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The Euro crisis has a strong impact on European Union (EU) politics and the EU polity. Crisis-related issues were debated across Europe and governments and EU institutions introduced several institutional instruments which are meant to make EU economic governance more effective. This paper investigates the scope, timing and divisiveness of political contestation, i.e. politicisation, in the GermanBundestagand the frames on which political parties relied in their debates on crisis-induced institutional innovations in the GermanBundestag. To account for these patterns, the paper relies on institutional theories and theories of party competition. Empirically, it draws on written protocols of debates and parliamentary questions in theBundestag. A case study of Germany and theBundestagdoes not lend itself to broad generalisations. Yet, as argued in the article, it is an unlikely case for politicisation and a politically important case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates how informal rules in the European Union change in the periods between formal treaty revisions. On the basis of a case study on the White Paper on Governance presented by the European Commission in July 2001, it shows how institutional change is driven by conflict between the Commission and the European Parliament. The conflict concerns the development of informal rules to structure the interaction of the Commission and the Parliament with Europe's civil society. The interaction with civil society organisations is very important for the EU bodies because it allows them to acquire resources that are indispensable in order to fulfil and expand their organisational role. An additional aim of this article is to examine how these institutional developments might influence the long-term development of formal treaty rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational information sharing among security agencies in the European Union and beyond has grown considerably more important over the past decades. Centralised databases and numerous formal and informal networks now facilitate cooperation and information sharing. However, sharing intelligence may not only conflict with the protection of fundamental rights (data protection/privacy; presumption of innocence), but also with the organisational culture of institutions that are built upon secrecy. Police agencies often keep knowledge about individual cases and their strategies secret as long as possible. Intelligence services build their work and strategies upon secrecy even more. This paper analyses the variations of secrecy that can be observed for police agencies and secret services, and the relationship between information sharing among security agencies, secrecy, trust, transparency and accountability. In a normative perspective, the paper explores answers to the questions of how secret the work of security agencies should be in democratic rule of law systems and how accountability can be improved without making these institutions work less effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effect of national partisanship and Euroscepticism on individuals’ causal responsibility attribution in European multilevel democracies. It is particularly focused on the average differences in responsibility attribution in federal and non-federal states, as well as in countries belonging to different European Union enlargement waves. Using a pooled dataset of the 2004, 2009, and 2014 European Election Studies, results show that when poor economic outcomes are at stake, partisans of the national incumbent in federal states are more likely to assign responsibility to regional governments following a blame-attribution logic, while this logic is absent in non-federal states. Likewise, Eurosceptic individuals are more likely to assign responsibility to European authorities when they hold negative views of the economy and they belong to countries that have been European Union members for a longer period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to address one of the growing causes of tension between responsiveness to electorates and responsibility to partners by analysing the new rule-bound system of economic governance that is evolving within the euro area in response to the crisis. The key argument is that the nature and depth of the external constraints that have been agreed since 2010 represent a step-change in the intrusion of external actors in the domestic government and politics of the euro states. Responsibility to the collective has emerged as the central norm of the framework of economic governance that is evolving. The norm is backed by a strong regulatory framework including sanctions. The paper concludes with an analysis of the likely impact of the new system on domestic politics and political parties under the rubric of the politics of constrained choice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union increasingly uses 'soft' international arrangements rather than formal international agreements in establishing relations with non-EU states. This contribution aims to raise the question of to what extent a move from hard to soft law in relations between the EU and its partners can be seen as allowing the Union to 'step outside' the legal framework (if that indeed is what is happening) and disregard the rules and principles that define the way in which EU external relations are to take shape. Possible consequences include the risk that these instruments are not subject to appropriate safeguards, that parliamentary influence (by the European Parliament as well as by national parliaments) is by-passed and that transparency is affected. There are various reasons for the EU not to use formal procedures, but a turn to informality does come at a price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy-makers regularly interact with interest groups to exchange information. This provides, it is often argued, the former with input needed to formulate effective policies and the latter with political influence. This article shares this broad perspective. In contrast to large parts of the literature, however, the paper argues for a political perspective on information exchanges between parliamentarians and interest groups. This perspective builds on party politicians' ideological positions to explain the scope of parliamentarians' information exchanges with different types of interest groups. In order to move away from the idea that information is a scarce resource for parliamentarians their interactions