Leading advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) advancement in the United States debate the central objectives of the movement as well as its proper reformist scope. On the libertarian right, gay rights proponents articulate a narrow vision, devoid of race or class consciousness and focused on obtaining formal equality through spare legal reforms—mainly access to marriage and military inclusion. On the left, advocates envision a larger cultural transformation, one that intersects with racial and economic justice and challenges the norms of powerful institutions such as family, capitalism, and the military.
A review of empirical research demonstrates that the needs in the LGBTQ community are diverse and, in many cases, urgent. The most privileged, along axes of race and class, may have few concerns apart from protection against discrimination and formal exclusion from major social institutions. Once the full spectrum of LGBTQ demographics and experience are considered, however, such a constricted range of reform objectives reveals itself to be insufficient to address such obstacles as hunger, homelessness, and unemployment.
A fresh approach to evaluating LGBTQ legal needs yields an equally fresh set of alternatives to the mainstream legal reform agenda. An intersectionally and distributively cognizant shift in the movement’s direction could advance the needs of the most disadvantaged members of the community, including homeless youth, transgender sex workers, and low-income parents.
Article
Distributive Justice for LGBTQ People
Libby Adler
Article
The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)
Lucia Quaglia
The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is one of the most important policy areas of the European Union (EU). Academic research on EMU in political science is well established and ever-evolving, like EMU itself. There are three main “waves” of research on EMU, which have mostly proceeded in a chronological order. The first wave of scholarly work has focused on the “road” to EMU, from the setting up of the European Monetary System in 1979 to the third and final stage of EMU in 1999. This literature has explained why and how EMU was set up and took the “asymmetric” shape it did, that is to say, a full “monetary union,” whereby monetary policy was conducted by a single monetary authority, the European Central Bank (ECB), but “economic union” was not fully fledged. The second wave of research has discussed the functioning of EMU in the 2000s, its effects and defects. EMU brought about significant changes in the member states of the euro area, even though these effects varied across macroeconomic policies and across countries. The third wave of research on EMU has concerned the establishment of Banking Union from 2012 onward. This literature has explained why and how Banking Union was set up and took the “asymmetric” shape it did, whereby banking supervision was transferred to the ECB, but banking resolution partly remained at the national level, while other components of Banking Union, namely a common deposit guarantee scheme and a common fiscal backstop, were not set up. Subsequently, the research has begun to explore the functioning of Banking Union and its effects on the participating member states.
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Economic Crisis and Public Administration
Denita Cepiku and Filippo Giordano
The last global financial and economic crisis started in 2007–2008; it had serious effects on public sectors of OECD countries and was still affecting some of them when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Different streams of literature contribute to understanding the public management and governance challenges emerging from economic crises: the public administration literature on cutback management of the late 1970s and 1980s, the contemporary literature on managing austerity, and the more generic management literature on organizational decline.
Although public administrations are reacting to the same global crisis, they are expected to adopt a variety of approaches when designing policy and managerial responses, including strategic approaches, across-the-board approaches (cheese-slicing or piecemeal incremental shifts), or rhetoric and inertia, avoiding real change and manipulating discursive frames. A strategic approach is based on systematic, selective, or targeted measures, and it includes different reactions to the crisis, such as a directive, hollow, or communitarian approach.
In light of the different approaches available to public administrations for addressing an economic crisis, attention turns to the factors that determine such a choice. Public administrations’ responses to austerity are shaped by external and internal determinants. The external drivers make the crisis faced by each public administration longer or more severe and shape the way public managers react. External forces include economic and social features of the environment in which the public administration operates as well as national austerity policies. According to the literature, the harsher the fiscal stress, the more likely it is that targeted cuts will be adopted, instead of an across-the-board approach that doesn’t take into account the different levels of efficiency of public administrations or the strategic priority of different policy areas.
Internal forces influencing crisis management approaches are financial and fiscal dimensions, such as financial autonomy (reliance on central government for revenue), spending autonomy and flexibility, degree of fiscal stress, and financial vulnerability. All these forces influence a proactive response to the crisis. Another key factor is leadership: the literature is excessively focused on incentives faced by political leaders, and few studies examine the role of administrative leadership.
Finally, the crisis management approach matters in terms of impact; the literature developed after the 1970s and 2007–2008 global economic crises all agrees on this. Such a link, however, is difficult to assess.
