Macro-regional strategies of the European Union (EU) and experimentalist design of multi-level governance: the case of the EU strategy for the Danube region

Placed within EU Cohesion policy and its objective of European territorial cooperation, macro-regional strategies of the European Union (EU) aim to improve functional cooperation and coherence across policy sectors at different levels of governance, involving both member and partner states, as well as public and private actors from the subnational level and civil society in a given ‘macro-region’. In forging a ‘macro-regional’ approach, the EU commits to only using existing legislative frameworks, financial programmes and institutions. By applying the analytical lens of multi-level and experimentalist governance (EG), and using the EU Strategy for the Danube Region as a case, this article shows that ‘macro-regional’ actors have been activated at various scales and locked in a recursive process of EG. In order to make the macro-regional experiment sustainable, it will be important to ensure that monitoring and comparative review of implementation experience functions effectively and that partner countries, subnational authorities and civil societies have a voice in what is, by and large, an intergovernmental strategy.     

The Convention Experience: Between Rhetoric and Participation

Abstract

This article investigates the participation of interest groups in the EU's Constituional Convention and their contribution to the debate on participatory democracy and EU governance. I argue that the constitutional moment prompted interest groups to define their priorities beyond focused policy issues to include wider principles of governance. While the Convention process was more inclusive that any previous treaty reform procedure, its institutional set up was a constraint to improving citizen participation either directly or via interest groups. The Convention reproduced a model of closed elitist politics which did not communicate sufficiently with the citizens, while the role of interest groups was restricted by a Convention designed as a drafting phase in preparation for the real decisive phase during the IGC. Despite the impact of specific domestic contexts, the ‘no’ votes in France and the Netherlands proved that civil society and participation were rhetorical devices deployed during the Convention to gain legitimacy rather than a genuine move towards a more pluralistic EU democracy capable of deploying effective mechanisms of active citizen participation.     

Leave and Remain voters’ knowledge of the EU after the referendum of 2016

Since the UK's vote to leave the European Union, there has been considerable debate about whether voters (particularly Leave voters) were well-informed prior to making their decisions. We gave a 15-item EU knowledge quiz to a large, nationally representative sample of the British population via an online survey. Our quiz included nine ‘ideologically neutral’ items, as well as six items that we deemed more ‘ideologically convenient’ for one side or the other. Overall, there was no average difference between Leave voters and Remain voters (either before or after controlling for covariates), despite the fact that Remain voters scored slightly higher on a short test of probability reasoning. In addition, both Leave and Remain voters were more likely to answer correctly on items that were ‘ideologically convenient’ for them. Consistent with the previous literature, older age, male gender, higher education, and stronger political interest were all significant predictors of EU knowledge. Interestingly however, these variables only predicted knowledge on the nine ‘ideologically neutral’ items; their associations with knowledge on the six ‘ideologically convenient’ items were generally weak and non-significant.     

When success is an orphan: informal institutional governance and the EU–Turkey deal

This article traces the role of the EU institutions in the process leading up to the EU–Turkey Action Plan and EU–Turkey Statement. The EU–Turkey deal is the proverbial ‘orphan’ in EU crises management, with none of the key actors and institutions eager to claim ownership. Yet when judged from the perspective of process management, the deal resulted from effective inter-institutional collaboration, which stands in stark contrast to the EU’s handling of the relocation schemes or the Dublin reform. Using insights from the informal governance literature, the article maps the inter-institutional network that managed this process, traces the activities within the network, and determines the effects these had on the final outcome. On an analytical level, the mechanism contains five key elements of informal institutional governance: linking, bridging, shielding, laying out the tracks and creative fixes. The conclusion reflects on the wider applicability and scope conditions of this mechanism.     

Decoupling practical and legal compliance: Analysis of member states’ implementation of EU policy

Despite the vast literature on policy implementation, systematic cross‐national research focusing on implementers’ performance regarding different policy issues is still in its infancy. The European Union policies are conducive to examining this relationship in a comparative setting, as the EU member states need to implement various EU directives both legally and in practice. In this study, a first attempt is made to analyse the relationship between legal conformity and practical implementation and the conditions for practical deviations in 27 member states across issues from four policy areas (Internal Market, Environment, Justice and Home Affairs and Social Policy). In line with existing approaches to EU compliance, it is expected that the policy preferences of domestic political elites (‘enforcement’) affect their incentives to ‘decouple’ practical from legal compliance. Instead, administrative and institutional capacities (‘management’) and societal constraints (‘legitimacy’) are likely to limit the ability of policy makers to exert control over the implementation process. The findings suggest that practical deviations arise from policy makers’ inability to steer the implementation process, regardless of their predispositions towards internationally agreed policies. The results have strong implications for the effective application of international rules in domestic settings, as they illustrate that political support for the implementation of ‘external’ policy does not ensure effective implementation in practice.     