with interest groups are put in the context of their intra-party information exchanges. The empirical analysis of original survey data of members of the German Bundestag broadly confirms the article's main arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters typically observe macroeconomic outcomes in order to evaluate government performance. However, during crises, when the clarity of economic responsibility is poor and the economy is in recession, citizens need additional sources of information in order to form a reasoned opinion. Government policy response is one such source. This study shows on a sample of 24 European nations from 2004, 2009 and 2014 that in the post-crisis period, economic policies have emerged as one of the key predictors of vote choice, with government decisions to pursue fiscal austerity leading to significantly lower levels of incumbent support. Furthermore, the paper tests the possibility that the effect of austerity is conditioned by the clarity of responsibility. In multilevel systems, where policies are externally imposed, voters could be expected to hold incumbents less accountable for unpopular measures. The analysis, however, provides no evidence that policy effects depend on the extent to which national governments share policy responsibilities with supranational and intergovernmental institutions. Accountability for policy actions is primarily attributed at the domestic level as voters are able to identify the decisional role of national governments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses under what conditions parties engage in parliamentary scrutiny of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. With insights from comparative literature on parliamentary oversight, two main incentives are identified. On the one hand, opposition parties initiate scrutiny to reduce their information asymmetry vis-à-vis the government; on the other hand, coalition parties use parliamentary scrutiny to control their partners. Empirically, the article uses information on scrutiny activities in six EU member states (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, United Kingdom) covering 13 years and 21 governments. The findings suggest that opposition parties scrutinise the government if they have access to strong oversight instruments. In contrast, the strength of oversight instruments is not important for coalition partners. They resort to means of scrutiny if the leading minister is weak. Coalitions with a greater number of parties engage in scrutiny less often. Moreover, scrutiny is especially observed in questions with more direct distributional consequences (‘intermestic’ issues). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The special issue of which this paper forms the introduction takes as its central focus one particular aspect of democratic governance: accountability. It attempts to position a broad understanding of the notion of accountability within the overall context of the evolving political system of governance in Europe and in particular of the European Union. With accountability at the centre, we consider its relationship to a fairly wide range of other themes in any given political system. This introduction first looks to the concept of accountability as it stands alongside and within other major themes of contemporary political systems. The issue of accountability beyond the national democratic state is then considered, and in particular within what Sbragia has termed the 'ecology' of governance. The introduction concludes with summaries of the papers included in the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the scholarly debate on hegemony and leadership in international relations and elaborates on an analytical framework to assess the nature, scope, functions and causal mechanisms of hegemonic and non-hegemonic leadership in general terms. Based on this framework, it takes issue with the interpretation of Germany's role during the euro area crisis as being a hegemonic one. Discussing the concepts of hegemony, leadership and dominance, it argues that Germany proved dominant during the euro area crisis on selected issues, mainly using its veto power. On other issues, Berlin provided non-hegemonic leadership, more often than not asymmetric co-leadership shared with France. It did not play the role of a hegemon, however, lacking the resources and being unable to shape decisively the economic constitution of the euro area along the lines of its core preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the evolution of EU governance since the financial and eurozone crisis from an experimentalist perspective. It argues that EU governance in many key policy domains continues to take the form of an experimentalist decision-making architecture, based on a recursive process of framework goal-setting and revision through comparative review of implementation experience in diverse local contexts, which is well adapted to the Union’s turbulent and polyarchic environment. The first part of the paper presents a synoptic theoretical account of the characteristics of experimentalist governance, and summarises the empirical evidence on its incidence and operation within the EU before the crisis. The second part of the paper examines two ‘hard cases’ from an experimentalist perspective, namely financial regulation and the European Semester of socio-economic policy coordination. The paper concludes that both cases illustrate the limits of centralised hierarchical governance under the diverse and polyarchic conditions of the EU, together with the continuing attraction of experimentalist approaches for tackling complex, uncertain problems like financial regulation and reform of national employment and welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction to the special issue recalls the alarm raised in EU capitals and Brussels after the UK's in-out referendum delivered a Leave vote in June 2016. The fear was of a domino effect and the further fragmentation of an already divided EU. Seven years later, it is clear that there was rapid attrition of Eurosceptic triumphalism, and the EU-27 showed remarkable unity. This required a sustained collective effort to contain a membership crisis and maintain the EU polity. Yet, the issue contributors challenge the notion that the alarm was unfounded and explain why this counter-factual did not materialise, even though potential for future membership crises of different sorts was revealed. Theoretically, this supports an understanding of the EU as a polity that is fragile, yet able to assert