Sebastian Harnisch

Minilateral Cooperation and Transatlantic Coalition-Building: The E3/EU-3 Iran Initiative

Abstract The article examines the factors that led to the establishment and evolution of the minilateral cooperation among France, Germany, the United Kingdom (and eventually the High Representative for CFSP) vis-à-vis Iran. The analysis brings together two theoretical approaches, institutional design and role theory. It posits that minilateral cooperation in the Iranian case and security affairs in general do not easily translate into multilateral cooperation. It finds that in contrast to the trade and economic realm, the course of security minilaterals is strongly shaped by rivalling formal institutions, specific characteristics in the non-proliferation regime (lack of specificity in central norms) and the role behaviour of the United States. European minilateral cooperation started (as in the case of the Middle East Quartet and Six-Party Talks) when the US rejected bilateral engagement. The initiative successfully mediated a temporary suspension of Irans enrichment activities as long as Tehran believed that the EU-3 could bring the US to the table and commit the Bush Administration to a comprehensive negotiated settlement, including US security guarantees. Since the EU-3 and the subsequent P-5 (the permanent five members of the UNSC) plus Germany/EU High Representative for CFSP minilaterals have been incapable of forming a resilient transatlantic coalition of policy makers to negotiate a comprehensive settlement, another serious split could occur if Washington pursues a punitive course without having fully supported a cooperative solution to the crisis.

Change and continuity in post-unification German foreign policy

Ten years after unification, Germany still maintains its post-Second World War foreign policy course based on transatlantic multilateralism and European integration despite changes in Germanys international and domestic contexts. This study argues that neither realist nor institutionalist explanations can explain the post-unification pattern of German foreign policy. Instead, continuity and change in this policy can be understood best through a role-theoretical approach based on the civilian power idealtype. Two causal pathways are developed which account for continuity in foreign policy orientation (goals) and strategies while explaining change in the choice of foreign policy instruments. First, the apparent success of Germanys traditional foreign policy role concept during and after unification helped to reify a broad foreign policy consensus around the goals and strategies of an ideal-type civilian power. Second, major foreign policy crises, such as the Yugoslavian wars, stirred the long held hierarchy between the core values of reticence vis-à-vis the use of force (never again German militarism) and the special German responsibility to prevent genocide (never again Auschwitz). The interaction between domestic and foreign expectations provides a promising source for explaining change and continuity in Germanys foreign policy role concept and behaviour.

German non-proliferation policy and the Iraq conflict

The article revisits the two explanations of Germanys opposition to the Iraq war, which posit that the Schröder government was either driven by electoral concerns in the 2002 campaign or bound by a persisting ‘culture of restraint’ that has led German security policy for decades. While the article extends some of the arguments developed by these two schools it takes issue with their main findings. First, it argues that the early public opposition to military ‘adventures’ in Iraq right after 11 September 2001 can be best understood when taking into account the political consideration of preserving the red–green government in the face of considerable opposition within the coalitions parliamentary caucus. Second, it holds that Berlins policy, while consistent on combat forces, has been far more flexible than earlier acknowledged, because it clearly tried to balance domestic necessities and foreign expectations. Third, it concludes that the Iraq case is less a precedence of a new ‘German way’ in foreign affairs but is rather a mix of old ‘German ways’ in search for a new role in a transformed international community.

Role theory in symbolic interactionism: Czech Republic, Germany and the EU

The literature on norm socialization and Europeanization has largely focused on successful norm diffusion, but thus far it has hardly addressed the norm backlash from the respective societies. To more fully grasp the interaction between member states’ roles and their institutional preferences we provide a conceptual model for the de-composition of national role conceptions. This model is applied in case studies on German and Czech European policies in the constitutionalization process of the European Union. The paper illustrates how the composition of Czech and German roles has changed over time and how these national role conceptions shape the countries’ respective institutional preferences. We conclude that historical role experience is considered as a powerful explanatory tool for the policies of today’s European Union member states.

Germany’s New European Policy: Weaker, Leaner, Meaner

When Gerhard Schroder and Joschka Fischer came into office, they claimed that Germany would continue its traditional pro-European course. The new government vowed in its coalition platform to further deepen and widen the European Union (EU). Sounding a note consistent with the German all-partisan pro-European consensus, and even before assuming his ministerial post, the Green party’s foremost foreign policy pundit, Joschka Fischer, called for a revival of the debate on the finalite europeene.

