The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination, and Governance, often referred to as the Fiscal Compact, constitute two of the main European Union (EU) instruments for dealing with the eurozone crisis. Both had to be established as intergovernmental agreements outside of, but parallel to, the EU’s legal framework. However, the instruments were closely linked to the European Community framework and made extensive use of Community institutions. The ESM was originally set up as a loan facility to Eurozone countries facing problems financing their debt, but it became much bigger in size and scope than originally envisioned by the member states. The Fiscal Compact, on the other hand, can be considered as the fiscal counterpart to the ESM. It received a lot of attention in the press and academia, but it was first and foremost required as a political signal that would allow further enhancements of the ESM.
The two instruments are often employed in the literature as part of a continuing juxtaposition of intergovernmentalist and supranationalist methods or approaches. However, from a theoretical perspective, the ESM and Fiscal Compact reflect an acknowledgment of new realities in European integration, in which intergovernmental actors and action channels play a more prominent role in decision making, but this does not necessarily come at the expense of the supranational actors. The instruments exemplify the rise of the European Council’s centered governance for dealing with major reforms. The processes of setting up the ESM and Fiscal Compact were undoubtedly political and top-down, but they were less driven and controlled by the big member states than the label ‘intergovernmental’ implies.
Article
The European Stability Mechanism and the Fiscal Compact in European Integration
Sandrino Smeets
Article
European Union Governance
Ingeborg Tömmel
The term “governance” refers to interactive forms of political steering, characterized by the coordination of a wide spectrum of actors in pursuit of common goals (e.g., Rhodes, 1996; Pierre & Peters, 2000, 2005; Kooiman, 2003; Torfing, Peters, Pierre, & Sörensen, 2013; Ansell & Torfing 2016). Governance processes involve multiple actors and institutions into cooperative relationships and network structures. The corresponding steering mechanisms may range from hierarchical rule to mere persuasion.
The governance perspective appeared particularly suited to analyze political steering in the European Union (EU). The Union is not sovereign; it therefore developed steering mechanisms that do not (or only partly) rely on formal competences and hierarchical rule. The evolving system of European governance constituted the EU as a multilevel polity, held together by interlocking relationships of policy coordination and cooperation (Marks et al., 1996; Hooghe & Marks, 2001; Piattoni, 2010).
Scholarly reflection on EU governance evolved comparatively late during the 1990s (Hix, 1998); it proliferated after the turn of the century, when the European Union introduced the so-called Open Method of Coordination (OMC) (Kohler-Koch & Rittberger, 2006). Later, the perspective widened to the whole spectrum of governance modes and its innovative forms (e.g., Sabel & Zeitlin, 2008, 2010a; Tömmel & Verdun, 2009a, Héritier & Rhodes, 2011). Yet salient issues remained under-researched, particularly the power dimension of EU governance (Torfing et al., 2013, pp. 48–70).
Article
The European Union’s International Promotion of LGBTI Rights in its Foreign Relations
Markus Thiel
Despite ongoing challenges, the European Union (EU) not only is a major actor on the world stage, but also emphasizes human rights for LGBTI individuals in its internal and external policies, thus setting a powerful example for acceptance and inclusion worldwide. While this establishes the EU as a presumptive normative actor from a liberal human rights perspective, a number of disputes over those rights policies and the way they are promoted have emerged in bilateral relations between the EU and other states in recent years. Given Europe’s colonial history, the fact that the bloc is collectively the world’s largest provider of development assistance, and the volatility of LGBTI human rights defenders, it is important to investigate how the EU and its member states promote LGBTI rights internationally. The EU institutions attempt to jointly formulate and implement guidelines for the external promotion of such rights, though no uniform rights standards exist across the various member states.
The compatibility of EU and member states’ conceptions of LGBTI rights and the more general question of how far the EU is, can, or should be a “normative” agenda-setting power on the world stage are central. This heavily contested but also popular ideational concept glosses over the limited consensus that exists in the EU with regard to many of its policies and the role it should assume in international affairs. Such incoherence is particularly evident in normatively contested and geopolitically intertwined areas like sexual rights and equality (ranging from nondiscrimination based on sexual and gender expression to positive rights of partnership recognition and childcare). To the extent that a common approach on LGBTI rights is developed, one can detect promotion attempts in the external policy areas in which rights promotion is formulated and diffused, namely in development and foreign aid, in enlargement and neighborhood policies, and in exchange with other international organizations. However, these come with their own politicizing issues, so that alternatives to the presently emphasized conditionality and visibility policies may provide a better way forward.
