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Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the European Union has attempted to reinforce its existing nascent capabilities to combat terrorism. The European Council adopted a comprehensive Plan of Action and reached political agreement on a number of important counterterrorism initiatives, including strengthening of Europol and Eurojust; and the introduction of a European Arrest Warrant. This paper provides a critical analysis of these key operational measures and reveals that the EU counterterrorism policy suffers from an implementation deficit, in large part due to the absence of genuine pro-integration thinking in the area of Justice and Home Affairs. A multitude of political, legal, and cultural challenges still need to be overcome in order to make the EU counterterrorism policy less of a paper tiger and more of an effective counterterrorism device. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the establishment of the Copenhagen criteria for membership in 1993 the European Community has entered a complex process of guiding Eastern European countries on their way back to Europe. The substance of this process consisted in institutional models and behavioral patterns delivery, which through the mechanics of conditionality, timing and bargaining was expected to produce substantial effects on national governance systems . This paper aims to present this experiment as a distinct governance mode in the EU based on conditionality about institutional performance and political timing. It further argues that as a top down governance process accession affects domestic policy making and institutional building efforts, but is limited to formal institutional choices. Actual institutional performance in candidate countries is predefined by previous and existing formal and informal institutional structures, political actor?s interests and reform capacity. The paper further proposes a more governance oriented approach in researching the substance of accession process and its outcomes in a transformational context. It combines vertical and horizontal analytical tools for discovering at one hand the substance of accession conditionality as a distinct governance structure. On the other hand it takes a closer look at two economic policy sectors for examining the actual functioning of the accession conditionality at domestic level in a given accession country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the impact of the European Union?s Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on Italy?s institutional capability in the employment and social inclusion policy fields. Institutional capability is defined as the extent to which a system of collective action is able ? by means of interactive dynamics ? to elaborate ?satisficing? responses to environmental challenges; transform such responses into decisions of a political nature; implement such decisions; and learn from experience. Both in employment and social inclusion, Italy has suffered from a twofold handicap: initial congruence of its policymaking process with that presupposed by the OMC was low in both fields, and there have been internal dynamics of change which have significantly interacted with the push related to the OMC. However, the evidence provided in the paper points towards a clear strengthening of institutional capability as an OMC-induced effect in the employment field, while the OMC seems to have had little ? if any ? impact on institutional capability in the social assistance field. This variance is put to work in order to identify clusters of factors that have plausibly affected the impact of the OMC on Italy?s institutional capability, and could be exploited to generate general hypotheses about the impact of the OMC on national institutional capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory reforms in Europe have focused on ‘good regulation’, ‘better law-making’, and, most recently, ‘quality of regulatory tools and institutions’. This paper deals with the main instrument used by governments to achieve good regulatory governance, that is, regulatory impact assessment (RIA). The article shows that the diffusion of RIA programmes in the European Union (EU) disguises considerable variability in terms of principles, processes, and results. The lack of convergence is explained by contextual variables. The argument here is not the trivial one that ?context matters? in the diffusion of RIA, but how it matters in terms of dimensions. Hence the paper breaks down ?context? into four dimensions, that is, stakeholders, institutions, models of the policy process, and legitimacy. The paper shows how the four dimensions explain the variability in RIA activities and outcomes throughout the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, and how, do polities expand their interests abroad? The goal of the paper is to provide answers to this classical and central question in international politics by examining the case of Europe. The paper sheds light on the reasons for Europe?s international efforts, particularly their security implications. How do policymakers define European interests in the world? What threats do European leaders perceive to those interests? What responses do they choose to make, in the light of those interests and threats? How do they justify those responses? I argue that European policymakers? desire to control their environment has increased. Europe?s grand strategy, blending expansion and accommodation, is shaped by a set of liberal assumptions, ideas and traditions about international relations, about European interests in the world, and about potential threats and responses. These liberal assumptions, not only reflect EU?s decision makers self-perceptions, they are likely to shape their subsequent perceptions of international security and their responses to challenges and threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the paper ? European gender equality policy and its implementation in the United Kingdom and Germany ? provides a window on social policy making at the interface between EU and domestic politics. The paper examines the evolution of EU social policy in regard to gender equality in the labor market and analyzes how the British and German governments have implemented EU directives and EU guidelines of the European Employment Strategy into national legislation. The central question of the paper is twofold: How are policy input (EU directives and EU guidelines) and policy output (national legislation) linked differently in the UK and Germany? Under what conditions can welfare state resistance and resilience to reform be overcome in the traditional and new community methods? To explain variation in policy change through EU law the paper focuses on institutional and cognitive veto points and domestic actor strategies evolving around them. To achieve significant policy change through EU resources, i.e. change that does not leave domestic legislation predominantly intact, domestic political actor mobilization evolving around institutional veto points of the EU legal system or new cognitive veto points of the open method of co-ordination (OMC) are essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Treaty of Amsterdam formalized the idea of a ?European Employment Strategy? (EES), a supranational instrument to boost European employment rates and competitiveness. The European strategy is ruled by the ?Open Method of Coordination? (OMC), a new governance regulatory instrument for developing the ?social dimension? of the European Union that is not legally binding and is voluntary in nature. