Unanimity and exposure in the EU Council of Ministers – or how the Dutch won and lost the ICTY debate

How are unanimity negotiations commonly settled in the EU Council of Ministers? Important contributions have been made to our understanding of the ‘consensual’ decision‐making dynamics in the Council, but most studies focus on explaining the sheer absence of votes in legislative decision making under the qualified majority rule. This study seeks to explain how vetoes are averted, or curtailed, in unanimity decision making. These unanimity negotiations are explained as attempts to induce or prevent high‐level exposure. The degree of exposure in turn depends on the degree of lower level contestation. A process tracing analysis of one prolonged debate is performed from the perspective of one Member State – the Netherlands – which played a very prominent obstructing role. By analysing when, why and where (at what level) the Dutch won or lost, one can come closer to understanding the dynamic interplay between the different Council levels.     

Transnationale Diskurse in der europäischen Medienöffentlichkeit: Die Debatte zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei

In December 2004, the European Council decided unanimously to initiate accession talks with Turkey. Although Turkey’s definite membership depends on successful negotiations and will be decided upon later, the Council will hardly be able to revise this offer and it seems reasonable to assume that Turkey will join the EU sooner or later. This article presents a comparative analysis on whether and how intensively this decision was accompanied by a transnational discourse in the public sphere of the mass media. The study is based on leading quality newspapers from the EU member states France, Germany, and Great Britain.     

Politicisation of the EU Budget: Conflict and the Constraining Dissensus

The current political climate in the European Union, referred to as the ‘constraining dissensus’, may place negotiations on the multiannual EU budget centre stage. Media framing of EU budget negotiations as conflict between member states may reinforce the constraining dissensus by resonating with exclusive national identity. In contrast, media emphasis on conflict within or across member states may alleviate the constraining dissensus by strengthening cross-cutting cleavages. This study tests hypotheses about patterns in politicisation of the EU budget in three budgets (Delors II, Agenda 2000, Financial Perspectives 2007–2013), three countries (the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland) and two forums (media and national parliaments). It finds predominant international conflict framing, especially in media. Thus, media coverage of EU budget negotiations likely reinforces the constraining dissensus. However, as debates intensify, the constraining dissensus may be loosened through more pluralist framing in the debates. Further comparative empirical research into the dynamics of politicisation is called for.     

The institution of 'consensus' in the European Union: Formal versus informal decision-making in the Council

Abstract.  Although many have studied European Union (EU) decision-making in order to evaluate where the locus of power is, most studies have relied on the formal decision-making rules in the first pillar to theorize the workings of the EU. This assumption is somewhat problematic given that the informal norms of consensus are the primary mode of decision-making (81 per cent of decisions are made by consensus). This article examines the institution of consensus in the EU. It argues that the informal norm of consensus renders implausible the fundamental assumption of the rational institutionalist literature, challenging the validity of its claims. Finally, the costs and benefits to the EU's perceived legitimacy are examined with the argument that the putative benefits of consensual decision-making do not obtain in the EU and that the institution of consensus – the lack of voting and thus accountability – actually contributes to the perception of a democratic deficit in the Council.     

Enlargement processes and distributional conflicts: The politics of discriminatory membership in the European Union

This paper examines discriminatory membership in the European Union from a game-theoretical perspective. I argue that discriminatory membership enables the enlargement of international organizations with heterogenous member states. EU members impose discriminatory measures on new members to redistribute enlargement gains from new members to particularly negatively affected EU members as to render expansion pareto-efficient. The empirical findings of a probit analysis on the EU accession negotiations and outcomes of all five EU enlargement rounds support the theoretical claim. The EU grants acceding states restricted membership rights if distributional conflicts emerge. Moreover, the candidate’s bargaining power and the possibility of alternative compensation schemes influence the enlargement outcomes.     

