The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) can be fruitfully construed as an instance of European embedded liberalism, shaped by overlapping layers of domestic, European Union, and international policymaking. Such a conceptualization reveals the large role of domestic politics, even in an area like the CAP, where policy competences were early on extensively transferred to the supranational level. This in turn reflects the rather prominent role of national governments in the EU construction, compared with traditional federal polities. This role can be probed by analyzing two related scholarly agendas: an agenda devoted to the shaping of the CAP by member states (policy shaping); and an agenda devoted to the domestic impact of the CAP. Current policy challenges highlight our need to develop our understanding of: (1) the interaction between different types of CAP decisions at the EU level; (2) the domestic impact of the CAP; (3) and the experience of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC).
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The Common Agricultural Policy: A Case of Embedded Liberalism
Christilla Roederer-Rynning
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The Common Commercial Policy
Johan Adriaensen
In 1958, the European Economic Community was formed as a customs union with a common external tariff. From then on, the Common Commercial Policy—also known as the European Union’s (EU) trade policy—served as the interface between the increasingly integrated common market and its external trade partners.
Like the creation of the single market, contemporary trade policy has long transcended discussions about tariffs and quotas at the border and has focused increasingly on the impediments to trade caused by regulatory divergences. Whether they concern agricultural subsidies or cultural protections, rules on public procurement or food standards, insofar as a regulation discriminates against exporters, it can potentially be part of a trade negotiation. The evolving nature of trade policy has triggered a redefinition of both the scope of the EU’s exclusive competencies as well as the procedures to govern this policy domain.
The central actor in EU trade policy is the European Commission, which is the designated negotiator for external trade agreements. Whereas member states always played a crucial role in overseeing such negotiations in the Council, the European Parliament has only taken up a position of power since 2009. Beyond securing market access abroad and protecting domestic sectors at home, post-material values have come to feature more prominently in the balancing act of contemporary trade discussions. This has galvanized a far wider range of societal actors to lobby the EU institutions in order to tilt the balance in their favor.
Complicating matters even further, the EU conducts a large part of its foreign policy through the Common Commercial Policy. Contrary to most other instruments of the EU’s external action, trade policy is an exclusive competency of the EU. Fostering development, promoting stability, providing humanitarian aid, and the promotion and enforcement of human rights and sustainable development commitments are but a few of the many objectives pursued via trade policy. However, there are clear limitations to the fungibility of the EU’s large market power for foreign policy objectives.
It should therefore be clear that the literature on the Common Commercial Policy is extremely diverse. Situated at the nexus of international political economy, regulatory governance, and foreign policy, it has become a well-studied policy domain through a great variety of theoretical and disciplinary lenses. The prominence of trade scholarship in EU studies is unlikely to change soon as developments at the international level, where the Western liberal order is under increasing pressure, but also domestically, where the contestation of several trade negotiations and the position of trade policy within the EU’s broader external action, are set to animate future debates.
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The European Union Financial Crisis: A Critical Analysis
Caner Bakir, Mehmet Kerem Coban, and Sinan Akgunay
The Global Financial Crisis, which originated in the United States, developed into a sovereign debt crisis in Europe, particularly the Eurozone. The Eurozone crisis was driven mainly by divergence in macroeconomic structures, fiscal indiscipline, and financial integration with fragmented regulatory and supervisory governance arrangements. The crisis also exposed flaws in the institutional design of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The EMU lacked mechanisms of effective crisis prevention and management and fiscal coordination, had a centralized monetary policy despite divergence in the macroeconomic structure and institutional setting across member states, and adopted a “light touch” approach to financial regulation. In response, crisis-hit countries implemented structural reforms and public spending cuts. European Union (EU) leaders attempted to address these deficiencies with institutional reforms at the national and regional level. Policy responses and institutional reforms have led to populist backlash with declining trust in regional and domestic politics and organizations, with voters favoring more inward-looking, nationalist political parties. Within this context, the Eurozone and EU face further challenges to maintain macroeconomic and financial stability and to ensure intraregional policy coordination.