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand how non-binding measures, specifically the EES, influence policy-making processes and outcomes on member States. To sustain and illustrate my argument, I present data from interviews conducted in Sweden, Spain and Belgium, and from patterns of spending on active and passive labor market policy in fifteen member States. This paper seeks to expand the literature on ?Europeanization? of domestic configurations by providing a theoretical framework to analyze how non-binding measures affect policy-making processes in member States. In addition, it makes a contribution to the policy-making literature by trying to comprehend: a) the relationship between ?soft institutions and instruments? and the process of policy-making; b) policy settings that do not necessarily require the creation of legislation; and finally c) how exogenous, i.e., non-domestic, inputs affect policy-making processes on domestic settings. The analysis is grounded on the reasoning researchers should open the ?black box of policy-making? when understanding the effect of non-binding and non-domestic governance instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do national parliaments regain some of their influence over policy areas that have been lost to the European Union? National parliaments influence policy as it travels ‘upstream’ to the intergovernmental level or in the ‘downstream’ implementation process. This paper presents a model that demonstrates how national parliaments could strengthen their influence over European policy in the upstream stage by minimizing information asymmetries with their representative at the European level, the national government. The containment of agency losses in the upstream process is a necessary step toward regaining policy influence, but it is not sufficient. Downstream influence is also necessary. This paper uses principal-agent theory to explain why national parliaments establish European Affairs Committees (EAC) and illustrate EAC limitations. It presents a model for the strategic interaction between national parliaments and governments over European policy. The conclusion describes possible empirical tests of the model and gives suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the ways in which supply and demand side forces influence interest mobilization and formal inclusion in the policy making process in the European Union. Drawing on an original dataset of nearly 700 civil society groups active in the EU, the paper first considers the supply-side pressures on group mobilization resulting in today’s EU interest environment; this investigation offers further insight into 1) the effect of interest group resources on mobilization and participation, and 2) the differential representation of the EU member states and candidate countries. Second, the paper turns to consider demand-side forces. This section provides new analysis of 1) the effect of the major EU treaties on the interest group community, 2) the policy areas that are the subject of the most activity by organized interests and 3) the composition of the Commission’s consultative committee system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Maastricht (1992), the EU has begun to supplement its process of economic integration by developing common institutional structures in the security and defense realm. Although not officially challenging NATO, what is now called a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) signifies an increased degree of cooperation among EU member states outside of NATO, thus challenging the Alliance’s role as the dominant security organization in Europe. The paper seeks to explain this process by addressing the question why, despite NATO’s continued existence and successful performance throughout the 1990, EU member states decided to establish their own common defense structures. Demonstrating that existing theories (realism, institutionalism, supranationalism) are unable to account for this post-Cold War shift in institutional allegiance, a social constructivist perspective traces the formulation of the national security interest back to conceptions of national identity. In essence, it is argued that a shift in collective identity has taken place among EU member states, replacing ‘the West’, the collective underlying NATO, with ‘Europe’, the collective underlying CFSP/ESDP. The paper is divided in two parts. First, addressing the problem of operationalization, the study seeks to improve our theoretical understanding of the identity concept and connect it to the definition of national security. Deploying identity as an intermediate variable that channels ideas into political behavior, it focuses on the recognition of national identity as evolving out of the interplay between collective and individual identity. It shows how the resulting definitions of Self and Other have crucial impact on how a state defines its security space, corresponding threats, and the means to address these threats. The identity shift is accounted for by the ability of the political elite to redefine the ideational parameters of national (collective/individual) identity during critical periods along a temporal axis. Second, the study takes a comparative perspective by looking at the shift in identity and institutional allegiance in Germany. It applies the constructivist approach to show how both Adenauer’s decision for NATO in the post-WW II period and the support of the Kohl government for CFSP/ESDP in the 1990s were attempts to (re)define German normality. While the first case reveals German desire to escape the totalitarian shadows of its own past and define itself as a ‘free’ society, the 1990s show a stronger identification with the European collective, built on the theme of ‘unity’ and the fear of ‘fragmentation’. Outlining increasing discomfort with an American defined post Cold-War world order, the study concludes by suggesting an ideational split of the ‘West’, with ‘Europe’ increasingly establishing its own security identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament has become object of intense academic scrutiny. Works have focused on the patterns of coalition formation, on party group cohesion and on the extent to which parliamentary amendments are adopted and incorporated into the EU statutes. This paper focuses on the types of amendments that the European Parliament wants to insert into EU law. It derives the following proposition from a model of the politics of EU delegation: Given similar supranational preferences of the Parliament and the Commission, the Parliament is likely to propose amendments that a) increase control on national authorities, b) transfer powers from national authorities to the Commission, c) increase the executive discretion of the Commission. This expectations are partially corroborated by an empirical analysis of parliamentary amendments to 21 draft directives. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational networks linking nonstate actors with governments and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have been credited with making international decision-making more accessible to citizen action. Others argue that states still exercise considerable control over nonstate actors. Insufficiently developed on both sides are attempts to document transnational networks empirically. This paper speaks to the need for systematic investigation of transnational relations by analyzing the network around European Union social policy and Poland and Hungary's accession to the EU. Using quantitative social network analysis, the paper makes three claims: (1) Transnational networks may be the result of careful construction by IGOs that place themselves at the center of interactions. (2) NGO interactions with one another as well as with states and intergovernmental organizations may frequently remain nationally distinct despite formal opportunities for multilateralism. (3) Political opportunity structures are seldom fully contained within the network of transnational communications. Thus, intergovernmentalism may prevail even when individual IGO agencies successfully build networks in which nonstate actors participate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to understand under what conditions the EU can set an international standard. It details the 1995 EU Data Privacy Directive and the reaction of the United States to it. The Directive has now become the de facto international privacy regime, binding US companies that do business with Europe. It thus becomes the first global standard that the US has been impacted by without having had input into its content. Given that the EU aspires to a greater role in transnational governance (White Paper on European Governance, 2001), what were the important factors necessary for the EU's success in this issue? This paper analyzes three different hypotheses that exist in the literature: 1) US government officials readjusting their views about the need for a comprehensive privacy policy after "communicative action" with the EU, 2) the successful threat of EU market exclusion backed up by the "shield" of the WTO exemption for privacy, and 3) US domestic interest groups trying to use the EU directive (gaiatsu) to accomplish a domestic agenda that they could not push through alone because of US domestic preference aggregation failure. The paper finds support for the third interpretation of the EU's success. For this reason, there may not be many other areas in which the EU can successfully project its regime preferences internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper moves the question of ethnic minority policies in Europe beyond the traditional domestic-homeland analysis and locates it within the larger topic of the domestic effects of international institutions. Based on detailed case studies and quantitative analysis, the paper examines the unique strategies employed by the EU and other European institutions to influence the formation of ethnic minority policies within the Baltic and East European countries during the 1990s. The paper argues that political membership conditionality has operated as a ?managed enforcement? strategy, and that this has been very effective at fostering policy compliance in spite of considerable domestic opposition. It further nuances the study of political conditionality by examining ex-anti vis-?-vis ex-post conditionality, and incremental vis-?-vis ?either/or? conditionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines national green party success in European Parliament elections from 1979 to 1994 in five countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. The results among the group of national parties, even considering structural/electoral constraints, have been uneven. This disparity of results raises a key question: Given the strong support for the green movement in many European countries, why have some national green parties been able to succeed in winning a relatively large share of national votes in European Parliamentary elections, while other national green parties have been markedly less successful? This paper argues that an answer to this question lies in the relationship between social movement and party, specifically in the character and management of the conflict that accompanies the transition from social movement to organized political party. The significance of green party conflict is examined via regression analysis of levels of internal party factionalism and national vote percentages. Internal party dynamics offer a contributory explanation to political opportunity structures, resource mobilization, participation-compensation, social cleavage, and electoral system explanations for green party success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of a sense of shared identity across the European Union has become an increasingly salient issue over the past decade, for analysts, participants, and policy-makers alike. However, we know relatively little about the determinants of a citizen’s sense of European identity. This paper uses agent-based modeling to study the role of different variables in the emergence of a European identity. Eurobarometer survey data are combined with basic sociological insights to generate a model of the European polity. By systematically varying different parameters of this model, we improve our understanding of the impact of different variables. Although this approach requires a considerable degree of abstraction, no other analytical tool offers the same combination of flexibility and power. The experiments reported in this paper investigate the impact of different types of domestic and international and social connectivity on the spread of a European identity, as well as the effect of introducing a foreign study scheme. The results illustrate how difficult it is for a European identity to become dominant within a nation, and how contingent its success is upon uncontrollable environmental factors. In particular, foreign study programs appear to contribute surprisingly little to the overall spread of a European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relationship between money, collective identity, and European integration. The recent move of the European Union (EU) toward a common currency ? the euro ? seems to contradict the conventional ?one nation/one money? assumption about the association between states, territory and money creation. The paper argues that ? if viewed from a broad macro-historical perspective ? the process of European monetary unification is not as exceptional and unique as it is often made out to be. I argue that money is, first and foremost, a social relation. This definition implies that collective identity plays some role in the creation and transformation of monetary systems. However, the key identity aspect at stake is not an affective relationship between citizens and country, but rather a relationship of trust. During the process of modernization, trust has become rather abstract and institutionalized. To support a modern relationship of trust, identity does not have to rest on deep affective feelings of belonging. Diffuse identity, based on utilitarian or contractual factors and as part of evolving hybrid identity structures, is sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European institutions have in recent years increased their competence in the field of employment policy. Between the Essen summit of 1994 and the Lisbon summit of 2000, the European Commission and the Member States have developed the European Employment Strategy and in doing so, transformed the way employment policy is made in the European Union. This paper seeks to understand why the Employment Strategy developed as it did and when it did and how, in particular, the European Commission was able to critically influence the final shape of the employment title that was included in the Amsterdam Treaty. This paper argues that the inclusion of the employment title in the Treaty of Amsterdam is the result of a ratcheting strategy by which the European Commission as a two-level policy entrepreneur succeeded in facilitating the gradual representation of previously latent interests within the Member States and thereby indirectly pressured the Member States to endorse the Europe-wide employment measures. The concerns of the public over unemployment in Europe at that time, gave the Commission a position of strength from which it was able to influence agenda-setting as well as the preference formation and thereby critically influence the inclusion of the particular employment chapter in the Amsterdam Treaty. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of jurisdictions and almost regardless of the welfare regime to which they belong, policy communities are increasingly focussing on investing in the early years and children more generally. Even in those places that have long had generous family programmes and explicit family policies, there is new attention to children. In these policy circles, this shift is considered an optimal anchor for the redesign of their welfare regimes, a broader event occurring everywhere in the European Union and North America. Many of the principles of redesign are similar, with attention going to human capital, "investments" for the future, life-long learning, activation and so on. These signs of convergence prompt us to speak of shift from the Fordism that characterised the post-1945 years and shaped welfare regimes to a LEGO model. How might we account for this convergence in policy thinking and visions? Are there theories or approaches that are helpful for understanding the similarities in ideas and recommendations that a growing number of policy actors advocate to address the various problems and pressures that beset the contemporary state, and that we term the LEGO model? These are the key questions we explore in this paper. Our goal is to strike a better balance between the study of social policy differences and similarities. We work with a key distinction between convergence in policy visions and divergence in implementation. This distinction is important because our major proposition is that most advanced democracies are currently in the process of renegotiating the terms of the post-war social contract. Therefore, they are in a phase of basic redesign that goes beyond retrenchment and is no longer one of permanent austerity. It is a moment for re-thinking the blueprints for the very architecture of welfare, that is the respective responsibilities of families, markets, and communities as well as states. Our second proposition is that, as they undertake this redesign, many are converging around a policy vision that we describe by using the image of LEGO, the building blocks invented in Denmark in the 1930s. We use the name in two ways. One is as a metaphor, to describe convergence around some basic building blocks of a future social contract and model. The other is as an ideal-type to capture the key features of the child-centred and future-oriented strategy currently advocated as a blueprint for welfare state redesign by an increasing number of people in policy circles. The paper is organised as follows. Part I briefly outlines, in ideal-typical form, the key elements of the LEGO model. By assembling a range of sources, from national to supra-national and international, we aim both to describe the key components of the model and to show how policy communities deploy it in their policy discourse. Part II reviews existing approaches to understanding the welfare state and welfare regimes, in order to assess their utility in understanding such convergence. There are three broad approaches: (i) power resources theories; (ii) new institutionalist approaches emphasising path dependency and regime continuity; and (iii) ideas-based accounts stressing the role of social learning. Building on the insights of all three approaches, Part III documents recent reform initiatives to highlight how features of the LEGO model have been incorporated in response to two challenges: child poverty in liberal regimes and sustainability in continental regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the questions of whether and how the process of European integration fuels demands for regional self-government in the states that are members of the EU. It does so by conducting a comparative, over time analysis of the impact of European integration on the demand for self-government in Scotland at two points in time: 1979 and 1997. At these points in time, two referendums on the establishment of a Scottish parliament were held, at the culmination of two distinct periods of demand for self-government: in 1979 the proposals were rejected while in 1997 they were endorsed. This particular configuration of the politics of self-government in Scotland makes the latter an ideal case for testing the general relationship between the two phenomena. Did the European Union impact on the demand for self-government at either of the two timepoints? Did the process of European integration between 1979 and 1997 increase support for self-government in Scotland and can thus account for the different results of the two referendums? Through a comparative analysis of party and interest groups strategies and public opinion data, the paper argues that the demand for self-government in Scotland was indeed significantly raised by the Europeanisation of the politics of self-government that took place between the two timepoints. By improving the cost/benefit balance of self-government relative to the status quo, European integration indirectly raised the demand for the former. In particular, the paper identifies three crucial aspects of this dynamic: the perception of European integration changed radically between 1979 and 1997, the strategies of elite political actors were crucial intervening variables and it was the single market rather than regional policy that had the strongest impact. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do historical legacies shape contemporary political attitudes and behavior? The paper proposes a novel attitudinal mechanism through which a distant history of interethnic competition may influence political outcomes in the present. I theorize that outgroup-focused framing of a policy issue can interact with historically conditioned outgroup predispositions at the local level, affecting policy preferences. Using Poland as a test case, the article shows that subnational variation in EU support in the 2003 EU membership referendum was produced in part by the interaction of national-level anti-Semitic framing of the EU and local historically determined prevalence of anti-Semitism. I demonstrate that the anti-Semitic cues promulgated by radical parties resonated with the voters concentrated in the areas with historically large Jewish populations. Even though Jews were virtually eliminated during WWII, latent negative attitudes toward the Jewish outgroup have persisted in these localities and were instrumentalized by political entrepreneurs who sought to mobilize opposition to European integration. The paper also explores alternative structural pathways through which the Holocaust may have affected political preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper prepared for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Washington, D.C., on August 28-31, 2014 is presented. It examines evolving European Union (EU) governance of economic and regulatory integration during the Eastern enlargement. It also examines anticipatory integration and orchestration in relation to the Eastern enlargement.

