsterdam and Lisbon, the EU has gained greater competences to develop fundamental rights standards, and new mechanisms for the protection of these standards have emerged. Although these new instruments enhance the mandate of the EU regarding fundamental rights protection, they also trigger a number of important questions. They are capable of calling into question, to an unprecedented extent, sensitive domestic policy areas through a rights-based process of Europeanization. Furthermore, the EU regime for the protection of fundamental rights is increasingly difficult to contain within the limits of the traditional principle of attributed competences that was initially designed to circumscribe the process of European integration. Both types of questioning trigger significant resistances at the EU as well as national level.     

The Impact of the European Union on Coalition Formation in a Minority System: The Case of Denmark

Does European Union membership influence coalition patterns in national parliaments? For governments in the Scandinavian countries – with their relatively high share of minority governments requiring external parliamentary support to form parliamentary majorities – the question of ‘coalition management’ is highly relevant. This article provides an empirical test of three central arguments in the Europeanisation literature on the impact of EU membership on national parliaments when political parties pass legislation in the Danish Folketing. The effect of EU content in a law on coalition patterns is compared across policy areas and four electoral periods from 1998 to 2011 encompassing 2,894 laws. The data provide support for the argument that the loss of national agenda‐setting over the legislative process has an impact on coalition patterns in the Danish parliament. It is shown that the coalition patterns on Europeanised legislation are both broader and more stable compared to national, non‐EU‐related legislation. The focus on Europeanisation of legislative coalitions goes beyond previous analysis with an institutional focus, and demonstrates an example of how the EU systematically has an effect on legislative coalition formation in a national parliamentary system.