Europeanisation of a Non-EU Country: The Case of Swiss Immigration Policy

Although studies of the influence of Europeanisation on domestic politics and institutions are numerous, a consistent and systematic analytical framework is still lacking. This article tries to overcome this weakness and presents a comprehensive framework that examines the conditions under which Europeanisation is likely to lead to national adaptation. We identify three main independent variables, including domestic power configurations, mediating domestic institutions, and actors' strategies. This model is applied to the agreement on the free movement of persons between Switzerland and the European Union. Our results suggest that it is not the number of veto points as such that matters most, but the strength of the actors that activate them or threaten to do so, and the counter-strategies available to actors favouring change.     

Reassessing South European Pensions after the Crisis: Evidence from Two Decades of Reforms

The article studies pension reforms in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain between 1990 and 2013, focusing on three dimensions of change: multi-pillarisation, institutional harmonisation, and spending trends (cost-containment/expansion). The pension evolution of these countries is reassessed throughout the period of crisis and austerity. All countries encouraged the spread of private pensions and harmonised their fragmented public schemes. Cost containment was massive, putting future adequacy at risk. While international actors, especially the European Union, acquired a stronger role, that of organised labour declined. Spiralling between crisis and austerity, these systems changed and adapted, but still face old and new problems: inequality, risk individualisation, and increasing vulnerability to external shocks.     

The Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe: A New Approach to a Regional Problem

The European Data Protection Directive is often considered the Internet Privacy Global Standard, but this in only partially true. While the European Union sets a formal global standard, the 1995 Data Protection Directive has two loopholes that Internet companies exploit to set the effective global standard for internet privacy. The United States and Ireland have become safe harbours for Internet companies to collect and process Europeans’ personal data without being subject to the stringent laws and regulations of some continental European countries. Companies, and not the European Union or governments, are the ones that set the effective global standard of internet privacy.     

欧共体“无争议债权支付令”介评

欧共体2004年4月21日通过的第805号规则对“无争议的债权（uncontested claims）”设立了“欧洲执行令”，该支付令可以在各成员国直接得到承认和执行，从而简化了欧共体成员国之间民商事判决的执行手续，进一步加强了各国在判决承认与执行方面的合作，体现了欧洲国际私法的发展方向。     

欧盟信息安全法律框架之解读

网络与信息系统安全已经引起了全世界共同关注,美国和欧盟在这一领域走在了世界的前列。伴随中欧经济、文化交流的日益密切,欧盟信息安全法律框架也为我国立法提供了可资借鉴的蓝本。通过解读欧盟信息安全法律框架的演变轨迹及其特点,结合我国信息安全保障立法现状,分析当前我国信息安全立法的主要着力点,提出我国应加快信息安全立法进程,用法律形式明确信息安全监管机构和监管模式,构建有中国特色的信息安全法律体系。     

From the rule of law to the rule of rules: technocracy and the crisis of EU governance

This article focuses on two trends emerging through the eurozone crisis, both of which diminish the quality of democracy in the EU and its member states. Firstly, the crisis has led to an increased reliance on non-majoritarian institutions, such as the ECB, at the expense of democratic accountability. Secondly, the crisis has led to a new emphasis on coercive enforcement at the expense of the voluntary cooperation that previously characterised (and sustained) the EU as a community of law. Thus, the ECB’s (over-)empowerment is a synecdoche of a wider problem: The EU’s tendency to resort to technocratic governance in the face of challenges that require political contestation. In the absence of opportunities for democratic contestation, EU emergency governance – Integration through Crisis – oscillates between moments of heightened politicisation, in which ad hoc decisions are justified as necessary, and the (sometimes coercive) appeal to the depoliticised rule of rules.     