Recent events have shown that the electorate directly influences the European Union's political agenda and institutional stability. Consequently, policymakers and political scientists alike are keenly interested in identifying the factors that explain public support (or the lack thereof) for the EU. A well-established body of literature on the determinants of EU support has examined the effects of economic, political proxy, and identity-based theories on EU support. We argue, however, that the recent financial crisis warrants a re-examination of these theories. Thus, this paper seeks to understand the ways in which our theories about support for the EU might need to be adjusted for the post-crisis context. Using data from Eurobarometer 71.3, which was collected in June and July of 2009, we test a hypothesis which departs from previous studies by examining the interaction between identity and economic explanations. Specifically, we are interested in gauging the extent to which the effect of individuals' perceptions of the health of their nation on their support for the EU is conditioned on the way they conceive of their national and EU identities. The analysis shows that positive perceptions of the national economic situation are associated with higher levels of EU support. What is more, in line with the predictions of social identity theory, the effect of these sociotropic economic perceptions on EU support varies depending on how individuals balance their EU and national identification. Specifically, the effect of sociotropic perception is much larger among people with stronger attachments to the nation than among those with equal attachment to the nation and the EU. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French leaders have long sought to shape the rules of international governance, economic and otherwise, and the European Union is the primary and necessary conduit for the attempted exercise of such influence by French Presidents and their administrations. This paper offers an analysis of the French 'turn' in the EU Council Presidency chair between July and December 2008 (FPE08), during which the world financial crisis erupted, when President Sarkozy was very much present on the world stage in the role of 'crisis-buster' and negotiator, but when French ideas were far from exerting exclusive or even significant influence on the initial responses, from Europe, to the unfolding disaster. By way of comparison, the paper makes reference to France's subsequent roles as G8 and G20 chair at a much later point in the cycle of crisis (2011). The paper asks to what extent (and how) these for a provide credible opportunities for French leadership to exert itself on an international scale, and with what consequences at international and domestic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the political parties in Western Balkan states is presented which is prepared for presentation at the 2011 Anuual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Seattle, Washington. The paper focuses on topics including the case of Serbian political parties, a consensus on qualifying for European Union (EU) membership in Serbia, and domestic candidates in EU-eligible states.

After the demise of the Soviet Union and the Communist-dominated regimes of central and eastern Europe, democratic polities were created and consolidated in a number of post-Communist countries. But in others, the process of democratization never started or, if it did, stalled at some point and the countries evolved into hybrid regimes that combined, in varying mixes, elements of democratic and authoritarian politics. A good deal of scholarly attention has been devoted to analyzing the role played by transnational linkages and international actors - most notably, the European Union - in the establishment and consolidation of democratic polities in the post-Communist countries of central and eastern Europe. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the role played by such actors in the establishment and consolidation in other formally-Communist countries - most notably, the non- Baltic states of the former Soviet Union - of polities that are either authoritarian or combine elements of democratic and authoritarian politics. This paper considers the extent to which and ways in which Russia, the successor state of the Soviet Union and by far the largest and most powerful of the post-Soviet states, may have influenced the consolidation of increasingly authoritarian polities or, in the case of hybrid polities that combine authoritarian and democratic elements, the erosion of their democratic elements in the other non-Baltic post-Soviet states. Building on the pathbreaking work of Levitsky and Way (2010a), the paper suggests that, while national actors pursuing their own interests no doubt played a major role in the perpetuation of authoritarian politics and erosion of democratic elements in those states, Russia's exceptional trade, energy, security and military linkages with those states provide it with ample leverage to influence the balance of authoritarian and democratic elements in most if not all of them. In particular, it suggests that Russia's extensive economic, collective security and military linkages with the other non-Baltic post-Soviet states, coupled with the erosion that has occurred over the past two decades of the democratic elements of its polity, may have facilitated and legitimized a strengthening of the authoritarian elements and a weakening of the democratic elements of the polities of most if not all of those states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about integration in the European Union (EU) is presented which is to be discussed at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, on September 2, 2011. The paper focuses on topics including future of the EU, the relationship between widening and deepening in the EU, and OECD Economic Survey of the EU.

The barriers to concerted political action on climate change mitigation are steep, especially in multilevel systems where power is diffused and authority contested. Yet action and mobilization - galvanising resources and people to participate actively - is possible, and in certain instances far reaching. This paper seeks to explain how mobilization occurs in complex multilevel systems. It compares two different polities - the United States and the European Union - to tease out the key features of multilevel systems and how they affect climate activism, mobilization and governance. Focusing particularly on climate activists - politically engaged participants - the paper analyses climate mobilization across three stages: awareness-building, alliance-building and network creation. It argues that successful mobilization is highly contingent on activists' ability to exploit - or at least navigate - multilevel institutional barriers. To capture this mobilization dynamic, the paper develops the notion of 'mobilization networks' - stakeholder networks able to transcend levels and institutional inertia and steer polities towards particular climate goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intriguing problem in institutional analysis is how institutions create order when the strategic environment in which they are embedded is volatile. The problem arises when the conditions that require flexibility are not perfectly observable, because ambiguity about its actual, situational demand opens the backdoor for defection. An important question in relation to the abovementioned problem is therefore how governments assess whether formal rules apply or flexibility is pertinent. The paper argues that previous studies failed to address this question due to implausible assumptions about states' ability to design optimal flexibility mechanisms. The paper embeds the study of this question in an analysis of the EU's Council Presidency. The central argument is that the Presidency serves a crucial information-providing role due to its informal authority to adjudicate on demands to depart from the official procedures. Because some governments face incentives to exaggerate the actual demand for flexibility for personal gains, adjudicating authority is granted to a government that "in normal times" prefers to stick to the official procedure. This arrangement induces other government to increase the level of information in order to prevent the Presidency from rendering a false and unfavorable judgment. The member states defer to this judgment because it permits them to uphold a deep, yet fragile, level of cooperation that would otherwise prove impossible to sustain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) adds