The Effects of Structures and Power on State Bargaining Strategies

When and why will states adopt more (or less) cooperative bargaining strategies? Standard answers to this question focus on the role of state power. Other scholars highlight socialization effects. I argue that in most international negotiations, the institutional bargaining structure will mitigate the effects of power and socialization, and drive state bargaining behavior. Factors highlighted by formal models of international bargaining should therefore best explain the variation in the strategies states adopt. I introduce empirical measures of these abstract concepts, and test their effects against those of power and socialization using an original dataset of state bargaining strategies in the European Union (EU). The results show that structural factors best explain variation in the EU states’ bargaining strategies. I conclude by highlighting the conditions under which these effects should explain state bargaining behavior in other international negotiations, and discuss the implications of this argument for the study of international bargaining.     

Politics like any other? Comparative politics,international relations and the study of the EU

This article disputes the claim made by Simon Hix (WEP January 1994) that ‘politics in the EC is not inherently different to the practice of government in any democratic system’ and argues against a rigid division between international relations and comparative politics. It contends first, that EU politics cannot be broken up into two categories: ‘politics’ and ‘integration'; second, that the nature of the EU system, the centrality of states and the continued importance of power considerations precludes explanations of EU ‘politics’ through the use of comparative government approaches alone; and third, that public policy cannot in general be studied without reference to international factors.     

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).     

Friends of the Court? Why EU governments file observations before the Court of Justice

The preliminary reference procedure under which the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) responds to questions from national courts regarding the interpretation of EU law is a key mechanism in many accounts of the development of European integration and law. While the significance of the procedure has been broadly acknowledged, one aspect has been largely omitted: The opportunity for member state governments to submit their views (‘observations’) to the Court in ongoing cases. Previous research has shown that these observations matter for the Court's decisions, and thus that they are likely to have a significant impact on the course of European integration. Still, little is known about when and why member states decide to engage in the preliminary reference procedure by submitting observations. This article shows that there is significant variation, both between cases and between member states, in the number of observations filed. A theoretical argument is developed to explain this variation. Most importantly, a distinction is made between legal and political reasons for governments to get involved in the preliminary reference cases, and it is argued that both types of factors should be relevant. By matching empirical data from inter‐governmental negotiations on legislative acts in the Council of the EU with member states’ subsequent participation in the Court procedures, a research design is developed to test these arguments. It is found that the decision to submit observations can be tied both to concerns with the doctrinal development of EU law and to more immediate political preferences. The conclusion is that the legal (the CJEU) and political (the Council) arenas of the EU system are more interconnected than some of the previous literature would lead us to believe.     

UNSC Resolution 1325 national action plans in Liberia and Sierra Leone: An analysis of gendered power relations in hybrid peacebuilding

This paper considers how the use of ‘hybridity’ in the peacebuilding literature overlooks the gendered dimensions of hybrid interactions. It does so by examining the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 national action plans (NAPs) for Liberia and Sierra Leone. By asking the gendered questions of ‘who participates?’ and ‘how do they participate?’ it draws from Mac Ginty’s conception of hybridity and traces the compliance and incentivizing power in hybridized peace, as well as the ability of local actors to resist and provide alternatives. However, Mac Ginty’s model is found to be inadequate because of its inattention to the gendered nature of power. It is found that with a gendered approach to hybridity, it is easier to trace the processes of hybridization of NAPs in post-conflict states where their implementation is limited. In asking the questions of ‘who’ and ‘how’, three conclusions about the gendered nature of hybrid peacebuilding are drawn: international intervention relies upon the ‘feminization’ of local actors; issues framed within the realm of the ‘masculine’ are more likely to get attention; and the Resolution 1325 agenda in post-conflict states can be subverted by framing it as a ‘soft’ issue.     

