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Given its recent development of becoming a fully fledged legislature in EU politics, the European Parliament is increasingly compared to the USA House of Representatives. At the same time, a lot of scholars that have analyzed the evolution of party cohesion within the European Parliament (see, for instance, Hix et al. 2007) do not refer to the American example. This is surprising since there is a long tradition on research looking at party cohesion - socalled party votes - within the House of Representatives (see, for instance, Roberts and Smith 2003). This paper wants to bridge this gap by comparing and explaining figures of party cohesion between the USA House of Representatives and the EU European Parliament. The analysis of party or roll-call votes is part of a broader research agenda that deals with the question whether the European Parliament is developing towards a legislature such as the House of Representatives or, in other words, whether the European Parliament can be better understood by comparing it to the USA House of Representatives. Some comparative research on these two legislatures has already been done. Kreppel (2006), for instance, compared the European Parliament with the House of Representatives by looking at three emblematic features of the House: its legislative power, the role of committees and bipartisan voting. Despite the notion of 'American exceptionalism' that is often referred to when analyzing national legislatures of EU member states, her analysis demonstrated that the European Parliament shares these characteristics to a large degree. This paper will examine whether this also applies to party cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the issue congruence between citizens and their national MPs in 15 EU member countries. The two broad issue dimensions that structure the European political space are distinguished: left vs. right and European integration vs. national independence. Based on INTUNE survey data from 2007/2008, the paper investigates the congruence of voters and elites on those dimensions. It concludes that the gap between Euro-positive elites and Euro-sceptical voters does no longer exist. Moreover, the antecedents of left-right and integration-independence attitudes are very similar both among citizens and political elites. There are two possible lessons to be drawn from this: one is methodological and suggests that earlier survey instruments were less than perfect. The other is substantial and argues that the politicisation of European integration in its post-functionalist era produces a fit between citizens and their representatives that is 'better than it used to be'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the importance of sub-national vis-à-vis national differences in good governance, control of corruption or what in the literature is known as quality of government (QoG). Methodologically the paper uses both a large-N quantitative analysis and qualitative case studies to elucidate variation in QoG across and within E.U. countries. We also introduce novel sub-national data for 172 E.U. regions based on survey of 34,000 residents across 18 countries, which constitutes the largest multicountry survey on QoG at the regional level to date. The paper shows, first, that there are notable differences in the level of quality of government across EU regions; second, that those differences, despite being inherently difficult to capture, can be measured with sufficient accuracy and are resistant to the most stringent robustness checks available; third, that those differences in quality of government decisively matter for explaining the different socio-economic development of EU countries and regions; and fourth, that there are institutions and policies shared by the administrations of the best performing EU regions that have been traditionally overlooked by both academics and policy-makers and that should be in the political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the challenges of integration of the new member states (NMS) in the single market and the single currency in the European Union (EU), is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the state of real economic convergence between the NMS from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the EU.

What impact has the 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU) had on legislative decision making? The present paper answers this question, first, by assessing the nature of the controversies and the alignments of actors on those controversies before and after enlargement. I find substantial variation in actor alignments across issues, both before and after enlargement. However, since enlargement a divide between old and new member states has been evident, particularly on issues about financial subsidies. Second, the paper examines whether enlargement has changed the way in which controversies are resolved. What model of legislative decision making gives the most accurate predictions of decision outcomes? Both before and after enlargement, a simple bargaining model, the Nash Bargaining Solution, gives significantly more accurate predictions of decision outcomes than a procedural model. The paper examines the impact of enlargement with a new dataset on legislative decision making in the EU. The dataset has been assembled through 228 semi-structured interviews with key informants. The dataset contains information on the positions taken by EU actors on 229 controversial issues raised by 87 legislative proposals from before and after the 2004 enlargement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of the qualitative findings within a larger research project on non-compliancewith EU law, which draws on a unique and comprehensive database on all the infringementproceedings opened against member states by the European Commission between1978 and 1999. By using panel-econometrical methods, the quantitative part of the project testedthe explanatory power of three prominent compliance approaches in the literature - enforcement,management and legitimacy- for explaining the varying levels of compliance between EUmember states as displayed in the more than 6.300 infringement cases in the database. The mainfinding was that the combination of a country's power and the efficiency of its bureaucracy