to the difficulties that the issue of European integration causes for the British Conservative Party. A hard Eurosceptic party supporting withdrawal from the European Union (EU), UKIP is winning support from disaffected Conservatives and intensifying divisions with the Conservative parliamentary party on the EU issue. This paper examines how the EU issue has re-emerged as a difficult and divisive one for the Conservatives. It firstly explores the challenge posed by UKIP and the Conservative response, drawing on the literature on competition between niche and mainstream parties. The paper then examines the extent to which the Conservatives have pursued a soft Eurosceptic policy while in coalition with the more pro-integration Liberal Democrats, divisions between hard and soft Eurosceptics within the Conservative Party, and the limits of Cameron's modernisation project in relation to the EU issue. Finally, the paper considers the significance of Cameron's January 2013 announcement that a Conservative government elected in 2015 would seek a 'new settlement' between the UK and EU and then hold an 'in-out' referendum. The paper draws on data from interviews with MPs, MEPs and party officials conducted by the authors, as well as our own surveys of parliamentary candidates, analysis of manifestos and YouGov and British Election Study data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines claims that recent obsessions with NGO accountability may have pushed NGOs to the edge in a cross-national dataset of NGOs registered with the European Union. While different models of accountability situate the capacity and responsibility to monitor NGO behavior with different actors, all mechanisms of accountability impose a cost or penalty on an organization in response to information about an abuse or violation of rules or obligations. This paper examines the most extreme outcome-NGO death-as as unintended and undesirable outcome in order to improve accountability mechanisms in the future. Logistic regression analysis of more than 1500 NGOs between 2011 and 2012 is used to examine which mechanisms of accountability, including government regulation, donor dependence, charity watchdogs, board governance, or website disclosure, pose the greatest risks for NGO mortality. As the debate on accountability mechanisms for NGOs becomes more nuanced, moving from the need for accountability to the mechanisms which best accomplish their intended purposes, this research suggests that some mechanisms impose too high a cost given their goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Treaty of the European Union has ushered in a new trans-national democratic institution: the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI). Prior to this plebiscitary innovation, the EU had experimented with a series of trans-national deliberative designs. This paper explores the emergence and impact of these very different democratic innovations which aim to increase and deepen citizen participation in the European political process. Particular attention is paid to the role of the aborted European Constitution in affecting the trajectory of democratic reform. The paper offers an analysis of the democratic characteristics of these different deliberative and plebiscitary designs, in particular their potential to realise trans-national citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the EU regime on GMOs through the lens of experimentalist governance (Sabel & Zeitlin 2008) being a continuation of my earlier research. It focuses on the appraisal of the recent process of revision of the regulatory framework through a thorough examination of its genesis and reforms which aim at addressing the persisting problems in GMO authorisation procedures. It claims that the understanding of this governance regime solely as a one of a regulatory conflict over the exercise of anti- and pro-GMO powers may be over-simplified. It further argues that the proposed and implemented reforms resonate with the premises of experimentalism (i.e. the 2011 reform of comitology, the 2010 proposal of the Commission to re-nationalise and decentralise competence on GMO cultivation) and that the EU went through experience-based and revisable processes to reflect upon and reform this policy sector. We can say the functioning of the GMO governance has not been perfect, but the reformative process is already an evidence of some democratising effects. Yet we also see the ideals of deliberative democracy as more demanding. So it is admitted here that that there are still some obstacles in the application of the EU system for GMOs as fully experimentalist architecture. They concern above all insufficiency of EU-EFSA-Member States successful co-operation during approval procedures which could lead to a more fruitful deliberation. This phenomenon seems to be linked to the instable institutional practice, external conditions for decision-making, and political disagreements. That is why, in order to ensure that policy outcomes become more democratic and that the current reforms bring visible changes in the 'dysfunctioning of the legislative framework', there is a need to improve not only regulatory provisions, but also the institutional practice of the EFSA and the Commission in the first place. The paper concludes that a desirable pathway to further improve the quality of the GMO regulatory framework in the EU leads through the conscious and consequent employment of experimentalist solutions in the approval procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each International Organization (IO) is composed of both big and small states. While the former are often in the centre of scholarly attention, the latter face several structural disadvantages in pursuing national policy preferences in international negotiations. Small states have less political leverage and fewer economic capacities, which reduces their bargaining power significantly. In addition, they have less financial and administrative resources necessary for building up policy expertise and exerting influence through argumentative power. How do small states cope with these structural disadvantages? How can they nevertheless actively engage in international negotiations and influence outcomes? In drawing on negotiation theory, this paper systematically explores different shaping strategies. Based on the example of the European Union (EU) and a comprehensive survey of all 27 member states, the paper shows that not all states are equally active and successful in influencing policies according to their national positions. The paper develops a set of competing explanations and proceeds to empirically test them. This reveals that the frequent usage of networking and arguing, and to a lesser extent bargaining strategies, increases the chances of states successfully influencing policies in day-today negotiations in the EU. The paper also shows that small states can punch above their weight especially if they have been members of the respective IO for some time, in which they experienced a steep learning curve which improved the knowledge of the institutions, internal procedures and policies, and if they use this experience to actively engage in a variety of policy shaping strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions many European countries have begun to develop adaptation strategies. However, developing and implementing these is not easy due to all kind of institutional complexities. Many of the current governance institutions are the product of times in which the climate issue was hardly of any importance. This paper deals with the question if our institutions are able to adapt to climate change. The paper presents a theoretical framework to assess the capacity of institutions to deal with climate adaption and applies it to adaptation strategies in four different European Countries: the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden. It concludes that institutions in these countries provide the basic qualities to adapt. Using the theoretical framework, five institutional weaknesses have been identified which can cause tensions on the long term: 1) the lack of openness of the political system towards learning and variety; 2) the strong onesided reliance on scientific experts; 3) the tension between top down policy development and bottom-up implementation; 4) the institutionalized mistrust in the problem solving capacity of civil society and 5) the wickedness of reserving funding for the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negotiations to reach a post-Kyoto settlement at Copenhagen in December 2009 