Making decisions is a complex and often problem-ridden process in a union of almost 30 member states. Most political science research hence discusses aspects of either decision-making or contents of specific EU policies. However, intricacies do not end when the governments and the European Parliament come to an agreement about, for example, regulative standards in a given policy. In actual fact, it is all but clear that the rules decided on the top layer of the European multi-level system will be implemented on the lower levels, ranging from the central governments of member states down to local communities. Multi-facetted issues related to the actual practice of implementing EU rules, and the Commission’s tough job in controlling this compound process, need to be addressed, while also evaluating the social science coverage of the topic. Research has a strong bias toward looking into the early phases of the implementation of EU law as opposed to the later ones, a trend which has only somewhat softened in the “new school” of relevant studies. A hardly researched but increasingly relevant factor in non-compliance with EU law is unwillingness by national governments. Therefore, it is important to consider the state of the rule of law in several member states and democratic backsliding—both essential for a healthy European integration process.
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Applying, Enforcing, and Implementing European Union Rules
Gerda Falkner
Article
Archives in the Study of Public Policy and Administration
Grace Jaramillo
Archives, including primary documents such as meeting minutes, memoranda, white papers, blueprints, drafts for laws, and acts, are a crucial part of a consistent research inquiry that provide significant understanding of the public-policy processes in public administration. Within qualitative methods for studying public policy and public administration, archives are a key step of the process-tracing method for comparative historical analysis.
Archival research is the backbone of any process-tracing exercise. Using archives for public administration studies requires rigorous planning. It starts with the definition of a time horizon of analysis that sets the dates over which the analysis will be performed. The time horizon will also help design the types of documents and indicators needed to identify the decision-making process, along with the goals and the budget performance that will accompany the policy decision. The key elements of time, sequence, selection, and classification of archives in public-policy studies determine the causal process mechanisms within a public-policy process. Identifiers, data-mining software, and sequencing are additional tools for improving classification and interpretation.
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Asylum Policy and European Union Politics
Ariadna Ripoll Servent and Natascha Zaun
Since the crisis of 2015/2016, asylum has become the focus of attention in the European Union (EU). The right to seek refuge raises issues of sovereignty and control of the territory; hence, with the gradual integration of European member states into a single area free of internal borders, there has been a functional pressure to harmonize domestic asylum policies. However, this process of integration continues to be highly contested on two main axes: the extent of harmonization (how much should the EU do in the area of asylum) and the content of the policies (should the emphasis lie on territorial security or individual rights). The tension between this “core state power” status and the EU’s international obligations has shaped both policy developments and academic debates since the emergence of asylum as an EU policy field in the mid-1990s.
The integration of asylum policies is intimately linked to the emergence of Schengen as a borderless zone. Indeed, the idea that, in a Europe without borders, member states cannot control the flow of migrants led national governments to find common rules on ascribing responsibility for international protection claims. The rules agreed in the Dublin Convention of 1990 have become the core pillar that structures the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This system aims to harmonize the definition of a refugee and the procedures and rights that need to be followed when considering asylum requests, as well as the conditions for receiving asylum seekers (e.g., housing, access to healthcare, and the job market). This process of harmonization has not been uncontested: while the first legislative phase (2001–2005) remained highly intergovernmental and was characterized by little progress being made in the approximation of domestic asylum systems, the second phase (2008–2013) showed an increased reluctance of member states to strengthen the powers of the EU in this field. As a result, the CEAS has been epitomized by faulty implementation and weak approximation—especially among those member states that did not have strong asylum systems in place before integration began. These gaps have left the CEAS in a dangerous position, since they have created incentives for those who benefit the least from EU cooperation to bypass their obligations. There, the principles underpinning the Dublin regime have been at the core of the functional crises that have recurrently emerged in the EU. The so-called “asylum crisis” has shown the weaknesses of the CEAS as well as the incapacity of member states to reform the system and find a solution that addresses the current imbalances. The main solutions have come via externalization, whereby the EU has sought to strengthen the responsibility of third countries like Turkey and Libya.