Article
Europe’s Supranational Courts and LGBT Rights
M. Joel Voss
Europe has some of the most powerful human rights legal institutions in the world including two supranational human rights courts—the Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights and the European Union’s Court of Justice (hereafter, together—the Courts). After decades of relative quiet, the Courts have begun hearing more cases concerning LGBT rights. Judgments of the Courts have advanced some facets of LGBT rights like anti-discrimination in the workplace while disappointing gay-rights advocates in other areas, for example family life and asylum.
Scholarship on European courts and LGBT rights is not as developed as scholarship on norm advocacy or policy diffusion within states in Europe. The research that does exist looks at how decisions by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice deal with current European law, how the institutions are designed, or how the supranational courts may act as agents of change or status quo institutions in shaping wider European behavior. This lack of newer research on the Courts presents ample opportunity for new avenues of research that examines not only how decisions are made at the Courts but also how states implement decisions and how states view the legitimacy of each Court.
Article
Euroskepticism, a Multifaceted Phenomenon
Patrick Bijsmans
In an age of Brexit, Euroskepticism has become a central element in debates about Europe. It is generally believed that there has been an increase in criticism on and opposition toward the European Union (EU) and its policies since the 1991 Maastricht Treaty. Yet, criticism was already present at the start of the integration process, also among mainstream parties in the six founding members. With the EU’s recent crises, Euroskepticism has become embedded in contestation in most member states, affecting politics at the national and European level. Consequently, it is important to understand Euroskepticism in contemporary Europe and to gather a broad overview of its development, its meaning, and its wider consequences.
Euroskepticism is a diverse, multifaceted phenomenon that varies across time, member states, and policies. Exploring the history of Euroskepticism helps to contextualize contemporary developments and to understand some of the main debates and issues in the field, including conceptual challenges, but also debates about the reasons for Euroskepticism and what kind of impact it might have. One of the key questions in this respect is whether Euroskepticism should be seen as a problematic phenomenon or as an essential element of a democratic Europe. While conventional negative connotations associated with Euroskepticism suggest the former, research finds a broader variety of criticism and opposition to the EU and its policies that may be conducive to a more democratic EU debate.
Article
Evaluating Success and Failure in Crisis Management
Allan McConnell
Crises and disasters come in many shapes and sizes. They range from global pandemics and global financial crises to tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanic ash clouds, bushfires, terrorist attacks, critical infrastructure failures and food contamination episodes. Threats may be locally isolated such as an explosion at a local fireworks factory, or they may cascade across multiple countries and sectors, such as pandemics. No country is immune from the challenge of managing extraordinary threats, and doing so out of their comfort zone of routine policy making. The crisis management challenge involves managing threats ‘on the ground’, as well as the political fallout and societal fears.
Populist and journalistic commentary frequently labels crisis management initiatives as having either succeeded or failed. The realities are much more complex. Evaluators confront numerous methodological challenges. These include the careful consideration of multiple and often competing outcomes, differing perceptions, issues of success for whom, and gray areas stemming from shortfalls and lack of evidence, as well as variations over time. Despite such complexity, some key themes appear continually across evaluations, from internal reviews to royal commissions and accident inquiries. These pertain to the ways in which evaluations can be shaped heavily or lightly by political agendas, the degree to which evaluating organizations are able to open up, the degree to which gray areas and shortfalls are stumbling blocks in producing findings, and the challenge of producing coherent investigative narratives when many storylines are possible. Ultimately, evaluating crisis initiatives is “political” in nature because it seeks to provide authoritative evaluations that reconcile multiple views, from experts and lawyers to victims and their families.
Article
Executive–Legislative Relations in Latin American Politics
Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo and Marcelo Camerlo
Presidentialism has long been associated with democratic instability. Conflict between the executive and the legislature is at the heart of this relationship. Traditional arguments link minority presidents with policy deadlock and inter-branch conflict, especially in contexts where presidential institutions deincentivize the formation of governing coalitions that can provide presidents with stable legislative majorities. The extent to which these premises are true, however, varies significantly across the presidential countries of Latin America, as does the potential for conflict and cooperation between the executive and the legislature. The prevalence of minority presidents hinges on the fragmentation of congress as well as other characteristics of the party and electoral systems; the relative powers of the president and congress vary widely, and in many places they have been adjusted precisely to reduce inter-branch conflict. Finally, even where minority governments are the norm, the formation of governing coalitions has helped presidents obtain majority support in congress.
