Ben Rosamond

Discourses of globalization and the social construction of European identities

Debates within international political economy have revealed the problematic nature of the relationship between globalization and regional economic integration. The literature in European Union studies has tended to treat global context as external and structural to the processes of integration and the Europeanization of governance functions. This article develops a constructivist position on this issue by investigating the operation of discourses of globalization within selected EU policy circles. It explores the proposition that- to an extent- globalization can be a powerful component of the social construction of external context that in turn helps to legitimate certain sorts of policy at the EU level. The article explores the types of knowledge about globalization at work in EU policy-making and how and why this knowledge is used. It suggests that a narrow, economistic conception of globalization dominates, but that this can lead to a variety of policy pathways.

The uniting of Europe and the foundation of EU studies: revisiting the neofunctionalism of Ernst B. Haas

Abstract This article suggests that the neofunctionalist theoretical legacy left by Ernst B. Haas is somewhat richer and more prescient than many contemporary discussants allow. The article develops an argument for routine and detailed re-reading of the corpus of neofunctionalist work (and that of Haas in particular), not only to disabuse contemporary students and scholars of the normally static and stylized reading that discussion of the theory provokes, but also to suggest that the conceptual repertoire of neofunctionalism is able to speak directly to current EU studies and comparative regionalism. Neofunctionalism is situated in its social scientific context before the theorys supposed erroneous reliance on the concept of ‘spillover’ is discussed critically. A case is then made for viewing Haass neofunctionalism as a dynamic theory that not only corresponded to established social scientific norms, but did so in ways that were consistent with disciplinary openness and pluralism.

New regionalisms in the global political economy

Preface and Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations List of tables and figures Chapter 1. Regions in Comparative Perspective Chapter 2. Regionalism and the Emerging (Intrusive) World Order: Sovereignty, Autonomy, Identity Chapter 3. Theorising the Rise of Regionness Chapter 4. The Trade-Environment Nexus and the Potential of Regional Trade Institutions Chapter 5. Governance after Financial Crisis: South American Perspectives on the Reformulation of Regionalism Chapter 6. Regionalism and development after the global financial crisis Chapter 7. Regionalism and Asia Chapter 8. Asian multilateral institutions and their response to the Asian economic crisis: the regional and global implications Chapter 9. Europeanisation and globalization: complementary or contradictory trends? Chapter 10. Austrias and Swedens accession to the European Union: a comparative neo-Gramscian analysis Chapter 11. Discovering the frontiers of Regionalism: Fostering Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Competitiveness in the European Union

Across the EU Studies – New Regionalism Frontier: Invitation to a Dialogue

This article notes a lack of communication between two broad schools of scholarship on regional integration: EU studies and analyses of the ‘new regionalism’. It is argued that the existence of this divide, which is perpetrated by proponents of both schools, is an impediment to the elaboration of useful theory as well as being a missed opportunity. The benefits and problems of using the EU as a comparator in studies of regionalism are assessed. While the mistake of giving the EU analytical primacy as a benchmark or model is to be avoided, it is argued that careful treatment of accumulated insights from EU studies (including a proper re-inspection of classical integration theory) brings clear methodological and meta-theoretical benefits for the project of comparative regional integration scholarship.

Three Ways of Speaking Europe to the World: Markets, Peace, Cosmopolitan Duty and the EU's Normative Power:

Research Highlights and Abstract A sympathetic critique of the literature on ‘Normative Power Europe’ that incorporates economic liberalism into the repertoire of the EUs constitutive principles. The derivation of three ideal type liberal modes of justification for external action and a discussion of their potential complementarities and contradictions. An application of the three modes to the case of EU external action. This article—a sympathetic critique of the literature on ‘Normative Power Europe’—observes that the rationales for EU external action, while understandable in terms of the concept of ‘normative power’, emerge from a variety of overlapping and potentially contradictory liberal arguments. For the purposes of the argument, these liberalisms are organised into three ideal types: market liberalism, the pursuit of peace through liberal means and the ethic of cosmopolitan duty. The article suggests that while it is possible to associate different domains of EU external action with different varieties of liberal discourse, it is often more appropriate to see these policy domains as sites of struggle, negotiation and (perhaps) reconciliation between competing liberal projects.