porous borders, exercise authority over a diverse membership, and mobilise a modicum of loyalty when the entire integration regime is under threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A surprising feature of Brexit has been the united front the EU-27 presented during post-referendum negotiations. This membership crisis arrived when the EU had been facing multiple overlapping political and economic crises revealing deep cleavages both between and within member states. How did negotiations prevent a widening politicisation of European integration? In this article a novel dataset is used, containing national and European newspaper Brexit coverage between 2016 and 2020 to establish how negotiating stances were formed in key EU institutions and five influential member states: Ireland, Spain, France, Germany and Poland. The results indicate that the European Commission could maintain a strong, centralised negotiating position over Brexit because the preferences of these member states were mutually inclusive, their negotiating stances aligned, and each national case was subject to generally low levels of domestic politicisation. As a result, while Brexit shocked the EU, its immediate fallout could be contained even during uncertain times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are secessionisms from and within the EU comparable? What motivates them and to what extent do they pose similar challenges to EU territorial governance? This article addresses these questions by comparing the framing of the British Leave campaign and the Catalan independence movement. Drawing on the FraTerr database and method, the analysis suggests that secessionism from the EU and secessionism within the EU are different political phenomena despite sharing an emphasis on sovereignty and the common goal of breaking-up from an existing polity. Secessionism from the EU is primarily a call for the recovery of lost sovereignty and of classical functions of the state such as border control. Secessionism within the EU invokes sovereignty as the right to external self-determination and adds narratives around a better future and greater democratic quality and social justice. These two types of secessionism pose different challenges to EU territorial governance because the first entails a full rejection of the European project while the latter calls for a review of European multi-level governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion scholarship suggests that Europeans broadly interpret Brexit as a cautionary fable rather than an encouraging blueprint to follow. Yet, Brexit singularly demonstrates the possibility of European disintegration, and is but one of multiple recent crises that have brought the potential for member state departures into focus. Drawing on new survey data from 16 countries and using logistic regressions, this article charts Europeans' perceptions of the likelihood future EU exits over the next decade. It finds evidence of asymmetric motivated reasoning: Euroscepticism and pro-Brexit views strongly associate with perceiving exits likely, while among Europhiles this association is only ameliorated, not reversed. This reveals two gaps with repercussions for understanding EU public opinion dynamics. First, between Eurosceptic policy elites' softened policy stances on exit and their supporters' steadfast sense that further departures remain likely. Second, between Europhiles' scepticism of Brexit and a residual lack of confidence in EU cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit constitutes a puzzle for integration theory. Functionalist analyses have not only failed to predict the UK's exit but have also underestimated the disintegrative dynamics of the withdrawal negotiations. By contrast, postfunctionalism accounts for the disintegrative Brexit process but struggles to explain the unity and defence of supranational integration among the EU-27. This article tries to make sense of the Brexit puzzle. First, it argues that Brexit constitutes an attack on the EU polity rather than a policy failure – the type of crisis that functionalist theories explain best. Second, it complements the postfunctionalist account of domestic politicisation with an analysis of the reactions and strategies of the defenders of supranational integration. According to this expanded postfunctionalist analysis, the interaction of polity attack and polity defence has produced 'external rebordering': extreme disintegration of the UK from the EU, on the one hand, and strengthened integration of the EU-27, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the global financial crisis, the European Union has adopted a new regulatory approach towards foreign countries by making use of equivalence rules in finance. Why? This paper argues that it is the EU’s attempt to restore financial stability in its territory and maintain the competitiveness of its financial industry. However, this ‘old’ dilemma between stability and competition in financial regulation is further complicated in a regional jurisdiction, such as the EU, because different regulatory paradigms play off in the dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented which discusses the articles within the issue on topics including decision-making within the European Union (EU), European Council presidency and the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

This article introduces a collection of papers devoted to the study of secrecy in European politics across a range of EU and national settings and policy domains. Academic interest in secret politics - those aspects of public activity intentionally concealed from the public eye - and the governance of secrecy - the political processes and regulatory frameworks governing secret keeping - is growing. This interest reflects technological, social and political developments that appear to signal the end of privacy and the rapid expansion of political secrecy in European multi-level settings. As a consequence, the tensions between democratic accountability, with its transparency requirements, and political secrecy, which is typically justified on grounds of effectiveness of state action, have become more marked and more politicised. Engaging with these developments, the contributions to this collection draw on actor- and interest-centred perspectives that focus on actors’ motivations in secret politics; institutional perspectives that focus on contestation over secrecy norms; and organisational perspectives that emphasise the diversity of secrecy cultures. Further research will benefit