Article
Federalism and Regional Politics in Africa
Asnake Kefale
During the anticolonial struggle and immediately after independence, African political leaders were preoccupied with the creation of a “nation-state.” As a result, many of postcolonial African leaders not only promoted national unity but also instituted centralized governance. Unity and centralization were considered important antidotes to the challenges of consolidating postcolonial states, which by and large were created by the partitioning of the continent by colonial powers. As a result, many of the postcolonial leaders were hostile to federalism in general and power-sharing in particular. This explains why many of the federal arrangements, which were created by departing colonial powers, were dismantled within the first few years after independence. In contrast to the earlier periods, the 1990s could be regarded as a turning point for federalism and devolution of power in the continent. Among African states, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa could be considered fully fledged federations, which have constitutionally devolved power to different tiers of governments. There is also an ongoing attempt to establish a federal system in war-torn Somalia. Some argue that, although federalism does not have a stellar record in postcolonial Africa, it is possible to contend that in the foreseeable future the importance of federalism will grow in the continent given the challenges that many African countries face in the management of their ethnolinguistic diversity. This is evidenced by the increasing application of the federalist principles of decentralization by several African countries.
Article
Financial Globalization and Domestic Policy Autonomy in Latin America
Giselle Datz
Despite theoretical assumptions about the potential for financial liberalization in Latin America to foster economic growth, empirical developments revealed a different story. With financial liberalization came greater macroeconomic instability, exposing countries to financial crises even when domestic economic fundamentals were mostly in order. At the policy front, capital account liberalization posed crucial challenges to macroeconomic governance. Indeed, international political economy literature on financial globalization has highlighted that developing countries’ governments who chose to implement policies that contradicted financial markets’ expectations could be “disciplined” or “punished” by the threat of capital outflows. Yet, capital flows to emerging economies are not determined solely by domestic (push) factors. Even in the most extreme case of noncompliance with investors’ (creditors’) preferences—i.e., sovereign default—evidence shows that market re-access and the cost of new debt are a function of credit cycles rather than solely determined by investors’ decisions to “punish” defaulters. In addition, to the extent that the “market” can indeed be considered as a single analytical category, industry-specific incentives shape portfolio investors’ bets. Caveats also apply to how market reforms differed in nature and degree, even in Latin American countries subjected to similar external pressures. The same is true for policy responses to the 2008 financial crisis. These dynamics add necessary nuance to broad depictions of financial liberalization as a deterministic process unequivocally constraining domestic policy autonomy in predictable ways.
Article
Finland and the European Union
Teija Tiilikainen
Finland joined the European Union together with Austria and Sweden at the beginning of 1995. At first glance, Finnish membership appeared as a rapid change of political orientation, given the inflexible policy of neutrality the country had maintained until the early 1990s. In spite of the brevity of national adaptation and consideration, the decision to follow Sweden and submit an application for EU membership was based on an overwhelming political consensus. All the major political elites, including party and interest organizations, key actors in the private sector, and the media were in favor of Finnish membership. In the referendum for EU membership in October 1994, membership was supported by 57% of the people.
A stable popular support characterized the Finnish EU policy for the first 15 years of its EU membership and distinguished Finland from its Nordic neighbours in the EU. The popular approach was anchored in a perception of EU membership representing a comprehensive change from the country’s difficult position in the Cold War era to full-fledged membership in the Western community. Finland thus joined the EU’s currency union as the only Nordic member state and adopted a constructive approach toward more integration in most policy fields. It was only in the context of the economic and financial crisis of 2008–2009 that Finnish public opinion became—at least temporarily—heavily polarized by the EU question. This resembled the situation in many other EU member states. During the two decades of Finland’s EU membership, the country has experienced a Europeanization of its political system and legislation. EU membership has contributed to a further parliamentarization of Finland’s semi-presidential political system with EU affairs being designated to the powers of the government and coordination of policies taking place at the prime minister’s office. Due mainly to EU membership, the Finnish Parliament has also become an influential actor in foreign and European policies.
