EUROPE 1992: CONFLICT OR COOPERATION?

Many European and American observers of the EC have criticized "intergovemmentalist" ac counts for exaggerating the extent of member state control over the process of European integra tion. This essay seeks to ground these criticisms in a "historical institutionalist" account that stresses the need to study European integration as a political process which unfolds over time. Such a perspective highlights the limits of member-state control over long-term institutional de velopment, due to preoccupation with shorHerm concerns, the ubiquity of unintended conse quences, and processes that "lock in" past decusions and make reassertions of member-state control difficult. Brief examination of the evolution of social policy in the EC suggests the limita tions of treating the EC as an international regime facilitating collective action among essentially sovereign states. It is ore useful to view integration as a "path-dependent" process that has pro duced a fragmented but still discernible "multitiered" European polity.

2006

Journal of International Relations and Development, 2005

The book Negotiating the New Europe: The European Union and Eastern Europe presents an innovative approach to the analysis of the European Communities' (EC) policy towards Eastern Europe. The author argues that, from the European Union (EU) perspective, the 'Association game' can be regarded as an optimal strategy for developing relations with Eastern European countries, taking into consideration the wider network of international and domestic games. By doing so, the book also explains the association agreements as a key part of the EU's Balkan policy. Dimitris Papdimitriou focuses on five main questions and provides answers combining theoretical and empirical evidence. First, why was 'Association' selected as the main tool of the EC's strategy in Eastern Europe? Second, why did the EC fail to adopt a more generous position during the Association negotiations with the first and second wave of Eastern European applicants? Third, why did Bulgaria and Romania fail to be included alongside Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the first wave of Association applicants? Next, what were the implications of the Association agreements becoming an iterated game for the strategies of both the EC and the second wave of Association applicants? Finally, what were the long-term consequences of the Association agreements for the EC's strategy in Eastern Europe, both within the setting of its eastwards enlargement and its attempts to stabilize the volatile Balkan region? (p. 4). In generalizing the answers to these five questions, the author explains the outcome of the association negotiations, enlargement policy and draws the implications for the future of the EU's policy towards the second wave of association applicants and the Balkan region. The introductory part of the book answers the first question. The treaty basis for Association agreements is substantially different from other areas relating to the EC's external relations. Competencies are divided between member states and the Community. Hence, they should be analysed at three levels: domestic (as seen from the individual member state), EC and international, and the analysis should also distinguish between their economic and political significance. Using the game-theoretic concepts of games in

Res publica. Politiek-wetenschappelijk tijdschrift van de Lage Landen, 1996

Int Security, 2012

ABSTRACT In “Europe’s Troubles,” Sebastian Rosato argues that the high water mark of European integration has passed and that the fate of the European Union (EU) is increasingly uncertain.1 The European project, he claims, had a geostrategic imperative during the Cold War: unable to match Soviet power individually, the small and medium powers of Western Europe sought to balance the Soviet Union through economic integration. The Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War removed the strategic rationale for preserving the community that European governments had built over many decades. At best, according to Rosato, Europe will continue to muddle along. At worst, the entire European project will collapse. Rosato’s article is an important contribution to the debate on the origins and persistence of European integration. His argument that integration was motivated by Eurasian balance of power considerations, however, leads him to make a number of dubious theoretical and empirical claims. Theoretically, Rosato’s structural realist premises are indeterminate regarding the magnitude, scope, and direction of European integration. Empirically, Rosato is forced to overstate the scope and degree of European integration during the Cold War and to understate the achievements and advances after the Soviet collapse. In addition, Europe’s troubles today are not only different from what Rosato suggests, but also more severe. Structural realism offers contradictory predictions and interpretations of post–Cold War European integration—especially in security and defense affairs. Contrary to Rosato, who predicts the EU fraying and fissuring in the absence of the Soviet Union,other structural realists have explained theoretically (especially as a reaction to American unipolarity) and documented empirically how the post–Cold War political landscape has led to greater European cooperation in security and defense, not less.2 Rosato’s exclusive focus on the balance of power largely ignores Western European threat perceptions. Perceptions of the Soviet threat rose and fell throughout the Cold War period. Some national leaders, such as French President Charles de Gaulle, did not view the Soviet Union as an implacable enemy, but instead, to the consternation of Washington, at times skillfully maneuvered between the two superpowers. Moreover, if regional power imbalance is all that matters, one is left to wonder why the small and medium powers of North and Central America did not take similar steps to integrate to balance the United States. Absent any account of threat perceptions, domestic politics, and the preferences, goals, and interplay of the main actors, this failure makes little sense. Monocausal explanations such as Rosato’s have trouble explaining events as complex and contingent as European integration over extended spans of time. Eurasian geostrategic power considerations were at best one of several reasons that leaders in Western Europe pursued integration in the immediate postwar period. Rosato states that the emergence of the EU “is best understood as a response to the postwar distribution of power” (p. 47). “Given the Soviet Union’s massive power advantage,” he writes, “the Europeans understood that they could compete effectively only if they built a single regional economy governed by a central authority” (p. 62). Rosato’s interpretation of European Cold War history vastly overstates the breadth and depth of integration during this period, and misstates the main motivation behind it. The 1951 Treaty of Paris, the first step toward what is today the European Union, formally established the European Coal and Steel Community, integrating the most important war industries of the time. The framers of the treaty—in the words of the 1950 Schuman Declaration—were more interested in making war between France and Germany “not merely unthinkable but materially impossible.”3 Sublimating the Franco-German rivalry, not balancing the Soviet Union, was the key motive behind the early moves toward European integration following World War II. In 1957 the “Six”—France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries—established the rudiments of a common market, including a customs union and the removal of internal barriers to trade in various economic areas. Although historically significant given Europe’s history of war and destruction, the first steps toward economic integration remained limited...

