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Since January 2020, European countries have implemented a wide range of restrictions to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet governments have also implemented democratic compensators in order to offset the negative impacts of restrictions. This article aims to account for the variation of their use between Belgium, the Netherlands and France. We analyse three drivers: the strength of counterpowers, the ruling parties’ ideological leanings and political support. Building on an original data set, our results distinguish between embedded and ad hoc compensators. We find that ad hoc compensators are championed mainly by counterpowers, but also by ideology of the ruling coalitions in Belgium and the Netherlands and used strategically to maintain political support in France. Evidence on the link between embedded compensators and counterpowers is more ambiguous.

The Constitution of the French Fifth Republic offers very little room for citizens to demand a strong accountability of people voted in power. Recently, the Yellow Vests movement has unexpectedly revived the debates on the introduction of a recall mechanism in France, an option already defended by some candidates to the 2017 presidential election. This chapter analyses the French experience of recall mechanisms in four directions. First, it recalls the origins and historical diffusion of the idea of recall, introduced during the French Revolution as imperative mandate. Second, it analyses current constitutional provisions and discusses their compatibility with some forms of recall processes. Third, it examines the various social demands for recall, especially focusing on the one which has emerged out of the Yellow Vests movement. Lastly, the chapter ends with a discussion of the possible design a recall process could take in France.

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Qu'ont de commun, un organisme paritaire chargé de mettre en œuvre des actions de formation continue dans des Etats membres de l'Union Européenne et une ONG, récipiendaire des fonds de la Commission Européenne pour mettre en œuvre des projets visant à soulager la souffrance des populations affectées par les crises humanitaires? A priori, rien. La comparaison peut dès lors paraître hardie, voire incongrue. Le point d'union des deux secteurs réside également dans leur utilisation importante des fonds européens pour faire financer leurs actions. Dans le cas des ONG humanitaires, il s'agit même d'une question de survie. Or la gestion de ces fonds se caractérise par un degré commun de rigueur, conçue comme " le caractère inflexible et d'une sévérité extrême d'une norme ou d'une attitude ". La question des effets de la rigueur reste pertinente à poser même lorsqu'il n'y a pas de diminution drastique des ressources disponibles pour les acteurs, à la condition d'opter pour une définition de la rigueur en termes également sociologiques. Ces proximités nous invitent à poser la question de l'effet de la rigueur budgétaire européenne sur les acteurs de la formation continue et de l'aide humanitaire. Comment peut-on qualifier les dynamiques communes aux deux secteurs ? Y-a-t-il des différences qui restent fondamentales ? Pour quelles raisons ? Que nous apprend cette comparaison sur les effets de la rigueur budgétaire sur les modalités de l'action publique ?

As the above mentioned quotations underline, the current development of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) comprehensive approach is characterized by an open rivalry between both organizations. Both actors strive to be recognized as the favorite regional peacekeeper of the United Nations (UN). The EU points at its "uniqueness" as an actor gathering civilian and military capabilities whereas NATO emphasizes its highly efficient military might. The dynamics of EU/NATO relationship and the current competition between both organizations are closely linked to the evolution of the European security architecture. The end of the Cold War and the development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) have deeply affected the relations between EU and NATO.

Most of the current studies focusing on network organizations analyze how interorganizational networks are created, how they develop and how they overcome the limitations of rigid and ill-adapted bureaucracies. This paper proposes a different stance and empirically studies how work is concretely carried out in NGOs network in order to assess the specificity of this new organizational space. The paper proposes a fine-grained analysis of the biggest humanitarian NGO network in Europe, VOICE, where the author spent eight months doing field observations and interviewing the network's staff and European policy-makers. The results presented here explore the nexus between work and organizations in terms of innovation, framing and mimicry processes, organizational culture, power asymmetry and organizations' pathologies. First of all, networks face difficulty to innovate. Through isomorphism, network's staff members tend to copy the structure and functioning of organizations they consider successful. Moreover, one of the key tasks of the permanent secretariat of a network is to create a specific organizational culture, which can bring rival organizations together. Finally, the research shows that networks can suffer from the same pathologies affecting other organizations in terms of power asymmetry and path dependence. These findings suggest that in future research about interoganizational networks, they also need to be considered as a workplace in order to fully understand the specificities of these new organizational spaces.

This research focuses on inter-organizational cooperation, considered as a forgotten theme of the international relations theory. Using the example of European humanitarian politics, this case study emphasizes the factors, dynamics and effects of inter-organizational cooperation inside the NGOs network VOICE and between this network and the European institutions. By building links between different theories (such as European integration theory, social network analysis or interest groups sociology), we divide the strategies of cooperation into three phases. First of all, NGOs networking does not seem to be spontaneous but answer to a favorable context where IGO are ready to accept the participation of non-state actors under the condition that they organize themselves and show a sense of responsibility. Against this backdrop, NGOs have chosen to delegate large competencies to the VOlCE secretariat in order to be regarded as legitimate, credible and expert interlocutors. Nonetheless this delegation should not be taken for granted and remains only because the network has an added value for its members by building their capacities and offering them the opportunity to collectively diffuse advocacy messages. Finally, VOICE has been built as an expert network to meet the Commission's requirements. Even if the close partnership between ECHO and VOICE has enabled them to reinforce each other, it has locked the network in specific way of acting which cannot be used to handle the assertion of power of new actors with different strategies.; Cette étude s'intéresse à la coopération inter-organisationnelle, un aspect délaissé de la recherche en relations internationales. En partant de la politique humanitaire européenne, cette étude de cas met en lumière les facteurs, les dynamiques et les effets de la coopération au sein du réseau d'ONG VOICE, et entre ce réseau et les institutions européennes. La construction de liens entre différentes théories (qu'il s'agisse de la théorie de l'intégration européenne, de la sociologie des réseaux ou des groupes d'intérêt), nous permet de distinguer trois phases dans les stratégies de coopération inter-organisationnelle. Tout d'abord, la mise en réseau des ONG n'apparaît pas spontanée mais répond à un contexte favorable où les OIG sont prêtes à accepter la participation des acteurs non-gouvernementaux à condition qu'ils s'organisent et se responsabilisent. Face à cette exigence, les ONG humanitaires européennes ont choisi de se constituer en réseau et de déléguer de larges compétences au secrétariat de VOICE afin de passer pour des interlocuteurs crédibles, légitimes et experts. Cette délégation demeure toutefois conditionnelle et ne persiste que parce que le réseau a une valeur ajoutée forte pour ses membres dans le renforcement de leurs compétences et dans la possibilité qu'il offre de porter des messages de plaidoyer. Enfin, VOICE s'est principalement constitué comme un réseau expert pour répondre aux exigences de la Commission européenne. Si le partenariat très fort entre VOICE et ECHO a permis à ces deux acteurs de se renforcer mutuellement, il a enfermé le réseau dans des registres d'actions spécifiques peu exploitables face à la montée en puissance de nouveaux acteurs aux stratégies différentes.