is themost promising account for explaining its record of (non-)compliance. The purpose of the qualitativeanalysis is to complement these findings by conducting comparative case-studies. studies. Firstly,this allows us to further discussing the pertinence of our quantitative findings by analyzing towhich extent the correlations are present in our cases and, more importantly, by revealing theunderlying causal mechanisms. Secondly, we are able to test hypotheses which are hardly quantifiable.Finally, by analyzing compliance with individual rules, we can also include hypotheseswhich draw on rule-specific features for explaining non-compliance problems.Drawing on case studies on the implementation of the Habitats directive (HD) in France, theUnited Kingdom (UK) Italy, and Greece, this paper argues that government capacity is the mostimportant factor for explaining a country's compliance record, but that we also have to considerthe role of non-state actors in determining a state's capacity to comply. It also puts forward therole of domestic legal culture in mitigating the power of a state to not comply. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the change of the employment rates in 35 democratic OECD and EU-countries, 1996-2006. Why were some countries more successful in increasing employment than other nations? This is the guiding question of this paper. I argue that there are various pathways to more or less employment growth. Countries that have reached a high level of employment already in the past face a ceiling problem, which makes further growth very difficult albeit not impossible. They may continue or pursue a variety of mixes of labor market policies without seriously endangering their previous level of employment. In contrast all countries that started from a low level of employment recorded strong increases if they had a low tax wedge. However, low pay roll taxes are not the only way to strong employment growth in countries with low employment level. The disadvantages of high pay roll taxes can be compensated by other employment-friendly policies. Consequently the politics of successful labor market varies. In countries with high employment level, the previous politics that were compatible with reaching a high level of employment are compatible with consolidating this level. In countries with low employment level, strong pro-market political parties, weak trade unions and collective bargaining is favorable to liberal employment-enhancing policy regimes. There are other pathways from low to high employment levels, but they are less frequently chosen. In general terms, I make two arguments: (1) Variations of employment performance may be explained better by looking at policy mixes and policy interactions rather than single policies. A policy that is employment-inhibiting in one context may be a structural precondition for employment-enhancing policies in other contexts. (2) The feasible options of policy makers depend on the level of employment and this is closely correlated with stage of the development towards a post-industrial labor market. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rampant political corruption has been one of the major problems associated with the entry of the post-communist states into the European Union. According to surveys, political parties are among the major actors involved in corrupt practices in countries such as Poland, Czech Republic and Bulgaria. This paper provides a theoretical discussion of the link between political party development and political corruption and tests two potential explanatory mechanisms in the context of post-communist Europe. At the party level it is argued that party-society linkages provide an important explanatory mechanism. Where party-society linkages are weak, political parties experience higher incentives to engage in rent-seeking behaviour, as alternative ways to gain financial, organizational and electoral support (Della Porta, 2004; Van Biezen and Kopecký, 2007). This hypothesis is tested using aggregate data on corruption and party membership in the period from 1990 - 2002 in 11 Eastern European countries. At the party system level it is argued that party competition provides an important mechanism that limits political corruption. Where party competition is strong, governing and opposition parties will ´keep each other in check´, uncovering corrupt behavior of their opponents, and rational voters will penalize corrupt politicians at elections (Della Porta, 2004; Grzymala-Busse, 2003; Heidenheimer and Johnston, 2002). This hypothesis is tested using aggregate data on corruption, electoral volatility, turn-over, fragmentation, strength of opposition in parliament, type of government and relative strength of the government vis a vis the opposition in the period from 1990 - 2006 in 11 Eastern European countries. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policy scholars have not attempted to integrate insights from the public opinion literature into theory building on issue framing other than to assert that shaping opinions is a critical aim of the process. Meanwhile, although public opinion research makes clear that different types of information have various impacts on how attitudes (the target of issue framing) are formed, controversy remains over the relative impact of these information types on attitude formation. This paper addresses both of these research gaps by using ordered heteroskedastic probit analysis to assess the relative impact of chronic and domain-specific information on European attitudes toward human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. Based on our analysis of responses to the November-December 2005 Eurobarometer (64.3) survey, we find that religiosity, the moral status of the fetus, and conflicted feelings regarding the benefits and risks of hESC were key determinants of Europeans' attitudes in 2005, as was trust in the European Union and national hESC regulatory systems. The paper concludes by assessing the implications of the findings for issue framing for hESC research in Europe, as well as for future research on issue framing and information types in public opinion formation more generally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An influential framework in comparative political economy, the "Varieties of Capital-ism" thesis predicts the