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The fear of falling behind has been a driving force of European integration. Historically, Europe's response to the looming angst of declining competitiveness has been more market-creation, not market-direction. Recently, however, Europe has – in the name of safeguarding Europe's technological sovereignty – taken on a much more active role in directing economic activity towards sectors and technologies deemed geopolitically or geoeconomically important. In this paper, we attempt to explain this 'geo-dirigiste' turn. We reconstruct the evolution of EU industrial policy through the lens of Europe's fear of falling behind, drawing not only on primary (including archival) and secondary sources, but also on original interviews and deep transfer learning applied to an original dataset of 66.548 documents. Focusing on Europe's changing technological and geopolitical context, its coalitional underpinnings, and the role of ideational politics, we document and explain the historic shift away from market-creation and towards supranational market-direction in EU industrial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crises of the European Union and the geopolitical shifts in its international environment have generated a backlash against the post-Cold War 'debordering' of European integration. Whereas integration theories focus almost exclusively on the EU's internal boundaries and developments, this framework paper conceptualizes and theorizes integration as a process of internal debordering and external rebordering. It sketches the history of European integration in a bordering perspective and proposes general assumptions about the EU's bordering process. Accordingly, rebordering pressures result from widening boundary gaps at the EU's external borders, exogenous shocks to cross-border transactions, growing community deficits of debordering, and their politicization. Whether external rebordering succeeds and how it interacts with internal boundary formation, depends on EU-level boundary negotiations and the relative costs and benefits of external vs. internal rebordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The open method of co-ordination (OMC) has received much attention in the recent EU literature. The predominant view claims that the OMC is not only a new but also an effective policy-making instrument. This paper raises doubts about both claims by offering a comparison of soft law policy co-ordination in three international organizations. More specifically, this paper compares the European Employment Strategy to the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines of the EU, the OECD Economic Surveys, and the IMF Article IV Consultations. Based on expert interviews, it seeks to demonstrate that these procedures are forms of multilateral surveillance that do not differ in kind. Such a comparative analysis of the OMC refutes claims to its novelty. Having compared the four procedures, a more general model of multilateral surveillance consisting of six elements is generated that facilitates further comparisons. This paper concludes that governments select voluntarist procedures mainly to secure their own competencies rather than to realize common goals. Effective problem-solving is therefore not necessarily the dominant objective of soft law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe's 'political space', its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way in the rich literature on European integration. In this paper we explain why the EU literature should pay more attention to the analysis of Europe's party-political 'centre of gravity'. We give a systematic overview of the party composition of member governments from 1957 to 2003. This includes analyses of how the support for integration, the left/right political conviction, and the ideological homogeneity or heterogeneity of the member states affected the Council over the course of time. We draw on expert surveys, the data of the Comparative Manifesto Project, and data about government composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the state of affairs regarding formal and quantitative studies on decision-making in the Council of the European Union. We compare recent empirical studies in the field and distinguish between work that utilizes actors' ideal preferences, their revealed positions in the bargaining process, and their subsequent voting records in the area of EU legislative politics. We argue that document analysis remains an underemployed tool that could help formal modellers in confronting their theories with quantitative empirical information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concluding paper sets the special issue in the broader context of literature on Europeanization. I consider what sort of empirical picture emerges from the issue and other literature, and highlight some puzzles in domestic politics to which that portrayal directs our attention. We see disjunctures between the EU's policy importance and low political mobilization around it, between general demobilization and bursts of activity around referenda, and between variation in citizens' views of the EU and little variation in mainstream political parties' programs. Then I consider the main ways in which Europeanization scholars explain these puzzles. I argue very briefly for an analysis that stresses the cross-cutting nature of pro- and anti-EU views in French (and other countries') politics, which leads to reactions from political parties to muffle internal dissent. To conclude I modestly extend this analysis to hypothesize a little-noticed mechanism of indirect EU effects on national politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we seek to understand the impact of the macro-political context on power configurations within policy subsystems. For this purpose we systematically compare policy networks in three major policy subsystems and seven Western European countries (and the EU) on the basis of a typology for the power configurations within policy subsystems. We link the European, domestic and policy-specific context to our typology of policy networks. To test the hypotheses we conduct empirical network and reputational analysis of 345 interviews with key policy-makers. The results point not only to the importance of the EU context, but also to the complex interplay of domestic and policy-specific contexts for understanding domestic power configurations. Domestic power configurations vary not only from country to country, but also within the countries depending on the