from paying special attention to a diverse range of inter-institutional and inter-organisational secrecy settings; to political contestation over secrecy and the regulatory regimes that govern it; and to the refashioning of public-private secrecy architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does EU funding to European regions affect sub-national parties’ support for European integration? This paper aims at analysing whether the EU regional development policy contributes to setting up support for EU institutions and European integration and thus strengthens the whole ‘European idea’ among political parties. To answer this research question, the article analyses election manifestos of parties acting on the regional level in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK for two EU programming periods: 2007─2013 and 2014─2020. The results show that sub-national parties are more supportive of European integration if regions receive more EU funding and if the parties represent regions that are dependent on EU funding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Europe remains a destination of an ongoing influx of asylum seekers. The attempts to build an EU-wide political consensus around refugee policy have so far failed. This article provides a perspective on EU citizens' preferred policy towards refugees and asylum seekers at both the EU and domestic levels. A hidden policy consensus is identified in which European citizens across all social and ideological backgrounds prefer refugees to have the right to work but their freedom of movement to be restricted while their application for asylum is being processed. At the same time, the mode of refugee allocation between countries, which has been prominent in political debates across Europe, is relatively unimportant to respondents, as they focus on the domestic level rather than EU-level policy. The widespread consensus on support for refugees' participation in the labour market may unite EU citizens around cautious hospitality by deemphasising allocation principles, and stressing country-level solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an institutional approach to accountability in representative democracies. Theorising accountability comprises both settled polities with well-entrenched institutions and unsettled polities with weak or contested institutions, and it is argued that agency theory and formal principal–agent models giving priority to compliance and control usually make assumptions that are unlikely to apply to the latter type of polity. An institutional approach challenges principal–agent assumptions regarding what accountability means and implies, what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing and responding to accounts and assigning accountability, and how accountability institutions work and change. Accountability is related to fundamental issues in democratic politics and the paper treats distributions of information, normative standards of assessment, authority and power relations as endogenous to democratic politics. The paper also holds that institutions affect actors’ identities and roles through socialisation, internalisation and habitualisation, as well as through external incentives. An aspiration is to take a modest step towards understanding areas of application for competing approaches to democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper models the correlates of parties’ positions on the issue of European integration, asking why some parties are in favour of European integration, while others are less favourable or even opposed to it. The paper builds on existing work which has identified three sets of explanatory factors predicting parties’ positions on integration: the electorate, parties and party system characteristics. By employing multilevel modelling using data on over 220 parties in 14 Western EU member states for the years 1984 to 2006, the effects of party- and context-level predictors of parties’ positions on EU integration are assessed. The findings demonstrate that parties’ positions are primarily influenced by EU preferences of the general electorate, parties’ left–right ideological extremes and incumbency status. The results also show that the impact of party characteristics is moderated by the electoral context in which parties operate. Moreover, the interaction between both levels offers further insights as to the nature of these associations. Specifically, party size is a robust predictor of integration position only when accounting for the levels of party system's fractionalisation and polarisation. Additionally, parties oriented towards the centre of the ideological spectrum are even more likely to favour European integration within highly polarised systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In most West European countries the effects of long-term determinants of the vote - in particular social class, religion and left-right ideology - have slowly weakened since the late 1980s. This paper first describes differences between the EU member states in the extent of structural and ideological voting in the period 1989-2004. It then focuses on the causes behind the changes over time. It is hypothesised that the decline is partially caused by generational replacement (H1). More specifically, it is assumed that structural voting is most important for the generation born before 1950, and politically socialised in the years of the mass party (H2) and that ideological voting is most important for the generation born between 1950 and 1970, who were politically socialised after the decline of cleavages and before the fall of the Berlin Wall (H3). To test these hypotheses, the study employs the European Elections Study 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004. The country by year combination provides data from 62 political contexts. To analyse the determinants of party choice across different countries and years, a methodology is employed that was developed by Van der Eijk and Franklin in Choosing Europe (1996). The study provides support for all three hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Union (EU) institutions have become increasingly involved in direct policy implementation in the member states, creating a new domain of differentiation in EU governance. What brings about such differentiation, and how does it vary across policy fields? Drawing on theories of differentiated integration, this article argues that differentiated implementation occurs at the intersection of postfunctional obstacles (politicisation) and