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5955 results in European government, politics and policy

Page 148 of 298

  • The ideational foundations of coercion: political culture and policies towards North Korea

  • Michal Onderco, Wolfgang Wagner
  • Journal:
    European Political Science Review / Volume 9 / Issue 2 / May 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    08 December 2015, pp. 279-302

  • The notion that states’ foreign and security policies are not exclusively driven by material interests is now firmly established. Whose ideas matter and in what way, however, has remained subject to debate. We advance this debate by studying the crisis diplomacy of liberal democracies towards North Korea during four crises around the country’s violation of international norms between 1993 and 2009. Although liberal democracies share a common perception of North Korea’s nuclear programme as a threat to international peace and security, they differ widely in either confronting or accommodating North Korea. We examine the explanatory power of two ideational driving forces behind the foreign policy of liberal democracies: the ideological orientation of the government, on the one hand, and a country’s political culture, on the other. Our analysis of 22 liberal democracies demonstrates that different domestic cultures of dealing with norm violations have a significant impact on crisis diplomacy: countries with punitive domestic cultures tend to adopt confrontational policies towards international norm violators; while left governments are not more accommodationist than right governments. Ideational differences across states are thus more pronounced than those within states.

The Euro Experiment
  • Paul Wallace
  • Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015
  • How and why did the euro crisis happen? What are the implications for the economic and political future of Europe? The euro is an extraordinary political and economic experiment, the results of which are still highly uncertain. This book, written by a leading commentator on the economics of the European Union, provides a clear and analytical guide to the euro experiment and the subsequent crisis. Written in a balanced way that is neither pro-euro nor euro-sceptic, it explains the political forces that helped to create and maintain the single currency. Further, it argues that the recent crisis can be best understood in terms of six fundamental issues: sovereign debt, banking, private debt, macroeconomic imbalances, defective economic governance, and the interplay of national and European politics. This accessible account will appeal to a wide readership, including general readers and students as well academics and policymakers working in banking and public policy.

  • Differential Europeanization? Explaining the impact of the early warning system on subnational parliaments in Europe

  • Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka
  • Journal:
    European Political Science Review / Volume 9 / Issue 2 / May 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 December 2015, pp. 255-278
    • Article
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  • The inclusion of subnational parliaments into the early warning system (EWS) for subsidiarity control generates transforming dynamics in parliamentary modus operandi in European Union (EU) decentralized states. Empirical findings reveal considerable variations in the pace and scope of subnational parliamentary activity in EU policy control challenging the existing theories of territorial mobilization. Drawing from a comparative institutional analysis, this article offers a theoretical framework that permits accounting for cross-country variations in subnational parliamentary mobilization in EU affairs, under the EWS. By placing an increased focus on the domestic environment, it suggests that the two important factors which might affect the scope of parliamentary activity are (1) the relationship between the executive and legislature at the subnational level, and (2) the position of the regional executive in domestic governance arrangements.

  • 1 - A question of survival

  • Paul Wallace
  • Book:
    The Euro Experiment
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 1-29

  • Summary

    In January 2009, ten years after the single currency had been founded, there seemed ample cause to celebrate in Brussels, the uncrowned capital of Europe, and Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank (ECB). The euro was a club that other states wanted to join. Starting as a monetary union of eleven, it had expanded to sixteen, with Slovakia the latest to become a member. More important, the euro had withstood the gravest test of its first decade, the financial crisis that came to a climax in late 2008; despite its tender years, the ECB won plaudits for its prompt response when the crisis started in the summer of 2007, whereas the three-centuries-old Bank of England was rebuked for being slow off the mark. In troubled times, the single currency appeared to offer a security sorely needed by European countries that had shunned it, such as the UK whose banking system had come close to collapse. Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB's president, described the euro as a ‘shield’, saying that in its first ten years it had ‘proven its stability, its resistance to shocks and its resilience in the face of financial and economic turmoil’.

    The verdict of the European Commission when publishing a study in May 2008 that examined the decade since the first eleven members of the club had been selected was grandiloquent. Though the findings of the actual report were more nuanced, the Commission proclaimed the euro ‘a resounding success’; the monetary union was ‘an achievement of strategic importance’ not just for the wider European Union but for the world at large in which Europe had become ‘a pole of macroeconomic stability’. A sense of complacency persisted among the euro-zone elite in 2009, even though bond markets signalled alarm early in the year about Greece and Italy. In December, the Commission published a study that surveyed the mostly sceptical views of American economists as the drive to create an economic and monetary union (EMU) gathered momentum in the 1990s. Martin Feldstein, an economist at Harvard University and a former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan, had even speculated that the venture could spur renewed conflicts in Europe. The told-you-so title of the paper was: ‘The euro: it can't happen. It's a bad idea. It won't last.