This chapter discusses the process of European institutional integration from a politicaleconomy perspective, linking the long-standing political debate on the nature of the European project to the recent economic literature on political integration and disintegration. First, we introduce the fundamental trade-off between economies of scale associated with larger political unions and the costs from sharing public goods and policies among more heterogeneous populations, and examine the implications of the trade-off for European integration. Second, we describe the two main political theories of European integration -intergovernmentalism and functionalism -and argue that both theories capture important aspects of European integration, but that neither view provides a complete and realistic interpretation of the process. Finally, we critically discuss the successes and limitations of the actual process of European institutional integration, from its beginnings after World War II to the current crisis.

2016

The path of European economic integration these days seems to be dominated by the European Union – its functioning and current challenges. It is however worth emphasizing, that the process of European integration together with commercial and trade aspects thereof, includes also elements which remain beyond the mainstream of Union–oriented debate and involve countries not being EU Member States. European Economic Area (EEA) is a good example of that. The supranational model of integration combined with inclinations towards more traditional, intergovernmental, concept of cooperation resulted in a very interesting form of economic integration grouping. The motives for establishing EEA, the mosaic of interests represented by states engaged, the economic conditionings in that respect and – finally – the character of EEA and the peculiar instruments of decision-making are then worth a closer analysis. No less important are perspectives of EEA further development. Those problems are the ma...

2015

The role and impact of institutions on policy-making have been receiving a lot of attention in the academic literature on the European Union (EU). The current special issue aims to contribute to this broader institutionalist debate in the EU literature by paying attention to institutional dynamics within and across EU institutions and different levels of governance. In this quest, it feeds into the broader political and academic debate on (changing) institutional balance and policy coherence. The contributions to this special issue reflect that a wide range of institutional mechanisms for intra-and inter-institutional cooperation have been developed. Most importantly, the contributions allow us to get a better insight into the factors that explain the success or failure of the cooperation. This introduction to the special issue provides the backdrop for the contributions and an overview of the individual articles.

European Political Science, 2016

Six years after the onset of the Eurozone the European Union (EU) no doubt is facing its most serious crisis to date. Popular distrust in the EU appears to be on an unstoppable upward trend, edging close to the 50% mark in the May 2015 Eurobarometer survey. Euro-skeptic parties continue to grow unabatedly even in traditionally europhile countries, such that the possibility of a victory for the French Front National in the 2017 presidential elections can no longer be ruled out. On the other side of the channel, the referendum of June 23, 2016 in the traditionally Euro-skeptic Britain has lead to the first “defection” from the EU. Simultaneously, tensions between member states repeatedly flared to unprecedented heights, with not only the Greek but also the Polish and Hungarian, and more recently even Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi accusing Germany of imperial ambitions. The main cause of the EU’s crisis of legitimacy crisis, no doubt, lies in its apparent inability to promote economic prosperity and stability. Since the onset of the Eurozone crisis in 2010 the European Union has recorded the lowest growth rate amongst the world´s regions since 2010. Moreover, the crisis has placed many countries in the EU periphery in a situation East Asian countries have tried to avoid since the crisis of 1997 namely a near total loss of policy autonomy in the face of a programme of fiscal austerity, internal devaluation and structural adjustment imposed by a coalition of creditor nations. Additionally, the Eurozone crisis brought to light that pre-2007 economic convergence to a considerable extent was a chimera. The entire Southern periphery of the EU is now diagnosed to suffer from deep-seated structural economic problems, while convergence has given way to divergence. The per capita GDP of Europe´s formerly communist Eastern periphery has increased notably since the early 1990s, but with the onset of the crisis, much of the ground conquered was ceded such that overall income convergence remains modest. Though European integration is frequently presented as a means to promote prosperity in a globalised economy that has served to emasculate the economic policy tools of the member states, not only those hardest hit by the crisis, but also an increasing share of the middle class plagued by fears of economic decline has come to see the EU as the problem instead of the solution. While for EU policy makers there can be no doubt that the answer to the crises besetting the Union can only be deeper integration, in view of the current dislocations it may be reasonable to ask whether a more differentiated form of integration might not be more appropriate for the European continent. Given that it provides the most successful example of economic convergence, East Asia, in particular, may hold some useful lessons for managing economic convergence in Europe. The significant diversity in East Asian convergence policies notwithstanding, the common denominator of their success seems to be an emphasis on strengthening rather than weakening the policy autonomy of national governments in order to promote investment and technology transfer, and a gradual and managed liberalisation of external trade alongside with various impediments to international financial transactions. This stands in contrast to the successive reduction of policy autonomy of the EU member states, which has obstructed convergence by making a consistently growth-oriented monetary and exchange rate policy impossible, by entangling many peripheral countries in the trap of excessive indebtedness and by reducing the capacity for a selective, vertical, industrial policy. However, it does not follow from this that the restoration of the economic policy autonomy of the member states and the adaptation of an East Asian model to the European periphery would be appropriate. Government failure is at least as serious an issue as market failure and there are good reasons to doubt that many of the European peripheral states dispose of the required state capacity to implement an East Asian strategy. Indeed, the deepening of integration in the monetary field in large part was driven by the need of highly fragmented peripheral states to impose tight external constraints on the domestic policy making process. Accordingly, the outlook for the EU would seem somewhat bleak as, on the one hand, the loss of policy autonomy implied by the current EU developmental model risks provoking permanent peripherilisation, while that same loss of autonomy may be a necessary anchor to guarantee policy coherence in many peripheral state