These trends have also been the focus of attention in this highly interdisciplinary field. Debates have generally concentrated on either the internal or the external dimension of EU policy-making. When it comes to the internal dimension, early scholarship centered on the process of integration and the development of asylum into a new policy field. They showed how the major drivers of integration followed functional logics of spillover from the single market and Schengen—but that the nature of this policy area called for different political dynamics. This process remained highly intergovernmental until the early 2000s, which gave interior ministers the power to escape domestic constraints (e.g., civil society, national parliaments, and courts) and shape EU policies in relative isolation. This does not mean, however, that this intergovernmental process was uncontentious. Indeed, it has been shown how the core principles of EU asylum respond to a public goods logic, whereby member states try to shift their responsibility for asylum seekers away from their territory and onto that of their neighbors. Although the idea of “burden-sharing” (and hence a generalized negative perception of asylum) is shared by most member states, the processes of uploading and downloading policies between the domestic and the EU level have been more complicated than just building a “Fortress Europe.” Among those who were traditional recipients of asylum seekers and had strong asylum systems, there has been a clear game of regulatory competition that has sometimes led to a race to the bottom. In comparison, those that had no experience with international protection and lacked a strong asylum system have generally struggled to adapt to EU standards, which has reinforced the imbalances and weaknesses of the Dublin regime. Given these dynamics, most scholars expected the shift to a fully supranational decision-making process to produce far-reaching policy changes and have a rights-enhancing effect. The outcomes have not always fulfilled expectations, which underlines the importance of opening up the black box of preference formation in the EU institutions and member states. What scholars do agree on is that policy outputs on the EU level have often failed to materialize into policy outcomes on the domestic level, which has led to processes of informal adaptation and the strengthening of EU operational agencies like Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO). In addition, these internal failures have pushed the EU to externalize border controls as well as push the responsibility for international protection toward third countries. There has been a clear case of policy diffusion toward neighboring countries, but also an increased dynamic of policy convergence among hosting countries like Australia and the USA. These policies tend to emphasize exclusionary practices, notably extraterritorial processing and border control—leading to major questions about the survival of asylum as an international human right in the years to come.
These trends show that asylum continues to be a highly contested EU policy both in its internal and external dimensions. We need, therefore, to look more closely at the impact of polarization and politicization on EU policy-making as well as on how they might affect the role played by the EU and its member states in global debates about migration and the right to seek asylum.
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Avoiding Blame in Policy Crises in Different Institutional Settings
Minou De Ruiter and Sanneke Kuipers
Policy crises often lead to “framing contests,” in which officeholders, opponents, media, and the public at large aim to interpret the crisis in question, explain its cause, attribute responsibility, and agree on ways to address harm caused. More often than not, these contests turn into blame games for the incumbent officeholder. Formal and informal institutional factors can shape blame avoidance options of officeholders, and influence the outcomes of these crisis-induced blame games in terms of blame escalation, policy responses, and political sanctions.
First, formal institutions shape officeholders’ incentives for arguing that they are not responsible for the crisis or should not be punished for its occurrence. Studies in the field of welfare state retrenchment and ministerial resignations have analyzed the blame avoidance options of governments and the survival rates of officeholders in various institutional settings. These studies have provided evidence that institutional complexity and policy-making authority help explaining pathways of blame management. In single-party governments, the accountability chain is more clear and prime ministers have a stronger electoral incentive to sack failing and unpopular ministers. However, a more restrictive interpretation of formal ministerial responsibility for administrative or implementation failures, along with the delegation of policy execution to agencies at arm’s length, can work as a protective shield in blame games for the officeholders and reinforce policy inertia. Consociational systems with multiparty coalitions often show an opposite effect.
Second, institutionalized norms, also known as “the way we do things around here,” affect blame avoidance behavior available to officeholders. Studies which have taken “cultural-institutional” approaches to accountability studies have shown that informal accountability actors, fora, and norms about appropriate behavior shape blame processes. Actors in consociational systems with multiparty coalitions often consider consensus-oriented and nonconfrontational behavior, such as attempts to appease the opposition with policy reparations, as more appropriate responses to blame than those in systems with more elite polarization. In addition, officeholders are increasingly held to account by actors who solely have an informal role in blame games, such as the media and interest groups. Therefore, the extent of mediatization and increased polarization plays a major role in how different political contexts “process” blame.