provide the opportunity to reinvigorate climate protection. This paper considers the potential for a 'second wave' of climate politics by comparing the divergent approaches of the EU and the USA. The underlying question raised is whether environmental and climate policy practice has been as divergent as policy rhetoric. The paper firstly situates trans-Atlantic divergence in the context of political cultures, with the EU's institutional history making it relatively comfortable with the practice of aspirational objectives, in contrast to US reluctance arising from an environmental policy tradition of precise and legalistic norm setting. Secondly, it critically reviews the capacity of ecological modernisation theory to resolve the tensions between economic and environmental orientations. The third part looks for evidence that ecological modernisation is actually occurring by investigating policy measures in the arena of 'technological forcing'. This label is applied to US 'technology forcing' as such, and to implementation in the EU of feed-in tariffs and an emissions trading scheme. Key commonalities identified are a preference for incremental improvements in the environmental performance of target firms and extremely limited capacity for initiating structural change within industry. Resistance from vested interests is a key explanation. However, the 'second wave' of climate politics will arguably be characterised by an understanding of the need for structural change, and the development of political strategies to overcome resistance from 'modernisation losers'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to frame and describe a novel method of political party positioning within the European Union and beyond. Ever since the groundbreaking work by Downs in the 1950s, political scientists have derived a variety of methods to empirically determine the position of parties on scales varying between policy positions or between ideologies. Today, two sets of techniques dominate this research domain: expert surveys and manifesto/programme coding. What is common to both techniques is that the positioning is done by professionals outside the parties, i.e. by qualified researchers in expert surveys and in manifesto coding. Up to now, the parties have never been asked to position themselves. Through the EU Profiler project, a large-scale, interdisciplinary and pan- European research endeavour, some 300 political parties within the European Union (and in a number of neighbouring countries) have been offered the possibility to place themselves on 30 political issues related to party competition in the 2009 European elections. The resulting data will offer unique opportunities for comparing the accuracy and efficiency among party positioning techniques, exploring for the first time and in a systematic way the auto-positioning of political parties throughout Europe. This paper will offer insights into the conceptual design and practical application of this new method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU perceives itself as a model for regional integration, which it seeks to diffuse by actively promoting the development of genuine (intra-) regional economic and political cooperation, the building of issue-related regimes, and the creation of joint institutions for consultation and decision-making in its neighbourhood and beyond as well as between the world regions and the EU. In this paper, we explore the extent to which EU has sought to promote regional integration beyond its borders. More specifically, we analyze what exactly the EU seeks to export and how it has used its external relations and foreign policy to foster the cooperation between regions (inter-regionalism), on the one hand, and regional cooperation among third countries, on the other. We proceed in three steps. The first part of the paper outlines the mechanisms and instruments through which the EU diffuses the idea of regional integration to other regions and foster regional integration among third countries. In the second part, we take stock of the EU's attempts to export regional integration focusing on the mechanisms it has drawn upon. We conclude with some considerations to what extent the promotion of regional integration constitutes a genuine EU agenda for global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about leadership in the European Union is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including French-German cooperation, working in tandem with the European Commission, and the Union's relations with third countries.

A conference paper about the challenges of integration of the new member states (NMS) in the single market and the single currency in the European Union (EU), is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the state of real economic convergence between the NMS from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the EU.

A conference paper about euro adoption in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including a domestic politics approach to analyze the euro adoption process and the role of domestic politics in explaining the process of euro adoption in new member states (NMS).

A conference paper about the role of France in the making of the Health Care Services Policy of the European Union (EU) is presented which is to be delivered at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the French resource investment in coordinating their EU operation, and a higher level of strategic integration of France than any other EU member state.

This paper argues that dynamically developing border security policies of the European Union are influenced by transnational regulation originating from the United States. It shows that the process of transatlantic homeland security is increasingly taking place through network structures. The emergence of transatlantic networks and socialisation processes within them allowed for the US involvement in the EU policy-making. This is mostly due to growing personal relationships between policy makers, gradual substitution of formal legal instruments with psychological contracts, and informal understandings providing the contents for formal agreements. Consequently, the paper analyzes the implications of these developments, looks at still unresolved issues and proposes potential solutions. The empirical examples for this paper are derived in particular from the EU-U.S. cooperation on data protection in the context of homeland security. The networks under investigation include the High Level Political Dialogue on Border and Transportation Security and the High Level Dialogue on Data Protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional integration in sub-Saharan Africa is as old as the post-colonial African political system. Theoretically accounting for the developments and dynamics of regionalism in Africa, however, has been limited. While much has been written about the effects of regional integration schemes on trade and economic development, a theoretical framework accounting for the evolution of these regional blocs is lacking. This paper proposes to apply Liberal Intergovernmentalism, a theoretical model used mainly to explain the European Union, in the case of the East African Community (EAC). The paper seeks to demonstrate that preferences of prominent business groups in the three member-states, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, influenced the governments' policy positions regarding regional integration during the negotiations for a customs union. These groups, through lobbying and seeking an audience with their respective governments, were able to have their policy preferences reflected in final state policy on integration. Furthermore, the outcomes of interstate bargaining and the institutional choice reflected the wishes of the three member-states of ensuring that integration would maximize their welfare. Liberal Intergovernmentalism offers a more plausible explanation of East African integration by focusing on influences of policy and bargaining outcomes, unlike other explanations such as Pan-Africanism, which as a constructivist/ideational argument, circumvents the power of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about lobbying reform in the U.S. and the European Union is presented. It describes the historical evoluton of lobbying regulations in the U.S. and its culmination in Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. It discusses the emergence and nature of lobbying regulations in the European Union. It examines a survey of attitudes among U.S. and European lobbyists and its implications for the new regulatory environments.