Plagiarism, Academic Norms and the Governance of the Profession

Few would dissent from the view that plagiarism is an academic crime of the worst sort. Attention to the issue has been heightened recently by the growth of websites supplying ‘off the peg’ or customised research papers. This article argues that the definition and detection of plagiarism involves several complexities and that the resolution of the problem depends less on the development of coercive instruments to deal with the ‘crime’ than on the development of norms that emerge through reflective pedagogy and processes of academic socialisation.

Performing Brexit: How a post-Brexit world is imagined outside the United Kingdom:

Theresa May’s claim that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ demonstrates the malleability of the concept. The referendum campaign showed that ‘Brexit’ can be articulated to a variety of post-Brexit scenarios. While it is important to analyse how Brexit gives rise to contestation in the United Kingdom, Brexit is also constructed from the outside. Brexit signifies more than the technical complexities of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union. It works both as a promise of a different future and performatively to establish a particular past. Brexit works as a frame with potential to shape perceptions in three domains. The first is identity. How does ‘Brexit’ shape national and European identities in distinct national environments? The second is how Brexit shapes understandings of geopolitical reality and influences conceptions of what is diplomatically possible. Third is the global economy. How does ‘Brexit’ work within intersubjective frames about the nature of global economic order?

Supranational governance as economic patriotism? The European Union, legitimacy and the reconstruction of state space

‘Economic patriotism’ (EP) and ‘European integration’ might normally be regarded as antonyms. The argument is made for reading some actions and discourses of the EU in terms of EP. Two assumptions are relaxed: that EP is an exclusive property of nation-state space and that is necessarily associated with the suspension of economic liberalism. By relaxing the first, the article shows how many aspects of EU discourse and practice can be thought of as EP-like. The institutionalized economic liberal biases of the EU tend to constrain the possibilities for supranational EP in its two principal guises, labelled here as ‘Schmittian’ and ‘Listian’. The relaxation of the second assumption allows for a third variant of EP to be introduced: ‘market-making’ EP. This is shown to be a particular feature of Commission discourse since the mid-1980s. The move to market-making EP discourse demonstrates the particular quality of legitimacy dilemmas faced by the EU.

Disciplinarity and the political economy of transformation: the epistemological politics of globalization studies

Most professional research continues to be funnelled through discipline-related organs. Similarly, most academic conferences have remained tribal conclaves on disciplinary lines. Most academic fund ing has continued to flow through disciplinary channels, and re spect of disciplinarity normally still provides researchers with a faster track to promotion than alternative approaches. In short, some mi nor inroads aside, disciplinary methodology remains quite firmly en trenched in the contemporary globalizing world. (Sch?lte, 2000:198)

'Greatly exaggerated': the death of EU studies-new regionalism dialogue? A reply to Jorgensen and Valbjorn

In a recent piece in this journal Jørgensen and Valbjørn develop a typology of intellectual dialogue across fields that yields rather negative conclusions about the prospects for sustainable dialogue between ‘European studies’ and the ‘new regionalism’. This response disputes this pessimistic conclusion. First, it is argued that while their derivation of models of dialogue is impressive, it is nonetheless incomplete. Using Jørgensen and Valbjørn’s premises, the article derives a ‘market’ mode of dialogue that represents a challenge to their assumption that dialogue will tend towards hierarchy. Second, the article accepts that there are important ‘sociology of knowledge’ impediments to effective dialogue within political science and International Relations, but maintains that Jørgensen and Valbjørn fail to work through the question of ‘dialogue between whom?’ The article argues that methodological division is the most significant impediment to dialogue, but maintains that within-methodology dialogue is more than viable in the case under scrutiny in this debate. Third, having established these general parameters of disagreement, the article moves to a number of more particular criticisms of the assumptions made by Jørgensen and Valbjørn about extant calls for dialogue between scholars in these two fields.