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In the past decades we witnessed a rise of public participation in transport and land-use projects, and often those practices have been formalised in a solid juridical framework. In the Netherlands and other EU-countries, the cornerstones of this participatory planning framework are the Environmental Impact Study and the Environment Impact Assessment. However, historical appraisals of the impact of these instruments on participatory processes are lacking. Using the case study of the contested Dutch motorway project passing through the Amelisweerd forest (1970s), this paper aims to appraise the role of deliberative democracy concepts and practices. This paper is a plea for a novel academic agenda driven by the research questions: to what extent have participatory processes in transport, land-use and water management policies had an impact on deliberative democracy concepts and practices? Which role did citizens and users have in shaping the decision-making process? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to investigate the influence of legislative quotas on gender differences in political participation by analyzing the within- and across-country effects of quotas. Gender quotas can signal to women that their presence in politics is welcome, leading to a subsequent increase in their involvement in political activities. This change in political behavior should not be reproduced in men; thus, when gender quotas are present, the gap between men’s and women’s participation narrows. Using the European Values Survey and data from eighteen European democracies, this paper demonstrates that this indeed occurs for some political activities when gender gaps are compared before and after the introduction of quotas within countries. This result, however, is not replicated for across-country analyses. European countries without legislative gender quotas tend to have smaller gender gaps than countries with them. This result is explained by referring to the context of the adoption of gender quotas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is structured into four different parts. In the first part the authors analyze the origins of banking and debt crisis in the EU. The state and the evolution of the EU banking sector before the crisis and in its immediate aftermath is analyzed in detail in order to dispel the myth of the existence of an exclusively debt-induced crisis. This part also introduces the notion of financialization into the analysis. The second part analyzes the crisis-related dynamics by using endogenous monetary theory and makes particular use of balance-sheet recession as a concept. The third part introduces political consequences of the banking and debt crisis in the EU by focusing on the political crisis of legitimacy and its impact upon the EU integration process. In order to deal with this topic the authors borrow several concepts from critical international political economy such as transnational elite, knowledge production, and hegemony. We posit a close link between actions of the European transnational elite, crisis origins, and their ramifications. The fourth part focuses on the two most-discussed policy solutions in tackling the crisis: the banking and the fiscal union as well as their feasibility. Additionally, it lays out some fundamental trillemas for creating a viable way out of the crisis which are unfortunately often neglected in public debate. The main argument refers to the growing impact of financialization in the EU and its detrimental effect on the potential for integrated, stable, and prosperous EU economies. The authors explain the changing social, political, and economic landscape and evaluate the main challenges and obstacles to economic and political governance in the EU. The paper is concluded with some heterodox policy recommendations for overcoming them.JEL classification: B52, E51, E52, F34, F50, G01, G20, P48 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the significance of international and transnational developments for education policy research, with a focus on the European Union. The rise of policy projects at the EU level since 2000, has altered the relationships between the state, EU institutions and education policy, in terms of the definition of values, purposes, and mechanisms of education change, in what is often referred to as the europeanisation of education policy and governance. In a time of financial crisis and extensive population migrations to and within the European space, the paper argues for further critical research on the EU institutions and their relationship to national education systems, as well as on the social justice dimensions and implications of considering both national and EU sites of policy for addressing young and vulnerable peoples' education and social futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine who drives attention to the European Union (EU) in member nations—the media or the parties—and how cross-national variations in these media-party interactions can be explained by focusing on issue salience in campaign communications, party polarization, and media system characteristics. To answer these questions, we rely on a quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles and party press releases in seven countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom) during the twelve weeks prior to the 2014 European Parliament (EP) election. Our results from a daily-level vector autoregression (VAR) analysis show that parties are the main driver. However, our findings also indicate that single approaches in comparative research, namely, issue salience, party polarization, and media characteristics, cannot fully explain cross-national variations, which stem from combinations of different determinants, such as low (high) EU issue salience interacting with high (low) party polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the gender gap in sport event attendance -- characterized by higher male and lower female participation -- using a macro-sociological and cross-national comparative approach. We argue that because gender is produced and justified in the realm of sport, gender gaps in sport event attendance may be more pronounced in some societies than others, depending on the position women and men have in the particular context in