Two fundamental insights are shaping contemporary international politics. The first, which represents a sharp departure from Realist theory, is that regime type really matters for a host of international public goods (from inter-state security and economic relations to intra-state conflict, the spread of crime and disease, to corruption and economic growth). The second insight is that while the need to encourage the transformation of weak and/or autocratic states into effective, open ones, is greater today than ever before, both our theoretical and empirical knowledge about the range of tools which the West can wield in this cause are woefully underdeveloped. On the hard edge of the spectrum of intervention, since the end of the Cold War, the end of bipolarity, the erosion of state sovereignty norms and the global spread of democracies, has resulted in the proliferation of the use of military means and neo-trusteeships to facilitate "forced democratization". Yet the costs - in terms of both blood and treasure - have been high, and the results mixed at best. On the other end of the spectrum, given the growing threats from weak and failed states, Western policy makers are increasingly impatient with the wielding of "soft power" instruments alone; notably financial and technical aid administered through bilateral or multilateral aid organizations. This paper will examine the main "third way" through which the West has attempted, particularly over the last decade, to engage transitional and weak states, and to transform them into better governed democracies; namely through their conditional induction into regional liberal communities. Using EU transformative engagement strategies towards Romania, Turkey, Serbia and Ukraine, as a leading example of this phenomenon, we draw on a multi-year, comparative qualitative study, to undertake an evaluation of whether, how and to what extent EU strategies (both enlargement and non-enlargement) have an impact on the development of rule of law conditions in targeted countries. The findings of the paper go against the grain of much of existing EU external relations literature, and provide more generalizable lessons on the dynamics of external influence on domestic democratic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports preliminary findings about neighborhood revitalization policies in Baltimore as part of a larger cross-national comparison of neighborhood policymaking in America and the European Union. The paper includes Census data that place Baltimore in its regional context and reports on five ongoing neighborhood revitalization efforts in Baltimore. The preliminary findings suggest that Baltimore (as a resource-poor, weak-market city) tends to develop and sustain revitalization efforts that are supported by local foundations and the "ed and med" sectors (hospitals and higher education institutions). However, a variety of intersecting policies (such as regional transportation initiatives and federal programs such as the empowerment zone initiative and HOPE VI) can also influence local revitalization efforts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the integration experiences of Portugal and Spain in the European Union in order to study how it has affected their economic structures and economic performance. It examines the relationship between regional integration, economic growth, and economic reforms in the Iberian countries, and draws some lessons based on their EU integration experience. In particular it looks at the impact of European Monetary Union (EMU) integration in the Portuguese and Spanish economies. While the overall benefits of EMU membership are undeniable in both countries, their economic performance has diverged. The paper will examine the reasons for this divergence. The examination of these cases will show that the process of economic reforms has to be a domestic process led by domestic actors willing to carry them out. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the determinants of successful implementation of EU law by the EU's member states using a new dataset covering both formal and practical implementation of several EU directives (on social policy and environmental issues) in five member states. The European Commission's reports on the implementation of EU law show that many member states experience difficulties in transposing and implementing EU-directives. The data at hand reveal that shortcomings in implementing EU law differ both across issues and across member states. However, neither a general theory on the causes of insufficient implementation of EU law exists nor do we find many generalizable results. This lack of systematic empirical studies on the implementation of EU law is above all due to insufficient data availability. There are hardly any large-scale investigations on implementation infractions encompassing both the transposition (formal implementation) and the enforcement (practical implementation) of European law. The purpose of this paper is to provide a more systematic and comprehensive approach for studying compliance in the European Union. We use "Configurational Comparative Methods" (CCM) on existing data on the implementation of certain EU directives, enriched with both expert interviews and systematic content analysis of major documents. Compared to former studies considering only the transposition rather than also taking into consideration the enforcement of EU directives in the member states, we observe far more non-compliance. Our results show that both domestic factors and characteristics of EU legislation are crucial for explaining compliance, but results differ across policy areas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates citizen support for welfare compensation, where such compensation can be provided at both the national and the EU levels. The guiding question is whether provision of welfare compensation at one level dampens, increases, or has little effect on support for compensation at the other. Literature on European social policy-making offers reasons to expect any or all three such patterns. The paper hypothesizes that citizens treat the national and EU levels of welfare as imperfect substitutes, such that provision at one level under particular conditions dampens support at another. The paper tests this and rival expectations by analyzing aggregate and individual-level data on support for national and EU-level compensation. The analysis suggests that citizens do treat national and EU levels as imperfect substitutes, but only in one direction: more generous national welfare tends to diminish support for EU-level welfare effort, and tends also to diminish how much economic insecurities spur such support; but the currently meager EU-level structural funds and other transfers have either no or positive effects for support for national welfare compensation. Such analysis clarifies possibilities and dilemmas of welfare compensation to address economic risks where governance is meaningfully multi-level in character. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]