policy domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU budget has only recently started to feature in theories of European integration. Studies typically adopt a historical-institutionalist framework, exploring notions such as path dependency. They have, however, generally been rather aggregated, or coarse-grained, in their approach. The EU budget has thus been treated as a single entity rather than a series of inter-linked institutions. This paper seeks to address these lacunae by adopting a fine-grained approach. This enables us to emphasize the connections that exist between EU budgetary institutions, in both time and space. We show that the initial set of budgetary institutions was unable, over time, to achieve consistently their treaty-based objectives. In response, rather than reform these institutions at potentially high political cost, additional institutions were layered on top of the extant structures. We thus demonstrate how some EU budgetary institutions have remained unchanged, whilst others have been added or changed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Italian parties' manifestos for national and European elections from 1979 to 1999 with the 'Wordscore' programme in order to gauge whether party positions with regard to the European Union have changed and whether the salience of the European Union has increased. Results indicate that, although there is no sign of increased salience, the leading Italian political parties have repositioned themselves in their attitudes towards the European Union, indicating that the European political space matters for national parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak in Europe has brought attention to EU health policy as a focal point for solidarity, particularly as it concerns access to medicines. Against the backdrop of policy proposals for EU joint procurement of medicines, this article expands our understanding of public opinion towards this particular aspect of European integration. Drawing on data from a conjoint experiment in five EU countries, the study investigates the extent to which citizens' preferences concerning alternative policy designs for EU joint procurement of medicines are either structured along a pro-EU versus anti-EU or ideological divide, or are crisis driven by the perceived COVID-19 threat. The analysis reveals that individual preferences over the design of EU risk pooling for medicines are most strongly explained by Euroscepticism, while egalitarian ideology plays only a modest role. How citizens' perceived threat of COVID-19 affects their preferences for this form of EU risk pooling is dependent on the national context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty years after 1989 Europe is once again divided, despite 15 years of integration within the European Union. In contrast to the West's liberal conception of internationally constrained democracy rooted in the protection of individual human rights, Central Europe has developed an illiberal version centred on the popular sovereignty of the nation. I argue that these divergent understandings of democracy and the nation-state are rooted in collective memory. Whereas the West's historical imaginary is based on the traumas of Nazism associated with 1945, Central Europe's is dominated by the legacy of communism symbolically signified by 1989. These differing understandings of past teach strikingly different lessons for the present: one focused on the dangers of nationalism, the other on protecting national self-determination from external interference. The future of the EU depends on its ability create a broader historical narrative that can incorporate both the lessons of 1945 and 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European welfare state autonomy is being eroded by both European integration and 'globalization'. The attempted creation of a European 'social' area, the completion of the internal market, the competitive effects of trade liberalization and the impact on policy autonomy of greater international capital mobility all have implications for the future of welfare states. This article argues that, in combination with a domestic policy agenda making welfare provision subservient to competitiveness, globalization is operating a 'subversive liberalism' which, even in the absence of an explicit neo-liberal assault, is reshaping social welfare systems. Despite persistent differences between welfare states, there is a convergence on a less universal, dualized model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that internal inclusion requires external exclusion features prominently in many theoretical accounts of modern statehood and citizenship. In a similar vein, it has been argued that internal freedom of movement in the European Union requires strict immigration control at its external borders. This article sheds light on the relationship between internal de-bordering and external re-bordering, making two main contributions. First, we theorise the idea of an integration-demarcation conditionality based on the European Union's symbolic legitimacy and functional needs. Second, we test the common belief that public support for free movement within Europe depends on a restrictive border regime for non-European immigration. For this purpose, we assess how the external shock of the 2015 refugee crisis shaped the bordering preferences of European citizens. We find that the crisis primarily increased citizens' support for external re-bordering, and did not substantially undermine their support for internal free movement. Thus, the large-scale arrival of refugees has not led to a general backlash against open borders and immigration but has, rather, increased public support for the European model of combining internal freedoms with external controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right of citizens to live and work in any member state is a foundational pillar of the European Union. The views of EU citizens on free movement are characterized by a puzzle: the border-free Europe is seen as the most important achievement of European integration but also appears as a main driver of Euroscepticism. In this article, I argue that this is because of a tension between citizens' own mobility rights and the mobility rights of citizens from other EU countries. This idea of ambivalence towards free movement is tested with observational data and a survey experiment across 28 EU countries. The results suggest that many citizens hold ambivalent views towards free movement due to a tension between the value of one's own mobility