Sieglinde Gstöhl

Scandinavia and Switzerland: small, successful and stubborn towards the EU

Economic theory of integration expects small states and highly industrialized states to be more likely to integrate than larger or less advanced countries. Why then, did Norway, Sweden and Switzerland choose for a long time not to join the European Union? Existing political economy approaches cannot fully explain this stubbornness because they neglect the hidden impact of national identities. Constructivist approaches, in turn, offer insights on identity-related variables but fail to assess tangible benefits. This article argues that economic incentives for EU membership coexist with and are often dominated by domestic and geo-historical constraints. Hence, both material interests and ideational factors are necessary to explain reluctant integration policies.

Models of external differentiation in the EU's neighbourhood: an expanding economic community?

ABSTRACT The neighbouring countries of the European Union (EU) have gradually developed ‘a stake’ in its internal market. This contribution asks to what extent and how the EU is expanding its economic community based on an analysis of the different neighbourhood models of deep economic integration, including current discussions about their future development. It shows that the EUs neighbourhood relations range from narrow, bilateral, static models to broad, multilateral, dynamic models and that a shift in this direction can be observed over time. The EU increasingly attempts to ensure market homogeneity beyond its borders by concluding agreements which include a dynamic adaptation to the evolving relevant acquis, its uniform interpretation as well as an independent surveillance and judicial enforcement.

JESP Symposium: The European Union's global social role

This symposium considers Europes global social policy through an exchange of ideas between scholars with different areas of expertise. The lead article provides an overview of the EUs objectives and instruments in promoting the social dimension of globalization, illustrating its focus on international labour standards and the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the shift from trade measures to a broader spectrum of soft external policy instruments. More specifically, we analyse the horizontal and vertical coherence of the EUs international social policies. The three other contributions to this symposium elaborate on this distinction by examining the social dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy, the `uploading of the EU social model in the ILO, and the EUs promotion of corporate social responsibility in the world. These accounts suggest that market-enhancing goals often take priority over social objectives, and that the EU can at best be seen as a regional social power. In addition, the contributions point to the limitations of an ambitious EU role in this area.

Between cooperation and competition: major powers in shared neighbourhoods

ABSTRACT This introductory article to the special issue on major powers in shared neighbourhoods sets the scenery by introducing the research objectives, situating them in the relevant academic context with references to the literatures on great power dynamics, regionalism and foreign policy analysis. It presents a conceptual framework for the study of ‘major powers’, understood as regional leaders, and their different forms of interaction in shared neighbourhoods, before providing an overview of the key insights of the individual contributions. The article concludes by identifying the main factors explaining the shape of the relationship between major powers in their shared region and outlining a research agenda on comparative neighbourhood policy studies.

The EU's Post‐Lisbon Free Trade Agreements: Commercial Interests in a Changing Constitutional Context

This article examines how the Common Commercial Policy in the post‐Lisbon era impacts citizens rights both within the EU and in the partner countries. The EUs aspiration to pursue a normative agenda through trade has further been reinforced by the Lisbon Treaty, both with regard to the objectives of external action and the reformed trade policy‐making processes. Concurrently, however, the EU has refocused its trade strategy on growth and competitiveness, and strongly advocated the conclusion of ‘new generation’ free trade agreements. These agreements combine an ambitious ‘WTO‐plus’ agenda with normative issues such as provisions on human rights, a social dimension and sustainable development. The result of this dual approach is a mixed ‘constitutional balance’: whereas constitutional rights and competitiveness have the potential to reinforce each other with positive synergy effects, they may also result in tensions and policy incoherencies.

Mechanisms of Global Trade Governance: The ‘Double Standard’ on Standards in the WTO

The rapid growth of global trade has increased the need for more specified regulation of products and production processes. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been coming under pressure to reconcile the requirements of free trade with requests for guarding certain health, environmental or labour standards as well as intellectual property rights, which carry both the promise of legitimate demands and the risk of non-tariff protectionism. In this chapter, we investigate the WTO’s role at this intersection of trade and non-trade concerns. We understand global trade governance as the process by which different public and private actors from the local to the global level govern international trade in a cooperative mode.1 Contrary to a common misunderstanding, the WTO itself does not set international standards and therefore has to find other ways to ‘govern’ trade-related regulation. The impact of standards on global trade is widespread - one estimate claims that up to 80 per cent of trade is affected by standards or associated technical regulations (OECD 1998: 4, 10). Nevertheless, ‘the literature on standard setting generally lacks a sustained theoretical argument to explain or assess institutional standards arrangements past or present’, and in contrast to some economic and legal studies, ‘work on standards by political scientists practically does not exist’ (Mattli 2001: 331f.).2

Blurring regime boundaries: uneven legalization of non‐trade concerns in the WTO

Purpose – The regulatory reach of the international trade regime beyond its own boundaries is attracting increasing scholarly and political attention as the World Trade Organization (WTO) is expected to reconcile free trade with concerns related to public health, environmental and labour issues or intellectual property rights. This paper aims to investigate to what extent and why the degree of legalization of non‐trade concerns in the WTO varies across issue areas.Design/methodology/approach – The paper first assesses the degree of legalization (in terms of obligation, delegation and precision) for technical (phyto) sanitary, environmental, intellectual property and labour standards. It then adopts a neoliberal institutionalist perspective to account for the uneven legalization across issue areas.Findings – The paper shows that legalization is strong for intellectual property rights, moderate for public health and environmental matters and weak for labour issues. It is argued that legalization is uneven b...