Europeanization beyond Europe

The European Union’s (EU) impact on the political systems of its member states as well as countries within enlargement and neighborhood policy has been broadly analyzed, particularly in the context of the democratization process. However, there have been some political changes in recent years that justify the question of whether we still can talk about the continuation of Europeanization and democratization or have started to observe a disruption of these processes, or even their reversal. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the phenomena of de-Europeanization and de-democratization, looking at the current political changes in selected “new” member states or candidates for EU membership (Hungary, Poland, and Turkey) to better understand the core problems of their democratization processes and, at the same time, the obstacles to effective Europeanization.

With the borders of the European Union (EU) moved eastwards, students of Europeanization have been awarded yet another real-world experiment. This paper explores to what extent existing Europeanization approaches travel beyond the EU’s border to its South Eastern and Eastern neighbours, which are marked by “bad governance” with regard to both the effectiveness and democratic legitimacy of their domestic institutions. The first part outlines key insights of the literature on “Europeanization West” regarding the outcomes and the mechanism of the domestic impact of the EU. Then, I summarize the main findings of research on “Europeanization East” focusing on factors that have limited or at least qualified the domestic impact of the EU in the ten Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries in comparison to the EU 15 (those that were members before the 2004 enlargement). This paper discusses to what extent the concepts and causal mechanisms need even further qualification when applied to countries, such as the European Neighbourhood Countries (ENC), that are neither willing nor necessarily capable of adapting to Europe and that do not even have the incentive of EU membership to cope with the costs. I will argue that the EU is unlikely to deploy any transformative power in its neighbourhood as long as it does not adjust its “accession tool box” to countries the EU does not want to take on as members. The paper concludes with some considerations on the policy implications of the EU’s approach of “move closer but don’t touch” which has started to creep into its relations with the Western Balkans and Turkey.

2014

The research on the impact of the European Union on its candidate countries has been traditionally framed within the concept of Europeanisation. But the term, notwithstanding two decades of usage, still lacks clarity in its attributes and its referent. Moreover, the statehood of candidate countries has emerged as a prerequisite for its effectiveness, providing no answer for cases of limited statehood and limited Europeanisation. The concept of member-state building, which refers to the EU's purpose of building functional member states while integrating them, may help reframe the academic discussion on the impact of the EU on candidate countries, particularly in limited statehood contexts, by complementing it with insights from the literature on state building. Deriving from an understanding of sovereignty as responsibility, member-state building highlights the paradoxes of simultaneous state building and European integration, given their competing logics of sovereignty concentration and sovereignty diffusion. To solve the dilemma, nevertheless, member-state building has one further resource. By exploiting the lack of a single blueprint and the possibility of different solutions for institutions to be compatible with EU requirements, member-state building can also foster domestic ownership and legitimacy, thus evading the trap of imposed international state building. 1

Review of European and Comparative Law, 2020

Despite the increasing influence of European legislation on the subnational level of government and local public policy, until recently, the subnational level has played only a marginal role in exploring Europeanization processes. With the creation of the single market in the early 1990s, the process of European integration began to have a significant impact on local governments across Europe. Subsequently , the development of European regional and cohesion policy resulted in the adaptation of the political and administrative structures of the local units of the Member States. However, the impact of European integration is not one-sided. The European Union's multilevel governance system and the spread of the impact of Europeanization on interstate levels pose new challenges for European cities and local actors and enable them to actively participate and influence political decision-making processes at the European level. The main aim of the paper is to identify, explain and classify aspects of Europeanization of local self-government. Therefore, research questions include identifying the dimensions, mechanisms and adjustments that local units make under the influence of European institutions. The paper first conceptualizes the phenomenon of Europeanization and then identifies and addresses its dimensions and mechanisms in the field of local self-government. Emphasis is placed on the implementation of European

1999

While much has been written about the European Union (EU), most of the scholarly work is concerned with the developments at the European level. It is only recently, that we observe increasing attempts to address this research deficit. Notwithstanding a growing number of studies explicitly concerned with the Europeanization of domestic institutions, we still lack consistent and systematic concepts to account for the varying patterns of institutional adjustment across countries and policy sectors. In order to arrive at a more general understanding of the domestic impact of European policy-making, this paper provides a more comprehensive explanatory framework. We distinguish three types of European policy-making, namely positive integration, negative integration, and what might be called "framing" integration, which are characterized by distinctive mechanisms of Europeanization, and hence require distinctive approaches in order to explain their domestic impact. We argue that it is the specific mechanism, rather than the nominal category of the policy area that is the most important factor to be taken into account when investigating the domestic impact of varying European policies.

2012

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2010

Annals of Faculty of Economics, 2009

European Integration Online Papers, 2006

This paper gives a viewpoint on a controversial issue of transnational regional cooperation (TRC) in Eurasia covering the analysis of cooperation between Europe and the regions of Russia. By promoting the favorable regime of transnational regional cooperation, both sides become more effective in managing such common problems as mutual security, political, economic and environmental challenges; illegal immigration; drug-and human-trafficking; etc. What is needed for the successful development of TRC in Eurasian context? What factors make a crucial impact on the development of regional cooperation, whether it is further "inclusion" or "exclusion" of the regions from cooperation with European neighbors? Is it the geopolitical location of the regions that makes regional cooperation more feasible or are there other factors that influence the success of this process? How might the regulatory and administrative tools of central government facilitate or complicate this process? To answer these questions, the study attempts to reconceptualize the theories of integration, Europeanization, and regionalism. Then, it addresses the role of ethnicity, economical development, and geopolitical factors in the establishment and development of transnational regional cooperation. It also investigates the importance of "domestic-policy factors" (reforms in the federal governments) in the development of TRC.