functional pressures for joint implementation (interdependence). There are two identified dimensions of direct implementation, a territorial one referring to states' participation in such activities, and a procedural one capturing the degree of uniformity in the guidelines for organising implementation. The resulting typology is applied to direct implementation activities (DIAs) conducted by EU agencies alongside national authorities. The qualitative analysis reveals that differentiated participation is a stable feature of DIAs in politicised fields, and although there is a tendency to create more uniform procedures over time and across policy fields, higher uniformity prevails under symmetric interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has developed an ambitious tobacco policy regime. However, this area shows striking differences in national implementation. Although existing research points to some explanations for member state differences, there is still only limited understanding regarding drivers of differentiated implementation. In this study, a method of difference is followed and the article investigates two cases of 'high performers' (United Kingdom, Ireland) and two cases of 'laggards' (Germany, Austria). In order to explain the differences regarding tobacco control strictness, three explanatory approaches are combined. First, taking a party differences approach, an in-depth analysis of the party positions is conducted, using Comparative Manifesto Data. Second, using a functional approach, policy implementation is assumed to be influenced by portfolio allocation. If the competence for implementing policy lies with economic or agricultural departments, a more liberal approach is expected than if it lies with the health department. Third, a turf approach is used: if the health department has the sole competence for the implementation, stricter (and also more dynamic) regulation is expected than if two or more departments must reach a consensus. Combining administrative science and politics approaches in an innovative way, the article provides novel insights on differentiated implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) launched the European Pillar of Social Rights to improve social rights for EU citizens. However, little is known about the domestic dynamics of implementing these new rights. This article examines the implementation of the Work-Life Balance Directive in three member states with different policy traditions: Denmark, Germany and Poland. Based on an actor-centred approach, the article demonstrates that two main factors were crucial in motivating national actors to shape the implementation of these rights. First, the economic costs, including new permanent costs emerging from the provisions and the administrative costs of implementing an EU directive, shaped actors' positions in all three countries. Second, the values of gender equality - whether promoting gender-equal leave or traditional family values - constituted an underlying reason for actors to customise the EU rules differently. Both factors, used as a defence or driver for change, increase differentiated policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of institutional misfit in why member states customise European Union (EU) renewable energy (RE) policies when implementing them. Institutional misfit theory posits that member states only adjust to EU policies when the adaptation pressure remains moderate and national actors' policy preferences align. Conversely, this article tests the argument that member states manage institutional misfit by adjusting - customising - EU policies, that is, through vertical EU policy change rather than domestic change. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the article compares the customisation of EU Directive 2009/28/EC in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, results suggest that institutional misfit is not a necessary condition for customised implementation. Instead, when high institutional fit meets high salience, member states may issue substantively more ambitious policies than the EU requires. Conversely, when high institutional fit meets low salience, member states have no impetus to customise EU rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differentiated integration (DI) and flexibility in implementation (FI) are two forms of differentiation that can be used to cope with heterogeneity among EU member states. Given the different ways in which they do so, this article asks whether DI and FI are alternatives for each other or whether they serve different functions in EU legislation. Based on a dataset that maps the occurrence of opt-outs and flexibility provisions in EU directives, the analysis shows that DI and FI tend to be used together. A qualitative analysis of directives that combine different levels of DI and FI shows that, within that overall pattern, DI is used to accommodate individual outliers, while FI is used to address widespread concerns among member states. This suggests that DI and FI are two forms of differentiation in the EU, which are used to address different aspects of a common underlying set of concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue analyses the patterns, causes and consequences of Differentiated Policy Implementation (DPI) in the European Union (EU). DPI is an umbrella term for the diversity in the presence and use of discretion during legal and practical policy implementation processes and outcomes in the EU. The emergent DPI research agenda emphasises differentiation in EU policy implementation beyond mere legal compliance, which is more widespread, and its role in the broader political and policy processes of EU multilevel governance. The contributions highlight anticipated implementation as one dimension of DPI, as well as legal and practical implementation. DPI serves as an alternative to differentiated integration (DI), accommodating heterogeneous national preferences, capacities and conditions, and feeding back into EU policy-making. The impact of DPI on the EU's output legitimacy and effectiveness depends on scope conditions that require more scholarly attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical debate about the effects of politicisation on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union has tended to focus on the potential of conflict between European political parties or member state governments. At the same time, empirical sociological studies demonstrate that controversy about Europe continues to unfold primarily within national