Mads Christian Dagnis Jensen

When politics prevails: the political economy of a Brexit

ABSTRACT This article analyses Britain’s quest to negotiate its future membership of the European Union (EU) through the lens of Liberal intergovernmentalism. The article demonstrates that despite the significant economic consequences of a potential Brexit, party political factors have hitherto proven more significant in defining the terrain of the debate than lobby group influence where a cross section of United Kingdom (UK) lobby groups are either actively or passively in favour of remaining within the EU ahead of the referendum.

The elephant in the room: mapping the latent communication pattern in European Union studies

European Union (EU) studies is known as a fragmented and interdisciplinary field. Drawing on bibliometric methods, this article presents a novel approach to examining the alleged lines of fragmentation in EU studies. It maps the network structure arising from the citation practices in journals concerned with EU studies by analysing 2,561 documents, containing 66,162 references, published in four authoritative EU journals in the period 2003–2010. The article finds: (1) a complex network of EU and non-EU sources clustering around different bordering disciplines, particularly Political Science, Comparative Politics, International Relations and Public Administration; (2) that the two core journals – Journal of European Public Policy and Journal of Common Market Studies – play an integrating function by holding the various subfields of EU studies together; and (3) a transatlantic divide in communication practices of EU scholars.

From ‘Frankenstein’ to ‘toothless vampire’? Explaining the watering down of the Services Directive

The Services Directive is one of the most significant and controversial legislative proposals ever negotiated in the European Union (EU). This article fills a gap in our knowledge by addressing the key questions as to why and how this prestigious proposal was watered down during the negotiation process. By applying the framework of rational choice institutionalism, the analysis pinpoints the positions of the key players and estimates their relative importance in shaping the final outcome. Prima facie, the European Parliament seemed to be the decisive actor developing the text which was adopted in the end. However, a closer inspection reveals that the text was influenced by the newly elected conservative–socialist coalition government in Germany and reflected a relatively low common denominator which secured acceptance from not only the vast majority of Members of the European Parliament, but also avoided any explicit opposition in the adoption by the Council of Ministers.

Negotiating the morass: measuring and explaining variation in co-ordination mechanisms in the European Union

ABSTRACT This contribution examines the co-ordination mechanisms which central governments have established to develop positions and cast votes in negotiations in the European Union (EU). Conceptually, the contribution discusses how different traits of EU co-ordination mechanisms can be defined and measured. Empirically, it utilizes a novel data set to map the defined traits of the co-ordination mechanisms in EU-28. Analytically, the contribution demonstrates that some of the variation in the traits of the EU co-ordination mechanisms is connected to public Euroscepticism. Therefore the analysis supports studies that have argued that a sceptical attitude towards European integration is associated with more centralized co-ordination mechanisms.

Policy Analysis, International Relations, and European Governance: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

ABSTRACT The article highlights the rationale of the special issue in terms of its objectives and guiding principles. It maps different evolutions and challenges within three analytical streams (1) regarding the field of policy analysis, (2) concerning the interaction between domestic and international affairs, and (3) with regards to the transformation of European Union governance in troubled times. These three research avenues highlight how not only European governance itself has evolved in a changing world, but also how the analysis of interests, institutions, and policy-making has morphed, oftentimes transgressing disciplinary and methodological boundaries.

‘Slow change may pull us apart’: debating a British exit from the European Union

ABSTRACT With a referendum set to take place on 23 June 2016 in a large and important European Union (EU) member state on whether it should remain within the Union or leave altogether, this year will prove crucial for all Europeanists. Brexit is a real possibility that both the Union and other member states must be prepared to plan for and eventually absorb the potential impact of. Whilst the process of ‘will they, won’t they’ will continue until the referendum, and even beyond, this level of uncertainty creates challenges for the existing actors with a stake in the process. This introductory contribution will set the scene for the ensuing debate, which flows from the various perspectives that each of the authors have with regard to the ultimate question of a Brexit. The three editors introduce the legal, political and economic themes that run through the articles, whilst simultaneously attempting to map out the trajectory for if, when and how a Brexit may actually occur, given the differing perspectives in the debate.

Game Changing – Tracing the Positions, Strategies and Interaction Modes of the German Länder towards the (Ever Expanding?) European Union

Abstract This article investigates how the positions, strategies and modes of interaction of the German Länder have changed over time in response to the process of Europeanization. By applying the method of process tracing within a theoretical framework of rational choice institutionalism, the article concentrates on the Länders responses to (1) the transfer of policy competences to the European level and (2) the enlargement of the European polity. Thereby, the article sheds new light on the Europeanization of the German federal system. It is shown that the transfer of policy competences to the European level have had the greatest impact on the Länder, which have reacted increasingly strategically by successfully demanding more power in the national coordination mechanism. However, the European Union enlargements have also had an effect as together with the transfer of policy competences they have resulted in a more sceptical attitude of the Länder towards (the perceived ever expanding) European Union.

