Robert Ackrill

Multiple streams in EU policy-making: the case of the 2005 sugar reform

The multiple streams model, developed by Kingdon in the United States (US), is being adapted increasingly to study European Union (EU) policy-making. This, however, is revealing a theoretical underdevelopment in some of its central components. The present paper considers several concerns. It seeks to develop the idea of policy entrepreneurship as a context-specific activity that gives substance to the claim that ‘ideas have their time’; it interprets the key notion of ambiguity, in the EU context, to mean institutional ambiguity; and it allows for spillovers between policy areas to be endogenous as well as exogenous. This affects the nature of the policy windows wherein policy entrepreneurship occurs. The adapted multiple streams model is used to analyse the 2005 EU sugar policy reform. Institutional ambiguity and endogenous spillovers are shown to create the conditions that enabled active policy entrepreneurship to lead, ultimately, to reform of this most resilient of policies.

Ambiguity, multiple streams, and EU policy

The multiple streams framework draws insight from interactions between agency and institutions to explore the impact of context, time and meaning on policy change and to assess the institutional and issue complexities permeating the European Union (EU) policy process. The authors specify the assumptions and structure of the framework and review studies that have adapted it to reflect more fully EU decision-making processes. The nature of policy entrepreneurship and policy windows are assessed to identify areas of improvement. Finally, the authors sketch out a research agenda that refines the logic of political manipulation which permeates the lens and the institutional complexity which frames the EU policy process.

Historical-institutionalist perspectives on the development of the EU budget system

Abstract The EU budget has only recently started to feature in theories of European integration. Studies typically adopt a historical-institutionalist framework, exploring notions such as path dependency. They have, however, generally been rather aggregated, or coarse-grained, in their approach. The EU budget has thus been treated as a single entity rather than a series of inter-linked institutions. This paper seeks to address these lacunae by adopting a fine-grained approach. This enables us to emphasize the connections that exist between EU budgetary institutions, in both time and space. We show that the initial set of budgetary institutions was unable, over time, to achieve consistently their treaty-based objectives. In response, rather than reform these institutions at potentially high political cost, additional institutions were layered on top of the extant structures. We thus demonstrate how some EU budgetary institutions have remained unchanged, whilst others have been added or changed over time.

Historical Learning in the Design of WTO Rules: The EC Sugar Case

The Uruguay Round Agreement made significant changes to the governance of international trade. Trade rules and dispute settlement mechanisms were altered and a series of specific agreements provided for liberalisation across economic sectors. The Agreement on Agriculture, arguably the most difficult and contentious to negotiate, permitted the continued use of trade-distorting instruments, both domestically and at the border. Rule-enforcement in agriculture therefore relies crucially on the clarity of the rules. This paper provides an in-depth study of a unique and critical case for understanding the new rules: the EC sugar regime. This policy was challenged unsuccessfully under the pre-Uruguay Round rules, but successfully under the new rules. This case is particularly valuable in allowing us to isolate the effect of the Uruguay Round on agricultural trade disputes: the policy under challenge was essentially unchanged and the legal actions addressed the same concern – excessive export subsidisation. Drawing on primary and secondary materials and interviews with key policy actors, sugar is used to illustrate how those involved in the multilateral process learned from particular rule weaknesses revealed in earlier cases, revising those rules in the Uruguay Round in such a way that dispute panels can more readily and objectively determine rule breaches.

Governing the transition to a biofuels economy in the US and EU: accommodating value conflicts, implementing uncertainty

Abstract The scale of the ambition to decouple emissions growth from energy consumption runs counter to decades of debates and literatures on the limits of government. Transport biofuels are an early and influential case of the policy capacity challenge in the transition to low-carbon economies. The case stands analytically for the policy-maker’s dilemma of maintaining long-term policy goals as credible commitments, despite the flexibility and adaptability in policy-making required to achieve them under high political, technological and market uncertainty. This paper compares US and EU biofuels policy processes in these terms. It reveals an intertemporal choice embedded in biofuels policies which tests the capacity to account for future benefits from a low carbon future in current policy processes; if the pathway to their achievement is uncertain and politically contested in the implementation phase, then future benefits may be heavily discounted, shortening policy-maker horizons and rendering the transition process politically vulnerable.

