Theories of Cooperation and Integration II

The nature of the beast ??

Supranational organization, intergovernmental administration

union, multilevel governance framework…

Ontological debates and epistemological consequences

Different Perspectives on the Integration Process

Integration as a result of political negotiation processes consciously entered into by national actors on the basis of previously defined political and socio economic preferences

Moves towards closer integration gradually/incrementally advanced by a multitude of political and economic actors on the basis of individual/organisational learning processes leading to (integration-friendly) positive changes of political and socio economic preferences

FederalismIntergovernmentalism

FunctionalismNeofunctionalism

National states cooperate on the (inter-) governmental level without formally questioning parts of their sovereignty or limiting the execution of their sovereign rights

National states transfer certain rights or parts of their sovereignty to a supra-national authority constituted as an independent international actor by international treaty

IntergovernmentalismSupranationalism

Traditional Approaches to the European Integration Process(or: the dialectic of Supranationalism and Intergovernmentalism)

Common AimDevelopment of shared solutions to shared policy problems

(Helen Wallace)

Process of collective decision-making in a network of actors

Process of multilateral decision-making in an administration union of states („Zweckverband“)

A possible compromise – Neoliberal Institutionalism

• Premiss: Increasing levels of interdependence generate (increased) demand for international cooperation

• Institutions are purposively generated solutions to (different kinds of) collective action problems established by states to achieve their purpose („institutions matter“)

• „Facing dilemmas of coordination and collaboration under conditions of interdependence governments demand international institutions to enable them to achieve their interests through limited collective action“ (Keohane)

Neoliberal Institutionalism II

• Characteristics:• States are effective gate-keepers between the

domestic and international spheres.• The successful collaborative management of

common problems strengthens the role of the state.• Institutions matter because of the benefits they

provide and because they have an impact on the interest calculations of actors.

provision of information reduction of transaction costs development of convergent expectations facilitation of issue-linkage strategies development of mechanisms to discourage cheating

International Politics

Society A

Akteur A

Society B

Akteur B

IGO

Foreign Policy A

Foreign Policy B

Internationale Politik

LOOKING AT THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM FROM A RECENT INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE

For some time already, the analysis of International Relations is characterised by a change in perspective- away from the state as a unitary actor acting as a gatekeeper between the domestic and international policy areas- up, down, and sideways to supra-state, sub-state, and non-state actors.

From the society of states, our focus of attention has consequently shifted to transnational and

transgovernmental societies which take the form of boundary-crossing networks amongst individuals and non-

governmental organisations (NGOs).

Transnational Society (of Actors)

SocietyA

Government

SocietyB

Government

SocietyC

Government

National Actor

Transnational Society

Transnational Politics

SocietyB

Government

SocietyC

Government

SocietyA

Government

Cobweb model of international Relations

Historico-Political Framework:

• No doubt, this change of perspective resulted from the very real changes of the international system which on the one hand caused, and on the other were driven by Globalization

• Recommended Reading: John Baylis, Steve Smith, Patricia Owens (eds.): The Globalization of World Politics, An Introduction to International Relations. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP 2008

Globalization: Explanation & Phenomena

Erklärungsversuch Überbauphänomen progress of productive

forces

change of modes production

transition from Fordist to post-Fordist accumulation

Erklärungsversuch Modernisierung

process of economic, industrial, technological, social , cultural and po-litical change during the transition from traditio-nal to modern societies

Erklärungsversuch Systemstruktur

competition between super-powers for global hege-mony within the context of systemic rivalry/ antagonism of the East-West-conflict

Erklärungsversuch Basisphänomen

technological progress/ technological innovation

differentiation of international division of labour

global orientierte Absatz und Bezugsmarktstra-

tegien industrieller Unter-nehmungen („global sourcing“)

+ increasing inter-industrial

trade

global development, production and -, Absatzverbund

+ world trade expands over world

production

G L O B A L I Z A T I O N growth and intensification of transborder

interactions complex system of mutual dependencies between

states and societies

emergence of a global society

environment migration world market global financial system material commu-nication, transport

virtual communi-cation, information

flows, culture

transition from international

to transnational society

time-space-compression/ virtualization

von Zeit und Raum growing awareness of the ‘world as a

whole’ (world society ??)

de-bordering/ de-nationa-lization of industry

de-bordering/ de-nationa-lization of the state world

disjuncture between principle of interdependence and territorial principle

nation state’s regulatory capacity is restricted by actors autonomously deciding and operating

processes of fragmentation and marginalization

system of divided, overlapping responsibilities, areas of competence and sovereignties resulting from the partial debundling of formerly territorial defined and centralized power authorities

actors?? TNCs,

Global Players

Standortdebatte Global Governance

NGOs

international civil society

global media world / networks

economic world

McDonaldization vs.