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Haiti: Deconstructing Military Entanglements in Politics
Michel S. Laguerre
Since the independence of Haiti in 1804, the military has played a central role in the governance of the republic, often accessing the presidency through the recurrent phenomenon of the coup d’état, which serves as both a principal mechanism for the transmission of power from one government to another and for reinforcing the domination of the military over the civilian population. The 19th-century model of the coup d’état reflected the de facto decentralization of the military as it was carried out through rebellions concocted and headed by army battalions stationed in the rural provinces. The U.S. occupation (1915–1934), by locating or relocating the military elite, the most prominent military bases, the largest contingent of the military officers and rank and file in the capital city, contributed to the reengineering of a new national infrastructure that facilitates a new model of the coup d’état to emerge: One that germinates among the high command of the military; one that takes the form of a corporate intervention; one that is made possible because of the high command’s control over tactical military weapons, including the heavy military equipment located in the capital city; and one that is swift, thereby preventing any provincial military base from mounting a meaningful or successful military counter-coup.
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Iran and European Union Politics
Sebastian Harnisch
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the European Union (EU) have not yet established formal diplomatic relations, but since 1979 the Union and its member states have had various strong if often conflictual interactions. The relationship has been marked by distinct phases that reflect the emerging character of the partners, a theocratic republic on the one hand and a Union of interdependent democratic states on the other. While mutual economic interests have formed the basis for substantial interactions, relations with member states and the EU itself have been colored by a long and sometimes hurtful history of European states’ role in Iranian politics, including the Russian and British imperial influence over Persia in the late 19th and early 20th century, the British (and American) involvement in the coup against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953, and the French hosting of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an avowed critic of the Pahlavi dynasty, prior to the anti-authoritarian revolution in 1979. Over time, the relationship has substantially shaped the character and direction of the politics of the EU’s common foreign and security policy, resulting in more policy coherence between member states and the EU, more policy autonomy, particularly vis-á-vis the United States, and more proactive behavior, such as during the nuclear negotiations leading to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (in 2015). By engaging with a problematic member of the nonproliferation treaty, the EU not only specified and thus strengthened the treaty, but it also grew into an international nonproliferation actor to reckon with.
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Key Actors in the Management of Crises: International and Regional Organizations
Eva-Karin Gardell and Bertjan Verbeek
In crisis-ridden times, when events like the COVID-19 pandemic, acts of terrorism, and climate change-induced crises are making constant headlines, states, businesses, and individuals alike look to international organizations (IOs) to help them weather the storm. How can the role of IOs be better understood in the context of crisis and crisis management? For a start, it requires a distinction between objective and subjective crisis perspectives in studying IOs. From an objective perspective, IOs are examined as unitary actors that have the aim of contributing to the stability of the international political system. On the other hand, in a subjectivistic approach, IOs’ actual crisis management is the focus. In this perspective, the emphasis is on an IO’s internal life, that is, its perceptions, bureau politics, and decision-making. In the exploration of these issues, IOs can no longer by studied as entities but have to be unwrapped into small groups and individuals, such as members of secretariats or member state’s top politicians. As borne out by theories developed by scholars of crisis management and foreign-policy analysis, centralization and cognitive bias are of special interest in the study of IOs. IOs’ crisis management has four crisis phases and tasks: sense-making, decision-making, meaning-making, and crisis termination. Finally, crises may prove a threat to, or an opportunity for, IOs. Transnational crises may usher in IOs’ foundation and flourishing, or they may contribute to IOs’ demise.
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The Political Economy of Development Finance in Latin America
Leslie Elliott Armijo
Finance is frequently, but incorrectly, judged a technical matter best left to experts. Equally mistaken is the exasperated conclusion encapsulated in the phrase “people, not profits,” which holds that capitalism, private investors, and markets are simply evil. Finance is necessary for economic development, but also has profound, and often unexamined, implications for social and political spheres. Channels for financial intermediation may be public or private, and national or foreign, implying tradeoffs among organizational forms. Public banks typically are superior in providing public goods and implementing national strategic plans, but private banks and capital markets normally are more efficient, assuming competitive markets. Savings may be sought within the national economy or from abroad, with domestic savings implying a smaller pool yet less subsequent international vulnerability, and foreign inflows offering potential abundance at the cost of external dependence. This framing yields four ideal-types of long-term finance (LTF): national public finance from state development banks; national private finance from domestic private banks and capital markets; foreign public finance via bilateral or multilateral aid or state investment (including from non-traditional lenders, such as China); and foreign private finance sourced from global investors seeking returns.