  • 9 - Debtors’ prison

  • Paul Wallace
  • Book:
    The Euro Experiment
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 240-270

  • Summary

    During 2013 and especially in the first half of 2014, the bond markets decided that the euro crisis was over. Government debt yields generally fell across the periphery in the first few months of 2013, shrugging off the eventful bail-out of Cyprus in March. When global yields rose generally in the ‘taper tantrum’ after the Fed aired in late May the possibility of phasing out its monthly bond purchases, euro-zone states were not immune; but, significantly, spreads between the periphery countries and Germany did not for the most part widen that much and before long started to close further. There were local flare-ups, but they did not persist or cause a wider conflagration. For example, yields spiked in Portugal during a summer political crisis, when the coalition government carrying out the painful measures required under the bail-out programme looked as if it might fall apart. They then subsided when the two governing parties coalesced again after Passos Coelho, the prime minister, gave Paulo Portas, the leader of the junior party, a bigger role.

    Politicians in both the core and peripheral countries were keen to declare the crisis over, even if this was imprudent. Ireland threw away its bail-out crutches in December 2013, making it the first crisis country to conclude its rescue programme on time. That ‘clean exit’ was in fact risky since both the Commission and the IMF as well as the ECB considered that Ireland would have done well to get a precautionary credit line with the ESM. The main advantage this would have conferred was eligibility for OMT since such a precautionary programme would require conditionality. That eligibility would have lasted for up to two years because the credit line could be renewed twice for six months after the initial one-year term. The counsel from the troika was disregarded for reasons both of Irish pride and of the German desire to wrap up the embarrassing rescues.

    A similar alliance on the periphery and core helped Slovenia avoid the threat of a bail-out that had long hung over the country. Having seen the effects of such programmes elsewhere, the government led by Alenka Bratusek was doing its utmost to avoid becoming the sixth country to require a rescue. It was helped by the fact that Germany also wanted to avoid such an outcome.

  • 7 - Legislative Powers: Competences and Procedures

  • from Part II - Governmental Powers
  • Robert Schütze, University of Durham
  • Book:
    European Constitutional Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 223-262

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Each society needs common rules and mechanisms for their production. The concept of legislation is central to all modern societies. Legislation refers to the making of laws (legis).

    But what is ‘legislation’? Two competing conceptions of legislation have emerged in the modern era. The formal or procedural conception of legislation is tied to our modern understanding of who should be in charge of the legislative function. Legislation is formally defined as every legal act adopted according to the (parliamentary) legislative procedure. This procedural conception of legislation has traditionally shaped British constitutional thought. By contrast, a second conception defines what legislation should be, that is: legal rules with general application. This material or functional conception of legislation has shaped continental constitutional thought. A material definition of legislation underpins phrases like ‘external legislation’ through international agreements, and ‘delegated legislation’ adopted by the executive.

    Which of these traditions has informed European constitutionalism? The Union has traditionally followed a material definition. However, with the Lisbon Treaty, a formal definition of legislative power has been adopted. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union now constitutionally defines: ‘Legal acts adopted by legislative procedure shall constitute legislative acts.’

    But what are the ‘legislative’ powers of the European Union? And what types of power can it enjoy? This chapter answers these questions in four sections. Section 1 analyses the scope of the Union's legislative competences. This scope is limited, as the Union is not a sovereign State. Section 2 analyses the different categories of Union competences. Depending on what competence category is involved, the Union will enjoy distinct degrees of legislative power. Section 3 analyses the identity of the Union legislator. Various legislative procedures thereby determine how the Union must exercise its ‘legislative’ competences. Section 4 finally scrutinises the principle of subsidiarity as a constitutional principle that controls the exercise of the Union's shared legislative powers.

    The Scope of Union Competences

    When the British Parliament legislates, it need not ‘justify’ its acts. It is considered to enjoy a competence to do all things. This ‘omnipotence’ is inherent in the idea of a sovereign parliament in a sovereign state. The European Union is neither ‘sovereign’ nor a ‘state’. Its powers are not inherent powers. They must be conferred by its foundational charter: the European Treaties.

  • 4 - Greeks bearing debts

  • Paul Wallace
  • Book:
    The Euro Experiment
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 88-115

  • Summary

    The euro crisis started in earnest in early 2010 when Greece lost access to the markets and over the next two-and-a-half years it was the country that threatened the single currency the most. Trouble flared up again in 2015 as the new government, led by Tsipras, brought Greece even closer to the brink through its destructive policies and antagonistic negotiating tactics with creditors. This was part of a pattern. As the crisis in its most acute phase spread around the periphery of the euro area between 2010 and 2012, it kept on reverting in its most malign form to the nation where it had begun, shaping the actions of the European leaders trying to save it in ways that were often counter-productive. Since the Greek crisis was manifestly a sovereign debt crisis, it prompted policies not just for Greece but also for other peripheral countries that focused on tackling fiscal weaknesses, even though the sources of the euro crisis ran much deeper than budgetary misdemeanours.