Third, other relevant noninstitutional factors for blame avoidance behavior are important, such as the nature and timing of the crisis and involvement of other actors in the blame game. Issue salience and proximity affect the potential for blame escalations and the options for blame management by both office holders and their opponents. Prior reputation of incumbent politicians helps them to draw on leadership capital to deflect blame. If the timing of a blame game coincides with upcoming elections, blame is more likely to escalate and lead to political sanctions.
To further understanding of the role of institutional factors in crisis-induced blames games, future research should focus on blame games where institutions themselves are questioned, contested, or in-flux.
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Bounded Rationality in Public Administration
JoBeth Shafran, Bryan D. Jones, and Connor Dye
Bounded rationality is the notion that while humans want to be fully rational beings and weigh the costs and benefits when making a decision, they cannot do so due to cognitive and emotional limitations. The role of human nature in the study and design of organizations can be examined through three general approaches that are explained using metaphors: organization as machine, organization as hierarchy, and organization as canal. The organization-as-machine approach ignores the principles of bounded rationality by assuming the organizational members perform straightforward cost–benefit responses to the incentives put forward by the operators. Later developments in organizational scholarship incorporate elements of bounded rationality and allowed researchers to link human cognitive capacities to the basic organizational features, giving us two new conceptions of organization: organization as hierarchy and organization as canal. Organization as hierarchy focuses on the organization’s use of subunits to create divisions of labor to expand the capacity to process information and problem-solve. Organization as canal recognizes that the weaknesses of human cognition are still channeled into the organizational structure, making it difficult for organizations to update their preferences and assumptions as they receive new information. These principles of bounded rationality in organizational theory can be applied to policy-making institutions. Hierarchical organizations delegate information processing to the subunits, allowing them to attend to the various policy environments and process incoming information. While the collective organization attends to many issues at once, the rules and procedures that are present within the organization and the cognitive limits of decision makers, prevent proportional information processing. Political institutions are unable to respond efficiently to changes in the environment. Thus, organizational adjustment to the environment is characterized as disjointed and episodic as opposed to smooth and incremental. Punctuated equilibrium theory applies these tenets of bounded rationality to a theory of policy change. Congress has been a vehicle for studying bounded rationality in organizations and theories of policy change, as it is a formal institution with bureaucratic elements and is subject to the constraints faced by any formal organization.
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Bureaucracy in Latin America
John Polga-Hecimovich
The bureaucracy is a central body in the effective functioning of democracy and oversight of the rule of law, and knowledge of how public agencies interact with politics and effect policy implementation is crucial in understanding the “black box” of the state. However, this body of non-elected officials can only fulfill its mandate and achieve good governance if it meets certain conditions, such as technical expertise, a clear organizational hierarchy, meritocratic recruitment for personnel staffing, as well as political support, resources, and the autonomy to devise solutions based on expertise. Unfortunately for Latin America, its bureaucratic agencies have seldom enjoyed these conditions. Instead, public administration in the region has been characterized by patronage appointments, patrimonialism, and a weak capacity to execute public policies.
Yet this blanket depiction of the Latin American bureaucracy obscures a great deal more diversity—as well as the fact that Latin American bureaucrats and public agencies are more dynamic and responsive than they are often portrayed. To begin, the size and role of the public administration have evolved constantly throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, growing under statist development policies of the mid-20th century before shrinking under neoliberalism in the 1990s and again growing during the 2000s in some countries. Moreover, the quality of the bureaucracy to efficiently provide services and implement policy varies by country, over time, and even within countries among agencies. This means that there is also variation in the scope and quality of the bureaucracy’s chief functions of policymaking, regulation, and implementation. In fact, politicians and bureaucrats in the region have found a number of creative solutions to agency weakness. Moving forward, politicians can guarantee even better bureaucratic performance by addressing some enduring challenges, such as public sector corruption and an institutional setup that favors short-term policymaking.