public spheres. There is as yet no genuine Europe-wide party system or public debate. This reveals a gap between the normative theoretical assessment of EU politicisation and empirical sociological analysis of this phenomenon. To reconcile this discrepancy, this paper develops three actually-existing trajectories of politicisation: the remote conflict, the international conflict and the domestic conflict. Each trajectory carries unique challenges and opportunities to the democratic legitimacy of the Union. It is argued that the domestic conflict trajectory is most promising from a normative democratic perspective. Paradoxically, this does not necessarily imply a renationalisation of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Does European soft law matter? In order to answer this question, the article investigates the processes through which the European Union (EU) affects domestic politics and policies in the eHealth sector in France, Austria and Ireland. More precisely, it shows how the hardening of EU soft law creates a new rationale for the use of European instruments by domestic actors, thus expanding their strategic opportunities for policy making at the national level. Despite the empirical diversity of the cases, similar patterns of variation in Europeanisation mechanisms emerge over time, and the data show how the varying structure of European soft instruments (i.e. their degrees of 'hardness') accounts for these changes. This comparative analysis includes multiple process-tracing cases of eHealth public policy making in France, Austria and Ireland in which Europeanisation processes are at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the leadership of Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission president, addressing two questions: to what extent did Juncker exercise political leadership and in what ways did his leadership qualify as explicitly political? Drawing on leadership theory and recent insights into political leadership in the EU, the article first conceptualises the Commission president's potential for acting as a leader – particularly a political leader. The empirical section analyses Juncker's provision of agenda-setting and mediative-institutional leadership in two phases: the first marked by an extraordinary activism and an assertive attitude in agenda-setting, but with limited successes in achieving binding decisions; the second characterised by launching proposals for deliberation and debate, embedded in longer-term visions. The article concludes that around the mid-term of his incumbency, Juncker adapted to the constraining institutional and situational context by engaging in mediative-institutional leadership and carving out a new, more political role for the Commission president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Eurozone crisis, intense political debate has resurfaced about deservingness judgements in European solidarity. To contribute to this debate, this article proposes a refined concept of 'multi-level blame attribution'. It postulates that public support for EU-level welfare policies crucially depends on how citizens attribute responsibility for economic outcomes across different levels of agency. Results from an original public opinion survey conducted in 10 European Union member states demonstrate that attributing blame to individuals decreases citizens' willingness to show solidarity with needy Europeans, whereas attributing blame to the EU increases support. The role of attributing blame to national governments is dependent on the country context; beliefs that worse economic outcomes are caused by national governments' policy decisions tend to dampen support for EU targeted welfare policies only in the Nordic welfare states. The article concludes by discussing the implications of multi-level blame attribution for the formation of public attitudes towards European solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Court of Justice of the European Union is an important motor of integration and is said to be particularly strong in those cases where the Council shows an inability to act. What is the relevance of the Court to social Europe? Europeanisation studies analyse how member states change due to European integration. Judicial Europeanisation is a topic that is under-explored in the literature. Using a case-study approach, this paper analyses the Zambrano case, one of the most notable recent cases of judicial activism of the CJEU with regard to EU citizenship rights. Although the literature often assumes that member states only reluctantly embrace the requirements of case law, the Irish government immediately obliged its administration to implement the required changes. Analysing this case in greater detail and comparing it to the responses of several other member states promises to shed some light on the under-explored question of how Europeanisation through case law proceeds, and what the Court may contribute to social Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Treaty of Lisbon’s institutional modifications narrowed the options for member states within the formal decision-making rules, mainly due to the broadening of the ordinary legislative procedure. This paper hypothesises that the actors in EU institutions seek to strengthen their influence through coordination across the EU legislative institutions, along either national or political party lines. The research data consist of co-decision files that include information on the national and political identities of all the relevant actors in the legislative process in 2004–2011. Statistical tests assess the likelihood of changes in the dynamics of the legislative process as related to the affiliation of the actors after Lisbon. The results show a clear difference in the post-Lisbon legislative process, indicating that the political party identity of the actors may play a more significant role, although other factors must be considered as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What impact will the Lisbon Treaty’s new system of voting in the Council have? After describing the new voting rules, this study develops a modelling approach to assess their likely impact. The first part of the analysis examines the extent to which procedural rules have affected the decision-making process in the recent past, since this will help assess the likely impact of the changes brought by the Lisbon Treaty. The second part of the analysis presents a counter-factual analysis of recent decisions, exploring what would have happened had the Lisbon rules been