Regional lobbying and Structural funds: Do regional representation offices in Brussels deliver?

In recent years regional representation offices have proliferated in Brussels. Among the many aims of these offices are influencing the allocation and securing the transfer of European Structural and Cohesion funds. However, our knowledge about whether they have succeeded in this goal is limited. In this paper, we assess whether regional offices in Brussels have managed to affect the commitment and payment of Structural and Cohesion funds beyond the officially stated economic criteria of eligibility. The paper uses a custom-made survey of Brussels offices, complemented by economic, institutional, and political data. The results of the analyses for 123 regions over the period 2009–13 highlight that the capacity – proxied by the budget and staff of the office – of the regional offices to influence the commitment and payment of Structural and Cohesion funds has been negligible, when not outright negative. Regional lobbying in Brussels does not lead to more funds or to an easier disbursement of regional development funds.     

Analysing stages of subnational mobilisation across the European Union: The case of subnational administrations in Turkey

Subnational mobilisation literature has tended to focus on EU members and either their establishment of liaison offices or the engagement activities of their subnational administrations (SNAs) with the EU institutions in Brussels. Extending this scope to include cases from a candidate state, this article aims to enhance our understanding of such processes by proposing a four-stage model for subnational mobilisation in the EU. The model includes: growing awareness; changing organizational settings; building transnational activities; and conducting EU-level activities in Brussels. Based on 65 semi-structured interviews with representatives from local and national institutions in Turkey and EU institutions in Brussels, this work evaluates six SNAs from three Turkish cities (?zmir, Samsun and Diyarbak?r) between 1999 and 2013. Findings reveal that patterns of subnational mobilisation can vary significantly within a single candidate country, owing mostly to organizational-level factors and region-specific factors related to how particular administrations are embedded.     

Same Game but More Players? Sub-national Lobbying in an Enlarged Union

This contribution builds on the insights provided by the literature on sub-national mobilization in the European Union (EU) to assess whether the 2004–2007 rounds of enlargement have changed anything in this respect. Empirical analysis uses two types of data sources. The first is a survey of over a 100 regional offices in Brussels, and the second consists of 29 semi-structured interviews with Commission officials led in the aftermath of the 2004–2007 enlargements. These data are used to answer the following two research questions: (1) is there a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage at the territorial level in Brussels? (2) Is there anything like an ‘enlargement effect’ on sub-national mobilization? Analysis reveals that, while there is fading evidence of a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage in Brussels, enlargement has nevertheless had an impact on sub-national mobilization at the EU level, reinforcing older but also newer trends.     

Bypassing a Centralized State: The Case of the Greek Subnational Mobilization in the European Union

For over 25 years successive administrative reforms have taken place in Greece, with a view to modernizing the subnational institutions. The European pressures come across as an influential factor inducing the process of change. But what has been the subnational responsiveness related to the rationalization initiatives? The aim of this paper is to investigate the Greek subnational authorities’ mobilization in the European arena, providing evidence of their bypassing the central state from a multi-level governance perspective. Building on the division between ‘financial' and ‘regulatory' mobilization, empirical data are drawn from the EU's environmental policy financial mechanism and the subnational representation and networking in Brussels. The figures show that only a few Greek subnational authorities financially mobilize; the vast majority show inertia. Moreover, their regulatory mobilization is hardly evident. It is argued that although the EU offers substantial incentives for mobilizing, domestic institutional capacity also accounts for much variation.     

The Foreign Relations of European Regions: Competences and Strategies

The article traces the foreign relations of 81 European regions by looking first at the constitutional competences which these regions enjoy within their nation-states. We discover that the regions in federal states have expanded their competences in two directions: conducting autonomous foreign activities and influencing national foreign policy. How far the Belgian regions, as well as the German and the Austrian Länder go in both directions depends very much on the scope of their competences in domestic politics. In non-federal states (France, GB, Italy), regionalisation brought rather more leeway to conduct a certain level of autonomous foreign activity than regional influence in national foreign policy. When we – in a second step – trace the strategies or directions of international activities which the regions pursue it becomes obvious that setting up an office in Brussels in order to adapt to political integration is very common among West European regions. In contrast, much more variety can be observed when examining the regions' strategies to adapt to fundamental economic and cultural transformations. Some European regions invest heavily in economic promotion offices and in transnational partnerships while others lack the motivation or ability to invest in these forms of foreign relations.     

