Marcus Carson

Recognition Struggles in Trans‐national Arenas: Negotiating Identities and Framing Citizenship

Abstract The purpose of this article is to incorporate trans‐national actors and institutions into citizenship theory both theoretically and empirically. We analyze three cases of recognition movements promoting gender, ethnic/minority and indigenous rights. Using one societal context, Sweden, we map the processes and mechanisms of power and agency (boundary‐making and brokering) that shape how trans‐national institutions and actors offer new forms of leverage politics to recognition movements as well as constrain their agency. These mechanisms of power are formalized in a model showing the multi‐level effects of leverage politics on recognition movements. Our three cases of recognition politics demonstrate the increasingly complex links between actors in policy communities across regional, national, European and international levels. They also reveal the processes implicit in our model: that policy imports are reframed when translated into specific national political cultures; and more broadly, that national citizenship frames of membership and inclusion are not easily dislodged.

European Union, neo-corporatist, and pluralist governance arrangements: Lobbying and policy-making patterns in a comparative perspective

Legislative and policy-making processes within democratic structures are multi-agent, collective decision processes. Interest representation, including lobbying, may have a substantial effect not only on policy outcomes, but also on the structure of democratic institutions themselves. In view of current trends and challenges facing democratic institutions, better understanding of the processes and mechanisms by which policy-making and lobbying operate is particularly important. This paper applies the new institutionalism to the comparative analysis of governance and policy-making in different political systems, particularly those in Europe and the US. Pluralist and neo-corporatist arrangements of influence articulation are distinguished and contrasted. It is argued further that these do not correspond to or fit EU (European Union) arrangements for policy-making and lobbying. A model of EU arrangements is outlined. The article considers the degree of openness, flexibility, extent of predictability, and patterns of policy production and development in the different systems. The EU system, which is a type of ‘organic’ or informal democracy, operates with highly flexible but well-organized procedures to engage interest groups from industry and civil society as sources of information and expertise and to act as brokers in EU policy-making; deliberation and negotiation typically result in consensus. We conclude that many of the advantages of the EU system with its flexibility and adaptability to sectoral specific issues and conditions are a source of its problems of non-transparency and ‘democratic deficit.’

The European Union's social dimension: from market to welfare?

This paper outlines the development of social policy-making in the EU (European Union). It argues that contrary to the prognoses and judgements of many observers, the social dimension is rapidly emerging as a key factor in EU policy-making and governance. In some policy areas, the development entails reinforcement and elaboration of earlier policy considerations, for instance, in the area of occupational safety and work environment. Other policy developments-in the areas of employment, public health, food, anti-discrimination, gender equality, and fundamental rights-are largely recent, having emerged in the 1980s, and give an entirely new profile to EU policy-making and governance.