applied. The main finding is that even under the strong and unrealistic assumption that formal rules define the decision-making process, decision outcomes would have been the same in most cases. The paper concludes by discussing the features of Council decision-making that soften the impact of these rule changes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union’s system of delegated powers, ‘comitology’, underwent significant changes after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force. This paper assesses the impact of these changes on the European Parliament, European Commission and Council. It distinguishes between the changes that occurred at the level of treaty reform (which generally favoured the EP in assuming a greater role in the process of policy-implementation) and subsequent legislative reforms and developments in soft law (through which the Council and the European Commission have reasserted their powers). While the system of delegated powers has significantly changed through the Lisbon reforms, it falls short of the expectations and intentions that led to these changes. The key objectives behind the reform – a simplification of a highly complex system of centralised policy implementation and greater democratic accountability through an upgrading of the EP’s role – have only partially been achieved. To some extent recent developments indicate a step back. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Who provides the European Union with information? This article examines patterns of participation in the large expert group system under the European Commission. It explores competing propositions about the character of the Commission's information system, and tests four hypotheses about what affects participation in the EU expert group system. The authors distinguish between three kinds of information providers: scientists, societal actors and government officials. The empirical section of the paper builds upon an analysis of a data set covering all of the Commission expert groups (N = 1237). Although scientists, and interest groups, industries and NGOs are prevalent information providers for the Commission, the authors show that the informational foundation is strongly biased towards officials from national administrations. They argue that these distinct patterns of participation are significantly affected by inter-institutional and environmental conditions that the Commission Directorate Generals operate under. Access of experts increases the ability of the Commission to anticipate reactions to its proposals and initiatives and hence it impinges on the inter-institutional dynamic of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a prerequisite to shape EU policies in day-to-day negotiations, states have to know what they want and have to quickly produce good instructions. This paper analyses how domestic coordination practices influence the timing and quality of national positions. Are some states in a better position to develop instructions quickly? Are some states more likely to end up with low quality positions? In effect, three factors are crucial to the production of timely and good instructions: good cooperation between Permanent Representations and the lead ministries, autonomous lead ministries that prioritise EU work and good inter-ministerial conflict resolution systems. States such as Luxembourg and Ireland are close to these ideal practices and tend to develop good instructions swiftly, while others, such as Greece and Cyprus, frequently end up with delayed and suboptimal instructions that make it difficult for them to actively participate in EU negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking into account the attempts to render the European integration process a new cultural and value-based quality on the one hand, and the prevalence of sceptical positions on the other, the role of religion as a factor shaping the process of European integration and its accompanying features such as Euroscepticism deserves special attention. It may be argued that the entire EU is a project inaugurated and pushed along primarily by Christian Democratic forces and inspirations. However, the EU is currently characterised by an advanced state of secularisation in most of its member states and high levels of religious and cultural pluralisation. This article raises the question to what extent religious, in particular Christian, actors such as religious parties and the churches have strayed from this integrationist past and contributed to Euroscepticism. Furthermore, the second question is whether a confessional pattern of Euroscepticism can be identified. The paper addresses these questions by empirically and comparatively analysing the positions and influence of religious actors on Euroscepticism in a selected group of EU member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the increasing relevance of Islam and religion in the institutional arrangement of the EU post-Maastricht and the future policy implications for the complex political system of the EU. By adopting a combination of qualitative methodologies that are theoretically rooted in historical institutionalism and in a systemic view of the EU, the paper studies the emergence of Islam and religion as policy issues in two institutional settings, the European Commission and the European Parliament, during the 1990s and up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analysis shows a growing attention to faith communities on the part of the Commission, in the post-Maastricht context, culminating in the elaboration of semi-official avenues for encounter and dialogue with religious groups. It also indicates how, in turn, these semi-official practices and the ideas behind them have gradually imposed themselves upon multiple levels of the EU political system, thus opening up an institutional space in the EU for consultations with and 'informal policies' towards faith communities, both within and outside the EU borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks why the European Commission lost control over the policy process in one of the most contested areas of policy-making in the European Union in recent years. The article finds that after years of vigorous political controversy over the framing of the issues at stake, the EU finally shifted into a Schattschneiderian mode of politics. The policy conflict expanded dramatically and a previously unrelated set of actors and interests united along new lines of policy debate. The analysis underscores how the political mode of EU decision-making can