Diana Panke

Obstinate and Inefficient: Why Member States Do Not Comply With European Law

This article seeks to explain cross-country variation in noncompliance with European law. Although noncompliance has not significantly increased over time, some European Union member states violate European law more frequently than others.To account for the observed variance, the authors draw on three prominent approaches widely used in the compliance literature— enforcement, management, and legitimacy. They develop hypotheses for each of these approaches before combining them in theoretically consistent ways. They empirically test their hypotheses using a comprehensive data set of more than 6,300 violations of European law.The findings highlight the importance of combining the enforcement and management approaches. Powerful member states are most likely to violate European law, whereas the best compliers are small countries with efficient bureaucracies. Yet administrative capacity also matters for powerful member states. The United Kingdom is much more compliant than Italy, which commands similar political power but whose bureaucracy is far less efficient.

Why International Norms Disappear Sometimes

This article addresses the empirical puzzle as to why some formerly deeply embedded international norms either incrementally or rapidly lose their prescriptive status and, in the extreme, can even cease to exist. Why is it that some norms are replaced while others simply disappear? The IR literature has rich explanations for norm creation, diffusion and socialization, yet there is a theoretical and empirical gap on both the dynamics and scope conditions for the degeneration of international norms. Thus, we develop hypotheses on processes and outcomes of norm disappearances that are tested with a series of qualitative studies. Norm degenerations require the presence of actors who challenge the norm and the absence of central enforcement authorities or individual states that are willing and capable of punishing norm violations. Moreover, our study shows that norms are likely to be abolished swiftly if the environment is unstable and rapidly changing and if norms are highly precise. In contrast, norms are likely to become incrementally degenerated if the environment is relatively stable and if norms are imprecise. Both processes lead to norm substitutions, provided that competing norms are present. If rival norms are absent, norms simply disappear without being replaced.

Small states in the European Union: structural disadvantages in EU policy-making and counter-strategies

Small states face disadvantages in shaping European policies owing to their limited bargaining power and constrained financial resources necessary for building up policy expertise and exerting influence via arguing. Nevertheless, small states can apply a variety of strategies to counterbalance size-related difficulties. Although such activity is an important precondition for success in negotiations, this article shows that some small states are considerably more active in using counter-balancing strategies than others. To explain this, the article tests hypotheses on learning, co-ordination mechanisms and legitimacy. It shows that small states are most active in negotiations if they have non-interrupted administrative work environments, motivated staff, balanced systems for the development of national positions, and have experienced a learning curve through long membership durations and through holding the office of the Presidency. By contrast, differences in specific or diffuse support of European integration do not influence activity levels.

More Arguing Than Bargaining? The Institutional Designs of the European Convention and Intergovernmental Conferences Compared

Abstract Overall, the Nice Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) was not a story of success in deepening integration. Therefore, all hopes shifted to the European Convention. According to a widely shared expectation in the constructivist literature, the Conventions institutional design facilitates argumentative discourses and consensus outcomes above lowest common denominator solutions. Rationalist approaches, on the other hand, assume for all institutional settings that bargaining is conducive to compromise, often close to lowest common denominator outcomes. This article theoretically assesses the impact of institutional variables on dynamics of interactions and illustrates its claims empirically. Based on a bridge–building approach between rationalists and constructivism, it identifies scope conditions under which polity and policy variables are conducive to argumentation and consensus or to bargaining and compromise. It concludes that the most prominent constructivist institutional variables, such as transparency or plurality of actors, were less important for the achievements of the European Convention than policy variables. The comparison of institutional designs reveals that Conventions are even less conducive to argumentative dynamics than Intergovernmental Conferences.

Small states in EU negotiations Political dwarfs or power-brokers?

Based on a comprehensive survey conducted in 2009, this article analyses similarities and differences in the policy-shaping activities of all 27 European Union member states in the day-to-day policy-making process of the EU. It shows that some states participate more actively in EU working parties and the COREPER than others. Do bigger states use negotiation strategies more frequently than smaller states? Do the available capacities crucially influence how frequently a delegation employs negotiation strategies in a particular policy field? The article develops a set of willingness- and capacity-related hypotheses and tests them using qualitative and quantitative methods. It shows that small states can surmount size-related difficulties most importantly through the accumulation of expertise. Thus, size is what states make of it. Small states are neither per se political dwarfs nor power-brokers.