Europeanisation and social movements: The case of the Stop TTIP campaign

Over the past years, the economic crisis has significantly challenged the ways through which social movements have conceptualised and interacted with European Union institutions and policies. Although valuable research on the Europeanisation of movements has already been conducted, finding moderate numbers of Europeanised protests and actors, more recent studies on the subject have been limited to austerity measures and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has been investigated more from a trade unions’ or an international relations perspective. In this article, the TTIP is used as a very promising case study to analyse social movements’ Europeanisation – that is, their capacity to mobilise referring to European issues, targets and identities. Furthermore, the TTIP is a crucial test case because it concerns a policy area (foreign trade) which falls under the exclusive competence of the EU. In addition, political opportunities for civil society actors are ‘closed’ in that negotiations are kept ‘secret’ and discussed mainly within the European Council, and it is difficult to mobilise a large public on such a technical issue. So why and how has this movement become ‘Europeanised’? This comparative study tests the Europeanisation hypothesis with a protest event analysis on anti‐TTIP mobilisation in six European countries (Italy, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria) at the EU level in the period 2014–2016 (for a total of 784 events) and uses semi‐structured interviews in Brussels with key representatives of the movement and policy makers. The findings show that there is strong adaptation of social movements to multilevel governance – with the growing presence of not only purely European actors, but also European targets, mobilisations and transnational movement networks – with a ‘differential Europeanisation’. Not only do the paths of Europeanisation vary from country to country (and type of actor), but they are also influenced by the interplay between the political opportunities at the EU and domestic levels.     

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.     

Does the UK Have Influence in the EU Legislative Process?

The UK has influenced some major EU policies, such as the creation of the single market and enlargement. But how influential are the UK government and British MEPs in the day‐to‐day EU legislative process? To answer this question, this article analyses recent data from the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. The evidence is mixed. In the Council, in recent years the UK government has been outvoted more often than any other EU government, yet UK officials remain well connected ‘behind the scenes’. In the European Parliament, British MEPs are now more likely to be on the losing side than are the MEPs of any other member state, yet British MEPs still win key committee chairs and rapporteurships. The evidence suggests that if the UK votes to remain in the EU, Britain's political elites will need to re‐engage with Brussels politics if the UK is to avoid becoming further marginalised from mainstream EU politics.     

Power and changing modes of governance in the euro crisis

Which European Union actors are most powerful in the governance of the euro crisis? The euro crisis has reignited the classic debate between intergovernmentalists, who tend to stress the coercive power of dominant member states in the European Council, and supranationalists, who maintain that through the use of institutional power, the Commission, and the European Central Bank turned out the “winners” of the crisis. This article argues that euro crisis governance is best understood not just in terms of one form of power but instead as evolving through different constellations of coercive, institutional, and ideational power that favored different EU actors over the course of the crisis, from the initial fast‐burning phase (2010–2012), where the coercive and ideational power of Northern European member states in the European Council was strongest, to the slow‐burning phase (2012–2016), when greater influence was afforded supranational actors through the use of ideational and institutional power.     

Prison or Voluntary Cooperation? The Possibility of Withdrawal from the European Union

Can a Member State choose to leave the European Union (EU)? Are there provisions in the Treaties that establish a right to withdraw? What would the political and economic implications be? In this article, these questions are addressed. In a first step, the Treaties of the EU and the provisions of international law are consulted in order to clarify if a legal right to withdraw exists. The conclusion is that there is no guaranteed legal right to withdraw in the current situation, but the entering into force of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe would create such a right. However, a formal right to withdraw does not necessarily mean that leaving the EU is a real option, and therefore the political and economic sides of the issue are also examined. From the literature on secession and Europeanization, a number of issues that could arise in a case of withdrawal are identified – namely ‘fear of fragmentation’, ‘lost investment’, ‘costs’ and ‘the effects of Europeanization’. The extent to which these issues were of importance is examined in the only existing case of withdrawal: Greenland. Subsequently, an assessment is made of the extent to which these issues could form obstacles for a Member State that wishes to withdraw in the current situation. The main conclusion is that large economic costs and the constitutional changes that follow from EU membership could rule out withdrawal as a realistic option.     

Transposition and National-Level Resources: Introducing the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive in Eastern Europe

The Cross-Border Patients’ Rights Directive represents an attempt to resolve the unclear situation that had developed due to ‘negative integration’ within the field of healthcare. While the adoption of the directive ends the EU-level decision process, it represents the start of the implementation process, where national institutional structures and interests play a key role. This article investigates the role of resources as a key factor shaping transposition within the member states, with a focus on Poland and Bulgaria. The article shows that a multidimensional perspective of resources is important for understanding transposition of EU directives in member states. While previous research has tended to consider resources at the aggregate, national level, the present study shows that specific concerns about the ‘adjustment costs’ at the sector system level are of key importance.     

