TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - New governance and the displacement of Social Europe: the case of the European Semester JF - European Constitutional Law Review N2 - Has the European Semester led to a displacement of Social Europe, or to the development of social policy through fiscal processes and actors? – Potential for Semester to increase soft law’s binding effects or ‘socialise’ EU policy-making – Positive effects severely limited by the Semester’s overall goals: fiscal stabilisation and the creation of increasingly uniform economic policies – Dilemma for Social Europe: how can an autonomous EU social policy be (re) established without risking marginalisation? Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1574019618000081 SN - 1574-0196 N1 - Published online: 15 March 2018 VL - 14 IS - 1 SP - 191 EP - 209 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo T1 - When politics prevails: Parties, elections and loyalty in the European Parliament JF - European Journal of Political Research N2 - In many political systems, legislators serve multiple principals who compete for their loyalty in legislative votes. This article explores the political conditions under which legislators choose between their competing principals in multilevel systems, with a focus on how election proximity shapes legislative behaviour across democratic arenas. Empirically, the effect of electoral cycles on national party delegations’ ‘collective disloyalty’ with their political groups in the European Parliament (EP) is analysed. It is argued that election proximity changes the time horizons, political incentives and risk perceptions of both delegations and their principals, ‘punctuating’ cost‐benefit calculations around defection as well as around controlling, sanctioning and accommodating. Under the shadow of elections, national delegations’ collective disloyalty with their transnational groups should, therefore, increase. Using a new dataset with roll‐call votes cast under legislative codecision by delegations between July 1999 and July 2014, the article shows that the proximity of planned national and European elections drives up disloyalty in the EP, particularly by delegations from member states with party‐centred electoral rules. The results also support a ‘politicisation’ effect: overall, delegations become more loyal over time, but the impact of election proximity as a driver of disloyalty is strongest in the latest parliament analysed (i.e., 2009–2014). Furthermore, disloyalty is more likely in votes on contested and salient legislation, and under conditions of Euroscepticism; by contrast, disloyalty is less likely in votes on codification files, when a delegation holds the rapporteurship and when the national party participates in government. The analysis sheds new light on electoral politics as a determinant of legislative choice under competing principals, and on the conditions under which politics ‘travels’ across democratic arenas in the European Union's multilevel polity. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12252 SN - 1475-6765.12252 VL - 57 IS - 3 SP - 563 EP - 586 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Bobić, Ana A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - Reconciling Independence and accountability at the European Central Bank: The false promise of Proceduralism JF - European Law Journal N2 - This article revisits the balancing act between independence and accountability at the European Central Bank (ECB). It contrasts procedural and substantive concepts of accountability, and challenges the mainstream idea that independence and accountability can be reconciled through narrow mandates, the indiscriminate increase of transparency, the creation of multiple channels of accountability, and the active use of judicial review. These assumptions form the pillars of a procedural type of accountability that promises to resolve the independence/accountability dilemma but fails to do so in practice. The article brings evidence to show how ECB accountability has become a complex administrative exercise that focuses on the procedural steps leading up to monetary and supervisory decisions while simultaneously limiting substantive accountability. The failure to acknowledge the trade‐off between independence and accountability (said to be ‘two sides of the same coin’) has resulted in a tendency to privilege the former over the latter. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12305 SN - 1468-0386 VL - 25 IS - 1 SP - 75 EP - 93 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Augenstein, Daniel A1 - Thielbörger, Pierre T1 - The UNGPs in the European Union: The Open Coordination of Business and Human Rights? JF - Business and Human Rights Journal N2 - The article examines the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the European Union via National Action Plans (NAPs). We argue that some of the shortcomings currently observed in the implementation process could effectively be addressed through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) – a governance instrument already used by the European Union (EU) in other policy domains. The article sketches out the polycentric global governance approach envisaged by the UNGPs and discusses the institutional and policy background of their implementation in the EU. It provides an assessment of EU member states’ NAPs on business and human rights, as benchmarked against international NAP guidance, before relating experiences with the existing NAP process to the policy background and rationale of the OMC and considering the conditions for employing the OMC in the business and human rights domain. Building on a recent opinion of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, the article concludes with a concrete proposal for developing an OMC on business and human rights in the EU. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/bhj.2017.30 VL - 3 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 22 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bénassy-Quéré, Agnès A1 - Brunnermeier, Markus A1 - Enderlein, Henrik A1 - Pisani-Ferry, Jean A1 - Farhi, Emmanuel A1 - Fratzscher, Marcel A1 - Fuest, Clemens A1 - Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier A1 - Martin, Philippe A1 - Rey, Hélène A1 - Schnabel, Isabel A1 - Véron, Nicolas A1 - Weder di Mauro, Béatrice A1 - Zettelmeyer, Jéromin T1 - Reconciling risk sharing with market discipline: A constructive approach to Eurozone reform JF - CEPR Policy Insight No. 91 KW - banking union, capital markets, European governance, eurozone governance, finance & financial regulation, fiscal policy, monetary union, Sovereign debt Y1 - 2018 UR - https://cepr.org/active/publications/policy_insights/viewpi.php?pino=91 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - From Market Integration to Core State Powers. The Eurozone Crisis, the Refugee Crisis and Integration Theory JF - Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - The Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis are showcases of the problems associated with the EU's shift from market integration to the integration of core state powers. The integration of core state powers responds to similar demand factors as market integration (interdependence, externalities and spillover) but its supply is more tightly constrained by a high propensity for zero‐sum conflict, a functional requirement for centralized fiscal, coercive and administrative capacities, and high political salience. We show how these constraints structured the initial design of Economic and Monetary Union and of Schengen, made them vulnerable to crisis, and shaped policy options during the crises: they made horizontal differentiation unattractive, re‐regulation ineffective, centralized risk and burden‐sharing unfeasible, and the externalization of adjustment burdens to non‐EU actors necessary by default. In conclusion, we explore possible escape routes from the trap. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12654 VL - 56 IS - 1 SP - 178 EP - 196 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Bobić, Ana T1 - Quantitative easing at the Court of Justice – Doing whatever it takes to save the euro: Weiss and Others JF - Common Market Law Review Y1 - 2019 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-30368 UR - http://www.kluwerlawonline.com/abstract.php?area=Journals&id=COLA2019097 SN - 0165-0750 N1 - This is a post-peer-review version of an article published in Common Market Law Review. The final authenticated version is available online at http://www.kluwerlawonline.com/abstract.php?area=Journals&id=COLA2019097 VL - 56 IS - 4 SP - 1005 EP - 1040 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Lynskey, Orla A1 - Muir, Elise T1 - What is the Added Value of the Concept of the “Essence” of EU Fundamental Rights? JF - German Law Journal N2 - This Article introduces our Special Issue by posing a central question: What is the added value of the increasing prominence of the concept of the “essence” of fundamental rights in EU law? It will address this larger question in four steps: First, by examining the function of the concept in EU law and the methods for its derivation; second, by summarizing how its application diverges across EU—and international—law; third, by outlining some enduring difficulties with the essence concept; and finally, by reflecting on its future role in EU law, including its impact on other sites of legal authority—such as domestic fundamental rights, the political institutions of the EU, and international human rights law. As the other articles of this issue demonstrate, while there is not yet a coherent approach to deriving and understanding the essence of rights across the fundamental rights the EU must protects, the essence concept plays an increasingly significant role in demarcating the boundaries between the EU’s legal and political orders and between overlapping sites of legal authority. Recent developments—such as the rule of law “crises”—are likely to further amplify the importance of “essence” to EU law practice and scholarship. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2019.61 VL - 20 IS - Special Issue 6 SP - 763 EP - 778 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - The lost Spitzenkandidaten and the future of European democracy JF - Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law N2 - This editorial critically examines the decision of EU leaders not to follow the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure when recently nominating the new President of the European Commission. It does so by situating that decision in a consociational model of democracy, that seeks to share political authority rather than link it directly to electoral processes. As the editorial argues, this model leaves the EU exposed to elitist critique and sits uneasily with certain aspects of Article 17(7) TEU. The review and renewal of the Spitzenkandidaten system promised by the incoming Commission President is thus sorely needed. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X19884434 VL - 26 IS - 6 SP - 731 EP - 735 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haas, Jörg A1 - D'Erman, Valerie A1 - Schulz, Daniel F. A1 - Verdun, Amy T1 - Measuring Economic Reform Recommendations under the European Semester: ‘One Size Fits All’ or Tailoring to Member States? JF - Journal of Contemporary European Research N2 - In 2010 the European Semester was created to better coordinate fiscal and economic policies within Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union. The Semester aims to tackle economic imbalances by giving European Union (EU) member states country-specific recommendations (CSRs) regarding their public budgets as well as their wider economic and social policies with a view to enabling better policy coordination among Euro Area member states. In this article we develop a method to assess the way in which the CSRs have been addressing coordination and offer a systematic analysis of the way they have been formulated. We offer a way to code CSRs as well as one to analyse progress evaluations. Furthermore, we seek to use our results to address one of the reoccurring questions in the literature: whether the EU is pursuing a ‘one size fits all’ approach to economic policy making in the Euro Area? The findings indicate that different types of market economies and welfare states – different ‘varieties of capitalism’ – among the Euro Area members obtain different recommendations regarding different policy areas. KW - Economic governance KW - European Semester KW - Policy area KW - Varieties of capitalism Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v15i2.999 SN - 1815-347X IS - 15(2) SP - 194 EP - 211 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kreilinger, Valentin T1 - From procedural disagreement to joint scrutiny? The Interparliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance JF - Perspectives on Federalism N2 - The provision of Article 13 TSCG to create an Interparliamentary Conference was the starting point for long discussions after which national parliaments and the European Parliament eventually reached a compromise. This article pursues a two-fold objective: It first examines the different phases of interparliamentary negotiations from 2012 to 2015. On the basis of a distinction between three competing models for interparliamentary cooperation, the article shows that the two models of EP-led scrutiny and creating a collective parliamentary counterweight did not prevail: Parliaments agreed that the new Interparliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance (SECG) would follow the ‘standard’ interparliamentary conference (COSAC model). In terms of national parliaments’ actual participation, the lowest common denominator compromise has not changed the numbers of participating MPs: Attendance records are stable over time, the size of national delegations continues to vary and participating MPs are still twice as likely to be members of Budget or Finance committees than to be members of European affairs committees. KW - European Union KW - national parliaments KW - Economic Governance KW - interparliamentary cooperation Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2478/pof-2018-0035 SN - 2036-5438 IS - 10(3) SP - 155 EP - 183 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kreilinger, Valentin T1 - Scrutinising the European Semester in national parliaments: what are the drivers of parliamentary involvement? JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - How exactly are national parliaments involved in the European Semester? The stronger coordination of fiscal and economic policies in the European Union (EU) in reaction to the sovereign debt crisis has forced national parliaments to adapt their procedures. This article examines how the European Semester is scrutinised and what factors have driven parliamentary activities in the French National Assembly, the German Bundestag, the Irish Dáil and the Portuguese Assembleia between 2012 and 2017. Particularly noteworthy is that legal provisions for a parliamentary debate on the Stability Programme can be ignored in France, that the German Bundestag is much less active in the European Semester than in EU affairs or in the budget process and that the weakness of Ireland’s parliament in the annual budget procedure affects its role in the European Semester. This article therefore suggests defining minimum standards for parliamentary involvement and strengthening interparliamentary cooperation. KW - National Parliaments KW - European Semester KW - economic and monetary union KW - democratic legitimacy KW - parliamentary oversight Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2018.1450402 SN - 1477-2280 IS - 40(3) SP - 325 EP - 340 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine T1 - EU Actors under pressure: politicisation and depoliticisation as strategic responses JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - This contribution conceptualises bottom-up politicisation in Europe’s multi-level system. EU-level actors, we argue, respond strategically to the functional and political pressures ‘travelling up’ from the member states. Perceiving domestic dissensus as either constraining or enabling, actors display both self-restraint and assertiveness in their responses. Motivated by the survival of the EU as a system ‘under attack’, and by the preservation of their own substantive and procedural powers, actors choose to either politicise or depoliticise decision-making, behaviour and policy outcomes at the supranational level. As a collection, this Special Issue demonstrate that the choices actors make ‘under stress’ at the EU-level – ranging from ‘restrained depoliticisation’ to ‘assertive politicisation’ – are, indeed, conditional on how bottom-up pressures are perceived and processed. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2020.1713193 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 329 EP - 341 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bobzien, Licia T1 - Polarized perceptions, polarized preferences? Understanding the relationship between inequality and preferences for redistribution JF - Journal of European Social Policy N2 - When studying the relationship between inequality and preferences for redistribution, it is often assumed – either implicitly or explicitly – that individuals are informed about actual levels of inequality. Newer research, however, challenges this assumption and shows that perceived inequality differs from actual inequality. Empirically, these inequality perceptions are rather good predictors for preferences for redistribution. This article argues that individuals answer the standard question for measuring preferences for redistribution based on their inequality perceptions. I conduct a simple regression analysis based on two waves of the ISSP (1999 and 2009) and show that (1) inequality perceptions are systematically linked to socio-economic variables as well as to ideological beliefs rather than to actual inequality. Then, I disaggregate the variance in inequality perceptions to a part which is explainable by socio-economic and ideological determinants (the common control variables for explaining preferences for redistribution) and an unexplained part. I show that (2) the explained as well as the unexplained variance part is associated with preferences for redistribution. I argue that this finding makes considering inequality perceptions practically relevant since standard control variables do not fully account for variation in perceived inequality. KW - perceptions of inequality KW - preferences for redistribution KW - Europe Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928719879282 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rohde-Liebenau, Judith T1 - Raising European Citizens? European Identity in European Schools JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - Abstract Citizens' identification with Europe could consolidate European integration. European Schools, created for children of EU officials, should mirror the EU's vision of citizens of member states united in (national) diversity. Instead, this study reveals that European School students construct an explicitly European in‐group and deviate from EU visions by differentiating themselves from a more national and less mobile lifestyle. The article draws on qualitative content analysis of in‐depth and focus group interviews with teachers and 101 students in European Schools in Germany, Luxembourg and England. This elucidates the relationship between European schooling and this peculiar but ultimately European identity. In a dual mechanism, by ‘doing Europe’, students actively nourish a transnational social network in school; by ‘telling Europe’, students are more passively exposed to European and diverse national narratives. Both the analysis of how their European identity emerges and descriptive underpinnings show the complexity of European identity construction even under most favourable conditions. KW - - KW - European identity KW - European Schools KW - in‐group/out‐group KW - causal mechanism Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13050 SP - 1 EP - 19 ET - 2020 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haas, Jörg A1 - D'Erman, Valerie A1 - Schulz, Daniel A1 - Verdun, Amy T1 - Economic and fiscal policy coordination after the crisis: is the European Semester promoting more or less state intervention? JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - The European Union (EU) – and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particular – is often criticized as a predominantly market-oriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU’s post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, CSRs have gradually become more permissive of higher public spending and more in favour of worker protection, while the share of recommendations advocating more social protection has stagnated at a high level. KW - Country-specific recommendations KW - economic governance KW - economic and monetary union KW - European Semester KW - fiscal policy coordination Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2020.1730356 SN - 1477-2280 VL - 42 IS - 3 SP - 327 EP - 344 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut‐Akbik, Adina T1 - Q&A in legislative oversight: A framework for analysis JF - European Journal of Political Research N2 - Abstract Parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight. However, the extent to which they are effective in controlling the executive remains underspecified both theoretically and methodologically. This article advances a systematic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of parliamentary questions drawing on principal–agent theory, the public administration literature on accountability and communication research. The framework is called the ‘Q&A approach to legislative oversight’ based on the premise that the study of parliamentary questions (Q) needs to be linked to their respective answers (A) and examined together (Q&A) at the micro‐level as an exchange of claims between legislative and executive actors. Methodologically, the Q&A approach to legislative oversight offers a step‐by‐step guide for qualitative content analysis of Q&A that can be applied to different legislative oversight contexts at different levels of governance. It is argued that the effectiveness of Q&A depends on the strength of the questions asked and the responsiveness of answers provided, which are correspondingly operationalised. To illustrate the merits of the approach, the article includes a systematic case study on the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Central Bank in banking supervision (2013–2018), showing the connection between specific institutional settings and the effectiveness of parliamentary questions. KW - - KW - legislative oversight KW - parliamentary questions KW - principal–agent problems KW - European Parliament KW - European Central Bank Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12411 SP - n/a EP - n/a ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - The Post‐agencification Stage between Reforms and Crises. A Comparative Assessment of EU agencies' Budgetary Development JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies KW - - KW - EU agencies KW - agencification KW - budget KW - EU governance Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13044 SP - 1 EP - 20 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jerg, Lukas A1 - O'Reilly, Jacqueline A1 - Schulze Buschoff, Karin T1 - Adapting social protection to the needs of multiple jobholders in Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany JF - Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research N2 - Working in two or more jobs at the same time creates special needs in terms of social security that differ from those of standard dependent employees or the self-employed. To investigate how well social security systems adapt to multiple jobholders we examine three case studies of countries with different levels and trends in multiple jobholding: Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany. We review recent trends and policies to address social protection gaps for multiple jobholders in these countries prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the extent to which the emergence of the ‘platform economy’ can exacerbate multiple jobholding. We conclude that attempts to resolve the gaps in social security protection reflect distinctive characteristics of each employment system. KW - Multiple jobholding KW - platform economy KW - social security KW - COVID-19 social policies KW - Denmark Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1024258921991039 SN - 1996-7284 VL - 27 IS - 2 SP - 237 EP - 253 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bobić, Ana A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - Making sense of the “incomprehensible”: The PSPP Judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court JF - Common Market Law Review Y1 - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-36925 UR - https://kluwerlawonline.com/journalarticle/Common+Market+Law+Review/57.6/COLA2020774 VL - 57 IS - 6 SP - 1953 EP - 1998 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - Procedural vs substantive accountability in EMU governance: between payoffs and trade-offs JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - his article introduces a new normative framework for analysing accountability in the European Union’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The framework is anchored in four normative ‘goods’ that accountability is supposed to ensure: openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness, and publicness. All of these can be achieved in a procedural or substantive way, depending on whether actors are held accountable for the quality of their decision-making processes or for the actual merit of their decisions. Transposed to EMU, this conceptualisation shows both the payoffs and trade-offs of prioritising procedural accountability. Using different examples across EMU governance, the article illustrates how current mechanisms of political, legal, and administrative accountability predominantly evaluate the procedures followed by EU institutions when performing their tasks. While such an approach can bring clarity, predictability, and autonomy for the actors involved, it distracts attention from the substantive assessment of EMU decisions. The article contributes to the EMU accountability literature by going beyond principal-agent expectations of democratic control rooted in the nation-state or legal debates about principles for accountable behaviour found in EU Treaties. The EMU, and the EU more broadly, need a different perspective on accountability focused on generally-applicable standards for holding power to account. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2020.1797145 SP - 1 EP - 20 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Freudlsperger, Christian A1 - Weinrich, Martin T1 - Decentralized EU Policy Coordination in Crisis? The Case of Germany JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - Abstract Europeanization research found no general convergence towards centralized EU policy coordination, despite decentralized systems' comparatively slow and ineffective position‐taking. Does this finding hold against the threat, urgency, and uncertainty exerted by recent years' polycrisis? We posit that decentralized systems indeed persist, albeit in a three‐step reactive sequence in which situational centralization during crises dialectically reinforces decentralization in the long run. First, the prime minister's office harnesses a crisis to acquire hierarchical control of position‐taking. Second, to exploit the deep expertise of the bureaucracy and maximize its bargaining power on the EU‐level, it co‐opts a lead ministry. Third, due to the institutional underpinnings of the decentralized system, the lead ministry, rather than the prime minister's office, eventually retains the administrative capacities created in crisis. We illustrate this causal mechanism in a comparison of the German government's EU policy coordination during the Eurozone and Schengen crises. KW - - KW - European Union KW - crisis KW - policy coordination KW - reactive sequence KW - decentralization KW - Germany Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13159 SP - n/a EP - n/a ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Woźniakowski, Tomasz P. A1 - Maatsch, Aleksandra A1 - Miklin, Eric T1 - Rising to a Challenge? Ten Years of Parliamentary Accountability of the European Semester JF - Politics and Governance N2 - As a result of the euro crisis, EU economic governance has been reformed and EU institutions have gained new competences regarding national budgets, with the European Semester (the annual cycle of economic surveillance of the member states) being the most prominent example. With the Commission and the Council being the main actors, and the European Parliament playing only a minor role, a debate about the democratic legitimacy of the Semester and the role of national parliaments (NPs) in this regard has unfolded. This thematic issue, therefore, addresses the question of how parliamentary accountability of the European Semester has evolved: Have NPs met the challenge by adapting to the new situation in a way that allows them to hold the executive accountable? While the contributions to this thematic issue show significant variation across NPs, overall they reveal a rather pessimistic picture: Despite several institutional innovations concerning the reforms of internal rules and procedures, the rise of independent fiscal institutions, inter-parliamentary cooperation, and hearings with the European Commissioners, NPs have remained rather weak actors in EU economic governance also ten years after the Semester’s introduction. Whether recent changes linked to the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility introduced in response to the Covid-19 crisis will change the picture significantly remains to be examined. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i3.4690 SN - 2183-2463 VL - 9 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Woźniakowski, Tomasz P. T1 - Accountability in EU Economic Governance: European Commissioners in Polish Parliament JF - Politics and Governance N2 - This article analyses the interactions between the members of the Polish parliament with the European commissioners in the context of the European Semester, the annual cycle of economic coordination. The Commission drafts crucial documents in this process which assess the implementation of the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs): the Annual (Sustainable) Growth Survey and the Country Reports. The goal of this article is to assess how the Commission is held to account by a national parliament and how this affects the level of implementation of CSRs. The findings suggest that the Commission is accountable to this national parliament, even if the form of accountability taken is rather innovative and its policy impact limited, at both the EU (the CSRs tend to be immune to Members of [national] Parliament’s contestation) and the national level, as the implementation of CSRs seems to be independent of the level of their scrutiny. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i3.4335 SN - 2183-2463 VL - 9 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maher, Imelda A1 - Riordan, Rónán A1 - Šubic, Neza T1 - The European Arrest Warrant Before the Irish Courts: Judicial Dialogue, Mutual Trust, and the Limits of Interpretation JF - The Irish Jurist Y1 - 2022 UR - http://irishjurist.com/current.htm N1 - Research Data available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6806666 VL - 67 SP - 14 EP - 54 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Flonk, Danielle A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus A1 - Obendiek, Anke S. T1 - Authority conflicts in internet governance: Liberals vs. sovereigntists? JF - Global Constitutionalism N2 - We analyse conflicts over norms and institutions in internet governance. In this emerging field, dispute settlement is less institutionalised and conflicts take place at a foundational level. Internet governance features two competing spheres of authority characterised by fundamentally diverging social purposes: A more consolidated liberal sphere emphasises a limited role of the state, private and multistakeholder governance and freedom of speech. A sovereigntist challenger sphere emphasises state control, intergovernmentalism and push against the preponderance of Western institutions and private actors. We trace the activation and evolution of conflict between these spheres with regard to norms and institutions in four instances: the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12), the fifth session of the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (UNGGE) and the Budapest Convention of the Council of Europe. We observe intense norm collisions, and strategic attempts at competitive regime creation and regime shifting towards intergovernmental structures by the sovereigntist sphere. Despite these aggressive attempts at creating new institutions and norms, the existing internet governance order is still in place. Hence, authority conflicts in global internet governance do not necessarily lead to fragmentation. KW - contested multilateralism KW - internet governance KW - norm collisions KW - sovereignty Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045381720000167 SN - 2045-3817 VL - 9 IS - 2 SP - 364 EP - 386 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rodger, Barry A1 - Maher, Imelda A1 - Riordan, Rónán T1 - A Decade of EU Law in the Courts of Scotland and Ireland: National Legal Systems Compared JF - Legal Studies N2 - This article is the first to undertake a comparative statistical study examining the application and trends in European Union ('EU') law before the Scottish and Irish courts over a ten year period from 2009 – 2018. The paper poses the question, how does European integration impact on the domestic legal systems of EU Member States due to the increasing volume, and significance, of cases where EU law is raised and applied within domestic legal systems? It highlights similarities and differences between the two jurisdictions and the fields of law where EU law has been most prominent. The research, focussing on civil law matters, is of particular relevance in light of Brexit. It highlights the potential difficulties implicit in attempting to unpick over 40 years of assimilation of EU law and principles into Scots law and lays the groundwork for a further comparative study after another 10 years on the extent of the impact of Brexit in Scotland and Ireland. KW - EU law KW - Scotland KW - Ireland KW - national legal systems KW - Brexit Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-3598 SN - 1748-121X N1 - This is a peer-reviewed, accepted author manuscript of the following article: Barry Rodger, Imelda Maher, & Rónán Riordan: A decade of EU law in the courts of Scotland and Ireland: national legal systems compared, in Legal Studies 2021, https://doi.org/10.1017/lst.2020.46 SP - 1 EP - 25 ET - 2021 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Riordan, Rónán T1 - Popular sovereignty in the Irish context: The deployment of the Referendum to resolve disputes, uphold decisions, and legitimate state acts in the eyes of Citizens JF - UCD S.L.S. Law Journal Y1 - 2018 SN - 1649-1327 SP - 103 EP - 108 ET - UCD SLS 80 years of Bunreacht na hÉireann ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bremer, Björn A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - Juncker's Curse? Identity, Interest, and Public Support for the Integration of Core State Powers† JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - Abstract In this study we analysed the patterns and covariates of public support for the European integration of core state powers based on an original new survey. We found considerable variation across integration instruments, member states and policy issues. Horizontal transfers are supported more than vertical capacity building; member states from the EU's South‐East are more supportive than states from the North‐West; and support increases from debt relief to unemployment assistance, sharing the burdens of refugees, and military defence to disaster aid. Identity is a strong and fairly consistent predictor for individual variations in support. The association with respondents’ interest is less consistent, but can be quite strong with respect to specific policy issues such as debt and unemployment. Overall, support for the integration of core state powers is higher and more variable than expected. This suggests there is considerable room for political agency rather than a general constraining dissensus. KW - - KW - capacity KW - core state powers KW - European integration; identity KW - interests KW - public opinion Y1 - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-36077 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12980 SN - 1468-5965 VL - 58 IS - 1 SP - 56 EP - 75 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - Accountability in the EU's para-regulatory state: The case of the Economic and Monetary Union JF - Regulation & Governance N2 - This article revisits Majone's famous argument about accountability in the regulatory state in reference to the European Union's (EU) Economic and Monetary Union. We show that the EU has entered the stage of a “para-regulatory state” marked by increasing EU regulation in areas linked to core state powers. Despite the redistributive and politicized nature of these policy areas, the EU's “para-regulatory state” has continued to rely on its regulatory model of accountability, focused on decisionmaking processes, and interest mediation. In line with Majone, we describe the model as procedural and contrast it to substantive accountability – which is necessary when regulation has clear redistributive implications. Using two case studies from fiscal policy and monetary affairs, we illustrate the predominance of procedural accountability as exercised by the European Parliament and EU Courts. We complement the empirical analysis with a normative discussion of how substantive accountability could potentially be rendered in both fields. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-42704 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12442 SP - 1 EP - 16 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Redeker, Nils A1 - Walter, Stefanie T1 - We’d rather pay than change the politics of German non-adjustment in the Eurozone crisis JF - The Review of International Organizations N2 - Germany’s large current account surplus has been widely criticized, especially against the backdrop of the role of macroeconomic imbalances in the Eurozone crisis. We argue that Germany’s resistance to reduce its massive current account surplus through an expansionary policy at home is rooted in distributive struggles about the design of possible adjustment policies. To explore this argument, we leverage original survey data from 135 German economic interest groups, qualitative interviews with interest group representatives and policymakers, and data from public opinion surveys. We show that while there is general support for internal adjustment among German interest groups, they disagree heavily about which specific policies should be implemented to achieve this goal. Together with a broad public and elite-based consensus to avoid a break-up of the Eurozone, this polarization turns financing into a politically attractive strategy. Rather than being rooted only in German ordoliberal ideas or Germany’s export-oriented structure, distributive conflicts contribute significantly to Germany’s resistance to reduce its large current-account surplus. Because similar dynamics can be observed in other surplus countries, we argue that distributive struggles within surplus countries played an important role in interstate conflicts about the management of the crisis. Y1 - 2020 UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11558-020-09390-1 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-020-09390-1 SN - Electronic ISSN 1559-744X, Print ISSN 1559-7431 VL - 15 SP - 573 EP - 599 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Redeker, Nils T1 - The Politics of Stashing Wealth: The Decline of Labor Power and the Global Rise in Corporate Savings JF - The Journal of Politics N2 - This article investigates the political roots of the global rise in corporate savings. In recent years, firms throughout advanced economies have started to accumulate enormous savings. Instead of using their revenues to reinvest or raise wages, many companies now stash their profits within financial markets, contributing to sluggish growth, financial fragilities, and rising inequality. I argue that political institutions that determine the balance of power between firms and employees play an important role in shaping this trend. The stronger unions are, the more they pressure firms into using revenues for pay increases and investment. The more unions’ influence erodes, the stronger the rise of savings. Using panel data from 25 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries as well as a regression discontinuity design leveraging the German law on codetermination, I find robust and causal evidence supporting this claim. These results have implications for our broader understanding of how political institutions affect financial imbalances and economic inequality. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716298 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1086/716298 SN - ISSN: 0022-3816, E-ISSN: 1468-2508 VL - 84 IS - 2 SP - 975 EP - 991 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Redeker, Nils A1 - Rommel, Tobias T1 - Misremembering Weimar: Hyperinflation, the Great Depression, and German collective economic memory JF - Economics & Politics N2 - The well-known German aversion to inflation has attracted a lot of interest and is often attributed to a specific historical memory: Weimar. Yet we do not know much about why hyperinflation seems to overshadow the Great Depression in German collective economic memory. To answer this question, we study what exactly it is that Germans believe to remember about their past. Using original survey data, we show that many Germans do not distinguish between hyperinflation and the Great Depression, but see them as two dimensions of the same crisis. They conflate Weimar economic history into one big crisis, encompassing both rapidly rising prices and mass unemployment. Additionally, more educated and politically interested Germans are more likely to commit this fallacy. Our finding thus nuances ideational explanations for Germany's economic policy stance in the European Union. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://doi.org/10.1111/ecpo.12182 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/ecpo.12182 SN - 1468-0343 VL - 33 IS - 3 SP - 664 EP - 686 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Migliorati, Marta A1 - Vignoli, Valerio T1 - When politicization meets ideology: the European Parliament and free trade agreements JF - Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica N2 - Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has considerably increased its competencies in European Union (EU) trade policy. At the same time, a ‘new generation’ of free trade agreements (FTAs), including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States, Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, and the agreement with Japan, have been negotiated by the European Commission. Although existing literature has tackled the process of the EP's institutional self-empowerment in this policy area, there is no systematic research investigating the lines of conflict within the EP over FTAs. Through a newly collected dataset of all EP plenary debates between 2009 and 2019 on six relevant FTAs, we extract EP Members’ (MEPs) preferences by means of a manual textual analysis. We then test the explanatory power of the two traditional lines of cleavages within the EP over MEPs stated preferences: position on the left-right axis and support for EU integration. We find that both these dimensions fundamentally shape the conflict in the EP over FTAs. The impact of these two ideological cleavages is magnified in the context of politicized FTAs, namely the TTIP and CETA. Through these findings, the paper significantly contributes to the research on competition in the EP and, more broadly, to the understanding of EU trade policy and its emerging politicization dynamics. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/italian-political-science-review-rivista-italiana-di-scienza-politica/article/when-politicization-meets-ideology-the-european-parliament-and-free-trade-agreements/411E516ABE8955AD982AD0F349C18730 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.50 SN - 0048-8402 (Print), 2057-4908 (Online) SP - 1 EP - 16 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - Postfunctional differentiation, functional reintegration: the Danish case in Justice and Home Affairs JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - Previous research shows that Differentiated Integration (DI) in areas of core state powers works according to a postfunctional logic, in response to concerns about national autonomy and sovereignty. Against this backdrop, scholars usually expect that the policies and practices ensuing from formal DI are equally differentiated. This article presents theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest otherwise. It argues that, while postfunctionalism explains the emergence of formal DI, its practical consequences are driven by functional pressures. The interdependencies produced by the integration process create functional incentives for states with opt-outs to work towards ‘reintegration’ by converging with EU policies. The result of this process is a decoupling between differentiated rules and similar practices. The plausibility of this argument is tested by applying process tracing techniques to the case of Denmark in Justice and Home Affairs. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2021.1921831 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1921831 SN - Print ISSN: 1350-1763 Online ISSN: 1466-4429 VL - 29 IS - 7 SP - 1112 EP - 1134 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - Where does implementation lie? Assessing the determinants of delegation and discretion in post-Maastricht European Union JF - Journal of Public Policy N2 - Drawing on a principal–agent framework the article analyses the European Union (EU) politics of delegation in the post-Maastricht era. By means of statistical analysis, it tests the impact of several variables upon the selection of national and supranational agents, as well as on the discretion they enjoy, on the basis of a recently collected data set of EU laws. Findings reveal that pooling and policy complexity favour the involvement of supranational actors in the implementation of EU laws. Moreover, the degree of supranational integration of a policy affects the likelihood of choosing supranational implementers. On the one hand, the Commission enjoys higher discretion vis-à-vis national actors when qualified majority voting applies, and when higher levels of conflict in the Council of Ministers is present. On the other, conflict between the European Parliament and the Council under codecision seems associated with lower supranational discretion, although the result needs further corroboration. Y1 - 2020 UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-public-policy/article/where-does-implementation-lie-assessing-the-determinants-of-delegation-and-discretion-in-postmaastricht-european-union/37ACC415DDD8CED6E138686E8F106D06 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X20000100 SN - 0143-814X (Print), 1469-7815 (Online) VL - 41 IS - 3 SP - 489 EP - 514 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bobić, Ana T1 - Constructive Versus Destructive Conflict: Taking Stock of the Recent Constitutional Jurisprudence in the EU JF - Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies Y1 - 2020 UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-yearbook-of-european-legal-studies/article/constructive-versus-destructive-conflict-taking-stock-of-the-recent-constitutional-jurisprudence-in-the-eu/5FF73D09FC408CF0D5349D38682353A9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2020.9 SN - 1528-8870 (Print), 2049-7636 (Online) VL - 22 SP - 60 EP - 84 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bobić, Ana T1 - Developments in The EU-German Judicial Love Story: The Right To Be Forgotten II JF - German Law Journal N2 - The relationship between the Court of Justice and the Bundesverfassungsgericht is perhaps one of the most explored relationships in all of EU’s legal history. In attempting to understand and operationalize the uncertainty surrounding the positioning between EU and national constitutional orders, they have in some respects followed the footsteps of a typical life-long love story: in the early years of European integration, both courts appeared to be in denial of any romance, and entered into a conflict over the question of the final arbiter; they subsequently turned to flirting by moving away from an institutionally based conflict towards finding a common substantive ground; which resulted in finally abandoning the competition for domination, but rather embracing mutual respect and a heterarchical relationship. This brief piece follows these developments in fundamental rights review that for now end with the second German decision concerning the right to be forgotten. Y1 - 2020 UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/german-law-journal/article/developments-in-the-eugerman-judicial-love-story-the-right-to-be-forgotten-ii/A5E8D7F640A6F6EC52D58CAF6906AD3F U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2020.15 SN - 2071-8322 VL - 21 IS - S1 SP - 31 EP - 39 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Freudlsperger, Christian A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - A member state like any other? Germany and the European integration of core state powers JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - The EU has integrated core state powers in a largely unsustainable manner. Why is this? In this introduction to a special issue on Germany, we take an in-depth look at national preference-formation. We trace the impact of state elites, as emphasised by functionalist theories, and mass publics and political parties, as stressed by postfunctionalism. We find that across policy fields and with striking continuity over time, Germany acts as a normal member state. The country prefers the regulation of national capacities over the creation of European capacities, and (increasingly) the intergovernmental rather than supranational control of those capacities. Only in existential crises, Germany supports European capacity-building under intergovernmental control. This leads to unstable integration but is not an indicator of hegemonic dominance. Crucial from both a practical and theoretical perspective, there exists no major gap between state elites and political parties or public opinion on German preferences. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2021.1877695 SN - Print ISSN: 0703-6337, Online ISSN: 1477-2280 VL - 43 IS - 2 SP - 117 EP - 135 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dermine, Paul A1 - Patrin, Maria T1 - Between Law and Politics—The Emergence of an EU Industrial Policy JF - Governance N2 - How do law and politics interact in shaping the relationship between the state and markets? To what extent can the law break free from the political and ideological beliefs which brought it about, and be repurposed to adjust to evolving assumptions and a new political‐economic Zeitgeist? This paper explores how the dynamics between law and politics play out in the context of the European Union as a multi‐level polity, where economic powers and prerogatives are distributed across different levels of government and where the central government enjoys limited, conferred powers. Drawing on the “Integration through Law” literature and institutional change theories, the paper investigates the evolution of EU industrial policy and its legal architecture. It lays out the legal rules and conditions under which industrial policy has traditionally operated in the EU. It further discusses how this framework is shifting following changing economic and political priorities that favor more activist forms of economic and industrial policy. The paper argues that the law can both act as a constraining, limiting factor, or as an enabler of EU industrial policy initiatives. On the one hand primary law principles and competences fundamentally inhibit the pursuit of activist industrial policies in Europe. On the other hand, a number of second‐order resources can be mobilized and “converted” to bring about an EU industrial policy. The paper finally reflects on the risks and challenges of repurposing legal rules for political ends, highlighting issues of consistency, efficiency and legitimacy. Y1 - 2026 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.70085 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 39 IS - 1 PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - Capacity-Building and the New Intergovernmentalism JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13755 VL - 63 IS - S1 SP - 65 EP - 76 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - Fundamental Rights in European Union Policy-making: The Effects and Advantages of Institutional Diversity JF - Human Rights Law Review N2 - This article investigates how the European Union’s political process affects the level of rights protection afforded by European Union (EU) law. It does so in two steps, firstly by analysing how institutional politics plays an important role in the evolution of the EU fundamental rights framework and secondly by demonstrating empirically how legislative interaction affects the level of protection provided by three important EU legislative acts. As the article will demonstrate, this interaction tends to result in the overall level of rights protection being increased. Analysing this finding, the article uses institutionalist theory to argue that the EU’s political process carries certain positive effects: the diversity of the legislative process (both within and between institutions) makes the explicit overlooking of rights-based concerns difficult. These findings carry implications for the increasing tendency to channel EU law and policy outside of the ‘ordinary’ legislative process. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngaa002 VL - 20 IS - 1 SP - 50 EP - 73 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - How Can EU Law Respond to Populism? JF - Oxford Journal of Legal Studies N2 - The rise in Europe of populist movements has created severe anxiety about the stability of the EU legal order. This article argues that, while populist ideas challenge numerous elements of the EU’s constitutional settlement, there exists no fundamental incompatibility between populism and EU law. By comparing its response to populism with attempts by EU law to stabilise its legal order in the face of political contestation arising from other political cleavages, the article discusses three different ways to understand the interaction between EU law and populism. EU law may seek to ‘survive’ the growth of populism by (i) bracketing or insulating its institutions from populist contestation, (ii) accommodating populist ideas or (iii) confronting the constitutional strategies populists utilise domestically. In examining the constitutional foundations of populism and its relation to emerging doctrines of EU law, the article seeks to build a road map of how populist movements might utilise or resist EU law in their development. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa002 VL - 40 IS - 1 SP - 183 EP - 213 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - Coping with Exit, Evasion, and Subversion in EU Law JF - German Law Journal Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2019.95 IS - Special Issue 1 SP - 51 EP - 56 ET - 21 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo T1 - Agenda‐setting under pressure: Does domestic politics influence the European Commission? JF - European Journal of Political Research N2 - The European Union (EU) has become increasingly visible and contested over the past decades. Several studies have shown that domestic pressure has made the EU's ‘electorally connected’ institutions more responsive. Yet, we still know little about how politicisation has affected the Union's non‐majoritarian institutions. We address this question by focusing on agenda‐setting and ask whether and how domestic politics influences the prioritisation of legislative proposals by the European Commission. We argue that the Commission, as both a policy‐seeker and a survival‐driven bureaucracy, will respond to domestic issue salience and Euroscepticism, at party, mass and electoral level, through targeted performance and through aggregate restraint. Building on new data on the prioritisation of legislative proposals under the ordinary legislative procedure (1999–2019), our analysis shows that the Commission's choice to prioritise is responsive to the salience of policy issues for Europe's citizens. By contrast, our evidence suggests that governing parties’ issue salience does not drive, and Euroscepticism does not constrain, the Commission's priority‐setting. Our findings contribute to the literature on multilevel politics, shedding new light on the strategic responses of non‐majoritarian institutions to the domestic politicisation of ‘Europe’. KW - agenda-setting; European Commission; politicisation; priorities; responsiveness Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12438 VL - 61 IS - 1 SP - 46 EP - 66 ET - European Journal of Political Research ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrara, Federico Maria A1 - Haas, Jörg A1 - Peterson, Andrew A1 - Sattler, Thomas T1 - Exports vs. investment: How political discourse shapes popular support for external imbalances JF - Socio-Economic Review N2 - The economic imbalances that characterize the world economy have unequally distributed costs and benefits. That raises the question of how countries could run long-term external surpluses and deficits without significant opposition against the policies that generate them. We show that political discourse helps to secure public support for these policies and the resulting economic outcomes. First, a content analysis of 32 000 newspaper articles finds that the dominant interpretations of current account balances in Australia and Germany concur with very distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Second, survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations has a causal effect on citizens’ support for their country’s economic strategy. Political discourse, thus, is crucial to provide the societal foundation of national growth strategies. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwab004 SN - 1475-147X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Bertolini, Elena T1 - Fundamental Rights as Constraints to and Triggers for Differentiated Integration JF - Swiss Political Science Review N2 - When looking for possible constraints on Differentiated Integration, the fundamental values of the European Union (EU) seem an obvious starting point. Both the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the values articulated in Art. 2 TEU are cross-cutting across EU states. However, while fundamental values have acted as centralising devices in other federal settings, in an EU context marked by extensive value disagreement, they may also act as pathways for differentiation. Insofar as national constitutional orders disagree on the scope of EU rights, attempts to ground EU law in fundamental values trigger inevitable interpretive conflicts across states. This paper will use the examples of asylum and the European Arrest Warrant to demonstrate this argument: while EU law may use fundamental values as a reason to harmonise EU law across states, such values may also be invoked to question the principle of mutual trust underlying the EU legal order, thereby causing rather than limiting differentiation. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12443 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 637 EP - 653 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - The accountability of non-governmental actors in the digital sphere: A theoretical framework JF - European Law Journal N2 - The last decade has seen increasing demands for greater accountability in digital governance. What, however, does accountability require and what normative goods does it serve? This article develops a general framework for assessing digital accountability focused on four normative goods: openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness and publicness. As the article will evidence, claims for digital accountability often refer to deficits relating to one or more of these goods. While scholarly attention has deservedly focused on tying powerful digital actors to rule of law guarantees, the article argues that accountability offers an important normative yardstick to allow citizens to contest digital decisions beyond strict legality. The framework therefore provides a basis for both conceptually disaggregating and normatively forwarding accountability claims in the digital sphere. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12420 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - What Does it Mean to Say that the Court of Justice is not a Human Rights Institution? A Critical Appraisal JF - Journal of Human Rights Practice N2 - What role does the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and EU law play in elaborating the rights and principles embodied by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)? Over the last 20 years, human (or ‘fundamental’) rights have become a constant part of the way the CJEU interprets and applies EU law. In a period where fundamental rights and values are increasingly under threat both globally and in Europe, judicial institutions remain an important last bastion of protection. Commenting on Judge Rosas’ (2007) observation that the CJEU is not in fact a human rights Court, three critical questions are derived: The first question is the most related to this special issue. What does the development of the CJEU—an institution with human rights responsibilities—mean for general international human rights law? The second takes up Judge Rosas’ observation that the CJEU, unlike the Strasbourg Court, has extensive judicial responsibilities beyond human rights. What does the development of EU human rights law mean for EU law more broadly? Finally, if Judge Rosas is right that the CJEU is not a human rights Court, what does that mean for its relationship to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the other organs of the Council of Europe? In answer to this last question, the article cautiously advances the argument that the very fact that the CJEU is not a human rights Court implies a more robust role than Judge Rosas suggests for external review of EU law by international human rights bodies. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huab023 VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - 215 EP - 222 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine T1 - Europe’s Bank and Europe’s Citizens: Accountability, transparency – legitimacy? JF - Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law N2 - Since the Eurozone crisis, critique of the European Central Bank (ECB) has centred on the Bank’s lack of acceptance by Europe’s citizens. One prominent strand of the debate argues that such acceptance can be enhanced by ensuring higher levels of compliance with the democratic standards of accountability and transparency. This article critically assesses this ‘standards-support nexus’ and its underlying assumptions. We suggest that three conditions need to be fulfilled for the argument to hold: (i) citizens are aware of the ECB and its design; (ii) citizens prioritise democratic standards over alternative motivations for acceptance; and (iii) citizens are able to differentiate between the ECB and the European Union’s wider multilevel system. Drawing from the established literature on support for European integration and trust in the ECB and from descriptive Eurobarometer data, we conclude that these three conditions are unlikely to bear out empirically. Moreover, increasing the ECB’s accountability and transparency in times of crisis and heightened politicisation could adversely affect the Bank’s policy-performance and public image. Hence, whilst not questioning the normative desirability of accountability and transparency, we caution against assuming too easily that such democratic standards alone will enhance citizen support, and against assuming that they come without trade-offs. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X19827906 VL - 26 IS - 1 SP - 63 EP - 80 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rohde-Liebenau, Judith T1 - EU identity visions and narratives of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in European Schools JF - European Societies N2 - In ‘European Schools’, created for children of EU officials, narratives of European identity among students could match EU visions. Yet, students’ individual narrations of their identities are more complex. The study systematises these narratives of Europeanness: cosmopolitan, multinational and transnational notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Qualitative thematic analysis provides perspectives on what ‘being (not) European’ means for EU, European Schools and teachers – and most importantly, it disentangles identity narratives of European School students. Based on interviewing 101 students across three schools, the analysis shows that EU and European School propositions of a multinational European identity differ from teachers’ and students’ cosmopolitan and transnational narratives. At the EU level, Europeanness implies an ‘out-group’ of a nationalist, war-torn past. Students contradict EU visions by widening teachers’ antinationalist narrative and excluding people within Europe. They exclude intolerant and narrow-minded, but more generally people who are more national and less mobile than their ‘in-group’. Systematically comparing European identity narratives thus helps to uncover these contradictions. Not all narratives about Europe are available to everyone and individual opportunities to partake in mobile, multilingual Europeanness need reconsideration. KW - European identity, European schools, narratives, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, us/them Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2022.2101679 VL - 24 IS - 4 SP - 409 EP - 430 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - Contesting the European Central Bank in Banking Supervision:Accountability in Practice at the European Parliament JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - The establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) raised expectations regarding theability of the European Parliament (EP) to hold the European Central Bank (ECB) accountable forits decisions. This article examines the accountability interactions between the two institutions inthefirst years of the functioning of the SSM (2013–18). The focus is on the extent to which the EPcontests ECB supervisory decisions in practice through letters and public hearings. The analysisshows a frequently-used infrastructure of political accountability that is however limited in ensur-ing the contestation of ECB conduct in banking supervision. The study identifies problems withthe performance of the EP as an accountability forum and with the tight confidentiality rules ofthe SSM, which allow the ECB to silence contestation on many politically salient issues. Thefind-ings are based on an innovative analytical framework on the study of accountability interactions. KW - European Central Bank; European Parliament; accountability; single supervisory mecha-nism; political contestation Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13024 VL - 58 IS - 5 SP - 1199 EP - 1214 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - Speaking on Europe’s behalf: EU discourses of representation during the refugee crisis JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - This article aims to understand the lack of consensus at the European Union (EU) level during the refugee crisis based on the discursive polarization of the main governmental and institutional actors involved in decision-making. Drawing on de Wilde’s representative claims analysis, the goal is to trace competing claims of representation made on ‘Europe’s behalf’ by multiple actors claiming to defend EU values or the interests of citizens. The analysis covers Politico Europe articles published during 2015–16, capturing the height of the crisis. The findings illustrate the self-understandings of actors on a humanitarian-communitarian axis that became intertwined with concerns for internal EU solidarity and the survival of the Schengen Area. The analysis contributes to the literature on EU politicization and discursive framing during the refugee crisis, showing how the actors involved in EU decision-making had very different conceptions of what was at stake in the episode. KW - refugee crisis, European Union, discourse, institution, politicization Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2020.1855157 VL - 43 IS - 7 SP - 781 EP - 798 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Freudlsperger, Christian A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - Wendepunkt Corona-Krise? Deutsche Präferenzen zur europäischen Integration staatlicher Kerngewalten seit Maastricht JF - integration N2 - Did the Covid-19 crisis prompt a turn in German EU policy? Investigating the long-term development of German preferences on the European integration of core state powers, we find striking continuity. German governments persistently seek to minimise their costs from and maximise their control over integration. Consequently, they back supranational capacity-building primarily as a last resort in existential systemic crises. The Corona recovery fund, which is temporary and placed under intergovernmental control, is in line with this general long-term preference and does little to alleviate the structural flaws of the Euro area. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/0720-5120-2021-2-81 VL - 44 IS - 2 SP - 81 EP - 96 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - Postfunctionalism reversed: solidarity and rebordering during the COVID-19 pandemic JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - Postfunctionalism posits a tradeoff between the functional scale of governance and the territorial scope of community: functional scale is large and transnational for efficiency reasons; community is small-scale and (sub-)national for reasons of social trust and collective identification. COVID-19 has turned this tradeoff upside down: it has shrunk functional scale to the (sub-)national level in the name of security, while lifting expectations of community to the grand transnational scale in the name of solidarity. This reversal of scales has resulted in a rapid rebordering of the Single Market and the Schengen area on the one hand, and a significant debordering of fiscal risk and burden sharing on the other. We reconstruct the evolution of this double-movement from January to August 2020, contrast it to historical trends in the scale-community tradeoff of European integration, and discuss implications for postfunctionalist theory. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1881588 SN - Print ISSN: 1350-1763, Online ISSN: 1466-4429 VL - 28 IS - 3 SP - 350 EP - 369 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - Differentiated integration as symbolic politics? Constitutional differentiation and policy reintegration in core state powers JF - European Union Politics N2 - What are the policy consequences of constitutional differentiation in core state powers? We argue that the most important consequence is not necessarily the exclusion of the constitutional outs from the policies of the ins, but their reintegration by different means. The outs often have strong functional and political incentives to re-join the policies they opted out from, and the ins have good reasons to help them back in. We develop a theoretical framework that derives the incentives for reintegration from the costs of a policy exclusion. We use a novel dataset of reintegration opportunities to map trends and patterns of reintegration across policy fields and member states. We analyze selected cases of reintegration to probe the plausibility of our theoretical argument. KW - Core state powers differentiated integration KW - European Union symbolic politics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165221128291 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn T1 - When can religious employers discriminate? The scope of the religious ethos exemption in EU law JF - European Law Open N2 - When are religious employers exempt from the prohibition of discrimination (i.e., when can they discriminate against non-adherents)? The European Union (EU) Equality Framework Directive exempts religious employers from the prohibition of religious discrimination, but the scope of the religious ethos exemption is disputed and its interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Egenberger and IR v JQ has been criticised for being ultra vires and for disrespecting the constitutional identities of the EU Member States. This article clarifies the religious ethos exemption, by examining the underlying legal and normative issues that determine its scope. It shows that the scope of the exemption depends not just on the Framework Directive but also on the relationship between EU law and national constitutional law and that between EU law and international law. Thus, this article not only provides clarity regarding the religious ethos exemption, but also uses these judgements as an opportunity to revisit these related constitutional issues, and in particular the role of the CJEU and EU legislature in defining the place of national constitutional identity in EU law. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/elo.2022.1 VL - 1 IS - 1 SP - 89 EP - 112 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Freudlsperger, Christian A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - Opening Pandora’s Box? Joint Sovereignty and the Rise of EU Agencies with Operational Tasks JF - Comparitive Political Studies N2 - This article problematises the proliferation of European Union (EU) agencies with operational tasks as a new phenomenon capturing the exercise of joint sovereignty in European integration. While joint decision-making has been a feature of EU politics for decades, joint sovereignty is a broader category that additionally involves the creation of EU bodies able to intervene ‘on the ground’ alongside national public actors. We argue that the choice for joint sovereignty opens a Pandora’s box of implementation deficiencies which undermine the ability of both national and supranational actors to conduct operational activities effectively. We subsequently identify two frequent dysfunctions in policy implementation and connect them to ambiguity and conflict at the decision-making stage. Empirically, we illustrate the systemic link between decision-making and implementation problems in the functioning of two agencies with operational tasks active in the fields of border management (Frontex) and police cooperation (Europol). Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211066223 VL - 55 IS - 12 SP - 1983 EP - 2014 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Obendiek, Anke S. T1 - What Are We Actually Talking About? Conceptualizing Data as a Governable Object in Overlapping Jurisdictions JF - International Studies Quarterly N2 - Data form an increasingly essential element of contemporary politics, as both public and private actors extend claims of their legitimate control in diverse areas including health, security, and trade. This paper investigates data governance as a site of fundamental normative and political ordering processes that unfold in light of ever-increasing inter- and transnational linkages. Drawing on the concept of jurisdictional conflicts, the paper traces the evolution of data governance in three cases of transatlantic conflicts as diverging definitional claims over data. The paper argues that these conflicts reveal varying conceptualizations of data linked to four distinct visions of the social world. First, a conceptualization of data as an individual rights issue links human rights with the promotion of sovereignty to a vision of data governance as local liberalism. Second, proponents of a security partnership promote global security cooperation based on the conceptualization of data as a neutral instrument. Third, a conceptualization of data as an economic resource is linked to a vision of the digital economy that endorses progress and innovation with limited regulation. Fourth, a conceptualization of data as a collective resource links the values of universal rights and global rules to a vision of global protection. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqab080 VL - 66 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus T1 - The security state in Europe: regulatory or positive? JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - We challenge Kruck and Weiss’ argument about the regulatory security state on two counts. First, we contest the notion that the regulatory state is a viable alternative to the positive security state. While regulation and epistemic authority are increasingly important means of security provision, they remain critically dependent power resources and political authority that only the positive state provides. The regulatory security state is premised on the positive state and unviable without it. Second, the rise of the regulatory security state over the past three decades reflects highly specific historical conditions rather than a general trend. These conditions include unusually low geopolitical tensions in Europe and the strong regulatory bias of EU integration. Concepts matter: The wider the notion of security, the more relevant the regulatory security state becomes. It is an important reality but the war in Ukraine reminds us of the enduring centrality of the positive state. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2174580 SP - 1447 EP - 1457 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn T1 - Revising Citizenship within the European Union: Is a Genuine Link Requirement the Way Forward? JF - German Law Journal N2 - EU institutions have argued on several occasions that national and EU citizenship should not be awarded without any genuine link with the Member State concerned. Some scholars have adopted the same position, justifying their position referring to the genuine link requirement established by the International Court of Justice in Nottebohm. This has prompted criticism from legal scholars, who point out that Nottebohm was wrong as a matter of international law and moral principle. This paper shows that supporters and critics have failed to recognise that they have been talking with different conceptions of the genuine link requirement in mind. The question of whether to apply a genuine link requirement for the recognition of nationality is altogether different from the question of whether to apply a genuine link requirement for the acquisition of nationality. Nottebohm concerns the first; the arguments of EU institutions the second. The argument of EU institutions cannot therefore be dismissed by dismissing Nottebohm. I subsequently explore the normative arguments for predicating the boundaries of national membership on a genuine link requirement. There are weighty moral reasons for member states to condition the acquisition of national and EU citizenship on the presence of a genuine link. Finally, moving from the normative to the practical, I argue that such a requirement would have far-reaching consequences (targeting not just investor citizenship schemes) and cannot be enforced as a requirement under EU law. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2022.4 VL - 23 IS - 1 SP - 79 EP - 96 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - EU politicization beyond the Euro crisis: immigration crises and the politicization of free movement of people JF - Comparative European Politics N2 - This article explores the applicability of democratic functionalism as a theoretical framework explaining mechanisms of European Union (EU) politicization during immigration crises. Since most existing studies on the politicization of EU crisis situations focus on the Euro crisis, it is unclear if and how the politicization of EU immigration crises differs. Drawing on a 2011 crisis with legislative implications for the free movement of people in the Schengen Area, the article illustrates that immigration crises are politicized along exclusionary identities rather than along pro-/anti-European lines—as expected by democratic functionalism. Moreover, unlike in the Euro crisis, the 2011 case illustrates how the media can be instrumentalized by governments during immigration crises, with little political mobilization from the public. This case is relevant given the widespread politicization of the 2015 refugee crisis, which conversely attracted close media attention and caused serious public concern. As it stands, democratic functionalism is shown to lack a conceptualization of how much and for how long an issue needs to be contested in the European public sphere for the mechanisms of EU politicization described by the theory to hold. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-018-0113-6 SN - 1472-4790 (print), 1740-388X (electronic) VL - 17 SP - 380 EP - 396 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut, Adina A1 - Puetter, Uwe T1 - Deciding on the European Semester: the European Council, the Council and the enduring asymmetry between economic and social policy issues JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - This contribution investigates the asymmetrical relationship between economic and social aspects under the European Semester by looking at the roles of the European Council and the Council between 2010 and 2016. Drawing on the theories of deliberative and new intergovernmentalism, this asymmetry is associated with an uneven evolution of the co-ordination infrastructure, notably the varying degree to which key policy issues are subject to informal policy dialogue. Not only are finance ministers better placed to conduct policy dialogue, they also control the European Semester policy priorities more effectively than their colleagues in the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO). Finance ministers also are more closely linked to discussions at the highest political level, the European Council. Social affairs committees and the Commission managed to gain a greater role at the expert level and to integrate more social issues into policy recommendations. Yet, these successes are not matched by higher level political endorsement. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2017.1363271 SN - Print: 1350-1763, Online: 1466-4429 VL - 25 IS - 2 SP - 193 EP - 211 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - The dynamics of institutional behaviour in EU justice and home affairs: roles, representative claims, and varying policy positions JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - This article investigates the reasons behind varying institutional positions in the European Union’s (EU) area of justice and home affairs (JHA). It argues that such instances of institutional behaviour cannot be fully understood without examining how each institution seeks to legitimize its role in the EU political system. A novel theoretical framework on institutional behaviour is advanced, connecting individual policy positions and governance choices to (1) institutional roles developed within different types of organizational structure, and (2) the representative claims made by officials involved in decision-making. The framework draws on insights from organizational theory regarding institutional role expectations and a constructivist approach to representation borrowed from the work of Michael Saward. Using three cases of JHA legislation from the post-Lisbon period, it is shown that the framework can explain varying patterns of institutional behaviour by exploring lines of justification present in the institutional discourse. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2017.1415334 SN - Print: 0703-6337 Online: 1477-2280 VL - 40 IS - 2 SP - 161 EP - 176 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn T1 - A typology of reverse discrimination in EU citizenship law JF - European Law Open N2 - In this Article, Martijn van den Brink sheds new light on one of the longest-running debates in the European Union (EU) citizenship literature: the concept of ‘reverse discrimination’ and the question of whether it is justified. Reverse discrimination has divided EU lawyers into roughly two distinct groups. One group believes that it constitutes an unjustified violation of the principle of equality; a second that it is inevitable in a Union governed by the constitutional principle of divided powers. This Article questions this by offering a typology of reverse discrimination. While most scholars assume that reverse discrimination is a singular phenomenon that demands a singular response, this Article shows that it is a variegated phenomenon that demands a variegated response. It distinguishes three types of reverse discrimination and explains that the proper response depends on the type we are considering. Type I is caused by the application of the principle of mutual recognition; Type II by an interaction between domestic federalism and internal discrimination; and Type III by the CJEU’s confusion over the aim of the right to free movement and residence. Through this typology, the Article shows that reverse discrimination is never a corollary of the principle of divided powers, nor is it always incompatible with the principle of equality. Finally, the Article shows that to the extent that reverse discrimination violates the principle of equality, the solution is not to equalise rights upwards but downwards to the lower (national or regional) level of government. This shows that the principle of equality and the principle of divided powers need not collide. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/elo.2022.54 VL - 2 IS - 1 SP - 57 EP - 78 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn T1 - The Protected Grounds of Religion and Belief: Lessons for EU Non-Discrimination Law JF - German Law Journal N2 - The article draws lessons for EU non-discrimination law from the protected grounds of religion and belief through a discussion of the CJEU’s headscarf judgments. The article has two ambitions. First, the judgments are used to draw broader lessons for EU non-discrimination law, in relation to the distinction between and the justification of direct and indirect discrimination, as well as the purpose of protecting against (religious) discrimination. Second, these lessons are used to analyze the headscarf judgments and the criticism directed at them. While there is widespread agreement that the CJEU erred in these judgments, there is little agreement as to what mistakes were made. Through a discussion of these judgments, the article clarifies the difference between direct and indirect discrimination and the justification of both forms of discrimination. It is argued that the headscarf cases correctly distinguished between direct and indirect discrimination, and that the problem lies in the justificatory burden for indirect discriminatory measures, which was set too low by the CJEU. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2023.54 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 24 IS - 5 SP - 855 EP - 880 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn ED - Szabó, Marcel ED - Gyeney, Laura ED - Láncos, Petra Lea T1 - Off Track, Again? EU Citizenship and the Right to Social Assistance JF - Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law N2 - The right of EU citizens to equal treatment with nationals of the host Member State in respect of social assistance has been subject to significant changes on several occasions between the Treaty of Maastricht and now. The CJEU has struggled to establish consistent standards prescribing when economically inactive citizens can claim social protection, and in 2014 its tendency to construe this right broadly suddenly came to an end. It backtracked on one-and-a-half decades of case law by ruling that citizens could lay no claim to social assistance unless the respective conditions set out in secondary legislation were met. This article discusses the relevant law and its evolution over the past decades for a twofold aim. (i) First, to clarify in an accessible manner in what respects the law has changed from 1993 to the present. (ii) Second, to articulate a framework that allows us to evaluate the CJEU judgments rendered during this period. This framework departs from established ways of thinking about this evaluative question. Much of the EU citizenship literature evaluates the case law by the outcome it brings about. I will argue, instead, that this evaluation is a matter of comparative institutional choice. Such a comparative institutional assessment shows that disputes over the right of EU citizens to claim social assistance should be decided in line with what the EU legislature intended. It follows that the application of a principle of judicial deference to legislation in the second period of social assistance case law from 2014 onwards was justified. Y1 - 2023 UR - https://www.hungarianyearbook.com/volumes SN - 978-90-4730-177-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5553/HYIEL/266627012023011001003 SN - 2666-2701 VL - 11 SP - 18 EP - 36 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bobzien, Licia T1 - Income Inequality and Political Trust: Do Fairness Perceptions Matter? JF - Social Indicators Research N2 - Political trust—in terms of trust in political institutions—is an important precondition for the functioning and stability of democracy. One widely studied determinant of political trust is income inequality. While the empirical finding that societies with lower levels of income inequality have higher levels of trust is well established, the exact ways in which income inequality affects political trust remain unclear. Past research has shown that individuals oftentimes have biased perceptions of inequality. Considering potentially biased inequality perceptions, Licia Bobzien argues that individuals compare their perceptions of inequality to their preference for inequality. If they identify a gap between what they perceive and what they prefer (= fairness gap), they consider their attitudes towards inequality unrepresented. This, in turn, reduces trust in political institutions. Using three waves of the ESS and the ISSP in a cross-country perspective, she finds that (1) perceiving a larger fairness gap is associated with lower levels of political trust; (2) the fairness gap mediates the link between actual inequality and political trust; and (3) disaggregating the fairness gap measure, political trust is more strongly linked to variation in inequality perceptions than to variation in inequality preferences. This indicates that inequality perceptions are an important factor shaping trust into political institutions. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03168-9 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kalleitner, Fabian A1 - Bobzien, Licia T1 - Taxed fairly? How differences in perception shape attitudes towards progressive taxation JF - European Sociological Review N2 - Empirically, the poor are more likely to support increases in the level of tax progressivity than the rich. Such income-stratified tax preferences can result from differences in preferences of what should be taxed as argued by previous literature. However, it may also result from income-stratified perceptions of what is taxed. This paper argues that the rich perceive higher levels of tax progressivity than the poor and that tax perceptions affect individuals’ support for progressive taxation. Using data from an Austrian survey experiment, we test this argument in three steps: First, in line with past research, we show that individuals’ income positions are connected to individuals’ tax preferences as a self-interest rationale would predict. However, second, we show that this variation is mainly driven by income-stratified tax perceptions. Third, randomly informing a subset of the sample about actual tax rates, we find that changing tax perceptions causally affects support for redistributive taxation among those who initially overestimated the level of tax progressivity. Our results indicate that tax perceptions are relevant for forming tax preferences and suggest that individuals are more polarized in their perceptions of who pays how much taxes than in their support for who should pay how much tax. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcad060 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bois, Julien A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - Towards a legally plausible theory of judicialization in the European Union JF - Journal of European Integration N2 - This article examines the development of judicialization literature in the EU arguing that – in spite of the obvious advantages of interdisciplinary collaboration – scholarship on judicialization in law and political science is drafting apart in the 21st Century. While early political science research on the European Courts found theoretical inspiration in legal research, law and political science have increasingly diverging epistemological and methodological starting points. As the article argues, using prominent papers, this results in both disciplines producing partial accounts of judicial change with limited external validity. The article concludes by offering routes to improving the inter-disciplinary foundations of judicialization research. KW - Judicialization; interdisciplinarity; EU law; EU studies; law and politics Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2023.2190104 VL - 45 IS - 5 SP - 823 EP - 842 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Zglinski, Jan T1 - Revisiting the asymmetry thesis: negative and positive integration in the EU JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - The ‘asymmetry thesis’, articulated by Fritz Scharpf, holds that EU governance is characterised by an asymmetry between positive and negative integration. The EU has well-developed capacities for negative integration but only limited capacities for positive integration. The present paper challenges the orthodoxy that this thesis has become in EU law and political science scholarship. It argues that the asymmetry thesis no longer accurately depicts European integration, revisiting its key legal and institutional assumptions. Taking the internal market as the most likely case to test the thesis, we show that negative integration has become weaker, positive integration has gained in strength, and both developments have had an impact on the substance of EU law and policymaking, which is promoting non-economic concerns and market-correcting policies to a greater extent than it used to. These shifts, so we contend, could be even more pronounced in other areas of European integration. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2296940 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Flonk, Daniëlle A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus A1 - Obendiek, Anke T1 - Controlling internet content in the EU: towards digital sovereignty JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - We analyse the rhetoric and reality of EU digital sovereignty by looking at content control. The control of online content is central to sovereignty because it relates to fundamental freedoms and democratic competition. Our main data source is the unique International Organizations in Global Internet Governance (IO-GIG) dataset which contains internet policy output documents across international institutions and issue areas between 1995 and 2021. By assessing policy output, we show structural trends in content control output in volume, bindingness, and orientation. By analysing policy discourse, we show the evolution of frames on content control over time. We find evidence for a comprehensive but still ongoing trend towards digital sovereignty in policy output and a shift from prioritising free access to the public order in discourse. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2024.2309179 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 31 IS - 8 SP - 2316 EP - 2342 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genschel, Philipp A1 - Jachtenfuchs, Markus A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - Nur Symbolpolitik? Differenzierung und Reintegration staatlicher Kerngewalten JF - integration N2 - Constitutional differentiation is often assumed to match perfectly with reality. We argue, however, that this is often not the case in core state powers. Constitutional differentiation often does not lead to the exclusion of the non-integrated member states (“outs”) from the policies of the integrated member states (“ins”) but to their reintegration by different means. We present a cost-benefit-model which argues that both “outs” and “ins” often have strong functional and political incentives to seek reintegration after an earlier decision for differentiation because the costs of exclusion are too high. We use a novel dataset of reintegration opportunities to map trends and patterns of reintegration across policy fields, reintegration instruments and member states in core state powers. We conclude by arguing that reintegration is a frequent but fragile phenomenon through which “ins” and “outs” cope with the costs of exclusion. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/0720-5120-2023-2-146 VL - 46 IS - 2 SP - 146 EP - 161 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Patrin, Maria T1 - Democratic standards in external differentiation: the area of freedom, security and justice JF - West European Politics N2 - The article investigates standards of democracy and accountability in external differentiated integration. It focuses on the area of freedom security and justice as a highly differentiated EU policy domain that combines patterns of internal and external differentiation. Two case studies in the field of Schengen and police cooperation illustrate how differentiated policies can affect participating third countries in democratic terms. The analysis shows that although countries associated to EU policies maintain their full sovereignty and jurisdiction, the pressure to comply is high and the threat of exclusion can lead to incongruence in both participation in decision making and accountability. Furthermore, the overlap between internal and external differentiation results in a frayed participation landscape that obfuscates accountability processes and can create legal uncertainty. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2477398 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library. VL - 48 IS - 5 SP - 1002 EP - 1028 PB - Informa UK Limited ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reh, Christine A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel T1 - Responsive withdrawal? The politics of EU agenda-setting JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - This contribution asks whether and why the newly political environment of EU law-making impacts on the European Commission's choice (not) to announce the withdrawal of legislative proposals. We argue that the Commission uses ‘responsive withdrawal’ in response to bottom-up pressure, so as to signal self-restraint or policy-determination to different audiences. Bottom-up pressures are driven by (1) the national contestation of ‘Europe’; (2) visible controversy about optimal (crisis) governance; and (3) the domestic salience of EU legislation. Our hypotheses are tested on a new dataset of all codecision files concluded, withdrawn, rejected or ongoing between 2006 and 2018. We show that the Commission reacts to bottom-up pressure by either politicising or depoliticising the EU's legislative agenda: ‘withdrawal announcements’ are more likely when Euroscepticism is high and when legislation touches core state powers, but less likely when legislation is domestically salient. We also demonstrate the continued importance of cyclical and technical reasons. Our analysis complements extant explanations of withdrawal as the upshot of functional factors or of uncertainty, and contributes to the nascent debate about whether, why and how supranational actors respond when the systems in which they operate – and the policies they produce – come under attack. KW - Agenda-setting, European Commission, legislation, politicisation, depoliticisation, withdrawals Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2020.1712453 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 419 EP - 438 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Breaugh, Jessica A1 - Hammerschmid, Gerhard A1 - Stockreiter, Simona T1 - The prevalence of public values in public private partnerships for government digitalisation: A systematic review of the literature JF - Government Information Quarterly N2 - This study presents a systematic literature review of 74 articles examining public-private partnerships (PPPs) in digitalisation projects, analysing how public values are represented in this literature. It contributes to the literature by systematically mapping how public values are discussed in PPP-driven digitalisation, distinguishing between their role as internal governance mechanisms (internal public value enablers) and their broader societal effects (external public value outcomes). It also identifies gaps in empirical research, particularly in understanding public value conflicts and trade-offs in PPPs. While public values such as efficiency, participation, and accountability are the most frequently cited in the literature, other values such as accessibility, trust and proportionality also emerged. Despite the collaborative nature of PPPs, our review uncovers conflicts between public and private sector motives, emphasizing the need for public sector actors to actively safeguard public values. The study thus contributes to a broader understanding of public values representation in the context of digitalisation projects. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2025.102048 VL - 42 IS - 3 PB - Elsevier BV ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hansum, Romy T1 - Continuity amid change: Explaining budgetary choices in the national implementation of EU cohesion policy funds JF - European Union Politics N2 - At first glance, the implementation of EU funds should be fluctuating with economic or political demands. However, this quantitative analysis shows that the national implementation is instead characterised by policy continuity. National governments largely adhere to the same budgetary choices as in previous periods when implementing cohesion policy funds, independent of changing political and economic circumstances at the national level. Additionally, countries with a longer implementation experience show more policy continuity. These findings suggest that self-reinforcing dynamics develop not only for domestic funds but also in the EU multi-level governance context. In addition to policy continuity, EU-wide trends were found to matter in the broad national programmatic orientation. When policy continuity prevails, the resulting rigidity can threaten the effectiveness and responsiveness of EU funds. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165251365553 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Knudsen, Edward L. T1 - A falling star? Origins of declining state capacity and democratic accountability in the United States JF - Global Policy N2 - AbstractThe United States—often hailed as the ‘oldest democracy in the world’ and the ‘leader of the free world’—has fallen on hard times. In addition to recent headline‐grabbing political events that have highlighted its political dysfunction, data from the 2022 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) reveal that overall state capacity and democratic accountability have been declining for years. Although public goods provision has remained on a steady course, the US still trails much of the developed world. We find this struggling performance is largely the result of neglecting three types of infrastructure: civic, physical and social. Specifically, we argue that the crisis became particularly pronounced due to an insufficient response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Although some recent political achievements could slow the decline, more drastic action will be required to reverse these troubling trends. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13282 SN - 1758-5880 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 14 IS - S4 SP - 47 EP - 57 PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Knudsen, Edward L. T1 - Escape from the ‘lost decades?’ Governance challenges in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela JF - Global Policy N2 - Much of Latin America has experienced a renewed ‘lost decade’, failing to substantially expand quality of life since the late 2000s. While the outcomes of governance performance across the largest countries – including Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina – have discrete causes, common themes like internal conflict, corruption, and overreliance on natural resources plague the entire region. Put more generally, the inability to turn democratic accountability into a state mechanism able to deliver economic growth and public goods in a sustainable manner is a liability affecting all five countries. To explore the difficulties that the large Latin American countries have faced in the twenty‐first century, this article examines results from the 2022 Berggruen Governance Index, and then presents three key issues facing the region: insufficient state capacity, flirtations with authoritarianism, and economic inequality and inflation. While the challenges remain substantial, increased regional integration may offer one way out of the predicament. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13279 SN - 1758-5880 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 14 IS - S4 SP - 113 EP - 123 PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Knudsen, Edward L. T1 - Stable or stagnant? Political economy and governance in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany since 2000 JF - Global Policy N2 - At the beginning of the twenty‐first century, the large democracies of Western Europe experienced some of the most prosperous and peaceful decades in human history. Specifically, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany experienced high and stable quality of life, democratic accountability and state capacity between 2000 and 2019, according to the 2022 Berggruen Governance Index. While all four of these countries are among the top performers in the Index, substantial problems lurk beneath the surface. Notably, each failed to capitalise on the low interest rate environment in the decade following the global financial crisis of 2007–2009—albeit in different ways and for different reasons in each country. In particular, low investment in infrastructure and key technologies, the persistence of stubborn regional inequalities, and resulting sluggish GDP growth have prevented the ‘Big Four’ in Western Europe from improving further and future‐proofing their existing gains. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13271 SN - 1758-5880 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 14 IS - S4 SP - 90 EP - 103 PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koranyi, Kinga T1 - Power of the weak? Framing strategies in fiscal redistribution negotiations JF - Regional & Federal Studies N2 - In fiscal redistribution negotiations, fiscally weaker sub-units aim to secure more funding but are disempowered by their dependency and lack of bargaining chips. What kind of negotiation strategies do fiscally weak actors rely on to maximize their bargaining positions in redistributive negotiations? The article puts forward a novel strategy of discursive framing whereby relatively powerless actors can reach successful agreements. Two strategies of framing, communitarian and coercive, are observed inductively through a comparative case study analysis of two instances of sub-federal redistribution negotiations in Canada. The findings reveal that ‘more is not always better’: more publicity and aggression can backfire, while communitarian strategies grounded in normative argumentation can prove effective despite their non-confrontational nature. Even a mixed communitarian-coercive strategy can prove effective given that sub-units remain consistent with their initial objectives and apply pressure incrementally. The lessons learned from these Canadian cases have broader implications for studying the dynamics of redistributive negotiations globally. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2023.2295407 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hansum, Romy T1 - The Role of Electoral Interests in the National Distribution of EU Covid‐19 Funds JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - Expectations are high regarding the impact of the extensive Covid‐19 crisis support ‘Next Generation EU’. Mixed experiences from established EU distributive policies indicate, though, that ultimate policy outcomes largely depend on national implementation decisions. This article scrutinises vote‐buying strategies according to which domestic governments exploit the largely autonomous national distribution of EU funds to target certain constituencies. To study national strategies, the analysis takes advantage of the extraordinary leeway given to domestic governments in distributing REACT‐EU funds, part of Next Generation EU. The encompassing quantitative analysis covers a large sample of member states and committed funds. The regression results provide no support that national governments distribute REACT‐EU funds to politically opportune regions. In a departure from most previous analyses focusing on specific member states, these findings suggest that vote buying is not the dominant strategy in the national implementation of all EU funds. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13711 SN - 0021-9886 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Akbik, Adina A1 - Migliorati, Marta T1 - Understanding oversight through parliamentary questions: The European Parliament in the Economic and Monetary Union JF - European Union Politics N2 - Although parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight, there is limited research on their variation in holding governments accountable. In this article, we analyse a new dataset of 1393 oral questions posed by Members of the European Parliament during the 8th parliamentary term. After distinguishing between questions asking for information, justification, or rectification of conduct, we explain their variation in connection to the formal oversight relationship between parliaments and scrutinised actors, and to the type of policy activity carried out by the latter. We find that Members of the European Parliament are more likely to address rectification questions and less likely to ask information questions the fewer legal controls they have. Moreover, information questions are more likely to occur in the oversight of policy formulation, while justification questions are prevalent in the oversight of policy execution. The findings flag the importance of structural factors in the practice of legislative oversight. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165241268274 SN - 1465-1165 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 25 IS - 4 SP - 675 EP - 697 PB - SAGE Publications ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Bobić, Ana T1 - Unpacking Legal Accountability: The Case of the European Central Bank JF - Politics and Governance N2 - Although the term “legal accountability” increasingly appears in scholarly discourse surrounding the European Central Bank (ECB), it is under-theorised. This article explores three different dimensions of legal accountability, which are often confused. Accountability to law refers to accountability to legal rules and standards. Accountability through law refers to achieving routes of administrative and political accountability through legal institutions. Accountability of law implies the accountability of legal institutions themselves to the wider public (and other courts) for their decisions. We argue that these dimensions are deeply connected in the sense that either improvements or failures along one dimension are easily carried to the others. We demonstrate the argument by applying our concept of legal accountability to ECB activity, comparing judicial review in the context of monetary policy with the Single Supervisory Mechanism. These cases suggest a possible vicious rather than virtuous circle of legal accountability, i.e., a tendency for either unclear legal standards or lack of accountability of courts themselves to undermine accountability for ECB activity as a whole. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.8907 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dawson, Mark T1 - The Changing Substance of European Law JF - European Constitutional Law Review N2 - Intrinsic relation between form and substance in law and between the institutional law of the EU and its substantive goals – idea and criteria for a ‘substantive core’ to the legal order – the internal market as early EU law’s substantive core – the EU’s changing policy substance and the subsequent ‘de-coring’ of the legal order – the consequences of de-coring and its impact on EU law’s relevance and legitimacy – early attempts to reconcile EU law with the changing substance of EU policy. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1574019624000233 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 20 IS - 3 SP - 451 EP - 481 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hansum, Romy T1 - 'Why organizations leave money on the table: explaining non-demand for EU funds' JF - Regional & Federal Studies N2 - The effectiveness of EU funds depends on their full and proper absorption, yet even regions with high administrative capacities face difficulties in the use of funds. This calls for more attention to a puzzling aspect: numerous potentially eligible organizations do not apply for EU funds. Unlike most previous studies, this analysis examines non-demand and a region with high administrative capacities. The first broad empirically grounded analytical framework of non-demand for EU cohesion funds is developed based on in-depth interviews with actual and potential beneficiaries and experts. It shows the main drivers for non-demand: unawareness of the offer, high administrative burden, and low perceived need for additional funding. Moreover, organization type and size are important moderators. Non-demand also causes adjustments in the supply of funds. These findings suggest that future EU implementation research should expand its focus to examine (non-)demand, as well as its dynamic interplay with the administration. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2025.2485052 SN - 1359-7566 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library SP - 1 EP - 27 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hassel, Anke A1 - Sieker, Felix T1 - The platform effect: How Amazon changed work in logistics in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom JF - European Journal of Industrial Relations N2 - While the effects of the platform economy on work are mainly studied through the lens of gig or cloud workers, many more employees are likely to be affected in non-platform firms or sectors. We discuss the mechanisms of platform economy’s impact on the employment relationships and indirect effect on employment trends. Platform firms enter the service economy with business models that put existing service providers under pressure and advance a platform model of employment relationship. However, their transformative force is limited by three factors: employment regulations, access to welfare provisions and the employment relations at legacy firms. We examine the case of Amazon logistics in the US, Germany and the UK and find that the employment contract, as a legal institution, prevents the dissemination of independent contracting as the preferred employment model. Moreover, the welfare state has a paradoxical effect on platform work: universal welfare and liberal employment law facilitate the rise of precarious work. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801221082456 VL - 28 IS - 3 SP - 363 EP - 382 ER -