Both national public and foreign public finance dominated long-term investment in Latin America in the early postwar decades of import-substituting industrialization. In the 1970s through the 1990s, they were succeeded by foreign private bank loans, followed by crisis and retrenchment. In the 21st century global political and market conditions brought a resurgence of foreign capital, including from both global private investors and non-Western public sources. Worries about problems arising from Chinese public finance to Latin America are likely overblown, as the quantity remains small, except in some Bolivarian Alliance countries. However, private foreign inflows, strongly promoted by Western-led multilateral actors, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to the World Bank, during the 2010s, may be more problematic. Excessive dependence on private securities markets funded by globally mobile capital often undercuts achievement of other valued societal goals such as reducing inequality and ensuring democratic accountability. Notwithstanding their predictable flaws, it may be time for a reemphasis on national, and possibly regional, public development banks.
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The Political Economy of the Developmental State in Latin America
José Carlos Orihuela
The role of the state in economic development is broad, old, and metamorphic. Drawing on historical political economy and a critical reading of new institutional scholarship, our understanding of the developmental state is contextual and complex. Successful developmental state formation is the result of stable political-economic environments, cultural legacies of earlier state-making functioning as mental maps for new statecraft, coherent institutional and policy entrepreneurship, and sustained growth that gives positive feedback in state-making. Latin American state developmentalism has always been diverse, before and after the debt crisis. In the era of state-led industrialization, the Latin American developmental state “failed” because, with domestic and regional markets small and dependence on foreign markets and financial capital high, macroeconomic policymaking did not learn to deal with crises and cyclical external conditions. Developmental state success in the 21st century depends on undertaking less volatile political-economic pathways to facilitate organizational learning by doing. In exclusionary Latin America more than in other corners of the world, developmental state success also means reconciling economic and social goals.
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The Politics of Domestic Taxation
Lucy Barnes
All governments require revenue, and domestic taxes are the primary means for generating it. Yet both the size and shape of taxation vary significantly across countries and have been transformed over time. What explains variation in domestic taxation? To answer this question, recent scholarship on taxation has focused on the politics of taxation as a tool for redistribution. This has led to a wide body of research on the fiscal impact of taxation and on the introduction, evolution, and variation in direct and progressive tax regimes, particularly the income tax. Yet the focus on taxation as a redistributive tool yields a puzzle, as more progressive tax systems tend to be found where redistribution is in fact the lowest. Explanations of this paradox often center on the impossibility of high and progressive taxes on capital in the context of international economic integration. Not as well studied are taxes other than the taxation of income, and the deliberate politics of nonfiscal, regulatory, and incentive effects of different tax choices. Methodologically, problems of endogeneity are ubiquitous in the study of tax policy choices, but more sophisticated experimental work is well underway in research on individual preferences for taxation.
Article
The Politics of Fires and Haze in Southern Southeast Asia
Helena Varkkey
Transboundary haze pollution originating from fires in Southern Southeast Asia affects about half of the countries in Southeast Asia with varied intensities on an almost annual basis. Haze not only affects visibility but also causes widespread health problems, transportation disruptions, and other socioeconomic issues. This haze and the fires that cause it have been a key topic for environmental politics research in the region since the late 1990s. This has largely been driven by one overarching objective: how to prevent haze from returning in the following years. However, conditions on the ground (mostly in Indonesia and in the larger Southeast Asian region) have been changing and evolving drastically, which has resulted in a dynamic research agenda that has to keep up.
Within the context of environmental politics, fires and haze can be viewed through the broad lens of national interest. There is a strong link between the severity of haze and the burgeoning agribusiness sector in the region: that of oil palm in particular. Oil palm is a very important crop in the region, with Indonesia and Malaysia generating almost 90% of total global palm oil output. Hence, national and business interest theories have often been used as a framework for research in this area, with commercial oil palm plantations often being the unit of analysis. However, this has been called to question lately as these plantations face increasing market pressure to act more sustainably. A new group of actors that have since been highlighted are smallholders, either independent or in contract with larger plantations. There is potentially much to be uncovered with regard to the relationships between smallholders and commercial plantations and how they affect patterns of fire use and global sustainability issues.
