Caitríona Carter

The Europeanization of Regions as ‘Spaces for Politics' : A Research Agenda

Through its collective regulation, the European Union (EU) has institutionalized as a critical space for public action. Yet, frequently regions are considered ‘objects’ of EU politics, rather than ‘subjects’ of its daily government. Moving away from dominant narratives on the relationship between the ‘region’ and the ‘EU’, we propose a new research agenda which draws on sociological applications of the Europeanization literature and re-frames the problematic towards studying regions as ‘spaces for EU politics’. Significantly, this approach identifies actor political usages of social representations of ‘territory’ as critical in explaining regional actors’ transformation from ‘objects’ to ‘subjects’ of EU government.

Introduction: Studying Regions as ‘Spaces for Politics’: Re-thinking Territory and Strategic Action

Transformations in global, European and domestic regulatory government have sparked debates about their effects on regions. Are regions becoming increasingly unbounded territories and/or passive actors in the face of political change? This Introduction argues for a political-sociological treatment of regions as ‘spaces for politics’ to answer these questions. This means first, conceiving regions as institutionalizing spaces, with power structures and logics of action; secondly, studying territory-linked arguments evoked by actors to legitimize the re-institutionalization of regional regulatory boundaries and spaces of public action; thirdly, studying regulatory strategies of individual and collective actors who act in the name of the region.

Globalization, Scottish Fisheries and 'Political Work': Global-EU-Local Dialectics

Like other fishing communities around the world, the Scottish industry faces global pressures of limited and diminishing resources. Collapses of North Sea herring (1970s) and Grand Banks cod (1990s) stocks have had severe impacts on the pelagic and whitefish sectors (Couper and Smith, 1997: 118). More recently, collapses of North Sea cod stocks resulted in further de-commissioning of the whitefish fleet, reducing it by 50% between 2000 and 2003 (Seafish, 2003). As well as the effects that diminishing resources are having on fishing activity in Scotland, international policy shifts on food prices and deregulation of international trade have also had repercussions for local fishing practice (Friis, 1996). This is because, over time, ownership of processing plants and sales contracts between fishers, merchants and processors have become increasingly globalized through the extension of the supply and demand food chain beyond local configurations. For a long time, reaction to these processes of ‘global re-structuring of fisheries’ (Symes, 1998: 254) has been analogous to others around the world, with commentators reporting fishers self-representing as Victims’ of global forces (Symes, 1998: 254–255).

The EU Government of 'Flexicurity': Trans-Industry Regulation to What End?

This paper examines the European Union’s evolving policy on ‘flexicurity’ – conjoining modes of market and employment flexibility with types of social and employment security. This is a highly contested policy which has received much attention in political arenas and also in a rich academic literature. In this paper, we seek to engage with these debates, operating from within what is termed the Gouvernement Européen Des Industries (GEDI) (European Government of Industry) approach. This means that we conceptualise ‘flexicurity’ in sociological terms as an ‘institution’ (rule and expectation) having both causal and constitutive effects. We hypothesise that ‘flexicurity’ emerges from actor struggles around competing sets of ideas or social representations of the relationships between ‘market’ and ‘society’. A key focus for research is to map the history of these struggles to explain how and why flexicurity has emerged as an EU-wide solution to a range of economic and social problems. Second, we ask ‘who’ does the EU institution of ‘flexicurity’ act upon? In addressing this question, we understand that studying EU flexicurity means studying convergence of economic and social institutions towards this EU-defined goal. Within the literature, analyses of EU-wide employment and social policy convergence to date have been almost exclusively premised upon analytical frameworks whereby the ‘nation state’ is the key unit of analysis for exploring the meaning of convergence between countries. In this paper, and staying within our GEDI approach, we adopt a contrasting starting point. Taking industries, not states, as our core units of analysis, we propose instead an analytical framework for capturing European convergence of industry practices. Finally, we critically examine how academic and practitioner literature has thus far analysed the implementation of flexicurity and reveal a limited attention of this work to precise industry impacts. We finish by identifying new avenues for research into EU flexicurity.