shift during the process of policy-making. In particular, it stresses how policy conflicts affect the mobilisation and demobilisation of political contestants and the realignment of political actors in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (Frontex) was founded. Contrary to the widely used principal-agent approaches, it is more promising to analyse Frontex through the lens of experimentalist governance. This paper has two lines of argument. First, it argues that Frontex may only succeed if Frontex has a sufficient degree of organisational independence and enjoys appropriate and steady support by all member states. This is especially virulent when many member states fail to provide significant contributions in terms of material and human resources as well as time, leading to a suboptimal reduction of duration, scope and operational impact of Frontex's missions. The second argument is concerned with the accountability of Frontex. Contrary to the experimental approach, this article takes a sceptical stance, arguing that important (supra-)national actors are sidelined and relevant legal rules are ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the EU regulatory state expands into fiscal surveillance and what conflicts arise in the process. That the EU should have gone down the route of regulating budgets is puzzling. In Majone's original concept, the regulatory state is meant not to interfere with member states' budgetary redistributive policies. Yet the revision of the Pact strengthened the regulatory content of fiscal surveillance by reformulating the policy problem, strengthening delegated monitoring by the Commission, with Eurostat rather than DG Ecfin at its helm, and by extending control through specialised information. The analysis implies that the revision of the Pact in March 2005 cannot simply be dismissed as a watering down of its fiscal rules. However, there are limitations to regulatory expansion. One limitation is the inherent tension between the requirements of control and the economic justification of fiscal rules, another that economic justifications remain ambiguous and contentious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines variation in the timing of compliance with European directives. It formulates and tests the hypothesis that member states' policy-based incentives to deviate from the content of directives influence delay in compliance. This hypothesis is tested along with other factors that are posited to influence compliance, including the amount of discretion directives give member states, the level of misfit between national and European-level laws, and characteristics of member states. The hypotheses are examined in a quantitative research design using arguably the best available information on compliance: national responses to six labour market directives investigated by Falkner et al. (2005) for Complying with Europe. The present study develops Falkner et al.'s analysis in two respects. First, it identifies new theoretically important variables and offers measures of these, notably member states' policy-based incentives to deviate and the amount of discretion granted by directives. Second, it tests these hypotheses using multivariate analysis, while Falkner et al. applied bivariate tests only. In contrast to Falkner et al.'s conclusions, the findings indicate that misfit between national and European laws significantly reduces the likelihood of timely compliance. While political opposition at the time of a directive's adoption is not linked directly to compliance, member states tend to oppose directives that do not fit existing national laws. Compliance is more timely for directives that grant more discretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of coordination structures for EU policy-making in the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. The study maps the main features of the established EU coordination machineries, and traces the most important reforms of their organisational structures. It proposes an actor-centred, 'politics of institutional choice' approach to explain the rapid and far-reaching changes in EU coordination structures in all the new member states. By contrast, two alternative frameworks focusing on efficiency and historical-institutional arguments emphasising the impact of early institutional lock-in fail to explain the specific institutional forms adopted and the considerable degree of institutional dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defining industrial policies has traditionally been a preserve of EU member states, upon which the Commission has only impacted indirectly, through numerous measures affecting industry, leaving little room for an industrial policy in its own right. However, growing concern about the EU's future position in the international division of labour has led several member states to request from Brussels a more pro-active approach and closer attention to European industrial interests. This paper investigates the recent trend towards 're-inventing' industrial policy in the EU, France and Germany. It examines the model of intergovernmental industrial cooperation established between these two member states, its usefulness and limitations. It argues that, despite recent regression in France towards old-style interventionist policies, and although German governments sometimes favour a protectionist stance, both countries can also generate new, more constructive, euro-compatible intergovernmental initiatives, but that promoting national champions damages the credibility of such initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion regarding EU integration has become increasingly important in light of both increasing public scepticism to integration and the EU's gradual shift towards integration of core state powers (CSPs). This article contributes to an emerging literature studying support for integration of core state powers by investigating whether such integration, given its greater potential for polarisation and activation of nationalist identities, is more likely to be opposed than regulatory integration. The results show that some CSP integration may meet greater support than regulatory integration. They also show that a larger number of exclusively national citizens support externally, rather than internally, oriented CSP integration. This suggests that what policy area a policy belongs to may be more important for predicting contestation of its integration than whether it is a core state or regulatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]