    For the single-currency club as a whole, the actions taken by European leaders involved the hasty erection of common defences to provide help in the form of official financing for members shut out from the markets. Although the new bail-out funds were an important addition to the euro area's institutions, they were an inadequate response. It was as if European leaders were erecting a rickety extension to the original defective building rather than carrying out the comprehensive reconstruction that was needed. What emerged from the reforms was essentially a revised version of Maastricht rather than a genuine move towards sharing debt burdens and fiscal resources through for example the introduction of jointly guaranteed eurobonds. The half-hearted measures were insufficient to overcome market fears, which meant that the ECB was forced to stave off panic through bond purchases. However, until Draghi's ‘whatever it takes’ pledge of July 2012, the central bank intervened in a reluctant and unconvincing way that also failed to restore confidence.

    Just as important as these responses at the euro-zone level was a drive to tackle at the national level the fiscal failures that the German government in particular blamed for what had gone wrong.

  • 1 - How to Find the EU Treaties

  • from Appendices
  • Robert Schütze, University of Durham
  • Book:
    European Constitutional Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 473-475

  • Summary

    The EU Treaties constitute the primary law of the Union. The formula ‘the Treaties’ commonly refers to two Treaties: the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. These two Treaties are the result of a long constitutional ‘chain-novel’. Starting out from three – successful – ‘Founding Treaties’, subsequent ‘Amendment Treaties’ and ‘Accession Treaties’ have radically changed the Union's form and substance.

    This radical change was to be formally recognised by the 2004 ‘Constitutional Treaty’. The latter tried to ‘refound’ the Union by starting a completely new ‘Treaty’; yet the attempt failed when the Dutch and French referenda rejected the Constitutional Treaty. The Member States thus resorted to yet another amendment treaty: the 2007 Lisbon Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty nonetheless contributes a radical new ‘chapter’ to the old ‘chain novel’ starting with the Founding Treaties. For it has replaced the old foundations of the ‘Community legal order’ – even if not in form, certainly in substance – with a new ‘Union legal order’. (The only remnant of the old Community legal order is the European Atomic Energy Community – which for some reason was not integrated into the new Union legal order.) One of the new features of the post-Lisbon era is the possibility of treaty amendments instigated by European Council Decisions. In addition to ‘Amendment Treaties’ there are thus henceforth ‘Amendment Decisions’ adopted by the European Council.

    The EU Treaties can today be found on the European Union's EUR-Lex website: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/collection/eu-law/treaties.html, but there are also a number of solid paper copies such my own ‘EU Treaties & Legislation’ collection.

  • 2 - Defective design

  • Paul Wallace
  • Book:
    The Euro Experiment
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 30-57

  • Summary

    The birth of the single currency in 1999 was a triumph for European integrationists whose vision had prevailed over nationalist naysayers. A monetary union that seemed fanciful a few years earlier as foreign-exchange markets cracked open its predecessor, the European exchange-rate mechanism, had become reality. On 1 January, the founder states, which included the four big economies of Germany, France, Italy and Spain, locked their exchange rates irrevocably against one another. Even though it would take three years until euro notes and coins replaced national money in circulation, at the start of 2002, the ECB based in Frankfurt now set interest rates for the whole of the euro area, affecting over 290 million people living in the eleven countries sharing a common currency.

    But the euro was a premature birth (as Gerhard Schröder presciently observed before he became German chancellor in 1998) because it was engendered by old national fears rather than new European hopes. Politics trumped economics in the rush to curb the power of a unified Germany by creating a European currency. The compromises involved in the project meant that the design was inherently flawed. Instead of a monetary union crowning the creation of a single European state whose citizens identified themselves as European first and foremost rather than clinging to their national identities, the euro would leave the nation states in place and be run by a supranational institution, the ECB. Even though the members of the currency union were to lose national monetary sovereignty, they were to preserve their power over broader economic policies while retaining their fiscal autonomy.

    As well as failing to comply with the traditional alignment between money and power, the euro did not meet the minimum economic conditions needed for a common currency to work properly. In the decades before its birth, economists had devoted much thought to specifying these requirements. Judged by the criteria they had set, the design of the euro was flawed, in particular through the retention of full national fiscal sovereignty while sharing a single money. Even so, the original template might have been workable if confined to a select band of highly developed and closely integrated northern economies.