Strategic and longer-term approaches seem to favor the strengthening of trust, resilience, and avoidance of electoral costs, whereas shorter-term changes lower employee morale, create recruitment and retention problems, cause loss of managerial expertise, cause distraction from the core purpose of the service, and increase costs.
Article
Ecuador: Military Autonomy Under Democratic Rule
Maiah Jaskoski
Under Ecuador’s “third wave” democracy that began in 1979, the armed forces have exhibited considerable autonomy vis-à-vis civilians in government, as measured by (a) military intervention in politics and (b) the armed forces’ spread into internal security. Perhaps most noteworthy, military participation in politics and internal security increased significantly during the second half of the 1990s, in a permissive environment: as a result of their rule in the 1970s, the armed forces enjoyed a positive reputation within society as an institution capable of getting things done, without committing human rights abuses. Within that context, a traumatic military role crisis prompted the armed forces to expand their political and internal security roles. The armed forces lost their traditional mission of defending Ecuador’s southern border against Peru in the late 1990s, due to the resolution of that border dispute. In its search for institutional justification, the military proactively intensified its participation in politics and internal security. That extensive internal security work not only served as an indicator of military autonomy vis-à-vis civilians but it also made the armed forces ineffective and unreliable in responding to the civilian government’s basic national defense requirements, as evinced by the military’s response to a new sovereignty threat. When Colombian guerrilla crossings into northern Ecuador became a salient border threat in the 2000s, the armed forces focused on internal security in the north and not border defense.
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Egypt and Tunisia: Political Control of the Military Under Mubarak and Ben Ali
Risa A. Brooks
Civil–military relations varied dramatically in Egypt and Tunisia under their former dictators, Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abedine Ben Ali. The leaders relied on alternative strategies of political control to accommodate the military to their rule and maintain themselves in office. Mubarak forged a grand bargain with his senior officers, while Ben Ali sought to contain the military. These strategies had important implications for how they met the imperatives of autocratic civil–military relations—keeping the military from engaging in coups and ensuring it would defend them against societal opponents, while retaining the latitude to govern. The cases illustrate the importance of studying variation in patterns of civil–military relations independently of regime type and of examining the overarching logics through which political leaders control the military.
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Electoral Systems and System Reforms in Latin America
Brian F. Crisp and Patrick Cunha Silva
Electoral systems impose incentives for relationships between parties and relationships within parties. In interparty terms, weak systems encourage many parties to enter and voters to vote sincerely for their most preferred options. Strong systems discourage many parties from entering and encourage voters to think strategically about viability (the likelihood a preferred option will win seats). In intraparty terms, centralized systems empower party leaders and put an emphasis on the party’s shared reputation. Individualistic systems empower individual candidates and members of congress and put an emphasis on their personal reputations. The individual rules examined when defining system incentives include ballot type (can voters choose among copartisans), the level to which votes are pooled before seats are awarded, the number and level at which votes are cast, district magnitude (the number of seats to be decided in a district in a given election), and legal thresholds (predefined vote total barriers to being awarded seats). The electoral systems used to elect lower houses, upper houses (where they exist) and presidents in Latin America are located in a two-dimensional space based on these incentives. In interparty terms, weak systems outnumber strong ones in the region. In intraparty terms, there is a great deal of diversity with centralized systems slightly outnumbering individualistic ones. Instances of electoral reform are captured as changes in incentives or movements in this space. Reforms are frequent but no clear pattern emerges in terms of countries across the region converging toward imposing similar electoral incentives.
Article
Electoral Volatility in Latin America
Miguel Carreras and Igor Acácio
Latin American political systems experience significant levels of institutional uncertainty and unpredictability. One of the main dimensions of this institutional and political instability is the high level of electoral volatility in the region. In the last 30 years, traditional parties that had competed successfully for several decades abruptly collapsed or weakened considerably in a number of Latin American countries. New parties (or electoral movements) and political outsiders have attracted considerable electoral support in several national and subnational elections in the region. Even when the main partisan actors remain the same from one election to the next, it is not uncommon to observe large vote swings from one established party to another.
While some scholars and observers expected that the instability in electoral outcomes would decline as democracies aged and consolidated, electoral volatility has remained high in recent decades in many Latin American countries. However, in other Third Wave Latin American democracies (e.g., Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Uruguay), the patterns of interparty competition have been much more stable, which suggests we should avoid blanked generalizations about the level of party system institutionalization and volatility in the region. Cross-national variation in the stability of electoral outcomes has also motivated interesting scholarly work analyzing the causes and the consequences of high volatility in Latin American democracies.