Finland has smoothly adjusted to the EU’s policies and has become a persistent proponent of the EU’s unity in external relations. Since the first years of its EU membership, the country has been in favor of majority decisions and a stronger role played by the commission and the EP in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It has also gone through a major change in its legislation on crisis management and the tasks of defense forces to be able to better fulfill membership commitments to the EU’s security and defense policies.
After the polarization of EU opinion taking place in the framework of the general elections of 2011, and leading to the emergence of an anti-EU “Finns Party” as the third-largest party in Finland, a more consensual atmosphere has recently returned with increasing levels of public support to EU membership. The Finns Party first made its way to the governmental coalition together with the two largest center-right parties in 2015, which significantly softened its EU criticism and moved its focus to an anti-immigration agenda. Finally, in 2017 the Finns Party was split into two parts with the more moderate part practically failing to establish itself in parliamentary or European elections of the spring 2019.
Article
Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy Tool
Clair Apodaca
The majority of countries around the world are engaged in the foreign aid process, as donors, recipients, or, oftentimes, both. States use foreign aid as a means of pursuing foreign policy objectives. Aid can be withdrawn to create economic hardship or to destabilize an unfriendly or ideologically antagonistic regime. Or, conversely, aid can be provided to bolster and reward a friendly or compliant regime.
Although foreign aid serves several purposes, and not least among them the wish to increase human welfare, the primary reason for aid allocations or aid restrictions is to pursue foreign policy goals. Strategic and commercial interests of donor countries are the driving force behind many aid programs. Not only do target countries respond to the granting of bilateral and multilateral aid as an incentive, but also the threat of aid termination serves as an effective deterrent. Both the granting and the denial of foreign assistance can be a valuable mechanism designed to modify a recipient state’s behavior.
Donors decide which countries will receive aid, the amount of aid provided, the time frame in which aid is given, and the channel of aid delivery. The donor’s intentions and the recipient’s level of governance determine the type or sector of foreign aid. States can choose between bilateral or multilateral methods of disbursing foreign assistance in order to pursue their interests. Although bilateral disbursements allow the donor state to have complete control over the aid donation, the use of multilateral forums has its advantages. Multilateral aid is cheaper, it disperses accountability, and it is often viewed as less politically biased.
Foreign aid, once the exclusive foreign policy instrument of rich powerful states, is now being provided by middle-income countries, too. The motivation for foreign aid allocations by nontraditional donors parallels the motives of traditional Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors. A main difference between traditional and nontraditional aid donors is that nontraditional aid donors generally do not place conditionalities on their loans.
The issue of fungibility can obstruct the donor government’s purpose behind the allocation of foreign aid. If the preferences of the recipient government are different from those of the donor, the recipient can often divert the aid and use it for other purposes. A recipient government may reallocate its budget after it determines how much aid it is slated to receive. The recipient government will redirect its resources to areas it deems a priority that cannot be funded externally, for example the military or prestige projects.
Article
Foreign Direct Investment and Its Politics in Latin America
R. Douglas Hecock
The open economic policies Latin American countries adopted in the wake of the debt crisis of the early 1980s were expected to bring a variety of benefits. Trade liberalization and privatization make domestic firms more competitive, and deregulation helps to create an efficient business climate. Notably, such policies are also likely to spur foreign investment seeking new opportunities, and Latin American countries did indeed begin to see large inflows in the 1990s. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is thought to be particularly complementary to economic development. Compared to portfolio investment in stocks and bonds, FDI consists of the construction or purchasing of physical assets including manufacturing facilities, retail outlets, hotels, and mines. FDI should spur local economic activity and bring with it jobs and technology transfers. Furthermore, because divestment takes planning and time, direct investment is relatively long-term, so investors are expected to display greater commitments to the economic and political futures of their hosts.
