Transgovernmental networks and rationalist outputs? The partial social construction of EU foreign policy

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) foreign policy has gone beyond intergovernmentalism. It is largely formulated by (Brussels-based) national officials, in a process characterised by a high number of cooperative practices, diffuse sentiments of group loyalty and possibly argumentative procedures. Yet, in many cases, the most likely output of this process reflects the lowest common denominator of states’ positions or the preferences of the biggest states. The article intends to investigate this puzzle. In the first part, it corroborates its existence by using answers from an original database of 138 questionnaires and 37 interviews with EU negotiators. Next, it argues that cooperative practices remain often subordinated to nationally oriented ways of doing things. Consequentialist practices perform an anchoring function, in that they define the parameters around which (social) practices operate. The last section looks more closely at the sites of and meanings attached to EU foreign policy-making. By discussing national diplomats’ conspicuous leeway in Brussels, it also argues that negotiating practices are performed through a mix of partial agency and persistence of national dispositions. On the whole, changing practices is difficult, even in dense and largely autonomous settings such as EU foreign policy. The social construction of EU foreign policy occurs only to a partial extent.     

Peer Microaggressions and Social Skills among School-Age Children of Sexual Minority Parents through Assisted Reproduction: Moderation via the Child–Teacher Relationship

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - The impact of peer microaggressions and the child–teacher relationship on the social skills of children with sexual minority parents has received little...     

The International Politics of the Chinese Arms Embargo Issue

The Chinese arms embargo issue has gone beyond Sino-European bilateral relations to become a matter of significance – and concern – for East Asian and US policymakers. Thus, an eventual solution depends not only on the interplay between EU and Chinese policymakers’ interests and considerations, but is now interconnected with China's domestic developments and regional posture, the security concerns of China's neighbours (especially Japan and Taiwan), the evolution of US-China relations and transatlantic relations.     

China’s Rebalancing towards Europe

Chinese leaders tend to think strategically about Europe. By following the process of European integration closely in the last decades, they have succeeded in identifying at different historical junctures those European integration initiatives that would serve China’s national security and foreign policy objectives. EU policymakers, instead, appear unable to think strategically about China as EU member states tend to focus on bilateral relations with Beijing, thus undermining Brussels’ capacity to fashion a clear and coherent China policy. There is thus a glaring disparity between Beijing and Brussels when it comes to strategic thinking. With China’s economic and political rebalancing towards Europe underway, there has never been more need for an adequate response from the Union.     

The European Convention: Bargaining in the Shadow of Rhetoric

The European Convention on the Future of Europe was initially presented as a turning point in the history of European integration. This article argues that, although its composition was broader, its process more transparent and its rules more flexible than classic intergovernmental conferences, the Convention was not Europe's Philadelphia. Since it took place under the shadow of the IGC and under a leadership especially sensitive to the positions of big member states, the Convention reproduced, by extension, the logic of intergovernmental bargains. Nevertheless, some of the Convention's outcome – the most formal aspects of its draft treaty with less predictable distributional consequences – can be explained by the ‘social norm’ of constitutional deliberation conveyed by its president and supported by a majority of its members.     

The Supremacy of Techno-Governance: Privatization of Digital Content and Consumer Protection in the Globalized Information Society

The article aims to describe the role of technology and contractin regulating access to digital content deregulating intellectualproperty law monopoly. In particular it argues that the anti-circumventionprovisions for technological protection measures and digitalrights management systems enacted in the United States and inEurope compromise the consumer’s capacity to exerciselegitimate rights, such as the private use exemption, by givingcontent owners extralegal protection for their works. It alsoanalyses how these acts have caused an inappropriate delegationof governmental decision making to a non-governmental entitywith a consequent privatization of the government’s rolein protecting intellectual property and in setting technicalstandards for digital infrastructure and interoperability.     

Quality assurance testing of an explosives trace analysis laboratory--further improvements

The Forensic Explosives Laboratory (FEL) operates within the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) which is part of the UK Government Ministry of Defence (MOD). The FEL provides support and advice to the Home Office and UK police forces on matters relating to the criminal misuse of explosives. During 1989 the FEL established a weekly quality assurance testing regime in its explosives trace analysis laboratory. The purpose of the regime is to prevent the accumulation of explosives traces within the laboratory at levels that could, if other precautions failed, result in the contamination of samples and controls. Designated areas within the laboratory are swabbed using cotton wool swabs moistened with ethanol water mixture, in equal amounts. The swabs are then extracted, cleaned up and analyzed using Gas Chromatographs with Thermal Energy Analyzer detectors. This paper follows on from a previous published paper describing the regime and summarizing subsequent results from approximately 6 years of tests. Lessons learned and improvements made over the period are also discussed. Monitoring samples taken from surfaces within the trace laboratories and trace vehicle examination bay have, with few exceptions, revealed only low levels of contamination, predominantly of RDX. Analysis of the control swabs, processed alongside the monitoring swabs, has demonstrated that in this environment the risk of forensic sample contamination, assuming all the relevant anti-contamination procedures have been followed, is so small that it is considered to be negligible. The monitoring regime has also been valuable in assessing the process of continuous improvement, allowing sources of contamination transfer into the trace areas to be identified and eliminated.     

Historicising Criminalisation: Conceptual and Empirical Issues

This paper charts a renaissance in scholarly analysis of criminalisation, and suggests that we do not have the conceptual tools or empirical knowledge to make the claims about 'overcriminalisation' which motivate much of this scholarship. My argument gives further shape to projects under the umbrella of criminalisation, setting out some of the conceptual issues to be resolved before we can work towards an adequate interpretive, and normative, vision of how criminal law has been and might be used. The paper elaborates a number of projects in 'criminalisation scholarship', and suggests there is a failure adequately to distinguish the different senses of 'criminalisation' in the literature, or the varying methods which might be applied within historical, interpretive, analytic and normative studies of criminalisation. In conclusion, the paper argues for a certain genre of criminalisation scholarship, and for a multi-disciplinary criminalisation research agenda informed by history, sociology and political science as much as by law, criminology and philosophy.     

Co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders among male detainees in Italy

This paper presents data on the prevalence of co-occurring substance use and psychiatric disorders among newly imprisoned males in Italy. Interviewers conducted semi-structured clinical interviews with n = 302 male detainees seven days after their admission to the prison of Perugia from August 2005 through July 2006. Over half of male detainees (54.3%) had either a substance use disorder or another psychiatric disorder. One of every five detainees (20.9%) had comorbid substance use and psychiatric disorders. Compared to detainees with psychiatric disorder only, substance use disorder only, or no disorder, detainees with comorbid substance use and psychiatric disorders were significantly more likely to have severe impairment in the areas of employment, substance abuse, family and social functioning, and psychiatric symptoms. Findings underscore the need for careful diagnostic screening at intake, access to treatment during detention, and an effective transition to services at the time of release.