The acceptance,relevance and dominance of lobbying the EU Commission — a first‐time survey of the EU Commission's civil servants

Among public affairs techniques lobbying is by far the most mystifying one — at least in Europe. Lobbying comes from the Latin word ‘labium’ and means ‘entrance hall’ or ‘lounge’. Therein the essential meaning can be seen: today political decisions are not made in plenary assemblies but primarily in the pre‐political phase of balancing the various interests. Lobbying is to be understood as the ‘diverse intensive activities of social groups, chambers and companies in the political and bureaucratic vestibule’ (Beyme 1980). Modern lobbying on the EU level is an intermediary policy for the support of political decision making — even if some critics refuse to believe it. Lobbying at EU level has become a politically realistic dimension. Even if the mass media still take a very sceptical and negative view of lobbying in Brussels, based on the existing European taboo on influencing politics, an in‐depth analysis reveals various lobbies at work in EU institutions. Lobbying today is an essential part of all EU decision areas. This paper describes the functional theory approach of lobbying known as ‘cooperation as confrontation through communication’. For the first time, recipients of lobbying in the EU Commission are demonstrating their acceptance of lobbying efforts. The paper is based on the doctoral thesis ‘The acceptance, relevance and dominance of lobbying the EU Commission’ by Peter Koeppl, University of Vienna (unpublished). Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Legitimacy through targeted transparency? Regulatory effectiveness and sustainability of lobbying regulation in the European Union

Regulating interest groups’ access to decision makers constitutes a key dimension of legitimate and accountable systems of government. The European Union explicitly links lobbying regulation with the democratic credentials of its supranational system of governance and proposes transparency as a solution to increase legitimacy and regulate private actors’ participation in policy making. This lobbying regulation regime consists of a Transparency Register that conditions access to decision makers upon joining it and complying with its information disclosure requirements. The extent to which transparency‐based regulatory regimes are successful in ensuring effective regulation of targeted actors and in being recognised as a legitimate instrument of governance constitutes a key empirical question. Therefore, the study asks: Do stakeholders perceive the transparency‐based EU lobbying regulation regime to be a legitimate form of regulatory governance? The study answers by building on a classic model of targeted transparency and proposes perceived regulatory effectiveness and sustainability as two key dimensions on which to evaluate the legitimacy of the Register. The arguments are tested on a new dataset reporting the evaluations of 1,374 stakeholders on the design and performance of the EU lobbying regulation regime. The findings describe a transparency regime that scores low in perceived effectiveness and moderate to low in sustainability. Citizens criticise the quality of information disclosed and the Register's performance as a transparency instrument. The Register did not effectively bridge the information gap between the public and interest groups about supranational lobbying. In terms of sustainability, interest organisations appreciate the systemic benefits of transparency, but identify few organisation‐level benefits. Organisations that are policy insiders incur more transparency costs so they instrumentally support transparency only insofar it suits their lobbying strategies and does not threaten their position. Insiders support including additional categories of organisations in the Register's regulatory remit but not more types of interactions with policy makers. They support an imperfect regulatory status quo to which they have adapted but lack incentives to support increased transparency and information disclosure. Targeted transparency proves an ineffective approach to regulating interest groups’ participation in EU policy making, constituting a suboptimal choice for ensuring transparent, accountable and legitimate supranational lobbying.     

The Preparation of the Governance White Paper

The European Commission's White Paper on Governance initiated a Europe-wide debate about the principles and practices of good policymaking. This article, which draws from the author's work with the team that prepared the White Paper, provides a first-hand examination of how the document was produced. Following a discussion about the meaning of governance, the article focuses on the timeline of events, the consultation procedures, and some of the challenges (linguistic, practical, and political) that arose. It concludes by placing the governance debate in the context of the ongoing European Convention and 2004 IGC.     

Reforming me softly – how soft law has changed EU return policy since the migration crisis

Abstract

In the wake of the 2015/2016 migration crisis, EU policy-makers have urged returning more irregular migrants. In order to achieve this, the EU has adopted a series of non-binding documents for European administrations (such as the EU Return Handbook) and agreed on informal return deals with countries of migrants’ origin including Afghanistan. This article argues that the EU’s shift towards soft law has not altered the EU’s return policy in a profound way. Yet, it has managed to ‘convert’ EU return policy by emphasizing a particular interpretation of existing hard law (towards more restrictive practices and a stronger focus on ‘efficiency’). The soft law approach has also allowed policy-makers to signal action in times of crisis at lower legislative and sovereignty costs.     