which someone 'does' his/her gender. So, in addition to individual attributes, one has to consider the societal, macro-level gender equality in order to understand the individual-level gender inequalities in sport event attendance. Using multilevel analyses on Eurobarometer data (2007), we evaluate whether the size of the gender gap in sport event attendance varies across European Union (EU) countries and how this variation relates to societal gender equality, as measured by the Gender Equality Index of the European Institute for Gender Equality. We find higher male than female attendance in all EU countries, but also conclude that higher levels of macro-level gender equality are associated with smaller gender gaps in sport event attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in economic geography has provided a critical examination of securitization's role in the recent global financial crisis. Building on earlier studies which interrogated the development of US securitization, contemporary research has explored how securitization has been adopted in different political economies. Although these novel studies have begun to highlight the geographies of securitization, our knowledge of the historical spread of securitization remains underdeveloped. This paper seeks to address this issue by exploring how securitization emerged within different European financial spaces. In doing so, the paper examines the cases of France, Spain and Italy to identify how securitization circulated through space and across communities of practice, facilitating the co-creation of new knowledge. The paper provides deeper insight into how securitization became established within European financial centres throughout the 1990s, shaping contemporary financial networks and the spread of the credit crunch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) promoted the image of the Internet as ‘interconnection ecosystem’, Internet security has been increasingly conceptualised through the language of resilience—the capacity to self repair. This paper uses performativity and relational space as theoretical lenses to analyse the political effects that ENISA's redefinition of the Internet entails. It argues that the Internet ecosystem is not only used to conceptualise the Internet as a heterogeneous, complex space, but also to legitimise resilience as a new security practice. The first section traces the trajectory of different discursive framings of the Internet as space and introduces the premise of understanding the Internet ecosystem through performativity and relational space. The paper then utilises this framework to conduct an analysis of the Internet ecosystem on the basis of a selection of ENISA's technical and policy documents. It explores infrastructural and political dimensions and discusses their correlated forms of resilience governance. It concludes that the reconceptualisation of the Internet as ecosystem is a highly political move, which also changes the notion of security. If security governance becomes a matter of facilitating distributed self-repair, security is not a state of being protected, which is how we often think about cyberspace, but it is self-made, processual, emergent, and strictly temporal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking for a concept that condenses the normative added value that the European Union may claim to embody vis-à-vis its member states, diversity would appear to be a first-rate candidate. For more than four decades, European institutions have endorsed a complex discourse about diversity that sharply differentiates the European project from the historical experiences of its member-states. The paper stresses the discontinuity inherent in the European Union project and the ways in which diversity is used in European Union discussions. It highlights the existence of several, and only partly overlapping, notions of diversity embedded in the European project: as an acknowledgement of the historical and cultural diversity of member states; as protection of individual and group diversity within a putatively shared and egalitarian European public sphere; as an instrument for achieving political stabilization, market competitiveness, territorial cohesion and economic growth. As an introduction to the special issue on the diversities of Europe, the paper provides the general conceptual framework for the analyses of the four types of diversities analysed: language, religion, foreignness and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interconnections for cross-border electricity trade improve price convergence and welfare. Increased production from variable renewables however implies higher levels of optimal interconnection capacity than in the past. Rather than using scenario building to determine new optimal levels of interconnection capacity, this paper presents a new methodology for Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) based on empirical market data, using the French-German electricity trade as an example. Employing a very fine dataset of hourly supply and demand curves (aggregated auction curves) from the EPEX Spot market, it constructs net export (NEC) and net import demand curves (NIDC) for both countries. This allows assessing hourly welfare impacts for incremental capacity and, summed over the year, the annual welfare benefits for each discrete increase in interconnection capacity. Confronting benefits with the annualised costs of increasing interconnection capacity determines the socially optimal increase in interconnection capacity between France and Germany on the basis of empirical market micro-data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable research analyzing European Union (EU) citizens’ attitudes toward enlargement, there is no scholarly consensus on what drives opposition to the accession of a particular country. To fill this gap, this paper adopts a comparative approach to examine the determinants of attitudes toward the membership of twelve candidate or potential candidate countries to the EU. Using 2005 Eurobarometer survey data from the EU-25, we examine the relative explanatory power of two leading theories—utilitarian and identity—in explaining public opposition to EU enlargement. Our results reveal that, across models, subjective variables capturing material and identity threat perceptions have a more