Gender,actors, and institutions at the local level: Explaining variation in policies to address violence against women and girls

Research on gender equality policy has generally focused on actors and institutions at the national and international levels. This article considers the role of local‐level actors and institutions in explaining different policy responses to violence against women and girls (VAWG). The literature on gender policy trajectories identifies the particular importance of executive actors in influencing “status policies” like VAWG. Quantitative data are analyzed to show how local Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales have responded to demands for policy action. The focus is on the interaction between the 41 elected commissioners and the new institutional arrangements for police governance introduced in 2012. The article shows that variation in policy outcomes is related (a) to the gender of executive actors and (b) to the way in which actors interpret elements of the institutional framework, regardless of their own gender.     

State structure and political representation: Comparing the views of statewide and sub‐state legislators across 14 countries

How the recent creation, re‐invention or reinforcement of regional levels of political decision making across Europe compounds political representation is one of the key issues of contemporary democratic government. Despite growing scholarly interest, the critical question as to whether the regional institutional setting has brought about distinct representational roles among sub‐state legislators has yet to be addressed. To advance research in this field, this study bridges the literature on multilevel politics and legislative studies that to date have developed in isolation. Using innovative survey data from 14 statewide and 56 regional legislatures across Europe, it provides the first comprehensive test of how the state structure affects a legislator's views on representation. The results highlight that, relative to legislators in unitary states and national legislators in multilevel states, legislators at the regional level are more constituency‐oriented. Moreover, this heightened responsiveness to constituents at the regional level is not offset by weaker collective representation operating through political parties. Beyond these findings’ immediate relevance to scholars of federalism/regionalisation and parliaments, they also speak to the wider normative debate about the quality of political representation and public policy.     

Land and Water Institutions in the Blue Nile Basin: Setups and Gaps for Improved Land and Water Management

This study undertook an assessment and gap analysis of the institutional arrangements for improved land and water management in the Tana and Beles Sub‐basins highlands of the Blue Nile Basin. We explored the mandates and design features of the major land‐ and water‐related institutional arrangements. Focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and a literature review were used in the analysis. The results of our work reveal that a lot of progress has been made in creating an institutional framework for improved land and water management and the policies and laws hitherto developed reflect global policy changes consistent with the widespread adoption of the integrated water resources management (IWRM) principles. There are also cases where informal institutions replace formal institutions. Judged by their enforcement, the water resources management, pollution control standards, and regulations and land use rights are not enacted effectively because of poor enforcement capacity. Overall there is a tendency to focus on command‐and‐control type policies. There is a need to strengthen traditional institutions by drawing lessons from their strengths and establish the legitimacy of these institutions. There is also a need to improve formal policy design, developing policies with specific objectives, goals, targets, and overall institutional changes and resources through active adaptive management to maximize the level and effectiveness of institutional learning. Finally, more focus needs to be given to incentive‐based policies through increased use of positive incentives and more emphasis needs to be given to self‐enforcement rather than third‐party enforcement.     

Multi-level governance in the EU and EU democracy: Democratic legitimacy,democratic accountability and transparency of the European offices of the English local authorities in Brussels

This paper seeks to examine the role and functions of the representative offices of English local authorities in Brussels by considering the democratic legitimacy (i.e. linkage to elected councillors or mayors), accountability and transparency of the office’s activities. The study demonstrates that the offices differ in their governance arrangements and funding, which has a direct impact on the approach to democratic legitimacy and accountability, noting that those offices which rely most heavily on direct funding from a single authority or a combined authority have the closest links to the authorities concerned. The transparency of the offices varies considerably, with clear distinctions between offices that are creatures of contract or where offices are an emanation of the authority concerned. The pattern here is less dependent on the pattern of funding of the office and depends more on the availability of resources and the approach adopted by the office itself.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

Europäisierung und innerstaatlicher Wandel. Zentralisierung und Entparlamentarisierung?

A number of studies suggest that European integration impacts upon the domestic institutions of the member states by changing the distribution of resources among domestic actors. This paper argues that resource dependency needs to be embedded in an institutionalist understanding of Europeanisation in order to explain when and how Europe affects the domestic institutions of the member states. First, domestic institutions determine the distribution of resources among the domestic actors in a given member-state. Second, the compatibility of European and domestic institutions determines the degree to which Europeanisation changes this distribution of resources and hence the degree of pressure for institutional adaptation. Third, the domestic institutional culture determines the dominant strategies of actors by which they respond to such a redistribution of resources facilitating or prohibiting institutional adaptation. This argument is empirically tested by comparing the impact of Europeanisation on the territorial institutions of the five most decentralized member states, with special reference to Germany and Spain as representatives of opposite institutional cultures. The study shows that the regions succeeded in balancing the territorial centralization caused by Europeanization. However, the compensation of regional losses of competencies through the intrastate participation of the regions in the formulation and representation of the national bargaining position in European affairs reinforces executive dominance in European decision-making contributing to the tendencies of deparlamentarization in the member states.     