systematic variation of national policy responses across differ-ent types of advanced economies and claims that policy differences in national political and economic arrangements are likely to persist in the midst of increased international pressure. These two claims are founded upon the propositions that: 1) different varie-ties of capitalism produce different corporate strategies and associated political re-sponses; and more specifically 2) domestic institutional settings define comparative institutional advantages, which remain the dominant frame of reference of corporate actors. While generating important insights into patterns of national adjustment, the varieties of capitalism has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the type of "global pressures" to which national economies are exposed. We examine the robustness of this framework in light of the EU's eastern enlargement and the policy choices made by individual European Union member states on the issue of the opening up of national labor markets. The decision of the EU-15, at the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002, to invite eight Central and East-European Countries (CEECs) to join the EU on May 1, 2004 fuelled fears in many European countries that intensifying competition from low-wage manpower from the new member states would erode national regulatory regimes. In this paper, we investi-gate the usefulness of the varieties of capitalism framework by conducting a structured comparative analysis of Britain, Denmark, and Sweden. Though the variety of capitalism literature captures important aspects of national policy-responses to the enlargement process, the main conclusion of the paper is that this influential perspective needs to be supplemented by more sophisticated accounts of politics, which shed light on how inter-party competition shapes national adjustment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Treaty of Amsterdam formalized the idea of a ?European Employment Strategy? (EES), a supranational instrument to boost European employment rates and competitiveness. The European strategy is ruled by the ?Open Method of Coordination? (OMC), a new governance regulatory instrument for developing the ?social dimension? of the European Union that is not legally binding and is voluntary in nature. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand how non-binding measures, specifically the EES, influence policy-making processes and outcomes on member States. To sustain and illustrate my argument, I present data from interviews conducted in Sweden, Spain and Belgium, and from patterns of spending on active and passive labor market policy in fifteen member States. This paper seeks to expand the literature on ?Europeanization? of domestic configurations by providing a theoretical framework to analyze how non-binding measures affect policy-making processes in member States. In addition, it makes a contribution to the policy-making literature by trying to comprehend: a) the relationship between ?soft institutions and instruments? and the process of policy-making; b) policy settings that do not necessarily require the creation of legislation; and finally c) how exogenous, i.e., non-domestic, inputs affect policy-making processes on domestic settings. The analysis is grounded on the reasoning researchers should open the ?black box of policy-making? when understanding the effect of non-binding and non-domestic governance instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms weakening the power of local units, such as municipal amalgamations, have been high on the agenda in many European countries for some time. The political rationale for this trend is often cast in terms of administrative efficiency. As Chandler (2008) points out, if the justification of local government is purely expediential, it is quite legitimate for the central government to control and arrange the local level in a way which makes it most efficient in fulfilling its expediential aims. In contrast, ethical justifications of local government value this institution because it fulfils some morally desirable purpose in itself, regardless of its value to the central government. If there are any valid ethical justifications for local government they would put restrictions upon the justifiability of the central government to interfere in the activities of local government. In this paper we construct a normative theory of local government by developing an ethical justification of the local level. The basic idea is that the same foundational value - individual moral autonomy - constitutes the normative cornerstone of both democracy and the right to local autonomy. The implication of this argument is that if we value democracy, we must also value strong local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration has had an incomparable impact across policy planes in European nation-states, of which immigrant integration and social policy stand out. While a burgeoning literature has explored the widespread "civic turn," most-different states have adopted mandatory language and country knowledge requirements as a way to regulate access to legal status, less attention has been focused on comparable shifts in social policy. This paper examines the overlaps of and changes to civic integration and social policy as part of a critical rethinking of membership policies in the contemporary welfare state. We argue and find evidence to show that change in civic integration and social policy is not merely contemporaneous but interrelated. Moreover, while Western European states experience similar trends of integration promotion and benefit narrowing, they pursue policy design as part of different membership goals. An examination of policy developments in Britain, Germany, and Spain maps unique changes in civic integration policy alongside benefit access. We account for variation in membership policy by highlighting three interrelated factors: citizenship policy legacies, welfare state model, and the dynamics of party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eastern enlargement has been celebrated as the success story of the "transformative power of Europe". Indeed, accession to the EU significantly reinforced the processes of democratic transition and socio-economic modernization in Central and Eastern Europe. So it had for Spain and