consistent impact on enlargement attitudes compared with objective indicators. While fears of higher EU budget contribution and evaluations of national economic conditions are the most consistent utilitarian predictors of respondents’ opposition to entry of potential EU members, attachment to European identity and fears about the loss of cultural identity are the two most powerful identity-related predictors of public opposition. Contrary to expectations, religious attachment plays a limited role in shaping public opposition. Only Turkey elicits strong and uniform opposition from all religious groups, including atheists, agnostics, and seculars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an interpretation of austerity that sheds light on the crisis in the Eurozone. It argues that austerity is a long-term policy rather than an ill-conceived short-term remedy. To go beyond the by now familiar criticisms of austerity, we need to examine the crisis in its totality. Especially important are the impediments to a strong recovery driven by market incentives. This might ultimately undermine the very existence of the common currency and the future of the European Union.JEL Classification: E2, O4, B5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to present a proposal of reform of the TARGET2 (Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer) system aimed to correct intra-European Union (EU) financial, trade, and productive imbalances. For this purpose, the proposal relies on the application of the Keynes Plan’s principles to a regional integration process. Previously, the origins of the EU imbalances are traced to the shortcomings of the European monetary integration. Finally, the reforms needed to make the TARGET2 a rebalancing system are discussed in depth.JEL Classification: F32, F33, F36 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the roots of the sovereign debt crisis around the Eurozone countries. Furthermore, it seeks to deconstruct the orthodox argument which states the crisis is caused by fiscal indiscipline of some of its members. In doing so, the article bears on the political economy tradition, integrating the elements of hierarchy and asymmetry among the various actors, and poses the hypothesis that the crisis in the Eurozone is due to three highly correlated causes: (1) the unfolding of the 2007 crisis that originated in the United States, (2) the financialization of the global economy, and (3) the intra-Eurozone imbalances, a legacy of the neoliberal institutional framework of the last decades. To associate the Euro crisis with this neoliberal architecture, moreover, the main tendencies of contemporary capitalism are described, pointing to the theoretical contribution of Marx, particularly regarding his hypothesis of a tendential fall of the profit rate. Finally, some concluding remarks are considered, stressing alternatives to the budget austerity measures and to the necessary ruptures with this neoliberal institutional framework.JEL Classification: B51; P16; H63; N14 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing carbon emissions from the transport sector has become a critical imperative for public policy as our understanding of the impacts of the mobility system on the environment has developed. This paper contrasts policy development in three cities (Aberdeen, Bremen and Malmö) that collaborated as part of a European Union knowledge exchange programme designed to share innovative approaches to carbon reduction in the transport sector. We identify a number of critical aspects of governance, including the approach to policy formulation and implementation, and the status of consensus and cohesion, as key determinants of transport outcomes. We conclude that the degree of institutional alignment evident in each city’s governance network is crucial in explaining their appetite for the pursuit of low carbon policies, and in turn the real potential for policy transfer to occur as envisaged by European Union collaboration frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the constitution of the European Union territory in socio-technical practices. We argue that calculative practices are central in the constitution of the European Union territory but that these practices need to be understood as being situated within the broader ‘teleological structures’ of European integration. This paper scrutinizes the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion (formerly European Spatial Planning Observation Network) programme as one of the activity spaces whereby the calculative practices of the ‘European knowledge-based economy’, a term which arose in the 1990s, are constitutive of the contemporary making of the European Union territory. We thus highlight the practices of surveying, mapping and modelling as central components in the constitution of the European Union as a political object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the aims behind the incorporation of competition rules into the European project and studies how the development of the doctrine has been molded to the specific circumstances and outlooks encountered in postwar Europe. It argues that the objectives of competition law in the EU go beyond economic or legal standards that are applied in individual cases; rather, competition law and policy have been calibrated to contribute to allowing the EU project to harness the benefits of an open capitalist economy within the context of a democratic European society. The analysis aims to demonstrate that while Ordoliberal thinking played a role in the development of European competition law and policy, there were several other social, political, and macroeconomic influences at play as well. As such, the strain that competition policy has come under is a result of attempts to use competition policy to balance several public policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances several reasons why EU competition policy on vertical restraints has been a failure. First, the distinction between price and nonprice restraints is inconsistent, since the economic effects of both practices are similar. Second, EU competition law creates a number of inefficiencies that cause a negative impact on social welfare; an example is the ban on absolute territorial protection that does not allow a full protection from free-riding. Third, it