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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.
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.
A Dynamic Analysis of Judicial Behaviour: The Auto-Correct Function of Constitutional Pluralism
(2018)
This book examines contemporary educational research and its governance, addressing key questions via a multidisciplinary theoretical framework of comparative institutional analysis with original data and applying multiple methods. The authors explore and explain important changes in the governance of educational research and the contents of scholarship in education and related disciplines across Europe since the 1990s. This volume synthesizes findings from a multi-year comparative research project, including in-depth empirical case studies of three distinct educational research cultures evolving in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The authors reconstruct and compare changing conceptualizations of educational research, embedded in increasingly internationalized contexts of research, and examine shifts in its governance, including patterns of funding, publication, and evaluation. They examine the producers of European educational research and the distinct role of the European Union in constructing a European Educational Research Area, in establishing cross-border networks, and in (re)shaping educational research agendas. Through innovative empirical analysis of programs of research on various levels and education researchers' collaborations in scientific networks, they provide insights into (supra)national dynamics in education-related scholarship. Theory-guided content analysis of research projects funded by leading national funding agencies and by the most highly developed supranational research funding instrument - the EU Framework Programme - enables the authors to embed findings on Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway in a broader European perspective.
Road freight transportation accounts for around 7% of total world energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. With the appropriate incentives, energy savings and emissions reductions can be achieved by shifting freight to rail or water modes, both of which are far more efficient than road. We briefly introduce five general strategies for decarbonizing freight transportation, and then focus on the literature and data relevant to estimating the global decarbonization potential through modal shift. We compare freight activity (in tonne-km) by mode for every country where data are available. We also describe major intraregional freight corridors, their modal structure, and their infrastructure needs. We find that the current world road and rail modal split is around 60:40. Most countries are experiencing strong growth in road freight and a shift from rail to road. Rail intermodal transportation holds great potential for replacing carbon-intense and fast-growing road freight, but it is essential to have a targeted design of freight systems, particularly in developing countries. Modal shift can be promoted by policies targeting infrastructure investments and internalizing external costs of road freight, but we find that not many countries have such policies in place. We identify research needs for decarbonizing the freight transportation sector both through improvements in the efficiency of individual modes and through new physical and institutional infrastructure that can support modal shift.
Observing and Measuring Government Openness. A conceptual discussion and application to Mexico
(2018)
Open government has become a goal for countries all over the world, but it remains an elusive concept. Despite innovative methodologies to assess open government policies, action plans, and interventions in different countries, scholarly research and practical decisions are hindered by the lack of a precise concept and an operationalization. In this paper, we make two contributions to this discussion. First, we argue that the discussions about open government would benefit from taking the grammatical structure of the concept seriously (open is an adjective, government a noun). Second, we propose that, in order to be conceptually and practically useful, open government should be observable. We present the methodology, application and results of an effort to observe and measure open government in Mexico, based on a study of 908 government offices in terms of transparency and participation.