As a result of these substantial potential benefits, a body of scholarship has emerged to try to understand the political dynamics of FDI. Is investment more likely to flow to democratic or authoritarian regimes? Are direct investors seeking countries with few labor protections and weak environmental regulations or are they attracted to public investments in human capital? Do they eschew governments with poor human rights records or do they see abusers as potential partners in managing a compliant workforce? What are the effects of FDI flows on the political contexts of their hosts? Among others, these questions have received significant scholarly attention, and while we have learned a great deal about the behavior and effects of FDI, considerable potential remains. Having received massive inflows averaging more than $100 billion between 2000 and 2017 and consisting of countries with broadly similar development trajectories, Latin America offers a rich landscape for such analysis. In particular, finer-grained examinations of FDI to Latin American countries can help us understand how it might affect political systems and which types of investment best complement national development projects. In so doing, studies of FDI flows to Latin America are poised to make major contributions to the fields of international political economy, development studies, and comparative politics.
Article
Foreign-Imposed Regime Change
Dan Reiter
International actors sometimes force targeted states to change their governments, a process known
as Foreign-Imposed Regime Change (FIRC). This foreign policy tool serves as a surprisingly active
locus for several theoretical debates in international relations and comparative politics. On the
international relations side, evaluation of FIRC as a policy tool has implications for the following
debates: whether foreign policy decisions are affected by individual leaders or are determined by
structural conditions; whether democracies are more peaceful in their relations with other states;
how belligerents choose their war aims; what factors make for successful military occupation; what
motivates states to go on ideological crusades; whether international actors can successfully
install democracy in postconflict settings; determinants of international trade; and others. On the
comparative politics side, FIRC speaks to what may be the two most important questions in all of
comparative politics: what factors help a state maintain internal order, and what factors help a
state make the transition to democracy?
FIRC also plays an absolutely central role in foreign policy debates, especially for the United
States. FIRC is arguably responsible for both the greatest success in the history of American
foreign policy, the post-1945 pacification of Germany and Japan, and one of the greatest disasters
in U.S. foreign policy history, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its catastrophic aftermath. Further,
FIRC has played a ubiquitous role in American foreign policy since America’s emergence as a great
power, as the United States has frequently used both overt and covert means to impose regime change
in other countries, especially in Latin America. FIRC has also been a tool used by other major
powers, especially the Soviet Union after 1945 in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Into the second
decade of the 21st century FIRC remains a controversial foreign policy tool, as some debate the
wisdom of pursuing FIRC in Libya in 2011, and others consider the possibility of pursuing FIRC in
countries such as Syria.
FIRC can be discussed as a theoretical phenomenon and as the subject of empirical research,
focusing on its nature, causes, and effects. The article contains five sections. The first section
discusses the definition and frequency of FIRC. The second section describes the causes of FIRC, why
actors sometimes seek to impose regime change on other states. The third section covers the
international consequences of FIRC, especially whether FIRC reduces conflict between states. The
fourth section addresses the domestic consequences of FIRC, especially whether FIRC is usually
followed by stability and/or democracy. The final section concludes.
Article
Foreign Military Training and Coups d’État
Jesse Dillon Savage
There has long been concern that foreign military training could increase the coup propensity of recipient militaries. Alternatively, others have held the hope that such training could be used as a development tool to help improve the normative outlook of militaries and increase their respect for civilian control. The primary goal of such training is rarely to improve, or worsen for that matter, civil–military relations in the recipient state. Instead, donor or provider states are usually aiming to strengthen their own security and strategic positions. If there is a relationship between training and civil–military relations, these effects are mostly, then, second-order effects.
The academic study of the issue has often reflected this divide, though many have been skeptical of any effect at all. Along with the theoretical differences regarding the effects of foreign military training, empirical results have been mixed. While some have found a relationship between training and coups, other studies have found the opposite. These divergent results can be attributed to a few factors. First, the field of civil–military relations lacks a solid empirical understanding of the effects of military education and training in general, let alone how foreign military training fits into this. Second, the theoretical arguments lack appropriate refinement. This has led to possible misspecification of empirical models or a failure of construct validity. Finally, most research has failed to account for heterogeneous effects from different donors in different political contexts.
Article
Foreign Policy Learning
Guy Ziv
An improved understanding of foreign policy learning necessitates a clarification of what foreign policy learning is, who learns, and how such learning occurs. Cognitive and social psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists situated in a variety of subfields have contributed to the understanding of foreign policy learning, a multidisciplinary area of inquiry. Learning theorists seek to show how a change in an actor’s beliefs due to experience or observation can lead to changes at other units, such as organizations and within the government. This cognitive dimension is important because actors may pursue a new course of action for politically expedient reasons rather than having genuinely “learned”—a distinction referred to as “complex” vs. “simple” learning.