Portugal 20 years before. At the same time, accession posed a formidable challenge to transition countries. Policy overload and tremendous implementation costs met with weak state capacities largely tied up in managing the political and economic transition process. This paper examines how Spain and Portugal have coped with the adoption of and adaptation to European environmental policy when they joined the EC in 1986. We explore to what extent the governments of the two Southern European accession countries sought to enlist the help of business and civil society in taking on the environmental acquis communautaire giving rise to the emergence of so called new modes of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars tend to assume that in terms of institutional shape the US is generally more hierarchical and centralized than the EU and in terms of market integration the former is more of a single free market than the latter in the sense of fewer allowable trade restraints. This paper, however, in taking a closer look at the respective public procurement regimes of the United States and the European Union argues that in certain policy fields the European Union appears to have gone further than the United States in centralizing authority and eliminating interstate barriers to integrate the common market. It further contends that the arguments made in the US to explain the continuing existence of trade barriers in public procurement, based on the market participant exemption, don't hold up in comparative light and that the difference between the two polities is largely due to the role of the Commission as a federal-level entity specifically charged with creating a common market and a different attitude towards federal-level entities in this policy arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to health care is considered a public right in European countries. The transition to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe has introduced new medical technology, equipment, and medication, while at the same time exposing and even deepening the shortcomings inherited from the old Semashko systems. The "tradition" of informal payments is one of the features passed from the old regime and which has continued to expand after 1989. Reforming health care systems in post-communist Europe has proven to be very difficult. The lack of a unified European health care policy meant that the European Union could exercise little pressure on candidate countries to reform and combat corruption in their health care systems. This paper examines the extent and use of informal payments in health care systems of Central and Eastern European countries and assesses the institutional strategies designed to reform the system. The results show that informal payments are common practice in most countries with important consequences for people's health. Additionally, the analysis shows that reforms were impeded by the lack of a clear vision, high turnover of Ministers of Health, insufficient funding, and lack of political will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade and a half has seen a proliferation of studies on the determinants of public support for the European Union among its national publics. Scholars have analyzed economic, political, informational, and identity factors as influences. There has been considerably less exploration of cultural factors, most notably religion, in these analyses. In this paper, we follow up on our previous work exploring the impact of confessional culture and religious commitment on support for the EU, expanding the purview from the early member states to the more recent accessions and candidate countries. Using Eurobarometer 65.2 (2006), we examine the role that religion plays in shaping public attitudes, while simultaneously controlling for factors identified by other theories. We conclude that religion still shapes attitudes toward European integration, but in different ways and to different degrees in various parts of the Union. Among the early member states, Catholics—especially committed ones—are still more supportive of the Union than Protestants, a result confirming our earlier findings. In more recent accessions to the EU, however, the influence of religion is weaker and assumes different configurations. Finally, age cohort analysis reveals that even in the early member nations, religion is losing its ability to shape public attitudes on European integration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enlargement of he European Union was expected to increase the effect of national inequalities within the supranational decisional system and significantly difficult the resolution of problems of policy coordination. However, the decision-making process of the EU has shown a remarkable flexibility and capacity of adaptation in the face of the entrance of new members. In this paper, I theorise how coalition formation in the Council of Ministers contributes to this flexibility in the issue area of environmental policy. Using an extension of the Banzhaf Power Index, I explain how coalition formation incorporates the preference variations infused by new member states through the combination of re-weighted voting power and a strategic process of bilateral exchanges between coalitions and selectively targeted member states. The analysis is completed with a procedural model, which takes into account the influence of the EP in the legislative process. Without imposing unanimity, the configuration of a decisive coalition under QMV requires an attention to particularised interests. In contrast with propositions based on axiomatic models of bargaining, I argue that the focus on the power-based coalition formation can better explain outcomes of effective differentiated adaptation to the Eastern enlargement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from research in Economics, Sociology and Political Science that has shown that diversity makes cooperation more difficult, this paper argues that one way a heterogeneous group can achieve cooperation is through formal oversight mechanisms. In European Union member states, one policy area where cooperation is essential is in the oversight of European affairs. Many policy decisions previously made by democratically elected national legislatures in Europe are now decided through the EU's policymaking process. National legislatures responded to this change by establishing oversight committees in European Affairs. While all national legislatures of EU member states have European Affairs Committees, there is considerable variation in the institutional designs of these committees. Using exact logistic regression to test several competing explanations on cross-national data from 25 European democracies, this article finds that the more political parties there are in a legislature, the more likely that legislature will establish a European Affairs Committee with the power to issue binding recommendations to guide cabinet ministers' negotiations at the Council of the European Union. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of domestic, country-specific conditions in the target countries for the conception and implementation of democracy promotion strategies by the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (US). First, an analytical framework is outlined to allow the identification of 'differentiated strategies'. We build upon the assumption that the 'grey zone' of semi-authoritarian regimes presents the greatest challenge to external democracy promotion. Empirically, we look for conceptual differentiation at the global level and analyze differentiation in implementation in four country case-studies (Morocco, Tunisia, Belarus, and Ukraine). In general, we find a surprising similarity between the two actors' democracy promotion efforts. Even though the EU highlights a cooperative approach whereas the US openly pursue a two-track approach, democracy promotion efforts of the two actors are similarly adapted to a country's context and its development in our four case-studies. Our findings suggest that both actors only choose a truly conflictive approach in reaction to a dramatic worsening of the political situation. In contrast, undemocratic but stable semi-authoritarian regimes are not the focal point of democracy promotion efforts: the scope for cooperative action is significantly limited and not backed up by a conflictive approach. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of European integration on national level legislatures in European Union member states. Many economic and political decisions previously made by democratically elected national legislatures are now decided at a supranational, or European, level. National legislatures have responded to this change by increasing their oversight of European affairs in order to impose more democratic accountability and transparency into the opaque decision-making process of developing European legislation. While all national legislatures of European Union member states have established European Affairs Committees to help strengthen oversight of European affairs, there is considerable variation in the institutional strength and political control invested in these committees. I argue that the more recently a country joined the European Union, the more likely its European Affairs Committee will have the power to issue binding recommendations to the government. Cross-sectional statistical analysis shows a strong correlation between the timing of membership and a legislature's approach to parliamentary oversight of European affairs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper actually presents a (very) first version of the introduction to the planned edited book Romania in the European Union: Challenges, Pathways, and Prospects (working title). As such, it presently also doubles as a larger project description. Four general issues actually need to be faced and taken into consideration when approaching Romania as a EU member: 1) Romania's (traditional) position as a "special case" in the political and social science literature and the (continuing) vagaries of its post-1989 internal development; 2) the general problematic of EU membership after "1989"; 3) the institutional and policy-relevant issues and terms that are presently available for tracking Romania's EU membership; and 4) the possible implications that Romania's EU membership can have on the general development of the EU and the possible impact that the study of Romania's EU membership can have on the study of European integration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even casual observation reveals obvious spatial patterns (i.e., correlation, not necessarily always positive) in labor-market outcomes, institutions, and policies across Europe, and in the European Union particularly. Labor-market policies entail significant cross-border spillovers, both positive and negative, political and economic, so the strategic interdependence of member countries might explain these patterns. However, European countries also faced common or at least very similar exogenous-external conditions, as well as common or very similar internal trends, which would also naturally suggest spatial patterns in the domestic responses thereto, even without any significant interdependence. Likewise, membership in the European Union itself presents both a series of common external stimuli and a set of strategic interdependencies in common and individual-country labor-market-relevant actions. We have discussed elsewhere the severe empirical-methodological challenges in distinguishing these possible sources of spatial correlation; this paper extends and applies those analyses in an attempt to disentangle the effects of general interdependence, correlated external and internal stimuli, and EU membership in shaping labormarket policies across Europe in recent years. To the extent that there is significant strategic policy interdependence among member states, greater EU-level coordination may be justified. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the assumption that sub-federal initiatives in multi-level systems matter, this paper compares climate change initiatives in the European Union and in the United States. It starts by considering different options for comparing environmental policy in the European Union and the United States (section 2). The next chapters describe climate change policy, first, in the European Union and, second, in the United States (section 3) in greater detail. Based on a comparative analysis of climate policy in the two multi-level systems (section 4), the concluding section asks whether the combination of federal and sub-federal perspectives can provide some general insights and lead to a better understanding of complex multi-level systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of commentators have noted the weakness and/or liberal nature of labor institutions in the new EU member states of eastern Europe. This paper examines some additional evidence of that weakness, as well as the correspondence of labor policy with other policy areas, specifically pensions and tax policy. It then explores possible mechanisms through which the liberal nature of these policies might influence the previously existing member states of western Europe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper that offers a comprehensive model of extreme right-wing anti-immigrant (ERAI) party voting is presented. The model has been tested using multilevel analysis of individual and contextual data from European Union (EU) member countries during 1988, 1994 and 2000. It is found that support for ERAI parties is linked to cultural and economic grievances of an individual against immigrants, as well as their feelings of political satisfaction.

In this paper I review progress in European Union immigration cooperation in the past fifteen years, but focus in particular on the period since the 1999 Tampere European Council meeting, which set the stage for the past five years of cooperation. I highlight some key measures and suggest how and why the EU achieved the current level of supranational cooperation from the pre-Amsterdam status quo of intergovernmental cooperation. A focus on state sovereignty concerns, the costs of cooperation, and differences in national practices allows a better understanding of the past five years of cooperation and suggests why post-enlargement cooperation will be difficult despite a possible move to qualified majority voting and co-decision with the adoption of the proposed EU Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political scientists have recognized that European welfare states are increasingly embedded in the multi-level polity of the European Union, the precise consequences of this development are unclear. Against this background, this paper analyzes the impact of popular dissatisfaction with the functioning of national welfare state arrangements on EU support. Data from the 2002 European Social Survey show a negative effect in a majority of member states: citizens dissatisfied with welfare state policy outputs are more prone than others to hold eurosceptic attitudes. Moreover, this effect is stronger in institutional environments where elites and citizens should reasonably perceive greater EU-induced threats to the welfare state, as well as where such threats already appear to have become a reality in the form of welfare state cutbacks coinciding with the post-Maastricht EMU process. Similarly, effects are stronger in member states where the most eurosceptic parties also tend to be the most welfare state-supporting ones. Under such conditions, we theorize, it is more probable that citizens receive cues from leftist/euro-sceptic parties saying that welfare state deterioration is related to European integration. In contrast, we find that welfare state dissatisfaction does not generate euroscepticism because citizens hold too little EU information and knowledge. On the contrary, the link between welfare dissatisfaction and low EU support grows stronger with more knowledge and information. This suggests that welfare state dissatisfaction does not generate euroscepticism because citizens know little about Europe, but rather because of the institutional environment that Europe?s large welfare states are finding themselves in, and because of how many European political actors have chosen to interpret and explain that environment to citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the impact of the print media on attitudes to European integration and European Monetary Union during the General Election campaign in Britain in 2001. We find that newspapers do have an impact on attitudes to Europe, but that these effects are relatively small. Identification with a political party is found to exert greater influence on public opinion, and when individuals receive reinforcing cueing information from both parties and the media these effects are stronger still. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global imbalances peaked at more than 6 percent of world GDP in 2006 but subsequently fell to around 3 percent of world GDP by 2011. Housing markets in Eastern Europe suffered the full brunt of this ?capital flow cycle?: they experienced real estate bonanzas when capital was flowing in, followed by property busts when capital flows reversed. We examine the impact of this capital flow cycle on fiscal policy preferences in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Our argument is that home equity is a form of self-insurance against income loss that can substitute for government-provided social insurance. Therefore, during the ?bonanza? phase of the cycle, when capital inflows were large and housing prices were rising, we expect CEE voters to respond by demanding both lower taxes and less publicly-provided social insurance. When capital flows reversed and real estate markets went from boom to bust, we expect CEE voters to become more favorable to redistributive taxation and social insurance. We evaluate these claims with evidence from the EBRD?s ?Life in Transition? Surveys (LiTS), using the wave administered in late 2006 (LiTS I) to assess fiscal preferences during the bonanza, and the wave conducted in late 2010 (LiTS II) to assess how preferences had changed after the bust. We find consistent evidence that mortgage-holders? fiscal preferences reversed between 2006 and 2010, shifting from right (opposed to redistribution) to left (in support of redistribution) as capital flows drove housing prices first up and then down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the pension policy adopted by all 27 European Union (EU) member states since 2000 to meet the Lisbon Strategy's goals. It compares the old-age pension reforms undertaken by the member states to explain cross-country differences and analyzes the social policy implications of the Lisbon Strategy. Findings in the study showed that a total of 286 pensions reforms were introduced and only 55 were general systems overhaul in EU.