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The Capacity of Decentralization to Promote Democracy and Development in Africa
Amy R. Poteete
The multifaceted nature of decentralization, democracy, and development renders relationships among them ambivalent and conditional. It is certainly possible to decentralize in ways that foster local democracy and improvements in socioeconomic well-being. The empirical record, however, is mixed, and not only because the phenomena of interest have multiple dimensions and are open to interpretation. Whatever its form, decentralization is inherently political. In the African context, the extent and form of decentralization has been influenced by international support, the challenges of extending state authority in relatively young multi-ethnic states, and, increasingly, electoral considerations.
By the 1980s, the broad consensus in the constructive developmental role of a strong central state that had characterized the immediate postwar period gave way to a growing perception of statist approaches as impeding democracy and, especially, development. For some, decentralization implied an expansion of popular participation that promised greater sensitivity to local knowledge and more responsiveness to local concerns. Others saw decentralization as part of a broader agenda of scaling back the central state, reducing its role, its size, and its costs. Yet others saw decentralization as part of a strategy of achieving sustainable natural resource management or political stability in post-conflict societies. By the early 1990s, a wide variety of international organizations were promoting decentralization and providing both financial and technical support for decentralization reforms.
In the African context, political decisions about whether and how to decentralize reflect the continued salience of ethno-regional identities and non-state authorities, especially traditional or customary leaders. Incumbents may decentralize because they hope to consolidate their political position by crowding out or co-opting rivals, depoliticizing conflicts, or deflecting blame to subnational actors. Indeed, reforms made in the name of decentralization often strengthen the political center, at least over the short to medium term. Whether it attempts to co-opt or sideline them, decentralization interacts with and may reinforce the salience of ethno-regional identities and traditional authorities. To the extent that democracy presumes the equality of all citizens, regardless of ascribed status or identity, the reinforcement of ethno-regional identities and unelected authorities threatens democracy.
The international spread of decentralization reforms coincided with the increasing prevalence of multiparty elections. In countries that hold elections, electoral considerations inevitably influence political interests in decentralization. Central government incumbents may view decentralization as a way to keep voters happy by improving access to and the quality of public services, as a form of political insurance, or as strengthening rivals. Whether incumbents and challengers view decentralization as a threat or an opportunity depends on not only the form of decentralization under consideration, but also their estimations of their competitiveness in elections at various levels (national, regional, local) and the interaction between the spatial distribution of electoral support and the electoral system. Electoral dynamics and considerations also influence the implementation and consequences of decentralization, perhaps especially when political rivals control different levels of government. Whether decentralization promotes democracy and development hinges on not only the form of decentralization, but also how broader political dynamics condition decentralization in practice.
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Centralization and Decentralization: Compatible Governance Concepts and Practices
Eva M. Witesman
The extent to which governance structures are centralized or decentralized is a key consideration for public administrators. While centralization and decentralization seem to represent opposite approaches to the structure of public organizations, the two frequently co-exist simultaneously in what is alternately deemed a comfortable coexistence or a paradoxical tension. Public institution reform efforts may call for increased centralizing forces (such as hierarchy, unification, and governance) or decentralizing ones (such as marketization, devolution of power, deconcentration, and diversification).
Public administrators calling for structural reform are often driven toward either centralization or decentralization by particular sets of public values. Values such as accountability, power, and efficiency favor centralized governance, while values such as responsiveness, engagement, and innovation favor decentralization. Thus, the design of public administration structures and processes frequently exist as an expression of value-based norms. Both centralization and decentralization are associated with distinct advantages for achieving specific public value goals. Conversely, each approach has unique weaknesses that create opportunities for corruption.
The pursuit of public value goals and the avoidance of corruption are two primary drivers that motivate structural reform. While structural reforms may be viewed as swings of a pendulum between two extreme ideal states (fully centralized or fully decentralized), a growing consensus in the scholarship suggests that centralized and decentralized structures are internally compatible and complementary. In other words, both centralized and decentralized structures frequently co-exist within the same institutions, often creating a dynamic tension between values. This creates an increasingly complex structural paradigm for the expression of public values. The result is that many governance structures appear to be evolving toward new models in which elements of both centralized and decentralized control are observed simultaneously.