‘The Politics of Domestication’: A New Paradigm in German Foreign Policy

Delegation has become a core feature of democratic governance both nationally and internationally. Historically, Germany has been more willing than other democracies to grant authority to an international agent to act on its behalf. Inside democratic states, the principal, i.e. the people, grants authority to national agents, reaping the domestic benefits of delegation: specialisation between agents, coordination of common action when facing policy externalities, facilitation of dispute resolution and rule enforcement. Historically, as Peter Katzenstein argued some 20 years ago, authority in Germany has been dispersed through federalism and parapublic institutions and thus tamed more intensely than in other democracies. A few years ago, both Peter Katzenstein and Willie Paterson pointed out in the volume on the semi-sovereign state revisited that there is a connection to be explored between Germany’s semi-sovereignty and Europe’s associated sovereignty. In this article, I investigate this connection, i.e. the impact of crosscutting internal and external delegation patterns, more closely. I argue that domestic delegation mechanisms, such as federalism, the strong Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) and strict constitutional rules for executive powers to use repressive force, have increasingly limited and shaped Germany’s ability to delegate authority internationally. Thus, domestication – ‘the limitation of executive prerogatives by legislative and judicial actors to clip and tie international delegation of competences to domestic core norms through procedural and normative rules’ – has become an ever more important mechanism shaping German foreign policy since the 1970s. Advancing Katzenstein’s and Paterson’s argument, I posit that the domestication by the German Länder, the

Diffusion of e‐government and e‐participation in Democracies and Autocracies

Internet based technology constitutes one of the most important policy innovations in the last decades. Its diffusion has been rapid, widespread and sustained. The increase has raised questions about its drivers. The article focuses on an aspect of this dynamic that has been neglected so far: the variance between and among democracies and autocracies and their respective subtypes. Moreover, the majority of studies tackles the diffusion of e-government techniques, excluding the important array of e-participation. Our analysis thus offers a broader and more differentiated account of the adoption of online tools by governments. The findings indicate that the adoption of e-government and e-participation techniques varies substantially between and among democratic and autocratic regime types as well as over time and in kind.

Embedding Korea's unification multilaterally

The traditional view that bi- and multilateral security arrangements are mutually exclusive is misleading. Since the Korean War the multilateral UN Armistice regime and strong bilateral alliances have kept peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. In the 1990s, multilateral security institutions such as KEDO have become more important in supplementing bilateral security treaties. Reflecting upon a future Korean Unification, the article argues that multilateral security institutions serve important complementing functions such as building additional trust, stabilizing commitment and enhancing resources that bilateral institutions often lack. The article concludes by suggesting that current bilateral relations (US-DPRK, US-ROK, ROK-J, US-PRC) and multilateral arrangements (KEDO) must be reinforced through enhanced multilateral co-operation to allow a peaceful Korean unification accepted by all parties concerned.

Conceptualising conflicts in cyberspace

ABSTRACTThe article conceptualises political conflict in cyberspace. Thus far, scholarship has focussed on the analysis of (unilateral) cyberattacks, measuring their scope and impact, especially in Western industrialised countries. But cyber conflict, defined here as an incompatibility of stated intentions between actors which guides their use of computer technologies to harm the other, has received much less attention. Our conceptual approach builds on the work done by Valeriano and Maness and others in the field of cyber conflict measurement. We argue, however, that the interactive, international and inter-agential nature of cyber conflicts has not been captured sufficiently in recent scholarship. By providing a new methodology to address the problems of information bias, attribution and the neglect of non-state actors, we hold that variance in cyber conflict dynamics as well as spill-over effects between off- and online conflicts may be better captured with the new approach. Our work seeks to extend th...

Alliances Rebalanced? The Social Meaning of the U.S. Pivot and Allies’ Responses in Northeast Asia

Pundits and policymakers have articulated growing concerns about a coming clash between the U.S. and China. In this view, the U.S. Pivot to Asia is a (merely hidden) attempt of the Obama administration to preempt the competition with Beijing through strengthening a formidable web of military alliances and partnerships to frustrate Chinese ambitions. If this interpretation was true, U.S. allies in the region would heed Washington’s call to arms, because their military dependence would make them comply. Our role theoretical appraisal of the U.S. Pivot and reactions suggests that the material dynamics of security dilemmas in the region have been exaggerated: both, factions within the U.S. and U.S.’ allies, Japan and South Korea, differ considerably in casting China as a military threat while they continue to treat China as an economic partner. Focusing on the social structure of security dilemmas, we examine role taking behavior by U.S. allies in all three dimensions of the Pivot. We find that security dynamics depend as much on the role-taking of U.S. allies, and their respective historical experiences, as on the alleged intentions of the two protagonists. It follows that security cooperation and/ or competition in Asia is what concerned states as role holder make of it.