Corporatism in Crisis: Stability and Change of Social Partnership in Austria

While recent developments in Western Europe provide numerous examples of the instability and decay of corporatist arrangements in the face of economic crisis, Austrian social partnership still exhibits remarkable stability. The article tries to explain this stability of corporatist politics in Austria. The Austrian case is also used to demonstrate some limitations of the academic literature on the breakdown of corporatism. However, stability in the Austrian case does not mean that nothing has changed. Changes have occurred within the existing institutional framework. Two main factors in the transformation of Austrian social partnership are pointed out, namely socio-cultural and political changes. Finally, some future perspectives of Austrian corporatism are outlined.     

Leaving the Australian Labor Force: An Extended Encounter with the State

This article seeks to demonstrate the way in which labor market choices are shaped by institutional arrangements devised by the state. Since these arrangements differ markedly from country to country, much that is distinctive about national labor market outcomes is a function of diverse encounters with the state. This argument is illustrated by an account that explains why Australia, a country which apparently devotes little in the way of public resources to the old, manifests an exceptionally high level of early retirement. This account shows that, in contrast to the standard European welfare state strategy of public pensions, the Australian state has over many decades tackled the need for provision for the old by encouraging retirement strategies that are not subsidized directly from the public purse. These strategies include the encouragement of widely dispersed home ownership and occupational pensions. Read broadly, the article suggests that the extremity of contrasts frequently made between the advanced welfare states of Western Europe and the miserable social policy outcomes in the democracies of the New World have been far too extreme. The article experiments with novel presentational techniques designed to focus attention on individual choices and on policy outcomes for the individual rather than policy outputs by governments.     

Devolution as Process: Institutional Structures,State Personnel and Transport Policy in the United Kingdom

Abstract. Devolution has been described as a key ‘global trend’ over recent decades as governments have decentralised power and responsibilities to subordinate regional institutions. UK devolution is characterised by its asymmetrical nature with different territories granted different institutional arrangements and powers. This paper seeks to examine the role of state personnel in mobilising the new institutional machinery and managing the process of devolution, focusing on transport policy. The research presented shows a clear contrast between London and Northern Ireland, on the one hand, and Scotland and Wales, on the other, in terms of the effectiveness of political leaders in creating clear policy priorities and momentum in transport.     

Explaining Reforms of Parliamentary Minority Rights: A Theoretical Framework with Case Study Application

How can we explain institutional reforms that redistribute institutional power between the parliamentary majority and minority? This paper proposes an informal theoretical model to explain such reforms in European parliaments based on congressional literature and inductive explanations from case studies. The article argues that political parties as the relevant actors pursue institutional reforms based on their substantive goals, their current and expected future government status, transaction and audience costs of reforms, second-order institutions that regulate the relative influence of actors in changing parliamentary rules, and the institutional status quo. Hypotheses derived from this model are tested with a qualitative case study of all standing order reforms in the Austrian parliament from 1945 to 2014. The empirical analysis finds support for various hypotheses and their underlying causal mechanisms. As Austria constitutes a least-likely case, the evidence provides strong support for the theoretical model.     

Welfare-State Expansion and Conflicts in the Nordic Countries: The Case of Occupational Health Care

The development of occupational health Services in the Nordic countries varied considerably in terms of coverage, content and conflicts during the period 1980–90. The focus is on differences in conflicts resulting from state intervention into the sphere of private employers analysed from three perspectives: policy ambitions, institutional arrangements and employer reaction. The main finding is that the high level of conflict in Norway is related to higher state ambitions, more fragmented institutions and more direct economic costs to the employers than those found in the other Nordic countries. The higher policy ambitions and resulting adversary processes in providing occupational health Services seem to be fundamentally rooted in specific egalitarian values inherent in the Norwegian welfare state in general and the trade union movement in particular.     