Foreign policy learning can be internal or external. The former type of learning entails what individuals, governments, or organizations learn from their prior experience. Learning theorists who focus on the individual level of analysis borrow insights from political psychology in an effort to shed light on the personal characteristics, the belief structures, and the cognitive psychological mechanisms of political actors that can better inform policymaking. Leaders whose cognitive structures are described as relatively open and complex—like Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose learning brought about the dramatic changes that ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Union—are more likely to alter their beliefs than their cognitively closed and simple counterparts.
Yet external learning occurs as well. Policy diffusion studies show that learning can result from demonstration effects. Foreign policy learning via diffusion is not instrumental, but instead occurs through osmosis. Privatization in the former communist states, China’s Foreign Direct Investment liberalization, and the diffusion of environmental norms in the European Union are examples of learning that is contagious, not chosen. A more conscious mode of learning than diffusion is policy transfer, which entails policymakers’ transferring ideas from one country and implementing them in another. Technological innovations, unlike lessons that involve political ideology, are generally easier lessons to transfer—for example, Japan’s success in applying lessons from the West to modernize its army in the second half of the 19th century.
The constraints to foreign policy learning are formidable. Decision makers are not always open to reconsidering views that challenge their beliefs. Leaders tend to resort to, and misuse, analogies that prevent learning. Even a change in a decision maker’s beliefs may not lead to foreign policy change, given the myriad political pressures, bureaucratic hurdles, and economic realities that often get in the way of implementing new ideas. Indeed, foreign policy learning and foreign policy change are not synonymous.
Scholars face significant obstacles in studying foreign policy learning. There is no consensus on the definition of learning, on what constitutes learning, on how actors learn, when they learn, or on how to assess whether learning has taken place. Despite attempts to make sense of the confusion, scholars face the daunting challenge of improving understanding of how learning is shaped and funneled through the interaction of agents and the structures in which they are situated, as well as the relationship between learning and foreign policy change.
Article
Foundations of Responsive Crisis Management: Institutional Design and Information
Kees Boersma and Jeroen Wolbers
The requirements for effective and responsive crisis management have developed significantly in the face of proliferating transboundary crises and rising societal demands during the information revolution. As crises disturb more and more societal strata and rapidly span across different types of networks, traditional crisis structures need to become more open and responsive. To deal with these contemporary requirements of crisis management, renewed institutional designs are needed. Institutional designs reflect the shared rules, norms, and belief systems that are established as guidelines for social behavior, which shape the nature of decision making, coordination, and information-sharing processes. In practical terms, the call for more engaged crisis management cumulates in the process of developing situational awareness (SA) through the common operational picture (COP) in traditional institutional designs like the Incident Command System (ICS). Two opposing crisis information management doctrines can be defined in this process: the information warehouse and the trading zone. The dominant warehouse doctrine presupposes that all crisis information can be gathered, synthesized, and disseminated in a uniform and unambiguous way. The trading zone doctrine contrasts this assumption by stressing the importance of negotiation through which the meaning, value, and consequences of crisis information is debated and assessed. Institutional designs based on the trading zone doctrine offer a foundation for a more responsive and societally engaged form of crisis management, as they are more sensitive to the (social) stratification and competing demands that are often found in contemporary transboundary crises.
Article
France: Civil-Military Relations in the Antiterrorist Frame
Grégory Daho
French civil–military relations are usually described as an example of subordination of the military command to political authorities. This subordination is the legacy of the mutual distrust inherited from the “events” in Algeria and, more specifically, the coups in Algiers in 1958 and 1961 that gave birth to the current Fifth Republic. With the end of the Cold War, civil–military relations have rebalanced to the benefit of general officers because of the increasingly technical nature of external interventions and the consolidation of interprofessional relations with diplomats and industrial networks, facilitating the return of some officers into decision-making circuits. After this functional reintegration, the antiterrorist framing, both outside of the country (Opération Serval in January 2013 in Mali) and within France’s borders (Opération Sentinelle , which followed the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris), seems to recast the military as the forge of the national community. The evolution of the political uses of the military forces in France shows how ambivalent the antiterrorist resources are in the contemporary civil–military game.