Designing stakeholder consultations: Reinforcing or alleviating bias in the European Union system of governance?

Consultations with stakeholders are a policy instrument widely used by policy makers to design policies and prepare legislative proposals across national and supranational systems of government. The European Union has recently reviewed its stakeholder consultation regime and asked for stakeholders’ policy input. This offers an opportunity to examine empirically stakeholders’ own evaluation of the regime and to ask a fundamental question about its democratic credentials: Do stakeholders recognise the EU consultation regime as reinforcing bias in interest representation by benefiting policy insiders, or conversely as an instrument that alleviates bias in supranational policy making? Building on rational choice institutionalism, this article outlines the potential distributional outcomes of the regime and argues that they are likely to vary along the lines of a classic divide in policy making that opposes policy insiders to outsiders. Two competing narratives are discussed in relation to the expected direction of this variation by focusing on insiders’ incentives to support or oppose the regime. The observable implications are tested empirically on an original dataset containing information about stakeholders’ positions on the evaluation of the regime status quo, its proposed further institutionalisation and their recommendations for change. The findings describe a consultation regime that seems to have created conditions alleviating bias in stakeholders’ participation in supranational policy making. This is evident in the lack of systematic, significant differences between insiders and outsiders in the evaluation of the consultation regime. Where differences do occur, they are consistent with the image of a consultation regime that has not reinforced bias in favour of policy insiders. These actors are found to be more critical of the regime status quo, its institutionalisation and more inclined to recommend policy improvements. This supports an optimistic view over the democratic credentials and legitimacy of the EU consultation regime and outlines an additional scenario under which policy actors that are traditionally associated with exerting more power and influence find themselves stripped of their privileged position in the context of European supranational governance.     

Managing anxiety: neoliberal modes of citizen subjectivity,fantasy and child abuse in New Zealand

The neoliberal direction of social policy under New Zealand’s fifth National government (2008–) is demonstrated in its 2012 White Paper for Vulnerable Children. This document advocates increased monitoring and policing of welfare populations and the downgrading of child protection policy to a technical administrative system for managing ‘risky’ families. The White Paper’s release came soon after the coroner’s report into the deaths of the ‘Kahui twins’, which were treated by the media as a shocking case of child abuse, and exemplified the media’s use of a fantasy of a ‘savage’ Maori welfare underclass in reporting cases of child abuse. Drawing on Isin’s analysis of ‘governing through neurosis’, this article explores how these media and policy discourses reinforce normative patterns of neoliberal citizen subjectivity by offering compelling pathways out of anxiety that re-route citizens’ anxiety over child abuse in support of neoliberal modes of citizen subjectivity.     

Biasing Politics? Interest Group Participation in EU Policy-Making

This article makes a contribution to research on soft or ‘new’ governance in EU policy making by examining the recent history of telecommunications policy as a case study, a sector hitherto not widely recognised for displaying this kind of governance. Training its focus on the process leading to the agreement of the latest iteration of the EU's Electronic Communications Regulatory Framework, the article finds strong evidence that soft governance has been used within hard governance legislative frameworks primarily as a tool of political compromise, in respect of the classic problem of securing a balance of regulatory power distribution between the national and EU level. Soft governance employed in this way casts doubt over its ability to achieve openness, common purpose, innovativeness and regulatory efficacy.     

The contested nature of political leadership in the European Union: conceptual and methodological cross-fertilisation

Abstract

European leaders have struggled to find common responses to the polycrisis the EU is facing. This crisis of leadership makes it urgent that scholars provide a better understanding of the role and impact of leadership in EU politics and policy making. This article prepares the ground for a collection of contributions that addresses this need by strengthening old and building new bridges between the academic domains of European studies and leadership studies. It opens with a discussion of the contested concept of leadership in the context of the European polity and politics, challenging the conventional view that leadership is necessarily a matter of hierarchy. Moreover, it argues that rather than leaderless, the EU is an intensely ‘leaderful’ polity. Subsequently, this introduction identifies four key debates in contemporary EU leadership research and discusses the value and insights the contributions in this special issue bring to these debates.     

Introduction: Issue Congruence and Political Responsiveness

It has long been realised that democratic governance requires a two-way flow of influence. Governments must be able to respond to what people want and people must be able to react to what governments do. These preconditions for democratic governance have been central to two research traditions on political representation. One of these, the responsible party approach, views policy change as a consequence of ‘electoral turnover’, while the other, the dynamic representation approach, focuses on policy change that occurs in ‘rational anticipation’ of electoral repercussions. The aim of this volume is to evaluate the state of political representation in contemporary Europe and to advance our understanding of the topic by presenting fresh insights both on the extent to which there exists issue congruence between voters and parties and the degree to which there is dynamic representation in the policy responses of representatives. This introduction describes in some detail the nature of the two approaches and then briefly summarises the contributions made in the remainder of the volume.     

