Liesbet Hooghe

A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus

Preferences over jurisdictional architecture are the product of three irreducible logics: efficiency, distribution and identity. This article substantiates the following claims: (a) European integration has become politicized in elections and referendums; (b) as a result, the preferences of the general public and of national political parties have become decisive for jurisdictional outcomes; (c) identity is critical in shaping contestation on Europe.

Calculation, Community and Cues Public Opinion on European Integration

This article summarizes and extends the main lines of theorizing on public opinion on European integration. We test theories of economic calculus and communal identity in a multi-level analysis of Eurobarometer data. Both economic calculus and communal identity are influential, but the latter is stronger than the former. We theorize how the political consequences of identity are contested and shaped - that is to say, politically cued - in national contexts. The more national elites are divided, the more citizens are cued to oppose European integration, and this effect is particularly pronounced among citizens who see themselves as exclusively national. A model that synthesizes economic, identity, and cue theory explains around one-quarter of variation at the individual level and the bulk of variation at the national and party levels.

Does left/right structure party positions on European integration?

How is contestation on European integration structured among national political parties? Are issues arising from European integration assimilated into existing dimensions of domestic contestation? We show that there is a strong relationship between the conventional left/right dimension and party positioning on European integration. However, the most powerful source of variation in party support is the new politics dimension, ranging from Green/alternative/libertarian to Traditional/authoritarian/nationalist.

Party Competition and European Integration in the East and West Different Structure, Same Causality

How does the ideological profile of a political party affect its support or opposition to European integration? The authors investigate this question with a new expert data set on party positioning on European integration covering 171 political parties in 23 countries. The authors’ findings are (a) that basic structures of party competition in the East and West are fundamentally and explicably different and (b) that although the positions that parties in the East and West take on European integration are substantively different, they share a single underlying causality.

Measuring party positions in Europe The Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999–2010

This article reports on the 2010 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES) and introduces the CHES trend file, which contains measures of national party positioning on European integration, ideology and several European Union (EU) and non-EU policies for 1999−2010. We examine the reliability of expert judgments and cross-validate the 2010 CHES data with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and the 2009 European Elections Studies survey, and explore basic trends on party positioning since 1999. The dataset is available at the CHES website.

Cohesion Policy and European Integration: Building Multi-Level Governance

How can one convince potent nation-states to put their sovereignty at risk in common European policies? EU cohesion policy, now one-third of the EU budget, provides such a puzzle. Until 1988 the European Commission shared out money to national governments with few strings attached. Since the reform of 1988, national governments are required to negotiate with the Commission and regional authorities on how to use the money. Has this European-wide policy eroded national sovereignty in favour of a stronger role for the Commission and more power for Europes regions? The first part of this book probes into the policy dynamics at the European level. In the second part, eight country studies evaluate the impact of uniform EU policy on territorial relations by comparing policy making before and after reform. The concluding section explains persistent variation in EU cohesion decision making and implementation.

Types of Multi-Level Governance

The reallocation of authority upwards, downwards, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in the social sciences. Yet beyond the bedrock agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no convergence about how it should be organized. This paper draws on various literatures in distinguishing two types of multi-level governance. One type conceives of dispersion of authority to multi-task, territorially mutually exclusive jurisdictions in a relatively stable system with limited jurisdictional levels and a limited number of units. A second type of governance pictures specialized, territorially overlapping jurisdictions in a relatively flexible, non-tiered system with a large number of jurisdictions. We find that both types co-exist in different locations, and we explain some facets of this co-existence.

Does identity or economic rationality drive public opinion on European integration

How do citizens respond to the reallocation of authority across levels of government? This article investigates the relative importance of economic versus identity bases of citizen support for the most far-reaching example of authority migration—European integration.

The rise of regional authority: A comparative study of 42 democracies

1. Measuring Regional Authority 2. Operationalizing Regional Authority 3. Validation of the Regional Authority Index 4. An Era of Regionalization Appendix A: Profiles of Regional Reform in 42 Countries (1950-2006) Appendix B: Country and Regional Scores

Measuring Regional Authority

Abstract This article sets out a conceptual basis for measuring regional authority and engages basic measurement issues. Regional authority is disaggregated into two domains (self-rule and shared rule) and these are operationalised in eight dimensions. The article concludes by examining the robustness of this measure across alternative measurement assumptions.