Article
From Elections to Democracy in Hard Times
Anna M. Meyerrose, Thomas Edward Flores, and Irfan Nooruddin
The end of the Cold War, heralded as the ideological triumph of (Western) liberal democracy, was accompanied by an electoral boom and historically high levels of economic development. More recently, however, democratic progress has stalled, populism has been on the rise, and a number of democracies around the world are either backsliding or failing entirely. What explains this contemporary crisis of democracy despite conditions theorized to promote democratic success?
Research on democratization and democracy promotion tends to focus predominantly on elections. Although necessary for democracy, free and fair elections are more effective at promoting democratic progress when they are held in states with strong institutions, such as those that can guarantee the rule of law and constraints on executive power. However, increased globalization and international economic integration have stunted the development of these institutions by limiting states’ economic policy options, and, as a result, their fiscal policy space. When a state’s fiscal policy space—or, its ability to collect and spend revenue—is limited, governments are less able to provide public goods to citizens, politicians rely on populist rather than ideological appeals to win votes, and elections lose their democratizing potential.
Additional research from a political–economic framework that incorporates insights from studies on state building and institutions with recent approaches to democratization and democracy promotion, which focus predominantly on elections, is needed. Such a framework provides avenues for additional research on the institutional aspects of ongoing democratization and democratic backsliding.
Article
Frontline Workers in Crisis Management
Jori Pascal Kalkman
Crises are uncertain and disorderly situations, which temporarily destabilize power relations and impede centralized control over operational crisis responders (e.g., firefighters, police officers, paramedics). Consequently, responders wield considerable autonomy and have room to act on their own initiative. They make crucial decisions in frontline crisis operations based on their situational understanding and professional expertise. As such, they are similar to other “frontline workers” (or street-level bureaucrats) in government service. Their important work has attracted increasing attention in crisis management literature, in which three tensions have emerged.
The first tension revolves around the nature and extent of frontline discretion. In some studies, these frontline responders are presented as implementers who are considerably constrained by extensive rules, planned routines, and detailed protocols. Other studies, instead, emphasize the independent and proactive behaviors of frontline workers who use their discretionary space to shape crisis response efforts. The second tension centers on the reasons for discretionary actions. Typically, crisis scholars analyze social and rule-based pressures on frontline workers to explain their discretionary actions as they implement public policy. Critics, instead, build on responders’ own stories to grasp their meaning-making attempts and use this as a basis for understanding why and how responders enact their discretionary practices. The final tension concerns the advantages and disadvantages of frontline worker discretion. There is a widespread belief that frontline discretion in crisis response enables much-needed improvisation, creativity, and flexibility, but increased discretion may also raise legitimacy questions and potentially burden frontline workers with complex ethical dilemmas.
To move the understanding of frontline workers in crisis management forward, further research is required in several areas. Empirically, frontline workers are increasingly working in transboundary crisis networks, so that more research is necessary to understand how such crisis networks affect frontline discretion. Theoretically, literature on frontline work in crisis management has remained by and large isolated from other micro-level theories on crisis management, even though there are opportunities for fruitful cross-fertilization with adjacent literatures.
Article
Future Scenarios of the European Union
Brigid Laffan
Debate on the future of the European Union (EU) never abates because the Union is a polity characterized by considerable change in its internal and external environment. Scenarios are an important tool in mapping possible futures for the Union as they bring underlying trends into focus. Four scenarios on the future of the EU are presented: disintegration, piecemeal adjustment, functional federalism, and a United States of Europe. The political and policy battle concerning the future of the Union is between scenario piecemeal adjustment, the dominant response to the crisis and to events on Europe’s borders, and functional federalism, defined as more integration but in defined fields. Piecemeal adjustment represents a Union that muddles through, incremental reform, whereas functional federalism represents a Union that garners sufficient political capacity to be more strategic in particular functional areas. Systemic disintegration is regarded as unlikely, but partial disintegration may occur because of the exit of the United Kingdom, challenges to a number of EU regimes, and the threats to the Union’s normative order from some member states. A united states of Europe, is highly unlikely as the member states are not in favor of transforming the Union into a state-like federation. The degree of contestation about the future of the EU precludes a transformation of the system at this juncture. Three intervening factors will have a major impact on the future of the EU: the profound changes in the global environment, turbulent politics in the member states, and the Franco-German relationship as a source of leadership in the Union.