Regional inequality and institutional trust in Europe

Inequality is a central explanation of political distrust in democracies, but has so far rarely been considered a cause of (dis-)trust towards supranational governance. Moreover, while political scientists have extensively engaged with income inequality, other salient forms of inequality, such as the regional wealth distribution, have been sidelined. These issues point to a more general shortcoming in the literature. Determinants of trust in national and European institutions are often theorized independently, even though empirical studies have demonstrated large interdependence in citizens’ evaluations of national and supranational governance levels. In this paper, we argue that inequality has two salient dimensions: (1) income inequality and (2) regional inequality. Both dimensions are important antecedent causes of European Union (EU) trust, the effects of which are mediated by evaluations of national institutions. On the micro-level, we suggest that inequality decreases a person's trust in national institutions and thereby diminishes the positive effect of national trust on EU trust. On the macro-level, inequality decreases country averages of trust in national institutions. This, however, informs an individual's trust in the EU positively, compensating for the seemingly untrustworthiness of national institutions. Finally, we propose that residing in an economically declining region can depress institutional trust. We find empirical support for our arguments by analysing regional temporal change over four waves of the European Social Survey 2010–2016 with a sample of 209 regions nested in 24 EU member states. We show that changes in a member state's regional inequality have similarly strong effects on trust as changes in the Gini coefficient of income inequality. Applying causal mediation techniques, we can show that the effects of inequality on EU trust are largely mediated through citizens’ evaluations of national institutions. In contrast, residing in an economically declining region directly depresses EU trust, with economically lagging areas turning their back on European governance and resorting to the national level instead. Our findings highlight the relevance of regional inequality for refining our understanding of citizens’ support for Europe's multi-level governance system and the advantages of causal modelling for the analysis of political preferences in a multi-level governance system.     

Global Regulation and Institutional Change in European Governance

The literature on institutional innovation in European governance has been dominated by an inward-looking focus on the European integration process. However, in the context of a highly integrated and interdependent world, it is not possible to understand the evolution of European governance without taking into account developments in the international institutional environment. This article aims to contribute to the study of the interaction between global and European modes of governance by examining the impact of EU's engagement with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and its predecessor the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) on the institutions of European accounting regulation. Following an analysis of the politics of international accounting harmonisation, it is demonstrated that EU's decisions to adopt the standards produced by the IASB, and to establish a new, differentiated European accounting regulatory mechanism, were driven by its desire to bolster European influence in the context of the IASC/IASB.     

The early modern origins of contemporary European tax outcomes

What explains variation in tax outcomes between European states? Previous studies emphasise the role played by political institutions, but focus mostly on the input side of politics – how access to power and policy making is structured – and the institutions of relatively recent times. It is argued in this article that output‐side institutions related to the implementation of political decisions also matter and have deep institutional origins. As the classic literature has argued, the early modern period from 1450 to 1800 was formative for the development of fiscal capacity, but European states diverged in the stock of capacity they acquired. This article tests whether these differences still affect contemporary tax outcomes using a novel measure of fiscal capacity, based on the age, extent and quality of state‐administered cadastral records. The empirical analysis shows that, on average, countries with higher early modern fiscal capacity have higher tax revenue today, compared to countries with lower early modern fiscal capacity. This association is robust to different model specifications and alternative measurements. The findings have important policy implications as they indicate how deeply the current fiscal problems of the continent are entrenched, but also point to what needs to be prioritised within ongoing tax reforms.     

Institutional reform and public attitudes toward EU decision making

In the face of the discourse about the democratic deficit and declining public support for the European Union (EU), institutionalist scholars have examined the roles of institutions in EU decision making and in particular the implications of the empowered European Parliament. Almost in isolation from this literature, prior research on public attitudes toward the EU has largely adopted utilitarian, identity and informational accounts that focus on individual-level attributes. By combining the insights from the institutional and behavioural literature, this article reports on a novel cross-national conjoint experiment designed to investigate multidimensionality of public attitudes by taking into account the specific roles of institutions and distinct stages in EU decision making. Analysing data from a large-scale experimental survey in 13 EU member states, the findings demonstrate how and to what extent the institutional design of EU decision making shapes public support. In particular, the study finds a general pattern of public consensus about preferred institutional reform regarding powers of proposal, adoption and voting among European citizens in different countries, but notable dissent about sanctioning powers. The results show that utilitarian and partisan considerations matter primarily for the sanctioning dimension in which many respondents in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden prefer national courts to the Court of Justice of the EU.