Re-inventing industrial policy in the EU: A Franco-German approach

Defining industrial policies has traditionally been a preserve of EU member states, upon which the Commission has only impacted indirectly, through numerous measures affecting industry, leaving little room for an industrial policy in its own right. However, growing concern about the EU's future position in the international division of labour has led several member states to request from Brussels a more pro-active approach and closer attention to European industrial interests. This paper investigates the recent trend towards ‘re-inventing’ industrial policy in the EU, France and Germany. It examines the model of intergovernmental industrial cooperation established between these two member states, its usefulness and limitations. It argues that, despite recent regression in France towards old-style interventionist policies, and although German governments sometimes favour a protectionist stance, both countries can also generate new, more constructive, euro-compatible intergovernmental initiatives, but that promoting national champions damages the credibility of such initiatives.     

Making the most of the best: Formulating a knowledge management strategy for a government advisory body

‘Well, there seems to be a growing consensus among companies doing knowledge management that the correct focus should be neither on the individual nor the enterprise, but instead on some grouping of people who share common context, stories and passion, around a subject’ (Larry Prusak).¹ What do you get when some 20 people meet every three or four months, each one at the top of their respective fields and from different organisations and with different backgrounds, in different cities around Australia? In the case of the Family Law Council you get scintillating intellectual pyrotechnics, sharing of insights and even, in a typically understated Australian way, passion. The Family Law Council (the Council) is a government advisory body. Advisory bodies have two primary functions: to provide expert and representative advice in an increasingly specialised and complex social environment; and to open up channels of communication between government and the people (Hughes 1995). This article examines how the tools and analytical techniques of knowledge management (KM) can add value to the two primary functions of the Council. Drawing on the conceptual framework of KM, and on the basis that the Council forms a knowledge system, this article will examine the workings of the Council. It will look at its statutory role, environmental background and logistics, in order to propose a KM strategy adapted to its specific circumstances. And it will, where appropriate, illustrate points with discussions based on methodologies and case studies from the flourishing academic field of KM.     

Softening the surface but hardening the core? Governing renewable energy in the EU

Abstract

Soft law and governance captured the attention of scholars in the 2000s, and new policy challenges and the novel introduction of ‘harder’ elements now drive a (re)turn to these discussions. This article explores the extent to which dynamics leading towards ‘harder soft governance’ (HSG) appear in the EU’s renewable energy governance by comparing the 2020 and 2030 Renewable Energy Directives. Document analysis and interviews reveal a surface-level softening because the new 2030 directive contains no binding national targets for the Member States. An entrepreneurial Commission has been seeking to introduce ‘harder elements’ at the core by focusing on implementation, allowing for potentially deeper influence on the national energy mixes though the Energy Union. Two main factors drive these changes: the evolving international context of climate change governance, as well as re-configurations of the actors in the EU. Future research should explore the effectiveness of emerging HSG in detail.     

Internationalism Under Platform Capitalism: Brexit and the Organisation of UK Fast Food Workers

In October 2018, a coalition of UK trade unions and civil society organisations called a strike across the UK’s fast food sector in support of a living wage, union recognition and the end to zero‐hour contracts in the sector. This paper takes the day of action—labelled the McStrike—as a starting point for an account of the place of the EU and Brexit in the campaign for fast food rights, as well as the contrasting political standpoints adopted by the different trade unions involved in the action. Brexit is used as a prism through which to analyse aspects of Britain’s contemporary food politics, especially those pertaining to freedom of movement, workplace organisation, and the role of EU legislation in protecting workers’ rights. In exploring the international dimensions of union organisation among the UK’s fast food workers, other, more conceptual considerations regarding the changing nature of public and private food consumption and the incorporation of food‐to‐go into the gig economy are also broached.