One of the major findings of this literature is that different forms of institutional discontinuity, such as the adoption of a new constitution, a significant enfranchisement, electoral system reforms, and irregular changes in the legislative branch (e.g., a dissolution of Congress) or in the executive branch (e.g., a presidential interruption), can result in higher volatility. Another major determinant of instability in electoral outcomes is the crisis of democratic representation experienced by several Latin American countries. When citizens are disenchanted with the poor performance and moral failures (e.g., corruption) of established political parties, they are more likely to support new parties or populist outsiders.
Weak party system institutionalization and high electoral volatility have serious consequences for democratic governability. Institutionalized party systems with low electoral volatility promote consensus-building and more moderate policies because political parties are concerned about their long-term reputation and constrain the decisions of political leaders. In contrast, party systems with high volatility can lead to the rise of outsider presidents that have more radical policy preferences and are not constrained by strongly organized parties. Electoral volatility also undermines democratic representation. First, the fluidity of the party system complicates the task of voters when they want to hold the members of the incumbent party accountable for bad performance. Second, high instability in the patterns of interparty competition hinders citizens’ ability to navigate programmatic politics. Finally, electoral volatility augments the cognitive load required to vote and foments voter frustration, which can lead to higher rates of invalid voting.
Article
El Salvador’s FMLN and the Constraints on Leftist Government
Kevin A. Young
The 1992 Salvadoran peace accords ended a 12-year civil war and forced modest democratic reforms on a state long dominated by a ruthless oligarchy and military. However, the new system represented a shallow version of democracy that remained largely unresponsive to the population. For two decades the far-right Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance [ARENA]) party held the presidency and used it to enact pro-business economic policies of austerity, privatization, and deregulation. In 2009, the left-wing opposition party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), won the presidential elections for the first time. Yet despite winning some notable progressive reforms, the FMLN did not seek, much less achieve, a radical break from the neoliberal policies of previous administrations. FMLN leaders opted to continue a number of pro-capitalist policies while pursuing reforms to ameliorate the worst symptoms of the system, not overthrow it. The FMLN’s shift away from revolutionary socialism is attributable to several factors: a political and media terrain that still heavily favors the right, the continued influence of the United States government, and private investors’ control over the economy. These constraints were vitally important during the tenures of FMLN presidents Mauricio Funes (2009–2014) and Salvador Sánchez Cerén (2014–2019). El Salvador’s political trajectory since 1992, and especially during the FMLN’s decade in the presidency, offers insights into the constraints facing various left-of-center governments elected across Latin America in the early 21st century.
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El Salvador: The Consolidation and Collapse of Military Domination
William D. Stanley
El Salvador experienced five decades of direct military rule from 1931 through 1982, followed by a semi-authoritarian phase from 1982 to 1992 during which elected civilians ostensibly governed while the military retained veto power and impunity. Twelve years of civil war produced significant political change, and a 1992 peace settlement finally brought constitutional and institutional reforms that curbed the military’s political power.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the armed forces had a somewhat informal structure, and while coups d’état occurred periodically, the military was more the tool of powerful individuals than the source of their power. An uncompetitive electoral system in the early 20th century broke down in 1931 after a combination of political reforms and financial crisis undermined civilian authority, and a coup enabled the minister of defense to seize power. Shortly thereafter, the fledgling military government suppressed a peasant uprising with extreme violence, thereby consolidating its own position and discouraging challenges from oligarchic elites. Initially military rule was personalistic, with power vested in General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, but in the 1940s this transitioned to a more institutional system in which the officer corps collectively shaped the broad outlines of how the country would be governed and prevented any one leader from dominating. For over 30 years the institutional military government sought to achieve a degree of legitimacy through controlled elections, repressed opposition when it grew too strong, promoted economic growth, and implemented mild social reforms that always stopped short of challenging oligarchic interests.