The article discusses a study on the relationship between national conflicts and orientations pertaining the European Union (EU) and mobilization of Euroscepticism. It states the analysis that is presented in the study including the respondents from the EU members to verify structure of orientations regarding the EU's economic and cultural dimensions. It also provides an overview of the results from respondents on whether European integration brings threat to European culture and identity.

The article examines the proliferation of the shift of public inclusive and informal secluded legislative decision making in European Union politics. Noted is the increase of fast-track legislation since its introduction in 1999. It is suggested that fast-track legislation is associated to the volume of legislative workload, complexity and the participants. Pointed out is the functionalist argument that focuses on intraorganizational coordination and information gathering transaction costs.

The article presents a study on the position of the governments of European Union (EU) member states that are controlled by the Left on immigration restriction in Western Europe. The researchers claims that governments of the Left are inclined to restrict immigration compared to the governments of the Right. Noted is the effect of European welfare states on the electoral implications of immigration for the governments of the left.

The article presents a study on the position of the governments of European Union (EU) member states that are controlled by the Left on immigration restriction in Western Europe. The researchers claims that governments of the Left are inclined to restrict immigration compared to the governments of the Right. Noted is the effect of European welfare states on the electoral implications of immigration for the governments of the left.

The article examines why European Union (EU) member states offer a constitutional obedience to EU obligations. It outlines the scholarly consensus on the constitutional effectiveness of European law. It considers a range of explanations for the effectiveness of the European constitution. It also develops a new explanation for the constitutional obedience of the EU member states to European obligations, based on domestic political institutions and the concept of the encompassing group.

The article offers a look at the effect of the enlargement of 2004 on the common commercial policy in the European Union (EU). It investigates the impact of Eastern enlargement on trade interests, policy preference aggregation and policy outcomes. The author argues that the growth of veto players has not halted the role of the Commission. He adds that such growth also increased informal processes and empowered large trading nations vis-à-vis smaller member countries.

Recently, governmental networks of state officials from national ministries have been considered to constitute the most important and desirable feature of a new world order. This reasoning sometimes obscures the fact that the current nation state - to varying degrees - is a hierarchical organization. It encourages, instrumentalizes and sometimes prevents interorganizational communication efforts of its state officials. And, as our result show, most of the time, it effectively controls these networks. We investigate the incentives leading to the formation of interorganizational relations in a highly institutionalized regional regime, the European Union. Each government of the member states is conceived as a complex organization composed of multiple equivalent ministerial jurisdictions. We reconstruct the interorganizational networks of the administrative agents along jurisdictional lines on the occasion of an intergovernmental conference. A simultaneous multi-level, exponential random graph model is used for the explanation of network choices of bureaucrats. This allows us to test whether communication patterns follow jurisdiction-specific incentives. The analyses are based on a large data set of 114 bureaucratic agents of the ministries of the EU-15 member states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courts contribute to the construction of citizenship by patrolling who enjoys rights to equal participation in a community. Member states of the European Union (EU) and Council of Europe adopted legal texts that develop a transnational civil citizenship based largely on economic and civil rights. Meanwhile, the European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights creatively interpreted EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights to expand entitlements to social rights as well, helping to forge a transnational social citizenship that provides social protection to foreign residents and national citizens alike. Although this judicial activism may appear reminiscent of US politics, the European Courts' social-rights case law is rooted in commitments to social solidarity that are uniquely European. Because European rights originate in commitments to national social welfare and rely on the operation of domestic social programs, however, judicial efforts to extend rights transnationally remain contested and vulnerable to retrenchment. Contemporary reforms increasingly link social rights to economic rights, transforming social citizenship into a civil citizenship that is closer to the US model of minimal social protection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at the inability of the member states of the EU to fully craft a grand strategy which would allow the projection of European military power into the system. The conflicting core beliefs of the member states about the use of the military cannot be reconciled with the idea of a unified policy of physical power projection of the EU. Using a six dimension framework of grand strategy, the differences between the member states about their foreign policy goals and the methods they are prepared to use are exposed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which investigated the circumstances under which subsidies influence public opinion and perceptions on politics in the European Union. It explored the evidence that can affect the party system and political competition in EU countries. It described the allocation of direct public funding for political parties. It noted that political analysts argue against the impact of political subsidies.