  • Preface

  • Paul Wallace
  • Book:
    The Euro Experiment
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp viii-xvi

  • Summary

    There are times when history speeds up and the early 1990s was one such juncture. The decision to create a single currency in a Europe of obdurately surviving nation states was audacious and its effects continue to reverberate. The elder statesmen of France and Germany who decided to jump-start history at the Maastricht summit of 1991 were seeking to answer an old and vexed question about the role of Germany in Europe, but they posed a new and also fraught one. Could the experiment of creating a monetary union of still sovereign countries work?

    Both the launch of the euro, on schedule in 1999, and the first decade of the single currency seemed to suggest that the venture was feasible in practice as well as bold in spirit. The European Central Bank (ECB) established its credentials and the overall performance of the euro area was satisfactory. Despite the diversity of the member states and the lack of any genuine economic union, it appeared that an ever-growing number of countries, rising from eleven at the start to sixteen a decade later, could indeed share a common currency while retaining fiscal and political autonomy. Even banks, which lay at the heart of the monetary union, could remain under national supervisory control. Although historical experience suggested that a single money required a single state, the euro might prove to be an exception.

    But the euro crisis was another time when history speeded up, in this case revealing the early sanguine assessment of the euro area's performance as largely illusory. The creation of the single currency paid an instant dividend for the countries on the periphery, by causing their interest rates to fall dramatically. It spurred a decade of easy credit that papered over the fact that the members in southern Europe had economies that were less able to cope with the rigours of the monetary union once the good times ended.

    Between 2010 and 2012, the euro area came close to disintegrating as financial markets assailed the vulnerable economies, forcing one after another to seek bail-outs even though a founding principle of the union supposedly ruled out any such assistance.

  • Part I - Constitutional Foundations

  • Robert Schütze, University of Durham
  • Book:
    European Constitutional Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 1-2

  • Summary

    The European Union has existed for over half a century. It originates in the will of six European States to cooperate closer in the area of coal and steel. Since 1952, the European Union has significantly grown – both geographically and thematically. It has today 28 Member States and acts in almost all areas of modern life. Its constitutional and institutional structures have also dramatically changed in the past six decades.

    The Union's remarkable constitutional evolution is discussed in Chapter 1. What type of legal ‘animal’ is the European Union? Chapter 2 analyses this question from a comparative constitutional perspective. We shall see that the Union is not a State but constitutes a ‘Federation of States’. Standing in between international and national law, the Union's federal character thereby expresses itself in a number of normative and institutional ways. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the two key normative qualities of European Union law, namely its ‘direct effect’ and its ‘supremacy’. Chapters 5 and 6 then look at the institutional structure of the European Union. Each Union institution will here be analysed as regards its composition, powers and procedures. The interplay between the various institutions in discharging the Union's governmental functions will be discussed in Part II.

  • 1 Constitutional History: From Paris to Lisbon 3

  • 2 Constitutional Nature: A Federation of States 43

  • 3 European Law I: Nature – Direct Effect 77

  • 4 European Law II: Nature – Supremacy/Pre-emption 117

  • 5 Governmental Structure: Union Institutions I 147

  • 6 Governmental Structure: Union Institutions II 185

  • 5 - Bad banks

  • Paul Wallace
  • Book:
    The Euro Experiment
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015, pp 116-142

  • Summary

    One of the many lessons of the euro crisis was that timing matters, both in the order of events and in the sequence of responses. The fact that Greece rather than Ireland was the first country to require a bail-out turned out to be highly significant. If the order had been reversed and Ireland had toppled over first, then it would have been clear from the outset that weak banks as much as weak states lay at the heart of the euro crisis. But because Greece was the first to fall, the crisis was misconstrued as predominantly a sovereign debt crisis, even though Greek fiscal improvidence was an extreme case by any reckoning. This led to a crucial delay in recognising both the problem and the solution that was necessary, the creation of a banking union (though even here only the rudiments were put in place). If some of the effort that was put into tackling the fiscal weaknesses of euro-zone governance in 2010 and 2011 had been directed instead towards swifter action in addressing the flaws in banking supervision, the euro crisis might not have intensified to such an alarming extent.

    Among the other rescued countries, Portugal most closely resembled Greece. Although Portuguese banks were inadequately capitalised and over-reliant on wholesale funding, it was the dire state of the country's public finances that led to the euro area's third rescue. But of the five countries eventually bailed-out during the euro crisis, fragile banks lay at the heart of the problem in at least three of them. Ireland was the first instance, but banking crises also brought down Cyprus and undermined Spain. Moreover, bust banks made Slovenia a near miss on the list of bail-outs, teetering for over a year on the brink of requiring help before finally getting to grips with them at the end of 2013.

    The reluctance to recognise that the euro crisis was in large measure the second leg in Europe of the financial crisis had baleful consequences. Instead of rooting out the bad loans and cleaning up bank balance sheets, the problem was left to fester even though previous experience had shown that swift surgery was vital to prevent the gangrene spreading.

Page 148 of 298