Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T04:46:31.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Several Roads Lead to International Norms, but Few Via International Socialization: A Case Study of the European Commission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2005

Liesbet Hooghe
Liesbet Hooghe
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Free University Amsterdam, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Can an international organization socialize those who work within it? The European Commission of the European Union is a crucial case because it is an autonomous international organization with a vocation to defend supranational norms. If this body cannot socialize its members, which international organization can? I develop theoretical expectations about how time, organizational structure, alternative processes of preference formation, and national socialization affect international socialization. To test these expectations for the European Commission, I use two surveys of top permanent Commission officials, conducted in 1996 and 2002. The analysis shows that support for supranational norms is relatively high, but that this is more because of national socialization than socialization in the Commission. National norms, originating in prior experiences in national ministries, loyalty to national political parties, or experience with one's country's organization of authority, decisively shape top officials' views on supranational norms. There are, then, several roads to international norms.For comments and advice, I am grateful to Jeffrey Checkel, Gary Marks, Donald Searing, and the editors and two anonymous reviewers for International Organization. An earlier draft was presented at the Center for European Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This project received funding from the Center for European Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and from two grants by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (1996–99, 1999–2002). Gina Cosentino, Erica Edwards, Michael Harvey, and Moira Nelson provided research assistance.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 861 - 898
Copyright
© 2005 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abélès, Marc, and Irène Bellier. 1996. La Commission européenne: du compromis culturel à la culture politique du compromis. Revue Française de Science Politique 46 (3):431–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allison, Graham T. 1971. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown.
Beck, Paul, and M. Kent Jennings. 1991. Family Traditions, Political Periods, and the Development of Partisan Orientation. Journal of Politics 53 (3):742–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caporaso, James. 2000. Changes in the Westphalian Order: Territory, Public Authority, and Sovereignty. International Studies Review 2 (2):1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Checkel, Jeffrey. 2003. ‘Going Native’ in Europe? Theorizing Social Interaction in European Institutions. Comparative Political Studies 36 (1):209–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, Dennis. 2000. Rational Lives: Norms and Values in Politics and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Citrin, Jack, Donald P. Green, Christopher Muste, and Cara Wong. 1997. Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations. Journal of Politics 59 (3):858–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston. 1991. Political Socialization: Where's the Politics? In Political Science: Looking to the Future, Vol. 3, edited by William Crotty, 125–52. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
Coombes, David. 1970. Politics and Bureaucracy of the European Community: A Portrait of the Commission of the E.E.C. London: Allen and Unwin.
Cram, Laura. 1994. The European Commission as a Multi-Organization: Social Policy and IT Policy in the EU. Journal of European Public Policy 1 (2):195–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crano, William D. 1997. Vested Interest, Symbolic Politics, and Attitude-Behavior Consistency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72 (3):485–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dod's European Companion. 1992, 1994. London: Dod's Politial Publishing.
Druckman, Daniel. 1994. Nationalism, Patriotism, and Group Loyalty: A Social Psychological Perspective. Mershon International Studies Review 38 (1):43–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duchêne, François. 1994. Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence. New York: Norton.
Eckstein, Harry. 1975. Case Study and Theory in Political Science. In Handbook of Political Science, Vol. 7, edited by Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby, 79–137. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Egeberg, Morten. 1999. Transcending Intergovernmentalism? Identity and Role Perceptions of National Officials in EU Decision-Making. Journal of European Public Policy 6 (3):456–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1990. When Rationality Fails. In The Limits of Rationality, edited by Karen Schweers Cook and Margaret Levi, 19–51. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Evans, Geoffrey. 2002. European Integration, Party Politics and Voting in the 2001 Election. British Elections and Parties Review 12:95–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
European Commission. 1996. First Report on Economic and Social Cohesion 1996. DG XVI, 144, Table 24. Brussels: European Commission.
European Convention. 2003. Draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe. CONV 850/03. Brussels: European Parliament.
Euro's Who's Who: Who's Who in the European Communities and in the Other European Organizations. 1991. Brussels: Editions Delta.
Fearon, James, and Alexander Wendt. 2003. Rationalism versus Constructivism: A Skeptical View. In Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, 52–72. London: Sage.
Finnemore, Martha. 1996. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Gabel, Matthew, and Chris Anderson. 2002. The Structure of Citizen Attitudes and the European Political Space. Comparative Political Studies 35 (8):893–913.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goren, Paul. 2001. Core Principles and Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics: A Test of Two Theories. British Journal of Political Science 31 (1):159–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haas, Ernst. 1958. The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces, 1950–1957. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Hartung, Harald. 2001. Eurobarometer 54.1: Building Europe and the European Union: The European Parliament, Public Safety, and Defense Policy, November–December 2000. Brussels: European Opinion Research Group EEIG.
Hemmer, Christopher, and Peter Katzenstein. 2002. Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism. International Organization 56 (3):575–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hix, Simon, and Christopher Lord. 1997. Political Parties in the European Union. London: MacMillan.
Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2001. Multi-Level Governance and European Integration. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hooghe, Liesbet. 2002. The European Commission and the Integration of Europe: Images of Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2003. Europe Divided? Elites vs. Public Opinion on European Integration. European Union Politics 4 (3):281–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooghe, Liesbet. 2003. Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multi-Level Governance. American Political Science Review 97 (2):233–43.Google Scholar
Huddy, Leonie. 2003. Group Identity and Political Cohesion. In Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, edited by David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, 511–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hug, Simon, and Thomas König. 2002. In View of Ratification: Governmental Preferences and Domestic Constraints at the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference. International Organization 56 (4):447–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, M. Kent. 1992. Ideological Thinking among Mass Publics and Political Elites. Public Opinion Quarterly 56 (4):419–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, M. Kent, and Laura Stoker. 2001. The Persistence of the Past: The Class of 1965 Turns Fifty. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California at Berkeley.
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 2001. Treating International Institutions as Social Environments. International Studies Quarterly 45 (4):487–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Judith. 2004. International Actors on the Domestic Scene: Membership Conditionality and Socialization by International Institutions. International Organization 58 (3):425–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keohane, Robert O. 2002. Ironies of Sovereignty: The European Union and the United States. Journal of Common Market Studies 40 (4):743–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legro, Jeffrey. 1996. Culture and Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-Step. American Political Science Review 90 (1):118–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindberg, Leon N., and Stuart A. Scheingold. 1970. Europe's Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Linden, Ronald H., ed. 2002. Norms and Nannies: The Impact of International Organizations on the Central and East European States. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1989. Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: Free Press.
Marks, Gary, and Marco Steenbergen, eds. 2004. European Integration and Political Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marks, Gary, Liesbet Hooghe, Moira Nelson, and Erica Edwards. 2006. Party Competition and European Integration in East and West: Different Structure, Same Causality. Comparative Political Studies 39.Google Scholar
McKeown, Timothy. 2004. Case Studies and the Limits of the Quantitative Worldview. In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, edited by Henry E. Brady and David Collier, 139–67. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Nordlinger, Eric. 1981. On the Autonomy of the Democratic State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Page, Edward. 1995. Administering Europe. In Governing the New Europe, edited by Jack Hayward and Edward Page, 257–85. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Page, Edward. 1997. People Who Run Europe. Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press.
Page, Edward C., and Vincent Wright, eds. 1999. Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States: A Comparative Analysis of Top Officials. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peterson, John. 1999. The Santer Era: The European Commission in Normative, Historical and Theoretical Perspective. Journal of European Public Policy 6 (1):46–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollack, Mark. 2000. The End of Creeping Competence? EU Policy-Making Since Maastricht. Journal of Common Market Studies 38 (3):519–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollack, Mark. 2003. The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the EU. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Putnam, Robert. 1973. The Beliefs of Politicians: Ideology, Conflict and Democracy in Britain and Italy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Risse, Thomas. 2000. ‘Let's Argue!’: Communicative Action in World Politics. International Organization 54 (1):1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risse, Thomas. 2001. A European Identity? Europeanization and the Evolution of Nation-State Identities. In Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change, edited by Maria Green Cowles, James Caporaso, and Thomas Risse, 198–216. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Risse, Thomas, Stephen Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. 1999. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ross, George. 1995. Jacques Delors and European Integration. New York: Oxford University Press.
Searing, Donald. 1986. A Theory of Political Socialization: Institutional Support and Deradicalization in Britain. British Journal of Political Science 16 (3):341–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searing, Donald. 1991. Roles, Rules and Rationality in the New Institutionalism. American Political Science Review 32 (1):47–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searing, Donald. 1994. Westminster's World: Understanding Political Roles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searing, Donald, Gerald Wright, and George Rabinowitz. 1976. The Primacy Principle: Attitude Change and Political Socialization. British Journal of Political Science 6 (1):83–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, David O. 1993. Symbolic Politics: A Socio-Psychological Theory. In Explorations in Political Psychology, edited by Shanto Iyengar and William J. McGuire, 113–49. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Sears, David O., and Carolyn Funk. 1991. The Role of Self-Interest in Social and Political Attitudes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24 (1):1–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, David O., and Carolyn Funk. 1999. Evidence of the Long-Term Persistence of Adults' Political Predispositions. Journal of Politics 61 (1):1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, David O., and Sheri Levy. 2003. Childhood and Adult Political Development. In Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, edited by David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, 60–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sears, David O., and Nicholas A. Valentino. 1997. Politics Matters: Political Events as Catalysts for Preadult Socialization. American Political Science Review 91 (1):45–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shore, Cris. 2000. Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. London: Routledge.
Simon, Herbert A. 1985. Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science. American Political Science Review 79 (2):293–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spence, Jacqueline M. 1996. The European Union ‘A View from the Top’: Top Decision Makers and the European Union. Prepared for EOS Gallup Europe's European Omnibus Survey. Brussels: EOS Gallup Europe. Available at: 〈http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/top/top_en.htm〉. Accessed 22 June 2005.
Taber, Charles S. 2003. Information Processing and Public Opinion. In Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, edited by David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, 433–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomassen, Jacques, Abdul Noury, and Erik Voeten. 2004. Political Competition in the European Parliament: Evidence from Roll Call and Survey Analyses. In European Integration and Political Conflict, edited by Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen, 141–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin. 2004. Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe. In European Integration and Political Conflict, edited by Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen, 32–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wessels, Bernhard. 2004. Contestation Potential of Interest Groups in the EU: Emergence, Structure, and Political Alliances. In European Integration and Political Conflict, edited by Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen, 195–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Young, Jason, Cynthia J. Thomsen, Eugene Borgida, John L. Sullivan, and John H. Aldrich. 1991. When Self-Interest Makes a Difference: The Role of Construct Accessibility in Political Reasoning. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 27:271–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.