Article
Climate and Environmental Crises
Victor Galaz
Climate change is increasingly being framed as a “climate crisis.” Such a crisis could be viewed both to unfold in the climate system, as well as to be induced by it in diverse areas of society. Following from current understandings of modern crises, it is clear that climate change indeed can be defined as a “crisis.” As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5oC special report elaborates, the repercussions of a warming planet include increased food insecurity, increased frequency and intensity of severe droughts, extreme heat waves, the loss of coral reef ecosystems and associated marine species, and more. It is also important to note that a range of possible climate-induced crises (through, e.g., possible increased food insecurity and weather extremes) will not be distributed evenly, but will instead disproportionally affect already vulnerable social groups, communities, and countries in detrimental ways.
The multifaceted dimensions of climate change allow for multiple interpretations and framings of “climate crisis,” thereby forcing us to acknowledge the deeply contextual nature of what is understood as a “crisis.” Climate change and its associated crises display a number of challenging properties that stem from its connections to basically all sectors in society, its propensity to induce and in itself embed nonlinear changes such as “tipping points” and cascading shocks, and its unique and challenging long-term temporal dimensions. The latter pose particularly difficult decision-making and institutional challenges because initial conditions (in this case, carbon dioxide emissions) do not result in immediate or proportional responses (say, global temperature anomalies), but instead play out through feedbacks among the climate system, oceans, the cryosphere, and changes in forest biomes, with some considerable delays in time. Additional challenges emerge from the fact that early warnings of pending so-called “catastrophic shifts” face numerous obstacles, and that early responses are undermined by a lack of knowledge, complex causality, and severe coordination challenges.
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Cohesion Policy and European Union Politics
Simona Piattoni and Laura Polverari
Cohesion policy is one of the longest-standing features of the European construction; its roots have been traced as far back as the Treaty of Rome. Over time, it has become one of the most politically salient and sizable policies of the European Union, absorbing approximately one-third of the EU budget. Given its principles and “shared management” approach, it mobilizes many different actors at multiple territorial scales, and by promoting “territorial cooperation” it has encouraged public authorities to work together, thus overcoming national borders. Furthermore, cohesion policy is commonly considered the most significant expression of solidarity between member states and the most tangible way in which EU citizens “experience” the European Union.
While retaining its overarching mission of supporting lagging regions and encouraging the harmonious development of the Union, cohesion policy has steadily evolved and adapted in response to new internal and external challenges, such as those generated by subsequent rounds of enlargement, globalization, and shifting political preferences regarding what the EU should be about. Just as the policy has evolved over time in terms of its shape and priorities, so have the theoretical understandings of economic development that underpin its logic, the nature of intergovernmental relations, and the geographical and administrative space(s) within which the EU polity operates. For example, whereas overcoming the physical barriers to economic development were the initial targets in the 1960s and 1970s, and redesigning manufacturing clusters were those of the 1980s and 1990s, fostering advanced knowledge and technological progress became the focus of cohesion policy in the new century. At the same time, cohesion policy also inspired or even became a testing ground for new theories, such as multilevel governance, Europeanization, or smart specialization. Given its redistributive nature, debates have proliferated around its impact, added value, and administrative cost, as well as the institutional characteristics that it requires to function. These deliberations have, in turn, informed the policy in its periodic transformations.
Political factors have also played a key role in shaping the evolution of the policy. Each reform has been closely linked to the debates on the European budget, where the net positions of member states have tended to dominate the agenda. An outcome of this process has been the progressive alignment with wider strategic goals beyond cohesion and convergence and the strengthening of linkages with the European Semester. However, some argue that policymakers have failed to properly consider the perverse effects of austerity on regional disparities. These unresolved tensions are particularly significant in a context denoted by a rise of populist and nativist movements, increasing social discontent, and strengthening Euroskepticism. As highlighted by research on its communication, cohesion policy may well be the answer for winning back the hearts and minds of European citizens. Whether and how this may be achieved will likely be the focus of research in the years ahead.