Fragmentation

problems

explanatory framework modernization

explanatory framework system structure

explanatory framework superstructure phenomenon

explanatory framework foundational phenomenon

Globalization and the State

general change of social and political structures, particularly territorial organized forms of political power

decline of state’s power/ autonomy / regulatory capabilities and potentials

territorial defined authority of the nation state is challenged by non-territorial competitors („unbundling of sovereignty“)

STATE ??? „evaporation“

global economic market forces /actors

economic institutions

transnational civil society 3rd sector

supranational Institutions

authoritative value allocation no longer exercised through the state but through transnational operating non-state actors (Strange)

redefinition of the ‘political’ without reference to territorial substratum

role of state is marginalized (Luard); important decisions are taken by international and transnational authorities

loss of regulatory capacity/ direct control reduction of state’s capability to perform its

traditional tasks (security, welfare provision) restriction of the right to self-determination

granted to democratic political societies +

lack of democratic legitimation/ control of Global Governance-actors

increasing loss of control over non-state actors’ transnational activities

globalization increases interdependecies

interdependencies increase actors’ vulnerability

GLOBALIZATION

radical interpretation moderate interpretation

Looking at the European Union from a Recent International Relations Perspective

For some time already, the analysis of International Relations is characterised by a change in perspective away from the state as a unitary actor acting as a gatekeeper between the domestic and international policy areas up, down, and sideways to supra-state, sub-state, and non-state actors.

From the society of states, our focus of attention has consequently shifted to transnational and transgovernmental societies which take the form of boundary-crossing networks amongst individuals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

In effect, much of EU decision-

making occurs informally within

such policy networks.

This poses problems:

loading of decision-making processes inorder to favour someoptions over others

rule of the technocrats ?

democracy and accountability deficit in European politics

Consequence:

• The aforementioned debates resulted in the rise of two analytic approaches new in integration studies – multilevel governance analysis on the one hand, decision-making analysis on the other (the latter approach, however, though perhaps new to integration studies, was already well known in the study of foreign policy…)

Literaturtipp

• Robert O. Keohane: Power and Governance in a partially globalized world, London 2002.

• Michael Zürn: Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaats. Globalisierung und Denationalisierung als Chance, Frankfurt/Main 1998 u.ö.

Literaturtipp

• Ian Bache/Matthew Flinders (Hrsg.): Multi-Level Governance, Oxford 2004.

• Héritier, Adrienne: New Modes of Governance in Europe: Policy Making with-out Legislating? Heft 81 der Reihe Politikwissenschaft des Instituts für Höhere Studien (IHS), Wien 2002.

• Liesbet Hooghe / Gary Marks: Unraveling the Central State, But How? Types of Multi-Level Governance. Heft 87 der Reihe Politikwis-senschaft des Instituts für Höhere Studien (IHS), Wien 2003.

Literaturtipp

• Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, Kermit Blank: European Integration from the 1980s: State-Centric vs. Multi-Level Governance, in: Journal of Common Market Studies 34 (1996), pp 341 -378.

Literaturtipp

• Hartmut Behr: Entterritoriale Politik. Von den internationalen Beziehungen zur Netzwerk-analyse, Wiesbaden 2004.

• Achim Brunnengräber/Heike Wolk (Hrsg.): Multi-Level Governance. Klima-, Umwelt- und Sozialpolitik in einer interdependenten Welt, Baden-Baden 2007

• Arthur Benz (Hrsg.): Governance – Regieren in komplexen Regelsystemen. Eine Ein-führung. Wiesbaden 2004

Literaturtipp

• Gunnar Folke Schuppert (Hrsg.): Governance-Forschung. Vergewisserung über Stand und Entwicklungslinien. Baden-Baden 2005

• Arthur Benz u.a. (Hrsg.): Handbuch Governance. Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Anwendungsfelder. Wiesbaden 2007

What is the European Union (I a) ?

More than a traditional international organization a functional administration union an international regime* a federation of states

Less than a federal state a unitary state

An integrated (or interlocking) system of states („Staatenverbund“)(German Constitutional Court on the constitutional legality of the

Maastricht Agreement)

* international regime: a set of rules, norms, principles, and procedures that focus expectations regarding international behaviour [an “informal” international organisation that is based more on usage, case law, and individual resolutions than on a complex written treaty ratified by all participants]

What is the European Union (I b) ?The EU is a multi-level system of governance: a confederation located between inter-state and

intra-state patterns of rule. (Armstrong/Bulmer 1998)

An increasingly intensified combination/linkage of

regionalnationaltransnationalsupranationalInternational

levels of decision-making and policy execution including a large variety of actors, resources and functions in a diversity of policy areas

multi-level games

Structural characteristics:

Procedural characteristics:

Standard decision-making procedure is the negotiation process by which national political and societal actors strive for consensually agreed compromise solutions and package deals

Phenomenological characteristics:

Governance refers to a process of exercising power, i.e. the art, manner, style, or method of governing [ NOT to the Government as a formal institution ], the novelty of which lies in the inclusion of civil society actors on all decision-making levels (local, regional, national, international)

What is the European Union (II) ?