Related to this is the ever-evolving collection of local, regional, and national policies (and related enforcement issues) on land and fire use in Indonesia. One key area of contention is the use of peatlands. Fires on peat produce the thick, sooty smoke that travels across national boundaries, and they are notoriously hard to put out. Political research in this area is heavily framed by a tough debate between the scientific community and socioeconomic concerns. While peatlands play an important role in the global climate change balance, they also face immense pressure for development fueled by the scarcity of land.
The regional context has also been an important theme for haze research. Haze primarily affects the Southern Southeast Asian subregion, and the major players of the palm oil sector come from this area. The Indonesian palm oil sector is a vibrant combination of Malaysian, Singaporean, and local companies. And the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been the hub of cooperation and mitigation activities over haze. Hence, many scholars have searched for answers at the regional level. However, new national developments, such as Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, suggest that countries may be losing confidence in regional efforts.
Article
Slovenia and the European Union
Ana Bojinović Fenko and Marjan Svetličič
Despite having fought for their bare survival against hostile foreigners, after finally reaching their independence and international recognition in 1991–1992, paradoxically, even before fully assuming statehood Slovenians were eager to engage in yet another international integration—the European Union. This historical and societal wager, rather than merely political elites’ driven perspective, dominates as the prevailing reason for pursuing European Union (EU) membership; thus security assurance to a small geopolitically transit state, economic benefits of a larger common market in conditions of economic globalization, and cultural proximity of Slovenian to European society explain Slovenian general identity-related elements favoring membership in the EU. There is also a more immediate time-space related explanatory factor for this, namely, the collapsing of the socialist Yugoslavia starting by the end 1980s and a view of assuring the democratic political life and market-lead economy via integration with Western European countries rather than South Slavic nations or following other alternative scenarios like full liberalization with all partners’ strategy. Authors critically evaluate where and why during the effort of becoming an EU member state and performing excellently as one during the first four years, the state fell short of capability-building and/or seizing the opportunities of EU membership. As the latter has been most brutally exposed via the effects of the 2008–2014 economic and financial crisis, of key importance for Slovenians before the COVID-19 crisis stood a self-reflection of its development strategy and enhancing competitiveness. A novel problem introduced by the 2020–2022 government and revealed to the European and international public during the Slovenian 2021 Presidency to the Council of the EU was the country’s rapidly deteriorating performance in implementation of until-then unequivocal engagement toward EU values, particularly liberal democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, and observation of human rights.. After the April 2022 general election, in which liberal democratic and social parties won a large majority, the central challenge remains how to overcome the small state hindrances and more effectively formulate and project national interest to the EU level. Some of the main questions of national interest within the EU concern assurance of social security to citizens; upgrading economic union to face more effectively global challenges, especially digitalization, the green transition, and interstate solidarity; refreshing enlargement policy for the remaining Western Balkans non-member states; and re-establishing Slovenian participation in the group of core states leading the European integration.
Article
Technocratic Government and Economic Policy
Despina Alexiadou
The surge in the appointments of technocrats to the top economic portfolios of finance since the 2009 Great Recession, and even the formation of fully technocratic governments in Europe, raises questions regarding the role of technocrats and technocratic governments in economic policy in democracies. Who are the technocrats? Why are they appointed in the first place? What is their impact on economic policy, and finally what are their sources of policy influence?
Surprisingly, we know little about the role of technocrats in economic policy despite their prominent presence in Eastern Europe since the early 90s and in Latin America since the early 80s. Technocrats were behind major market-conforming reforms in Latin America with lasting economic and political effects in the region. Technocrats we also appointed in many former Eastern European countries to reform the system of production and the labor market. Yet, to this day, we have little systematic knowledge and even less cross-regional comparative work on the policy effects of technocratic appointments.
Moreover, the term “technocrat” itself does have a shared meaning and is not uniformly used by scholars across the European and American continents, further inhibiting the study of technocrat policymakers. This article seeks to advance the study of technocratic government by providing a clear definition of a technocrat and of technocracy more generally; by reviewing the extant literature on the role of technocrats in economic policy with a special focus on the sources of their policy influence and finally by proposing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of technocrats as policymakers.