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Comitology: Controlling Everyday Rule-Making in the European Union
Jens Blom-Hansen
Rules issued by the European Commission, based on powers delegated by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, constitute the vast majority of all EU rules. They regulate the daily operation of common policies in all areas. Because the devil is often in the details, Commission rules are tightly controlled by the member states. This traditionally takes place in the so-called comitology system, which is a system of 200–300 member state committees set up to control and approve draft Commission rules. Comitology dates back to the early 1960s, when the Common Agricultural Policy was introduced. The institutional setup of the comitology system is a four-tiered structure composed of Treaty rules, framework rules, daily legislation, and the formal and informal working practices in the individual comitology committees. The Treaty of Lisbon gave the comitology system a major overhaul and introduced new types of Commission rules, delegated acts, and implementing acts. Research on comitology has focused on the purpose and design of the system and its daily workings. Relevant research questions for future studies include the legislative choice between delegated and implementing acts, the daily workings of the comitology committees, lobbying of comitology committees by interest groups, introduction of comitology through the back door in the delegated acts system, and the relationship between comitology and the new rule-making role of European agencies.
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The Common Fisheries Policy
Troels Jacob Hegland and Jesper Raakjaer
The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is rooted in the Treaty of Rome. After its completion in 1983, the policy framework was gradually reformed through decennial reviews in 1993, 2003, and 2014. Due to geopolitical, physiographic, and historical reasons, the EU implementation of the CFP is most developed in the North Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea, and less developed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. However, the CFP applies throughout European Union (EU) waters, which that are treated as a “common pond.” The CFP has been heavily contested since its introduction, and over long periods was characterized as a management system in crisis. Historically, the CFP has arguably struggled to perform and the policy’s ability to meet its objectives has not uncommonly been undermined by factors such as internally contradictory decisions and inefficient implementation. Since the turn of the century, the policy has changed its course by incrementally institutionalizing principles for a more environmentally orientated and scientifically based fisheries management approach. In general, in the latest decade, fisheries have become increasingly sustainable in both environmental and economic terms. An increasing number of fish stocks under the CFP are being exploited at sustainable levels—a development that is likely to continue, as fish stocks are coming to be more commonly managed along the lines of science-based multi-annual management plans. Consequently, many fishing fleets, particularly those deployed in northern waters, have shown good economic performance in recent years. This development has been further facilitated by the introduction of market-based management principles; in most member states these have been implemented by granting de facto ownership to fishing rights for free in the name of ecological and economic sustainability. This has, however, in many cases also led to huge wealth generation for a small privileged group of large-scale fishers at the expense of small-scale fisheries and smaller fishing communities, as well as society at large; this situation has led to calls for both a fairer distribution of fishing rights—to protect the small-scale sector—and for a resource rent or exploitation fee to be collected for the benefit of society at large, which is the true owner of fishing resources. Consequently, social sustainability, understood as the improved well-being of fishing communities and a fairer sharing out of the benefits derived from fisheries resources, should be a subject for the CFP to consider in the future.
Article
Communist State Administrative Structures
Astrid Hedin
Communist models of state administration constitute a type or “family” whose core logic and design differ fundamentally from Western standards of rule-bound, impartial, and transparent administration, at arm’s length from political control.
The most significant feature of communist-type administration is the Communist Party’s aspiration to merge politics and administration in all spheres of society. The so-called nomenclature system of cadre appointment ensures that politically reliable administrators occupy the influential positions within state and local administration, the military and security sector, state-owned enterprises, associations, media, cultural life—and the Communist Party organization itself. The central nomenclature system branches out into new pyramids at lower levels, where local managers appoint cadre. The linchpin of this system is the personnel dossier, which collects the individual administrator’s political and professional evaluations and follows the individual throughout their career.
A second distinguishing feature of communist administrative structures is their web-shaped complexity. Under the principle of democratic centralism, communist administration is shaped like a sheaf of hierarchical strings of command, which are all controlled from the center and monitor and influence each other. At each level, hierarchical steering takes precedence, but horizontal controls are encompassing. Administrative managers—including regional and local governors, company directors, media heads, and university chancellors—are appointed by and under their superiors’ command. Simultaneously, they are under supervision by regional and internal Communist Party organizations.