Financing social and cohesion policy in an enlarged EU: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?

The development of the Open Method of Coordination, agreement on the Lisbon Agenda and EU enlargement offered the prospect of a new and substantial EU social policy agenda. This article considers EU social and cohesion policies in the context of the recent negotiation of the EU budget for 2007—13. We find the Commissions wish to redistribute EU spending in favour of these policy areas and new member states was thwarted by key political features of EU budget making: CAP spending levels which are downwardly sticky; institutional arrangements which provide for budget making as, at best, a zero-sum game; and the preferences of contributor member states in the EU-15 to contain overall spending while preserving their net budget positions. Questions are thus raised as to the ability of the EU to make any progress, from a budgetary perspective, on the social and cohesion policy agenda in an enlarged EU.

The Growth of Biofuels in the 21st Century

1. Biofuels and Biofuels Policies - an Introduction 2. Brazilian Biofuels Policy - an Introduction and Overview 3. Biofuels Policy - an Introduction and Overview 4. United States Biofuels Policy - an Introduction and Overview 5. Comparing Biofuels Policy Drivers - Common Themes, Differences and Issues for Analysis 6. The Challenge of Policy Capacity in Biofuels Policy Design 7. Biofuels Policy Design and External Implementation Challenges 8. External Dimensions to Biofuels Policies 9. Biofuels Policy Challenges

Policy capacity for the transition to a biofuels economy: a comparative study of the EU and USA

The scale of the ambition to decouple emissions growth from energy consumption in the economy runs counter to several decades of debates and literatures on the limits of government. Transport biofuels are an early and influential case of the policy capacity challenge in the transition to low-carbon economies. The case stands analytically for the policy-maker’s dilemma of maintaining longer term policy goals as credible commitments, even though considerable flexibility and adaptability in policy-making is required to reach those far horizon goals in conditions of high technological and market uncertainty. In such terms, this paper compares US and EU biofuels policy processes, revealing an intertemporal choice which tests the capacity to account for the future benefits of a low carbon future in current policy processes; because if the pathway to their achievement is uncertain and politically contested in the implementation phase, then those future benefits may be heavily discounted, shortening policy-maker horizons and rendering the overall transition process politically vulnerable.

Measuring the Welfare Costs of EU Accession: The Case of Vat Reform in Bulgaria

We analyze possible reforms to the Bulgarian VAT system, evaluating revenue-neutral reallocations of goods to tax bands within the existing 2-rate structure. We investigate the sensitivity of the results to behavioural response and imperfect tax recovery. We find only a weak case for the use of non-uniform VAT rate structures for redistributional purposes. Selective VAT exemptions can produce approximate welfare gains equivalent to a general price fall of much less than 1 per cent for plausible specifications of social welfare.

Making ‘greener’ connections: An introduction to the Special Issue

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (‘Green innovation’ – connecting governance, practices and outcomes) brings together a set of papers that focus on social and technological innovations designed to address the environmental sustainability challenges that we face today. Several contributions were first presented as part of the Economic and Social Research Council seminar series, ‘Green Innovation: Making it Work’, which took place between 2015 and 2017.1 Co-organized by Nottingham Trent University and The Open University, the series examined many types of pro-environmental innovation, with a particular focus on the factors that constrain and enable their practical implementation. The choice of the broad and populist term ‘green innovation’ (Schiederig et al., 2012), rather than more specific terms like ‘eco-innovation’ or ‘environmental innovation’, was quite deliberate and intended to signal the intention to create a forum for the interchange of ideas and research findings between academics with sustainability-related research interests, and sustainability practitioners drawn from the private, public and voluntary sectors. Practitioner engagement and participation was a prominent feature of the series, reflecting a desire to maximize the impact of the seminars outside academia. We were fortunate not merely to have practitioners attend the seminars, but to include papers from a number of them during the course of the series. Among the practitioners who gave papers during the course of the series were a Principal Administrator from the Energy Directorate of the European Commission, a transport consultant, a local authority transport planner, a property developer and a representative of a leading European train manufacturer. The Special Issue includes an article based on one of these practitioner-led presentations, while other seminar contributions have informed its overall shape and focus.