More than a regime, less than a federation ... – but why

We name four characteristics:

1. The Commission as guardian of the Treaties and motor of the integration process which can – unlike secretariats in a regime structure – exercise a right of control over EU Member States and can take them to court if they do not fulfill their treaty obligations

2. The existence of a supranational legal order which – as is customary in international law – not only addresses itself to the Member States, but equally to individual EU citizens who can claim rights directly from the norms of this supranational order. Equally, in all Treaties inter-pretation matters as well as in respect to secondary EU legislation, the European Court of Justice overrides the court system of the Member States; on the other hand, the execution of ECJ decisions is left to the national legal systems

3. The EU has its own budget and its own sources of income, does not depend, in other words, solely on the contributions of the Member States

4. Within the EU decision making framework, decisions can be made by (qualified) majority, whereas in classic international law decisions regulating the relations of states have to be made unanimously

Finally, the EU is not only a legal body set up by international treaty – it is also a body which can formulate internationally valid norms and rules itself (constituted by primary Community law, it produces secondary Community law as its main occupation) – its main political function is regulatory, not so much distributive or redistributive.

What is the European Union (III) ?

More than a regime, but less than a state...- but why

We name four characteristics:

1. the lack of territorial sovereignty, which still resides in the member states

2. the lack of a monopoly of armed power, which is still exercised by the member states

3. the lack of a European demos: despite the Union citizenship introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam (Art. 17 – 22 ECT), national citizenship still comes first (Art.17); Union citizenship is only supplementary

4. the lack of major redistributive economic power (with only 1. 27% of the European GDP spent by Brussels, redistribution in favour of public functions does not make much of an impression on national economies)

In the classic model of the state, the exercise of public authority in different functional domains is congruent with a specific territory - or: when one arrives at the state’s borders, the legitimate exercise of coercion in all its functional domains ends. In other words: the foundation of stateness is based on the indispensable coincidence of territorial and functional authority.

In the development of the EU, the functional and territorial domains of authority have become less rather than more congruent over time. What seems to be asserting itself is a plurality of polities at different levels ofaggregation – supra-national, national, subnational – that overlap in a multitude of policy areas or functional domains. The EU authorities have few exclusive competences and hardly exercise hierarchical control over member states (with the notable exception of competition policy); rather, in the execution of their legal instruments they depend on the member states to an inordinate extent.

It is these multiple levels of political aggregation – or more precisely: the actors located on them/representing them – which continuously negotiate with each other in order to perform common tasks and resolve common problems across an expanding range of issues. Without a monopoly of coercion, without a center for the definitive resolution of conflicts, without an agent for the authoritative allocation of public goods, there are only a number of policy-making processes (admittedly solidifying over time into more permanent structures). The participants in these processes are not just a fixed number of states, but an enormous variety of sub-nationalunits and networks, transnational firms, supra-national associations and the like.

What is the European Union (IV) ?

The core of the emerging European polity’s novelty lies in the

growing dissociation between territorial constituencies and functional competences

multi-level governance approaches to European Union politics

efforts to catch the real existingcomplexity

of European integration and its policy processes

decision-making approachesto European Union politics

efforts to catch the process-ness or procedural characteristics of European integration and its policy processes

multi-level structure

resulting actual policies

actors’ input:aims, interests, resources

policy-making processes

What is governance?• The term "governance" is a very versatile one. It is

used in connection with several contemporary social sciences, especially economics and political science.

• It originates from the need of economics (as regards corporate governance) and political science (as regards State governance) for an all-embracing concept capable of conveying diverse meanings not covered by the traditional term "government".

• Referring to the exercise of power overall, the term "governance", in both corporate and State contexts, embraces action by executive bodies, assemblies (e.g. national parliaments) and judicial bodies (e.g. national courts and tribunals).

• The term "governance" corresponds to the so-called post-modern form of economic and political organisations.

What is Governance II

• According to the political scientist Roderick Rhodes, the concept of governance is currently used in contemporary social sciences with at least six different meanings: the minimal State, corporate governance, new public management, good governance, social-cybernetic systems and self-organised networks 1.

• 1) R. Rhodes, “The new governance: governing without government” (1996), in Political Studies, Vol. 44, page 652.

Literaturtipp• Arthur Benz (Hrsg.): Governance – Regieren

in komplexen Regelsystemen. Eine Ein-führung. Wiesbaden 2004.