and the fear of immigration. Their effective support depends on the relative salience of inward and outward mobility. This finding has important implications for the public support of international integration more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does media coverage of European Union (EU) politics affect the process of European integration? This contribution investigates the nature and logic of media coverage of EU affairs and identifies the news value criteria that underpin it. It subsequently confronts the key causal mechanisms and processes of grand theories of European integration with this media logic. This generates several key insights in which media impact the EU and European integration. Importantly, it functions to empower the intergovernmentalist nature of the EU, by providing a platform for member state governments, focusing on conflicts between them, reinforcing the primacy of national identity, and by amplifying the European Council as the main locus of EU decision-making. But media also create opportunities for new supranational entrepreneurship that is executive in nature, in policy fields where the EU has significant powers, facilitates action in public interest fields such as consumer policy and supports majoritarian rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a first comprehensive overview of the workings of enhanced cooperation in the European Union (EU). Although this form of secondary law differentiation exists since the Amsterdam Treaty, it has only rarely been used so far. In the article, we formulate a theory of when and why enhanced cooperation is used in EU decision-making. Our theory builds on rationalist institutionalism focussing on institutions, preference constellations and the externality structure of policies. We test the plausibility of our theoretical claims by combining comparative and within-case analyses of nine cases. The empirical findings underline that the usage of enhanced cooperation depends to large degrees on the externality structure of the goods under consideration. The article ends with a short normative evaluation of the enhanced cooperation procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a theoretical overview and empirical summary of the contributions to this collection. The collection makes four contributions to the literature on comparative capitalism. First, its analysis of institutional change adopts a long-term historical perspective that allows us to observe the potentially transformative effects of relatively slow and incremental changes. Second, it examines the linkages between four levels of institutions that regulate the economy – the international, macro (national), meso and micro. Third, the national case studies compare change and linkages across six core institutional domains. And fourth, the cases show how institutions are shaped by different sets of socio-political compromises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conceptualize European identity as a dual concept (subjective awareness and coherence) that contains both perceptual and behavioral components. We provide a set of indicators for European identity and analyze the data to assess changes in European identity over the last 50 years. Our goal is to offer a conceptual framework and method of assessing identity in an empirically sensitive way. Our findings show that EU citizens have multiple identities of which EU identity is part and that there is strong evidence for the development of a coherent EU. We suggest that future research pay attention to a broader range of indicators than examined here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines and evaluates several hypotheses regarding the way national political parties position themselves with respect to European integration. By using a pooled cross-sectional panel of data on references to Europe in the election manifestos of political parties in 16 West European countries between 1970 and 2003, I present further evidence that their stances on European integration are largely determined by their ideology, here measured by the locations of the parties within party families and their general orientation along the left/right ideological continuum. However, notable changes have occurred and the influence of ideology has diminished, as most parties have adopted more favourable positions towards the European project over time. Nonetheless, it is too early to disregard the connection between left/right and pro/anti integration, since many marginal parties are still taking oppositional stances that are strongly related to their ideological commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until relatively recently, French élites seemed to have found a winning combination for the communicative discourses through which they legitimated European integration and responded to globalization. First, the Gaullist discourse underplayed the loss of sovereignty by emphasizing the gains to interests and identity through French leadership in Europe. Next, the Mitterrandist discourse updated the ideas in the Gaullist paradigm to legitimate further institutional integration while it added a new rationale for greater economic integration: Europeanization as a shield against globalization. The discourse in the Chirac years did little to change or update this discourse. The problem today is that neither the institutional nor the economic ideas in the discourse are persuasive: the public is convinced that France no longer leads Europe and that Europe no longer protects against globalization. And yet, French élites seem trapped in the old discourse, unable to develop new ideas capable of legitimating France in Europe and the world. This was dramatized by the 2005 French 'no' vote on the Constitutional Treaty, and did not change with the 2007 French presidential elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While role behaviour and conflict dimensions in the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have been fairly well documented, studies on the internal functioning of the College of the European Commission have been almost lacking. Thus, highly inconsistent images exist; ranging from portraying Commissioners as mainly independent Europeanists on the one hand, to seeing them as primarily national ‘ambassadors’ on the other. Although the main purpose of this article is to theorize College behaviour, some exploratory data indicate that Commissioners first and foremost champion their sectoral portfolio interests, while at the same time, although variably, being attentive to their collective