is doubtful that the inefficiencies of EU competition law can be justified by the market integration goal, since the rules may turn out to be ineffective in reaching this objective. Fourth, EU competition law on vertical restraints has created negative side effects: it has put an end to experimentation and innovation of competition rules at the member-state level and induced private interests groups to spend a lot of effort in lobbying national regulators. The example of resale price maintenance for books serves as an illustration of the latter problem. Several of the above pitfalls have been indicated by Richard Markovits in his treatise on U.S. antitrust law and EU competition law. These criticisms are supported in this paper and further expanded by a discussion of additional errors that have made the EU competition rules on vertical restraints a policy failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores social accounting matrices (SAMs) using three country case studies (Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia). For each, the agri-food sector, trade negotiations with the European Union and associated challenges are first presented. The key sectors are then identified and analysed using the SimSip SAM tool (Parra and Wodon, 2009). Using sensitivity analysis, the implications of free trade for key sectors were analysed. By evaluating backward and forward linkages in the economy of each country, the most important sectors likely to take a lead role and become essential drivers of growth were identified. Due to strong backward relations and high labour intensity, some agricultural sectors have the potential to generate significant income, thus supporting economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the energy efficiency of EU countries over the period 2000-2010. At the first stage, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used, combining multiple energy consumption data and economic outputs. The efficiency estimates obtained from the analysis are evaluated in a second stage through a multiple criteria decision aiding methodology (MCDA). The proposed non-parametric approach combining DEA with MCDA enables modeling of the problem in an integrated manner, not only providing energy efficiency estimates but also supporting the analysis of the main contributing factors, as well as the development of a benchmarking model for energy efficiency evaluation at the country level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the income distributional effects of three main instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the EU: Coupled Direct Payments (CDP), the Rural Development Programme (RDP) and the Single Payment Scheme (SPS). The authors use a large set of cross-country farm-level panel data for the EU covering the period 1999-2007, and employ the GMM estimator, which allows important sources of endogeneity to be addressed. According to the results, farmers gain 66-72%, 77-82% and 93-109% from the CDP, SPS and RDP respectively. These findings suggest that the initiated shift in CAP expenditure from the support of farm production activities towards supporting rural development and the provision of public goods and externalities is also in line with supporting farmers' income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using comparative methods of policy analysis, this paper explores the institutional factors shaping the transfer and adaptation of risk-based approaches to regulation within and between the regimes for occupational health and safety (OHS) and food safety in the UK. Over the past two decades successive governments have enthusiastically promoted risk as a key concept for regulatory reform and 'better regulation'. Rather than trying to prevent all possible harms, 'risk-based' approaches promise to make regulation more proportionate and effective by using various risk-based metrics and policy instruments to focus regulatory standard-setting and enforcement activity on the highest priority risks, as determined through formal assessments of their probability and consequences. But despite facing similar external pressures and sharing many historical and structural features as OHS, food safety regulation has proven much less receptive to risk-based reforms of its organizing principles and practices. To explain that anomaly, we consider a range of explanations highlighted in the policy transfer and mobilities literatures. We find that coercive drivers for the adoption of risk, in the form of top-down political pressure for deregulation or hard EU mandates, are much less influential than voluntary ones, which reflect both normative (ie, shared commitments to proportionality, resource prioritization, and blame deflection) and mimetic (ie, imitation of private sector corporate governance models) isomorphism. We conclude with wider reflections about the significance of our cases for policy transfer and mobilities research and for the limits to risk as a universal principle for organizing, and accounting for, governance activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the welfare-optimal market share of wind and solar power, explicitly taking into account their output variability. We present a theoretical valuation framework that consistently accounts for the impact of fluctuations over time, forecast errors, and the location of generators in the power grid on the marginal value of electricity from renewables. Then the optimal share of wind and solar power in Northwestern Europe's generation mix is estimated from a calibrated numerical model. We find the optimal long-term wind share to be 20%, three times more than today; however, we also find significant parameter uncertainty. Variability significantly impacts results: if winds were constant, the optimal share would be 60%. In addition, the effect of technological change, price shocks, and policies on the optimal share is assessed. We present and explain several surprising findings, including a negative impact of CO2 prices on optimal wind deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers reflections on the Eurosphere's proper object domain. It does so by reflecting on two interrelated questions: (I) what is the European public sphere?; and (2) how does diversity shape the character of the European public sphere? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]