Morten Kallestrup

Europeanisation as a Discourse: Domestic Policy Legitimisation through the Articulation of a ‘Need for Adaptation’:

This article explores how and why domestic policies and political systems of European nation-states are being changed due to the articulation of a ‘need’ for adaptation to the policies of the European Union (EU). Domestic policy changes are legitimised with reference to the conception of the inevitability of European integration. Under certain circumstances Europeanisation processes occur even in areas where we find neither ‘de jure’ nor ‘de facto’ needs for harmonisation with EC/EU policy. Non-EU-induced ‘adaptation to the EU’ is thus claimed to be an underestimated dynamic of Europeanisation. The article analyses processes of construction and communication of policy change proposals leading to Europeanisation and domestic institutional change. It presents a case study analysis of the processes leading to the 1993 tax reform in Denmark, as well as the processes leading to the 1997 reform of Danish competition legislation. In both cases major changes to policies and institutions were initiated and to a large extent legitimised with reference to a ‘need’ for adaptation to the Internal Market. The necessity for actual harmonisation was and is still questionable.

National parliaments and the new contentiousness of trade

Abstract Rather than becoming obsolete, national parliaments have come back obstinately in the politics of trade. This article develops this proposition and explores its contribution to the idea of twenty first-century trade as contentious market regulation. Contra the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments’ assertion entrenches the role of domestic actors in the EU trade liberalisation policy, and fleshes out its multi-level parliamentary bases. We discuss the role, drivers, and patterns of parliamentary assertion and explore parliamentary assertion using preliminary survey and case study material. We find that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations represented the tipping-point of parliamentary assertion. Through interpretation and political engagement, national parliaments have forged a role for themselves that was unforeseen in the Lisbon Treaty: weighing in on the policy-making and the ratification processes. In Europe, parliamentary assertion reflected the twin impact of a changing global trade agenda and the centralisation of the EU trade policy regime.

Learning Effects of Negotiation Simulations: Evidence from Different Student Cohorts

This chapter assesses the learning effects of the appliance of ten negotiation simulations across a spectrum of different student cohorts. Based on a typology of learning effects distinguishing between substantive knowledge, skill-building, and affective learning, the chapter analyses to what extent negotiation simulations generates student learning. The student cohorts are comprised of full-time university students (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) and professionals/public managers, who study part-time at the university (Professional Master of Public Management/Governance), as well as a cohort of selected high school students (Academy for Particularly Talented High School Students). The empirical data are based on quantitative data on substantive knowledge and qualitative data on the students’ experience of the negotiation simulations, as well as quantitative data on satisfaction levels via final course evaluations. The analysis reveals that while negotiation simulations undoubtedly stimulate students’ engagement and motivation and – in the students’ own perception – learning, measurable learning effects are more dubious. As opposed to the students’ own very positive statements about learning effects of negotiation simulations, assessable learning effects are harder to catch. There are some effects, but also important biases, as simulations tend to twist student’s perceptions of systems and processes disproportionately towards the issue, institution, or process in question during the particular simulation.

The New Governance of ICT Standards in Europe

In 2012, the ‘European Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardization’ (MSP) was inaugurated as a new platform for dialogue on European ICT standardization. The MSP was comprised of a wide range of members, e.g., representatives of national authorities of EU member-states and European Free Trade Association countries; the European and international ICT standardization bodies and stakeholder organizations representing industry; small- and medium-sized enterprises, consumers, and other stakeholders. The MSP was set up by the European Commission as a new kind of collaborative forum in ICT standardization, partly in response to the otherwise consolidated and formalized European standardization system, which had a clear allocation of competences between exclusively selected public and private actors, yet also inefficiencies due to a rather bureaucratic governance system. This chapter outlines the creation of the MSP as a new ICT-enabled collaborative decision-making system in European ICT standardization. Not due to the application of new technologies, but due to the systemic consequences of the fast development of ICT for political, administrative and regulatory setups of collaboration in Europe. This chapter provides an analysis of the MSP as a new type of forum for deliberation and cooperation in European ICT standardization, and it outlines how the platform facilitates a regulatory dialogue on ICT standardization in Europe. Simultaneously, the MSP plays a significant role in public–private co-creation of regulation and ICT standardization, and it may prove to be a pathbreaker leading to a ‘paradigm shift’ in the governance of European standardization. Finally, certain implications of the MSP are discussed.

Explaining EU Impacts at the Domestic Level – The Europeanization of Regulatory Policy in Denmark

This chapter questions the value of ‘goodness of fit’ as an explanatory variable in studies of EU impacts on domestic change. Instead it points to the important role of domestic politics. The analysis is based on case studies of domestic regulatory policies of consumer protection and competition policy in Denmark. It is assumed that EU pressures and policies affect domestic policy content not only directly though legal acts, but also indirectly through domestic political actors making use of the EU in policy-making processes at the domestic level. Hence the chapter also explores whether and how domestic actors have been making use of EU policies and pressures in shaping domestic policy content. While the ‘goodness of fit’-hypothesis in itself holds little explanatory value, Europeanization through changing domestic opportunity structures as well as framing beliefs and expectations are important in explaining domestic policy change. The chapter concludes that changed domestic opportunity structures and actors’ beliefs and expectations are much more important than ‘goodness of fit’ when assessing EU impacts on national regulatory policy. An emphasis on actors’ interaction in domestic politics is thus supposed to be a prerequisite for obtaining satisfactory explanatory value in studies of Europeanization.