Lobbying Institutional Key Players: How States Seek to Influence the European Commission, the Council Presidency and the European Parliament

In governance arrangements on the local, state, regional and international levels, lobbying as a strategy to gain influence on policy outcomes via informal channels takes place. While most studies focus on how individuals, companies, interest groups or non‐governmental organizations try to exert influence via state actors, we know much less about whether and how frequently states themselves engage in lobbying. How effectively do state actors seek to further their own preferences informally in lobbying institutional key actors in governance arrangements beyond the nation‐state? To shed light on these blind spots, this article draws on the example of the European Union and analyses the conditions under which states are especially inclined to use this informal influence strategy as well as the conditions for lobbying success. Is shows that states use lobbying strategies more often, the more capacities they possess, the lower the transaction costs of lobbying and also the stronger their incentives of getting active are for particular policies. Additionally, it is not only a high frequency of lobbying that increases the chances of informally influencing policies, but also the type of reasoning applied, its quality and its fit to the nature of the issue at stake.

Network Governance: Effective and Legitimate?

Network governance has been present in the domestic affairs of highly industrialized states for a long time. Corporatist arrangements, for instance, constitute one such form of network governance. With the ‘governance turn’ in International Relations and European Studies, (Jachtenfuchs 2003) network governance beyond the nation state has been increasingly studied (Reinicke 1998; Kohler-Koch & Eising 1999; Borzel & Risse 2005). Many authors consider network governance as a significant solution to a whole variety of problems relating to governance within and beyond the nation-state (Marin & Mayntz 1991; Kooiman 1993; Le Gales & Thatcher 1995; Reinicke 1998; Cutler, et al. 1999). In this perspective, the success of network governance (NWG) is defined on the basis of the NWG’s effectiveness. As a consequence, legitimacy, as the second yardstick for good (and successful) governance, is often neglected. This chapter is based on the assumption that the criterion for successful governance is twofold: it must be effective and legitimate. Hence, overemphasizing effectiveness as yardstick for successful governance — as much of the literature on network governance does — is problematic and might lead to attestations of success, where there is none. Another strand of the literature takes legitimacy issues seriously and explicitly criticizes network governance for its lack of democratic participation and accountability (e.g. Scharpf 1993; Benz 1995; Bruhl et al. 2001).

The Irish Green Party and Europe: An Unhappy Marriage?

Abstract To what extent is the Irish Green Party affected by the presence of an additional, European arena next to the domestic one? The answer is twofold. Organizationally, the Irish Green Party drew on the experience and support of the pan‐European Green Party Federation and more developed Green parties in other countries. The European arena also provided a platform for electoral success and thereby an important route to resources used to professionalize the organization. Programmatically, and despite the above, the positioning of the Green Party towards European integration has always been ambivalent. European environmental law is more demanding than national law and environmental problems often ask for international solutions which, theoretically, should be welcomed by the party. Yet their fight for direct citizen participation makes them wary of shifting power to a polity whose democratic credentials are contested. While the Green Party originally opposed Europe, they have become more differentiated and constructive over time, pushing for democratization whilst simultaneously viewing the EU as an arena in which desired policies are generated. Having entered government at a national level in 2007, its closer involvement in EU decision‐making should reinforce this trend.

Social and Taxation Policies - Domaine Reserve Fields? Member States Non-compliance with Sensitive European Secondary Law

Abstract Social and taxation policies are sensitive fields in which states often have sovereignty concerns. Accordingly, member states hesitate to transfer such competencies to the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, the EU shaped sensitive policies. Do states violate these domaine réservé fields more often than less sensitive European laws? Are those cases more difficult to settle? This paper shows that employment and taxation policies are indeed more frequently violated and that these infringement cases are harder to resolve. Yet, this is not due to sovereignty concerns, as expected by the domaine réservé thesis. Rather, the extent of non‐compliance costs, the strength of domestic pro‐ and contra‐compliance constituencies and the fit to governmental programmes are crucial for dynamics of norm violations and settlements. These variables do not systematically vary over policy fields and, in the end, states comply even with inconvenient European laws.

Microstates in Negotiations beyond the Nation-State: Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg as Active and Successful Policy Shapers?

Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg are sovereign states with less than one million inhabitants and, consequently, are often referred to as “microstates.” This article inquires into the negotiation activities and conditions for success of microstates in negotiations beyond the nation-state. It develops a set of hypotheses on negotiation activity and on negotiation success and tests them qualitatively by drawing on the example of day-to-day negotiations in the European Union. Luxembourg is considerably more active than Malta and Cyprus. This is due to differences in domestic coordination practices (performance and cooperation between lead ministries and Permanent Representations), as well as different negotiation styles (proactive vs. reactive). Microstates can be influential, if they actively participate in negotiations for issues of high importance and if they select effective strategies in the given setting. Thus, microstates can sometimes turn into successful shapers of law beyond the nation-state ‐ despite their slimmer administrations, fewer staff and ‐ on average ‐ negligible bargaining power.