‘We the People’ versus ‘We the Heads of States’: the debate on the democratic deficit of the European Union

The Eurozone crisis has rekindled the debate on the democratic deficit of the European Union (EU). In this paper, the debate is reconsidered by contrasting the modus vivendi of ‘We the People’ in the USA with the modus vivendi of ‘We the Heads of States’ in the EU. It is demonstrated that many of the solutions to the alleged democratic deficit focus on how more voice can be given to ‘We the People’ on the input side, but that this goes against the functional logic of the EU system, thereby undermining its ability to govern. Instead, we argue that more attention should be given to how to increase output legitimacy, and a number of proposals are put forward. Such a reshuffling of the analytical focus is the best way forward to escape the current impasse in the debate on how to ‘fix’ democracy in the EU.

Erfolgreiche Koordination in turbulenten Zeiten – die dänische Ratspräsidentschaft im ersten Halbjahr 2012

Am 1. Januar 2012 trat Dänemark die Präsidentschaft des Rates der Europäischen Union an. Für Dänemark war dies kein Neuland – es war die siebte Ratspräsidentschaft seit dem Beitritt des Staates zu den Europäischen Gemeinschaften im Jahr 1973. Verglichen mit den vorhergehenden, war die dänische Ratspräsidentschaft im Jahr 2012 allerdings mit neuen Herausforderungen konfrontiert:1 Zu nennen sind hier insbesondere die durch den Vertrag von Lissabon veränderte institutionelle Architektur der Europäischen Union sowie die Wirtschaftsund Finanzkrise. Diesen Themen musste sich die dänische Ratspräsidentschaft widmen, obwohl Dänemark nicht an der dritten Stufe der Wirtschaftsund Währungsunion (WWU) teilnimmt. Zudem gab es in Dänemark drei Monate vor Beginn der Ratspräsidentschaft einen Regierungswechsel: Eine neue Mitte-Links-Regierung trat ihr Amt an. Dieser Wechsel führte jedoch nur zu einer geringfügigen Änderung der Präsidentschaftsagenda, die umweltund sozialpolitische Themen nun stärker und Fragen der wirtschaftlichen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit weniger betonte. Dänische Politik ist aber generell konsensund zur politischen Mitte orientiert. Wie kann die dänische Ratspräsidentschaft von 2012 angesichts dieser Herausforderungen analysiert werden? Eine wachsende Anzahl von Studien hat in den letzten Jahren die Rolle der Ratspräsidentschaft untersucht.2 Im Großen und Ganzen gehen diese Studien der Frage nach, was eine erfolgreiche Ratspräsidentschaft ausmacht, oder sie sind dem Einfluss gewidmet, den eine Ratspräsidentschaft auf die politische Agenda der Europäischen Union auszuüben vermag. Ein Großteil dieser Arbeiten vernachlässigt jedoch die Aufgabe der Koordinierung durch die Ratspräsidentschaft. Die wenigen Studien, die diesen Aspekt berücksichtigen, betrachten ihn als Erklärungsfaktor für eine erfolgreiche beziehungsweise einflussreiche Ratspräsidentschaft.3 Im Gegensatz dazu untersucht dieser Beitrag, wie eine Ratspräsidentschaft auf nationaler Ebene koordiniert wird. Dazu wird im folgenden Abschnitt ein analytischer Rahmen auf

The Emergence of Second-Screen Gatekeeping

Legacy media have recently started to include material from social network sites in televised events, including election debates, to enhance the viewing experience of users and to enable interactions between viewers and political candidates. Decisions about which material and which users to include on the screen comprise a new arena for the gatekeeping function of the established media. In this paper, I introduce the concept of second-screen gatekeeping as a theoretical framework for understanding the gatekeeping practice taking place between the first and the second screens. To examine this emergent practice of second-screen gatekeeping, the paper introduces an empirical study of the selection process of material from social network sites in the live-broadcast election debates on Denmark’s two leading television channels, the public service institution DR1 and the commercial station TV2, in the run-up to the European elections in Denmark in 2014, drawing on both qualitative interviews with the individuals responsible for selecting material as well as a quantitative analyses of the distribution of content in the debates. A content analysis of updates from social network sites referenced in the two debates is presented that suggests differences in the selection practices of the two institutions in relation to the thematic content of the updates as well as in terms of which types of users that were referenced on the screen. The findings here testify to the continued centrality of traditional criteria of newsworthiness as well as gatekeepers more generally who continue to exercise control over which content is “fit to the screen”.