The military’s strategy failed to resolve severe social and political tensions that arose from the country’s highly unequal distribution of land and income. The military faced popular demands for access to land and adequate wages, while the agrarian elite resisted any reform. Factional strife broke out regularly within the military over whether to rely mainly on repression to contain social and political demands, or to break with the oligarchy and deliver deeper reforms. The result was an inconsistent policy that occasionally created political space for opposition and then violently closed it. By the late 1970s there were massive protests and the beginnings of armed insurgency. Outright civil war began in 1980, and the country began a partial transition to civilian rule in 1982. Despite ample help from the United States, the military failed to defeat the insurgents. In 1990, the conservative elected civilian government began negotiating with the insurgents, leading to accords that definitively excluded the military from political power. After 1992 the country struggled with a sluggish economy and pervasive crime, and questions remained about past human rights crimes. The political system was genuinely democratic, featuring unrestricted debate and a wide range of political ideologies. The military remained largely subordinate to civil authority under governments of both the right and the left. Yet legacies of authoritarianism persisted, and in 2020 a populist elected civilian president called on the military for political support and used it to detain people unlawfully during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article
Emergencies and the Rule of Law
Clement Fatovic
Despite scholarly disagreements over the meanings of both the rule of law and emergency, there is broad agreement that emergencies often invite and justify departures from the formal requirements and substantive values identified with the rule of law as a normative ideal. It is often argued that strict adherence to existing laws, which are typically enacted during periods of normalcy in order to prevent arbitrary forms of rule associated with tyranny, could inhibit the government’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to the often unexpected and extraordinary challenges posed by an emergency such as war or natural disaster. Consequently, the temporary use of extraordinary measures outside the law has been widely accepted both in theory and in practice as long as such measures aim to restore the normal legal and political order. However, understandings of the tension between emergency and the rule of law have undergone a significant shift during the 20th century as emergency powers increasingly get codified into law. The use of extralegal measures that violate the formal and procedural requirements of the rule of law is still considered a dangerous possibility. However, as governments have come to rely increasingly on expansions of power that technically comport with standards of legality to deal with a growing list of situations characterized as emergencies, there is concern that extraordinary exercises of power intended to be temporary are becoming part of the permanent legal and political order.
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Energy Policy and European Union Politics
Anna Herranz-Surrallés
Energy policy has been considered as a “special case of Europeanization,” due to its tardy and patchy development as a domain of EU activity as well as its important but highly contested external dimension. Divergent energy pathways across Member States and the sensitivity of this policy domain have militated against a unified European Energy Policy. And yet, since the mid-2000s cooperation in this policy area has picked up speed, leading to the adoption of the Energy Union, presented by the European Commission as the most ambitious energy initiative since the European Coal and Steel Community. This dynamism has attracted growing scholarly attention, seeking to determine whether, why and how European Energy Policy has consolidated against all odds during a particularly critical moment for European integration. The underlying question that emerges in this context is whether the Energy Union represents a step forward towards a more homogenous and joined-up energy policy or, rather a strategy to manage heterogeneity through greater flexibility and differentiated integration. Given the multilevel and multisectoral characteristics of energy policy, answering these questions requires a three-fold analysis of (1) the degree of centralization of European Energy Policy (vertical integration), (2) the coherence between energy sub-sectors (cross-sectoral integration), and (3) the territorial extension of the energy acquis beyond the EU Member States (horizontal integration). Taken together, the Energy Union has catalyzed integration on the three dimensions. First, EU institutions are formally involved in almost every aspect of energy policy, including sensitive areas such as ensuring energy supplies. Second, the Energy Union, with its new governance regulation, brings under one policy framework energy sub-sectors that had developed in silos. And finally, energy policy is the only sector that has generated a multilateral process dedicated to the integration of non-members into the EU energy market. However, this integrationist dynamic has also been accompanied by an increase in internal and external differentiation. Although structural forms of differentiation based on sectoral opt-outs and enhanced cooperation have been averted, European Energy Policy is an example of so-called “micro-differentiation,” characterized by flexible implementation, soft governance and tailor-made exemptions and derogations.
Article
Enlargement Policy and European Union Politics
Eli Gateva
Enlargement has always been an essential part of the European integration. Each enlargement round has left its mark on the integration project. However, it was the expansion of the European Union (EU) with the 10 Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), Cyprus, and Malta, unprecedented in scope and scale, which presented the EU with an opportunity to develop a multifaceted set of instruments and transformed enlargement into one of the EU’s most successful policies. The numerous challenges of the accession process, along with the immensity of the historical mission to unify Europe, lent speed to the emergence of the study of EU enlargement as a key research area. The early studies investigated the puzzle of the EU’s decision to enlarge with the CEECs, and the costs and benefits of the Eastern expansion. However, the questions about the impact of EU enlargement policy inspired a new research agenda. Studies of the influence of the EU on candidate and potential candidate countries have not only widened the research focus of Europeanization studies (beyond the member states of the Union), but also stimulated and shaped the debates on the scope and effectiveness of EU conditionality. Most of the analytical frameworks developed in the context of the Eastern enlargement have favored rational institutionalist approaches highlighting a credible membership perspective as the key explanatory variable. However, studies analyzing the impact of enlargement policy on the Western Balkan countries and Turkey have shed light on some of the limitations of the rationalist approaches and sought to identify new explanatory factors.