responsibility within the Commission, their country of origin as well as their political party. Theoretically, Commissioners' decision behaviour is accounted for by considering the organizational structure, demography, locus and culture within which they are embedded, as well as the type of policy they are dealing with. It seems as if politics in the College has much in common with politics within national cabinets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neofunctionalism lives on in health policy: while there are many ways in which the theory of Haas has become obsolescent, it still provides a convincing explanation of the expansion of EU competencies, as shown above all by the ongoing, unintended, development of a European health policy. Member states have carefully isolated health services and policy from the EU since its inception, granting only narrow responsibilities and weak tools relevant to marginal areas of policy. Yet today the EU is emerging as one of the formative influences in health policy. Simply put, the activities of EU institutions in areas outside health, both legislative and judicial, have had unexpected consequences for health by changing the legal environment under which health systems contract employees, purchase goods, finance services, and organize themselves. The result is systematic encroachments on health policy by the EU, driven by the Court and justified by internal market rules and decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The no-votes in the French and Dutch referendums on the Constitutional Treaty have highlighted the importance of understanding the mechanisms of direct democracy. Despite the increasing use and significance of referendums in the process of European integration, comparative studies of referendums in Europe are still few and many questions concerning direct democracy thus remain unanswered. This article reviews recent advances in the literature on direct democracy and European integration and suggests future avenues for research. To understand the ways in which referendums may influence the European integration process, this article approaches the study of direct democracy from the perspective of voters (how do they decide?) and political élites (which strategies do they adopt?), as well as examining the impact on policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do legitimating discourses matter for a country's successful adjustment to economic policy change? Or can adjustment more simply be explained by the interplay of economic and political interests, path dependency, or cultural framing? This article argues that discourse - defined as constituting both a set of policy ideas and values and an interactive process of policy construction and communication - matters, and that it can be shown in some instances to exert a causal influence over and above the interplay of interests, institutions, and culture. In illustration, the article examines critical shifts in the political-economic discourses and policy programs of France and Britain, presenting them as matched cases. It finds that while in Britain the presence of an effective legitimating discourse accompanying economic policy change proved transformative, in France the absence of such a discourse until relatively recently proved problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of growing economic globalization and rapid technological changes governance in the field of information and communication policy increasingly requires policy co-ordination across multiple arenas, not only including vertical co-ordination across different institutional levels, but also horizontal coordination across different policy sectors. In view of these new co-ordination demands the mediation and accommodation of heterogeneous interest positions at the interfaces of various institutional levels and sectoral boundaries become a crucial governance function. The specific political, economic and technological conditions underlying information and communication technology policy favour this function being carried out by European interest associations - a development which coincides with significant strengthening and structural integration of the system of European interest representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical response to an article by Alec Stone Sweet and Wayne Sandholtz in the September 1997 issue of this journal in which they put forward a theory of European integration focused on supranational governance. We argue that this theory fails to address the key problem in current theorizing, namely the persistence of a supranational-intergovernmental dichotomy which dictates that integration is driven by either supranational institutions or national governments. As a result, we argue that supranational governance is essentially a mirror image of the liberal intergovernmentalist theory which it criticizes, and demonstrate that, by reducing integration to a particular form of governance, it fails to allow for different forms of integration in different policy domains. Instead, we propose that the focus of current theorizing on European integration be shifted away from institutional characteristics and toward processes of interaction and policy characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paradoxically, though the Treaty on European Union underlines the power of EC central bankers, they have been neglected in the literature on European integration. Central bank independence provides the key connection between changes in global financial markets and the new Treaty provisions on economic and monetary union (EMU). In recent years EC central bankers have been subjected to ever more volatile and competitive markets and new political pressures related to EMU. Central bank independence has offered a means of reconciling these twin changes. This article seeks to explain why central bank independence has strengthened its grip in Europe and the nature of the role of central bankers in European integration. The adequacy of existing theories of central bank behaviour is examined - public interest, personality, public choice and bargaining theories. Emphasis is given to explanations that focus on external factors: the structural power of the 'anchor' currency in the exchange rate mechanism (ERM); deep-seated change in the nature of capitalism; the role of economic crisis; the policy style of the European Community (EC); and the unique relationship of central bankers to the state and consequent capacity to pursue their corporate interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]