A third key feature of the communist administrative model is the practice of wide-ranging secrecy. In communist administration, vital rules, decrees, and instructions can be secret, for the eyes of security-screened cadre only. For example, throughout history, the structure of nomenclature systems has been kept secret. Little is known about how they function. An important exception is the former East Germany, where historical research on many aspects of communist administration has made singular progress based on the archives, which were opened for research after democratization in 1989–1990.
Article
Constitutions and the Rule of Law in Asia
Maartje De Visser, Victor V. Ramraj, and Arun Thiruvengadam
In the modern world, formal constitutions are ubiquitous as the legal foundation of the state, standing at the apex of the legal order. As they emerged in a North Atlantic context, constitutional law and the ideal of constitutionalism came to be associated with a liberal model of government in which the state, composed of its leaders and public officials, was limited by law. This model of a constrained government became encapsulated in the ideal of “rule of law”—distinguishing between autocratic systems that were ruled by “men,” on the one hand, and systems in which political leaders were constrained by law, on the other hand. In this model, the courts typically play a critical institutional role in keeping state power within constitutional boundaries. Although this “liberal” model of constitutionalism and the rule of law continue to dominate legal and political thought, the proliferation of postcolonial legal and political regimes, and competing understandings of government and the role of the state, have challenged the dominant liberal understanding of constitutions and the rule of law. Many of these challenges come from Asia, which encompasses a stunning variety of political regimes that shape the environment in which constitutionalism and the ideal of the rule of law acquire meaning. This makes Asia an ideal site from which to explore the contested notions of constitutions, constitutionalism, and the rule of law as powerful explanatory tools and, in some cases, important normative correctives to the liberal model.
Article
Consumer Policy and European Union Politics
Hans-W. Micklitz
The rise of consumer policy is inextricably linked to the emergence of the consumer society after the Second World War. From the mid-1970s the EU became engaged in the issue. It used first and foremost legal means, directives, and regulations. The actors were no longer nation-states, governments, national parliaments, national courts, and national consumer organizations; they became the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, the European Court of Justice, European organizations, research institutions, and consultancy firms, which interact in a multilevel economy and society.
Article
Corruption in African Politics
Tom Lodge
Survey evidence indicates that political corruption is more prevalent in Africa than in any other global region, though there is also evidence of considerable variation between countries in degrees of corruption and where it is most likely to be located. Traditional explanations for the frequency of corrupt political behavior emphasized the effects of conflicting values that were a consequence of the imposition of modern forms of bureaucratic government upon societies in which authority rested upon personalized relationships. Contemporary African corruption’s historic roots and its variation across the continent may be the effect of the disjuncture or “incongruency” between colonial and successor postcolonial states and the precolonial political settings upon which they were imposed. Modern neo-patrimonialism is a coping response by rulers and citizens to conditions fostered by economic scarcity and institutional incapacity. Since the 1990s, democratization and liberalization have supplied fresh incentives and opportunities for venal politicians and officials. And even among Africa’s more capable and resourceful states, the institutional fluidity generated by democratic transition and economic reform has opened up possibilities of systematically organized state capture. Consequences of corruption certainly further impoverish poor people, and it is likely that corruption also limits economic growth and distorts government efforts to promote development. It is arguable that in the past, corruption may have helped to facilitate political stability but this is less likely in 2018, as evidence emerges of its corrosive effects on public trust in institutions. African anti-corruption efforts are constrained by the extent to which political power is exercised through patronage but there are instances of successful action, sometimes the byproduct of factional struggles within the political elite. As of 2018, there is no clear evidence of trends in success or failure in the work of African anti-corruption agencies.