After the completion of the fifth enlargement with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, the research shifted to analyzing the continuity and change of EU enlargement policy and its impact on the candidate and potential candidate countries. There is also a growing number of studies examining the sustainability of the impact of EU conditionality after accession by looking into new members’ compliance with EU rules. The impact of EU enlargement policy on the development of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and comparative evaluations of the Union’s performance across the two policy frameworks have also shaped and expanded the debate on the mechanisms and effectiveness of the EU’s influence. The impact of the Eastern enlargement on EU institutions and policymaking is another area of research that has emerged over the last decade. In less than two decades, the study of EU enlargement policy has produced a rich and diverse body of literature that has shaped the broader research agendas on Europeanization, implementation, and compliance and EU policymaking. Comprehensive theoretical and empirical studies have allowed us to develop a detailed understanding of the impact of the EU on the political and economic transformations in central and eastern Europe. The ongoing accession process provides more opportunities to study the evolving nature of EU enlargement policy, its impact on candidate countries, the development of EU policies, and the advancement of the integration project.
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Environmental Governance and the (Re-)Making of the African State
Maano Ramutsindela and Bram Büscher
State formation processes that are historically associated with the emergence of the modern state as well as the post-colony have been punctuated by the rise of environmentalism, especially the need for nation-states to respond to, as well as manage environmental challenges. Responses to these challenges by multiple actors such as the state, industry, environmental nongovernmental organizations, and financial institutions culminate in environmental governance and in the co-constitution of environment and state making. The state–environment relations have produced new forms of governmentality that refocus the activities of the state toward globally defined environmental agendas. In Africa attempts by multiple actors to manage the environment have transformed the state in five principal ways: (1) They enable global capitalism to enroll African environments in a niche area for capital accumulation but also tie up African governments to environmentally related business interests; (2) environmental governance in Africa and elsewhere leads to resistance and contestations over natural resources that in turn shape the relationship between the state and its citizens; (3) global environmental issues have led to environmental solidarity among African states, which they use to negotiate environmental agreements at the international stage; (4) environmental threats such as the poaching of wildlife in Africa integrate African states into global security frameworks that in effect threaten or corrode the integrity of the African state; and (5) environmental challenges and the opportunities that come with environmental solutions create conditions for competition among African states as well as the formation of new alliances among states. These outcomes highlight the significance of the state–environment nexus in the continuous (re-)making of the African state.
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Environmental Policy and European Union Politics
Diarmuid Torney
The European Union (EU) has developed an extensive body of environmental policies spanning a wide range of areas. No other international organization shapes the environmental affairs of its members to anywhere near the same extent. However, implementation of environmental policy has remained a persistent challenge, and Europeanization of member states’ environmental policies remains partial. There has not been a wholescale convergence of environmental policy, though the differentiation between leaders and laggards is not as stark as it once was.
The rules, regulations, and policies that make up EU environmental policy have increasingly impacted not only member states but also the wider world, and the EU has emerged as a key player in global environmental politics across a range of policy domains. It has been central to the creation of many international environmental regimes and has integrated environmental issues into a variety of facets of its external relations.
Looking forward, increasingly stark warnings from bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services should raise questions regarding existing responses to environmental challenges, which to a significant extent favor incremental over transformational change. The EU faces the task of responding to these profound challenges against the backdrop of increasing political turbulence at home and abroad. Over the past decade, the EU has been beset by profound challenges that have shaped both its internal and external environmental policies. At home, the EU has been shaken by the global financial crisis as well as the decision of the United Kingdom to withdraw from the EU. The EU’s external environment is to a growing extent shaped by nativist regimes such as Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, both of whom seem determined to undermine not just the foundations of global environmental governance but the rules-based international order more generally. The coming generation of scholarship on EU environmental policy will need to reflect upon how these competing forces serve to reshape the EU’s environmental policies.