Now that the European Union has expanded to include ten new member states, the transformation of industrial relations in postcommunist eastern Europe has become increasingly important, not least for the future of the European "social model." Following the varieties of capitalism literature, which divides advanced capitalist economies into coordinated and liberal market models, we examine labor relations in eastern Europe to determine which of the types they most approximate. We then find that, despite the rigidities of the communist era, nine of the ten postcommunist (new and prospective) member states are much closer to the liberal than the coordinated types, and that they are also far from the European social model. Again following the varieties of capitalism approach, we find that the likelihood that the eastern European countries will converge or harmonize toward existing European labor and social standards to be unlikely. Rather, it seems more likely that the liberal approach of the new member states will push the European social model towards further liberalization. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the member states with their divergent preferences have incentives to delegate important policymaking power to the Commission, I argue that the Commissioners, who have portfolios and power and come from these member states, try to pursue goals in the interest of their country of origin. The question is whether and how member states respond to this principal-agent problem in the process of EU legislative decision making. The expectation is that if there is preference divergence among member states and a country-biased Commission proposal, then the process of decision making takes longer. The econometric analysis of the duration of about 11,000 Commission proposals provides strong support for this view. The evidence suggests that member states are aware of this problem and sometimes even force the Commissioner to modify the original proposal. The larger the conflict among member states, and the higher the risk of a country-biased proposal, the more time is spent on the legislative process. If the Commission modifies the original draft, the decision making process is shortened. This suggests that member states with divergent preferences can achieve the goal of European integration even in the case of hostile Commission proposals. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the process of enlargement of the European Union (EU). Nature of the bargaining asymmetries that have affected the association and membership negotiations with Central and Eastern Europe; Terms of the EU membership agreement and the ways in which the interests of the Central and East European countries have been marginalized; Ways in which the Europe and membership agreements have been crafted to protect the interests of the old EU member states.

Examine European Union (EU) policy and policy-making in the area of agricultural biotechnology, particularly the development and marketing of genetically modified crops and foods. Analysis of the nature of GM regulation; Discussion on the challenges of biotechnology as a case of risk regulation and as a multi-sectoral and multi-level policy; Assessment of the relationship between domestic EU regulations and international trade and environmental rules.

Presents a study on the Maastricht Effect that accounts for the structural break in the fiscal and social policies of the European Union's member states since the early 1990s. Magnitude of the Maastricht Effect in terms of social expenditures at the national level against alternative factors, such as economic conditions or national institutional and political structures; Methods used in studying the impact of the Maastricht Effect on European Union countries; Results of the study.

Examines the European judicial integration in the context of the European Union's (EU) inter-institutional disputes. Cause of conflict between EU institutions; Overview of the decision-making process of the European Court of Justice; Static and dynamic models for judicial integration; Outcomes of inter-institutional disputes.

The national parliaments of the member states of the European Union (EU) have been losing power. Decisions that parliaments traditionally had the right and power to decide are increasingly being made either within the institutions of the EU or by the national executives of the member states. But as the EU has been extended to include more and more policy areas, national parliaments and parliamentary party groups acting therein began to realize the loss and adapted their institutional structures to claw back some lost power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]