• Gunnar Folke Schuppert (Hrsg.): Gover-nance-Forschung. Vergewisserung über Stand und Entwicklungslinien. Baden-Baden 2005.

• Arthur Benz/Susanne Lütz/Uwe Schimank/ Georg Simonis (Hrsg.): Handbuch Gover-nance. Theoretische Grundlagen und empi-rische Anwendungsfelder. Wiesbaden 2007.

Multi-Level GovernanceFlexibly organised common problem solving among different communities from

the local via the regional and state to the international level (and vice versa)

In Domestic Politics:Concept gains importance in contexts in which political institutions and their decision-makers lose part of their autonomy to act; political direction and problem solving has to relyon cooperation of political AND societal actors in networks and negotiation systems (Round Tables etc.)

In International Relations:Concept covers the mechanisms, agreements, and patterns neces-sary to insure, in an anarchical international system* transnational cooperation* balances (of power/influence)* stabilitywithout formalised and insti-tutionalised organisations and treaty systems governance without government

MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE: MAIN ACTORS AND LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

GOVERNMENT AGOVERNMENT B

GOVERNMENT C

International regimes

Supranational and intergovernmental

actorsTARGET STATE

Transnational groups

Administration Legislative branch Judiciary system

Central state

Administration Legislative branch Judiciary system

Regional/substate unit

Individual cognition; Belief system;

Personal and national identity

Domestic groups & issue-specific groups

(commercial, religious, and environmental)

International level

State level

Regional level

Individual level

Literaturtipp• Klaus Dieter Wolf: Die Neue Staatsräson –

Zwischenstaatliche Kooperation als Demo-kratieproblem in der Weltgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2000.

• Jürgen Neyer: Postnationale politische Herrschaft. Vergesellschaftung und Verrechtlichung jenseits des Staates, Baden-Baden 2004.

• Beate Kohler-Koch/Thomas Conzel-mann/Michèle Knodt (Hrsg.): Europäische Integration – Europäisches Regieren. Lehrbuch. Wiesbaden 2004.

European Governance

• The European Commission established its own concept of governance in the White Paper on European Governance, in which the term "European governance" refers to the rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised at European level, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence. These five "principles of good governance" reinforce those of subsidiarity and proportionality.

• The White Paper is about the way in which the Union uses the powers given to it by its citizens.

• The debate on European governance, launched by the Commission in its White Paper of July 2001, concerns all the rules, procedures and practices affecting how powers are exercised within the European Union. The aim is to adopt new forms of governance that bring the Union closer to European citizens, make it more effective, reinforce democracy in Europe and consolidate the legitimacy of the institutions. The Union must reform itself in order to fill the democratic deficit of its institutions. This governance should lie in the framing and implementation of better and more consistent policies associating civil society organisations and the European institutions. It also entails improving the quality of European legislation, making it clearer and more effective. Moreover, the European Union must contribute to the debate on world governance and play an important role in improving the operation of international institutions.

• Democratic deficit • Proportionality • Simplification of legislation • Subsidiarity • Transparency (access to documents) • Transparency of Council proceedings

Proportionality Principle• Like the principle of subsidiarity, the principle of

proportionality regulates the exercise of powers by the European Union, seeking to set within specified bounds the action taken by the institutions of the Union. Under this rule, the institutions' involvement must be limited to what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaties. In other words, the extent of the action must be in keeping with the aim pursued.

• This means that when various forms of intervention are available to the Union, it must, where the effect is the same, opt for the approach which leaves the greatest freedom to the Member States and individuals.

• The principle of proportionality is clearly laid down in primary law under Article 5, third paragraph, of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC). A Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, annexed to the TEC by the Treaty of Amsterdam, sets out the criteria for applying both these principles.

Subsidiarity Principle• The principle of subsidiarity is defined in Article 5 of

the Treaty establishing the European Community. It is intended to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made as to whether action at Community level is justified in the light of the possibilities available at national, regional or local level. Specifically, it is the principle whereby the Union does not take action (except in the areas which fall within its exclusive competence) unless it is more effective than action taken at national, regional or local level. It is closely bound up with the principles of proportionality and necessity, which require that any action by the Union should not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaty.

Literaturtipp

• EUROGOV No. N-05-02 /  November 17, 2005Oliver Treib, Holger Bähr and Gerda Falkner:Modes of Governance: A Note Towards Conceptual Clarification

EUROGOV No. C-05-01  /  March 14, 2005Beate Kohler-Koch: European governance and system integration

Literaturtip

•  http://www.connex-network.org/eurogov• e-mail: eurogov@ihs.ac.at  

• http://www.eiop.or.at/eiop/index.php/eiop

Goodbye for tonight ... and enjoy your dinner