Article
Ethics, Corruption, and Integrity of Governance: What It Is and What Helps
Leo Huberts and André van Montfort
Ethics, corruption, and integrity do matter for society and are relevant topics to take into account in the research (and practice) of public administration and governance. The many views, perspectives, and interpretations that are available with respect to these issues can be integrated in a challenging framework. This framework takes the concept of integrity of governance as a starting point, with a focus on relevant moral values and norms for political and administrative behavior and a discussion of various forms of integrity violations in the public sector. Based on a large amount of research on “what helps to protect integrity and prevent integrity violations,” it specially pays attention to integrity management and integrity systems. The framework concerning ethics, corruption, and integrity of governance offers starting points for formulating an agenda for the future. This agenda should express the desirability of both an “integrity turn” in public administration and political science and an “empirical turn” in integrity research.
Article
The Ethics of Voting
James Stacey Taylor
The first question that is often raised in a discussion of the ethics of voting is whether or not there is a duty to vote. The view that there is a duty to vote is supported by two main arguments. The first holds that since the value of democratic governance is high persons should vote to preserve stable democracy. The second is that there is a duty to vote because if nobody voted the effects would be disastrous. The first of these arguments is criticized by Jason Brennan, who holds that since each individual vote will play little to no role in preserving stable democracy nobody has a duty to vote. The second is criticized by Loren Lomasky and Geoffrey Brennan, who argue that it is incomplete unless its supporters can show that democracy needs everyone to vote to continue. The question of whether there is a duty to vote naturally leads to the question of whether it is permissible for persons to vote in their own self-interest. Jason Brennan argues that persons should only (morally) vote for candidates or policies that they are justified in believing would promote the common good. It is unclear, however, what “the common good” consists of. This discussion of the morality of voting in one’s self-interest leads to the question of whether voting for a politician because she has made campaign promises is morally analogous to a voter selling her vote. In discussing this issue it is important to distinguish between the “restricted” defense of markets in votes (that the purchased votes are to be cast in favor of what the buyer is justified in believing is the common good) and the “unrestricted” defense of such a market (that purchased votes can be cast in any way the buyer pleases). Much of this discussion focuses on the morality of unrestricted markets in votes. Christopher Freiman has offered four main arguments in favor of such a market: (1) that it will make both the buyer and the seller better off; (2) that it is required by respect for voter liberty; (3) that it is relevantly similar to other practices that are currently allowed, such as logrolling; and (4) that it would enable electoral outcomes to better express voter preferences. None of these arguments are persuasive. The first is based on illicitly inferring from the claim that persons would voluntarily buy and sell votes if a market were allowed to the claim that they would thereby desire that this market be allowed. The second argument is flawed because if some persons would prefer that a market not be allowed, this could provide a sufficient reason to restrict their liberty by precluding them from selling their votes. The third argument overlooks important disanalogies between votes traded between voters, and votes traded between legislators. The fourth argument is based on the implausible assumption that vote sellers would not misrepresent their political preferences in a market for votes.
Article
The EU Migration Crisis: A Crisis Analysis Case Study
Peter Slominski
The European Union (EU) migration crisis has been part and parcel of a conglomerate of crises that have affected the EU since the late 2000s, as have the financial and sovereign debt crisis, “Brexit,” the Russia–Ukraine conflict, as well as tensions within transatlantic relations. Scholarship on the EU has devoted much attention in assessing what the migration crisis means for EU integration at large. In particular, EU scholars are interested why the migration crisis has led to political gridlock and a renationalization of border controls rather than a deepening of integration. While they differ in their explanations, these explanations shed light on different aspects of the crisis and are far from mutually exclusive.
Scholars who are more interested in the area of EU Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) largely agree with EU theorists that the field suffers from an incomplete governance design, the dominance of EU member states, and weak supranational capacities. Their analysis also focuses on intra-EU dynamics but offers a more nuanced empirical assessment of relevant EU institutions and decision-making in the course of managing the migration crisis. This growing body of research produces valuable insights and largely confirms existing scholarship, including that on the growing securitization and externalization of EU asylum and migration policy. The EU’s understanding as a norm-based power is particularly challenged by the migratory movements in the wake of the crisis. A small but growing scholarship analyses how the EU is balancing its non-entrée policy with its legal obligation, and what kind of governance arrangements result from that.