European Business and the Assemblies

The new Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were expected to have key and pioneering roles to play in the UK-EU policy process. The central legislative framework for devolution — the White Papers and the Parliamentary Acts — stated this explicitly. The essentially prescriptive and general nature of the legislation meant that the manner in which the two assemblies, and their committees, would interact with the UK-EU system remained undecided at the time of its publication. Importantly, it was left up to the territorial institutions to determine, in accordance with their own consultation procedures, how the Parliament and Assembly would best input to EU business. Furthermore, given that domestic and regional parliamentary influence across the EU varies considerably between Member States, the new assemblies could look to many different models of parliamentary influence to determine ‘best practice’. With devolution, therefore, both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly had a clear opportunity to create the necessary institutional setting and procedures to conduct effective sub-Member State parliamentary influence over EU affairs.

Adapting to Europe: the Pre-Devolution Story

The devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland makes explicit that UK governance has become more multi-levelled in recent times. Prior to devolution the most obvious manifestation of this multi-levelled situation was the interaction between the UK government and the EU. A clearly anticipated impact of devolution was the formal introduction of ‘third-level’ governance into pre-existing patterns of handling European policy within the UK.16 Whilst European policy was to be reserved to the UK government, much of its substance was to be devolved. Outlining the preparations for, and introduction of, this development is the purpose of the chapters which follow this one.

Introduction: Labour, Constitutional Change and European Policy

The United Kingdom (UK) Labour government elected in May 1997 introduced a major programme of constitutional reform. This programme embraced a wide range of measures including commitment to the reform of the UK Parliament, the creation of an independent central bank, the introduction of freedom of information legislation, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law and measures for devolution. Taken as a whole, this programme was ambitious and radical in its implication. One of the world’s most ancient systems of parliamentary government, which had evolved into its contemporary characteristics over many centuries, now faced substantial restructuring on a wide front. True, reform had been undertaken in the past, but the breadth of the Labour programme made this one unique.

Relations between the Devolved Administrations and the European Union

In this chapter we report on the considerations which were influential in designing new representative offices to act for the devolved administrations in Brussels. We depart from the approach taken in previous chapters of attempting to integrate the Scottish and Welsh stories within a common chronological framework, instead focusing on each separate administration in turn. Documenting developments in this way helps to illustrate and account for the different paths of development followed in Scotland and Wales in establishing their representative offices. Both this development and the role to be played by each office within the newly devolved system of governance strongly reflect the constitutional asymmetry of the devolution settlement.

The Post-Devolution Governance of Rural and Environmental Affairs: Early Impressions

In the report so far we have examined institutional change in a broad sense, not focusing on specific arrangements for individual policy areas. That coverage is important because there are general features relating to the handling of all areas of policy. In addition, we have thereby covered the machinery for horizontal issues that cut across different UK and devolved departments responsible for European policy. However, a lot of European business is dealt with in a more sectorised manner, whereby the functional departments do not have to consult widely across government. Instead, the Brussels-London-Edinburgh/Cardiff triangle comprises officials in one policy area. In this chapter we focus upon agriculture and, in a shorter study, on environmental policy. Our interest is once again in how far the policy machinery has changed as a consequence of devolution.

European Business and the Executives

A key expectation arising from devolution was that it would impact significantly on the UK’s EU policy administration structures — both at the centre (Whitehall) and within the former territorial administrations (Edinburgh and Cardiff). That devolution was bound to have important consequences for the political Executive and bureaucratic components of the polity at all levels arose in part from the commitment by the UK government to involve the devolved administrations in what is, after all, a reserved matter. In addition, this expectation reflected the fact that, in Scotland, approximately 80 per cent of the competencies assigned to the devolved administration would be affected by European legislation. Although it might be argued that the retention of the Scottish and Welsh Offices suggested that they could input the territorial perspective on UK European policy, the fact that both were considerably down-sized in terms of resources (and respectively re-designated Scotland Office and Wales Office), as well as considerations of ‘legitimate’ governance, made this approach both impractical and in some senses inappropriate. Rather, in such a situation, the common sense notion of ‘good government’ which emerged accepted that the devolved administration in Edinburgh, and by extension in Cardiff, should have a part to play in the UK-EU policy process. In this chapter, we examine how the three administrations adapted their existing EU policy arrangements — or acquired new capacity in that area — to suit the new constitutional situation and to respond to the challenges that devolution introduced.