Article
Critical Infrastructure Disruption and Crisis Management
Eric Stern and Brian Nussbaum
Explicitly considering major critical infrastructure disruptions from the perspective of crisis/crisis management enables policymakers, analysts, and researchers to draw inspiration from an extensive multidisciplinary literature. Furthermore, this approach takes infrastructure failures or disruptions, and provides crucial institutional, economic and social context that is too often ignored when such challenges are treated as exclusively technical problems. The added value from this approach enables analysts and decision makers to understand the complexity of such failures and consider the many levers—technical, economic and social—that might be used to respond to them. Attempts to understand infrastructure failures as crises are not new, but the literature—like the field of practice—is to some extent underdeveloped and continuously evolving (e.g., with regard to the challenges associated with cybersecurity), generating a need for a more comprehensive approach to understanding the leadership tasks associated with the management of such crisis events in dynamic and complex organizational environments.
Article
Democratic Backsliding in the European Union
Nick Sitter and Elisabeth Bakke
Democratic backsliding in European Union (EU) member states is not only a policy challenge for the EU, but also a potential existential crisis. If the EU does too little to deal with member state regimes that go back on their commitments to democracy and the rule of law, this risks undermining the EU from within. On the other hand, if the EU takes drastic action, this might split the EU. This article explores the nature and dynamics of democratic backsliding in EU member states, and analyses the EU’s capacity, policy tools and political will to address the challenge. Empirically it draws on the cases that have promoted serious criticism from the Commission and the European Parliament: Hungary, Poland, and to a lesser extent, Romania. After reviewing the literature and defining backsliding as a gradual, deliberate, but open-ended process of de-democratization, the article analyzes the dynamics of backsliding and the EU’s difficulties in dealing with this challenge to liberal democracy and the rule of law. The Hungarian and Polish populist right’s “illiberal” projects involve centralization of power in the hands of the executive and the party, and limiting the independence of the judiciary, the media and civil society. This has brought both governments into direct confrontation with the European Commission. However, the EU’s track record in managing backsliding crises is at best mixed. This comes down to a combination of limited tools and lack of political will. Ordinary infringement procedures offer a limited toolbox, and the Commission has proven reluctant to use even these tools fully. At the same time, party groups in the European Parliament and many member state governments have been reluctant to criticize one of their own, let alone go down the path of suspending aspect of a states’ EU membership. Hence the EU’s dilemma: it is caught between undermining its own values and cohesion through inaction on one hand, and relegating one or more member states it to a second tier—or even pushing them out altogether—on the other.
Article
Denmark and the European Union
Anders Wivel
Denmark’s relationship with the European Union (EU) takes its point of departure in the Danish self-perception of being a minor power with a superior societal model. This calls for both adaptation to the power realities of the European political space and resistance against infringements of the Danish societal model, occasionally supplemented by attempts at actively influencing EU policy-making. Denmark’s general EU posture is reactive and defensive with a stronger focus on defending autonomy than influencing the future of the EU. It is pragmatic and functionalist, seeking primarily to utilize EU membership to secure the economic sustainability of the welfare state. Danish EU policy is increasingly characterized by dualism, navigating the integration dilemma in a way that allows for simultaneous protection against political integration and uploading of Danish interests to the EU level.
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Diplomacy in Foreign Policy
Kenneth Weisbrode
Diplomacy’s role in foreign policy is hampered by multiple understandings of what diplomacy is and does. A broad definition of diplomacy holds that it encompasses more than the promotion of peaceful international relations. Instead, it applies to the sum of those relations—peaceful, hostile, and everything in between. Thus, foreign relations—so long as they involve the interests, direction, and actions of a sovereign power—may be regarded as being synonymous with diplomatic relations, whereby foreign policy relates to the theory and practice of setting diplomatic priorities; planning for contingencies; advancing strategic, operational, and tactical diplomatic aims; and adjusting those aims to domestic and foreign constraints. This conception of diplomacy is functional: it emphasizes the roles of diplomats and recognizes that many other people perform these roles besides official envoys; and it illustrates that diplomatic settings—and the means, methods, and tools of diplomacy—undergo continuous change. The basic mediating purpose of diplomacy, however, has endured, as has much of its institutional apparatus—embassies, ambassadors, treaties, and so on. This is likely to remain the case so long as there are multiple polities in the world, all having to relate to one another.