While this scholarship has enriched our understanding of the EU migration crisis, it has not generated a major refinement of the standard approaches of EU theorists and JHA scholars. To further enrich the literature on the migration crisis, scholars should go beyond studying the dynamics of EU decision-making and the role of EU institutions. Such an approach should engage more systematically with international actors and institutions that have the capacity to influence EU migration policy. At the same time, global phenomena such as war, poverty, or climate change should also be taken into account in assessing the EU’s room for maneuver in handling migratory pressures. Future research on the migration crisis as well as on migration challenges should thus not only connect with other subfields of political science, such as policy analysis or international relations, but also open up to other disciplines such as law, demography, or environmental studies.
Article
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR)
Diana Panke
In the European Union (EU), there are two consultative committees, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR). Both, the EESC and the CoR are involved in EU decision-making but lack formal competencies to influence European secondary law directly. Instead of having votes or veto rights concerning EU directives or regulations, the two consultative committees provide recommendations to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. In addition to providing advice to the two EU legislative chambers, the two consultative committees can also approach the European Commission and give input into the drafting of EU policies at the very early stage.
Article
Europeanization
Søren Dosenrode
Europeanization refers to the mutual influence of the European Union (EU) and its member states, to interactions within and between member states driven by the EU, and to the effect of the EU on EU applicant states. It affects domestic politics, policy, and polity and therefore is relevant for citizens and businesses. Europeanization effects also raise an issue of legitimacy: who bears responsibility, the member states or the European Union?
In the broadest sense, analysis of Europeanization began with the theories of regional integration in the 1950s, which explained what was to become the early 21st-century EU and how it began and developed—the making of a polity. In the narrow and more common use of the concept, studies of the effect of what was then known as the European Community began at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s under the name of “adaptation.” It was not until 1994 that Robert Ladrech used and defined the term “Europeanization” for analyzing the effect of the European Community on its member states. Thus, in its most encompassing sense, a complete typology of Europeanization includes five types, each with its own primary mechanisms at work: (a) meta-Europeanization, the processes whereby the member states that have created the EU have set the overall frame, that is, the EU; (b) downloading, which implies a pressure on EU member states’ policies and governmental structures to adapt to EU standards (but this does not lead to “uniformity,” as the member states have diverse histories and traditions); (c) uploading, whereby the member states contribute to the EU’s further development by making policy suggestions to the EU and its institutions; (d) cross-loading, whereby the EU creates frames for the member states to exchange best practices and experiences, with little or no involvement from the institutions; and (e) export Europeanization, whereby the EU makes potential members comply with the Union. In a narrow sense, Europeanization is about downloading, uploading, and cross-loading.
Studies on Europeanization have contributed greatly to our understanding of how the EU works and how it influences its member states and vice versa (not to mention its influence on subnational actors as well as on interest organizations and neighboring countries). In the early 21st century, Europeanization studies expanded to policies that were previously not sufficiently considered: for instance, the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Common Security and Defence Policy, and social movements.
Article
The European Neighbourhood Policy
Meltem Müftüler-Baç
The European Union (EU), following its 2004 big bang enlargement toward the central and eastern European countries Cyprus and Malta found itself facing a new group of neighboring countries (i.e., new borders). In response, the EU devised a new policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), adopted in 2004, which encompasses two different geographical regions for the EU’s 16 neighbors: Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Belarus in the East and Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia in the South Mediterranean. The ENP aimed to promote political and economic transformation in the EU’s periphery and stabilize the European borders with its key instruments. To do so, Association Agreements together with Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements, Action Plans, Partnership Priorities, and Single Support Frameworks were adopted. The ENP was revised twice, in 2011 and in 2015, to respond to the ongoing challenges that the EU and its neighboring countries face.
The ENP’s evolution included multicountry, regional plans, the Union for the Mediterranean and the Eastern Partnership, adopted in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The ENP’s effectiveness could be assessed in terms of its ability to stabilize the EU’s neighbouring countries, as well as in promoting political, economic, and governance-related reforms. The ENP’s revisions with the “more for more/less for principle” in 2011 and a stronger EU presence in the region in 2015 with the emphasis on building “resilience” rather than diffusion of European norms and rules were all adopted to enable the realization of its main objectives. However, the variation among the partner countries, the domestic scope conditions, and scope conditions such as the EU’s vertical and horizontal policy incoherence, coupled with the presence of other international actors, constrained the ENP’s effectiveness. The ENP as an attempt to create a “ring of friends” around the EU failed to realize its objectives, and instead the EU is surrounded now with a “ring of fire.”