The UK and EU Foreign and Security Policy: An Optional Extra

Foreign and security policy were not areas in which Prime Minister Cameron was seeking to renegotiate the relationship between the UK and the European Union (EU), but security may be a key issue in the EU referendum. The untangling of Britain's foreign and security policy from the EU following a Brexit vote would be relatively uncomplicated. The EU's arrangements for collective foreign and security policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), are conducted on an intergovernmental basis which allows the UK to preserve independence in its diplomacy while allowing for the coordination of policy where interests are held in common with other member states. The UK retains substantial diplomatic and military capabilities which would allow it to continue to pursue a separate national foreign, security and defence policy in the case of either a ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ outcome.     

If Money Talks,What Does it Say? Corruption and Business Financing of Political Parties

Do parties with different ideological origins adjust their policies in response to the binding commitments that derive from the European integration process? This paper examines whether party platforms have adapted to the ideological content of EU treaty provisions – based on ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘regulated capitalism’ – across a range of policy areas The analysis builds on existing research which has examined how party families respond to the challenges and opportunities of the integration process. This is the first study that focuses on long-term party policy adjustment across different policy areas by examining whether there has been a shift away from core ideological goals towards the direction of EU policy. The main finding is that there has generally been a shift towards the direction of EU policy across all party families in both member and non-member states. The findings have implications for the quality of representation and functioning of democracy in the member states since the deepening of the European integration process reduces ideologically distinct policy alternatives across party families and can hinder policy innovation     

The Irish Parliamentary Elections of 2007: New Gloss on an Old Engine

The issues of Kosovo independence and European Union membership have dominated Serbian domestic politics and foreign policy since the fall of Slobodan Milo?evi? in 2000. Despite the lack of formal EU conditionality on the Kosovo issue, Serbia’s insistence on its uncompromising ‘no recognition’ of Kosovo policy has been detrimental to its EU candidacy aspirations. This article examines Serbia’s Kosovo policies in the context of EU integration, in particular the divergence between Serbia’s stance towards Kosovo and its aspirations towards EU candidacy. Considering the negative effects that the Serbia–Kosovo relationship has had on regional cooperation and Serbia’s EU integration, this article considers why Serbia appears to have failed to ‘Europeanise’ its Kosovo policies, i.e. to normalise relations in a way that would be more favourable to accession. In doing so, it examines Serbia’s Kosovo policies since 2000, and the ways in which domestic actors have deliberately manipulated and complicated the question of Kosovo and Serbia’s EU membership.     

Channelling Protest in Illiberal Regimes: The Cuban Case since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Abstract

As part of the strategy for better governance, the European Commission has taken steps towards improved consultation and dialogue on European Union (EU) policy with interested parties. Opening up the policy process and getting interest groups involved are considered important for the democratic legitimacy of EU policy making. This article examines the public Internet consultation on the Commission proposal for a new European chemicals policy, the so-called REACH system. Being one of the most consulted issues in EU history, the chemicals policy review is considered as a critical test for the participatory mechanisms provided by the European Communities. By analysing more than 6000 contributions to the consultation, it is demonstrated that it invited broad participation, although industry was considerably better represented than NGOs and other civil society associations. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of participants were national actors from the largest member states rather than transnational actors. It is concluded that online consultations can invite broad participation in EU policy shaping but it is unlikely to bring about equal participation from different group of actors. Therefore it raises concern when measured against standards of democratic governance.     

Abstracts section

The theme of poverty eradication is now again at the top of the development policy agenda. In November 2000 the UK Department for International Development (DfID) published an important White Paper on International Development with the title Eliminating world poverty: a challenge for the 21st century. The World Bank World Development Report for 2000/2001 also takes poverty as its theme with the title Attacking poverty. It is interesting to note that the World Bank has bracketed the decade of the 1990s with the 1990 World Development Report simply entitled Poverty. After many conflicting theories of economic development, the basic problem of poverty in developing countries is now being addressed in a much more holistic way, as is exemplified in the following articles. It should be noted that two of these act as introductory articles to a special issue of a journal on this topic. The article by Lustig and Stern introduces the December 2000 issue of Finance and Development whose overall title is ‘How we can help the poor’ and the article by Baulch and Hoddinott introduces the August 2000 issue of the Journal of Development Studies entitled ‘Economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries’. These special issues contain articles on poverty in addition to the ones abstracted here. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.