Embedding the 'new economy' in Europe: a study in the institutional specificities of knowledge-based growth

Aspirations for a 'new economy' currently feature prominently in the economic policy debate within the EU. So pronounced is elite interest in the 'new economy' that the issue of knowledge-based growth dominated the Special European Council organized for Lisbon in May 2000. However, the Presidential Conclusions to that Council failed to address the question of whether the European economy is institutionally compatible with knowledge-based growth. The 'new economy' is currently most developed within the United States, and the institutional specificities of the American high-tech sector suggest that it may be impossible simply to import the 'new economy' into Europe. The EU may lack both the labour market and the capital market conditions necessary for successfully embedding the 'new economy' in Europe.     

International relations in China and Europe: the case for interregional dialogue in a hegemonic discipline

Abstract

The international relations (IR) discipline is known as an ‘American Social Science’ dominated by scholars and theories from the US core. This paper compares IR in two noncore settings, China and Europe. It shows that there is a growing institutional and intellectual integration into global Anglophone, mostly American, IR in both Europe and China. Both Chinese and European IR communities have established top Anglophone journals like the European Journal of International Relations and the Chinese Journal of International Politics to spearhead their integration into mainstream Anglophone IR and carve out a space for regional thinking. Yet, the analysis of their publication and citation patterns shows that IR outside the American core communicates through a hub-and-spokes system where there is always a connection to the American core but rarely very strong linkages to other peripheral regions. The two journals studied thus function as outlets for ‘local’ and American scholars, rely on ‘local’ and American sources, and there is very little integration and exchange between Chinese and European IR. Chinese and European IR would benefit from such a dialogue, especially regarding ‘schools’ of IR at the margins of an ‘American social science’.     

Upgrading the ‘software’: The EU–Korea Free Trade Agreement and sociocultural barriers to trade and investment

Abstract

In October 2010, the European Union (EU) and the Republic of Korea signed a free trade agreement that went into effect in July 2011 and aims to increase levels of bilateral trade and investment by dismantling existing tariff and non-tariff barriers. In this article, we highlight the importance of a third class of barriers: social, cultural and institutional barriers to trade with and investment in Korea that cannot be legislated for under the new agreement but that can serve as ‘hidden stumbling blocks’ to its implementation and effectiveness. We argue that the phenomenon of ‘mismatched globalization’ (in which economic globalization outpaces cultural globalization) is still apparent in Korea, as evidenced by the continuing existence of these ‘soft’ barriers which include, inter alia, the gap between policy and implementation; the lack of predictability, consistency and transparency in the regulatory environment (including IPR protection); education systems; labour militancy; and attitudes towards globalization. These findings resonate with Dent's (2006 Dent, C. M. 2006. New Free Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) argument that ‘deficient capacity’ in terms of technocracy, industry and/or institutional arrangements can pose problems for developing countries seeking to negotiate and implement bilateral trade agreements with more developed countries. In the case of Korea, the long-term ‘soft’ social, cultural and institutional barriers identified and discussed in this article act as a constraint on the country's institutional capacity functions and thus have the potential to hinder the full and effective implementation of the EU–Korea Free Trade Agreement and reduce the economic benefits that the signatory parties hope to gain from it.     

Governing the future: the European Central Bank’s expectation management during the Great Moderation

Abstract

The experience of the global financial crisis has sparked renewed interest in the role of futurity in the capitalist economy in general and in the formation and coordination of expectations under uncertainty in particular. Economic sociologists have carefully studied the ‘defuturizing’ technologies devised by private actors, but have tended to neglect the increasingly pivotal part played by central banks. Political economists have had more to say on central banks, but have focused on institutional issues rather than on the concrete practices of central banking. Making an original contribution to both literatures, this paper traces the construction and subsequent evolution, up to 2007, of the European Central Bank’s communicative apparatus. Drawing on official documents and on interviews with both ECB staff and market participants, the paper shows how this apparatus created the conditions for the formation and coordination of private sector expectations. The insights from this empirical analysis into the performative dimensions of ‘credibility’ and ‘knowledge’ in monetary governance contribute directly to ongoing debates about the recent extension of the ECB’s communicative apparatus through forward guidance and quantitative easing.