Ideas on Europe Blog

The summer of 2016, between the French Euro and the Brazilian Olympics has demonstrated once more to what extent sport has become an important showcase for contemporary nation-states. Not only for the hosts, but also for the participants (ask the Portuguese or the Icelanders, the British or the Jamaicans). The historians of nationalism have well shown that already at the end of the 19th century, governments of all kinds quickly understood the benefits in terms of prestige and recognition that they could reap from this popular activity which gave centre stage to individuals or teams supposed to represent the national body.

The benefit was (and is) twofold, as sport has always served two major purposes: highlight the competitiveness and performance of the nation, as well as consolidate, with the help of sport’s emotional power, its collective identity.

This political use of sport has hardly changed over time. The vocabulary, however, has. The intangible resources of cultural influence or internal cohesion that may be accumulated thanks to the different levers of ‘sport diplomacy’ are now often referred to by the term ‘soft power’, which has made its way from political science to mainstream media.

The high-level group at work in the Berlaymont.

If virtually every more or less developed nation-state has a ‘sport diplomacy’, should the European Union have one, too? The question was put on the table by the Lisbon Treaty which gives the European Union competence in sporting matters. It is thus not surprising that over the last academic year Commissioner Tibor Navracsics set up a high-level expert group to discuss the matter in a series of meetings between October 2015 and June 2016 and submit a report with their conclusions and recommendations.

I am relieved to testify that the objective of a European sport diplomacy, if ever there will be one, will NOT be to challenge nation-states on their favourite playing field: sentiments, flags and sporting performance.

It is true that in the mid-80’s the ‘Ad-hoc Committee on a People’s Europe’ (whose final document is also known as the ‘Adonnino report’) suggested to the European Community to seize sport’s potential to move people and bring them together. Among other things, it proposed the ‘organisation of European community events’ for certain sports, the ‘creation of Community teams’, or the invitation to ‘sporting teams to wear the Community emblem in addition to their national colour’.

Today, such propositions sound somewhat naïve at best, outright counter-productive at worst.

They were based on a conceptual mistake. As we all never tire of telling our students, the European Union is a ‘sui generis’ entity: it is not, and has no ambition to become a large nation-state, and it has no interest whatsoever to take inspiration from the mechanisms of classical ‘nation-building’.

It is of course legitimate for any enthusiastic promoter of European integration to have the desire to see Europe ‘loved’ by its citizens, and it is true that without citizens’ support for a common project there will be no sustainable solidarity among them.

But the EU would be well-advised to avoid falling into the ‘identity trap’ and resist the ever-present temptation to instrumentalise sport in order to ‘build a European identity’ or ‘provoke feelings of belonging to Europe’. Its identity will derive from the legitimacy that citizens are willing to grant it, and this legitimacy will be based on a strong credibility with regard to the values it wants to embody.

A smart European sports policy would not copy or imitate what is already done by the nation-states, but provide a tangible added value to international sport. The Union definitely has the potential for it, precisely because it is not a nation-state pursuing interests of national prestige. On the contrary: it can become a respected actor, patiently defending high ethical standards and the fundamental, universal values of sport.

The report of the high-level group on sport diplomacy was handed over to the Commissioner this summer. It contains quite a few recommendations on how the EU could intelligently integrate sport in its external relations. It can be downloaded under the following address:  http://www.essca.fr/EU-Asia/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/07/Final-REPORT-HLG-SD.pdf

Albrecht Sonntag,
ESSCA School of Management, Angers

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Ever heard of ‘L’Arlésienne’, a short story written by French novelist Alphonse Daudet in 1869 and included in his famous ‘Letters from my Windmill’? The title refers to a lady from the city of Arles, who is central to the plot, but never appears on the stage. No one ever sees her, and yet everyone talks about her. Over the years, the term ‘l’Arlésienne’ has become a household expression for someone or something that everyone seems concerned about and talking about, but which is simply not there.

It seems to me that before Brexit eventually jumps on the stage (in 2019? 2020? later?), it will remain a genuine ‘Arlésienne’ for quite a while!

In the meantime, keen Brexiters will have gone through a learning process, realizing that the EU had more advantages than disadvantages for Britain, and that after all, being part of the EU as the least committed member state, negotiating all sorts of exemptions, blocking many decisions it disliked, offered both a comfortable position and a convenient shelter. At that stage it will however be too late to revert to these good old days of bottom line commitment.

Some form of ‘soft Brexit’ is likely to materialize in a few years’ time to keep loud-barking Brexiters quiet and the Remain camp not too disenchanted. But in the process, a lot of feathers, even teeth, will have been lost completely unnecessarily.

Jean-Marc Trouille is Jean Monnet Chair
in European Economic Integration
at Bradford University School of Management, UK.

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In the last 7 years, the EU has gone through one of its most challenging periods. Measures introduced during the Eurozone crisis (e.g. financial assistance programs), to counter the immigration crisis, etc., have been widely considered as challenging to the democratic principles and foundations of the EU.

This blog focuses on analyzing and investigating all issues relevant to the democratic principles of the EU from a variety of perspectives and academic disciplines.

Contributions, to a maximum of 1.000 words, are invited on any issue relevant to the EU and democratic principles or processes, from any discipline within the social sciences or law.

Contributions can be either in Greek or English.

All proposals or full blog submissions should be emailed for review at euanddemocracy@gmail.com.

We look forward to your ideas and contributions!

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Despite the importance of the European Parliament in EU law making, MEPs have typically been marginalised in UK politics, writes Margherita de Candia. She argues this attitude on the part of national politicians may have contributed to the UK’s decision to leave the EU, and that the remaining Member States should recognise the importance of the Parliament in order to foster greater democracy legitimacy for the EU.

UK’s EU Referendum Result Discussion, European Parliament, CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

According to the EU treaties, MEPs are elected to represent the whole EU citizenry, not just their national constituencies. If we accept this position, then UK MEPs should keep their seats in the European Parliament (EP) until the expiration of its current term, in 2019. We can expect the majority of them to adopt a lower profile, abstaining on matters outside the UK’s new remit.

In this regard, UKIP leader Nigel Farage has already affirmed that he won’t pack his bags until they ‘win the peace’. What is keeping him and the rest of UKIP in the EP hemicycle is certainly not European nostalgia, but the desire to ensure a good new relationship between the UK and the rest of the EU.

Tears will probably accompany the departure of Europhile MEPs from the Parliament. Yet, seeing the glass half full and with a bit of cynicism, leaving the EP may finally bring an end to British MEPs’ predominant sense of frustration. Conservative and Labour MEPs I met several months ago told me that they have long been frustrated about the way that party colleagues and the media back home treat them.

In truth, Westminster has always considered MEPs to be second-order politicians – people ended up in the European Parliament if they didn’t make it in national politics. The European Parliament has always been deemed little more than a weak democratic decoration without real powers, despite its progressive empowerment.

Remarks by one Labour MEP were particularly enlightening in this regard:

I feel totally unappreciated. If there is anything to do with the European Union in terms of legislation, do they have to consult the MEP on that committee? No, you always go to the minister, the shadow minister, the chairman of the European Select Committee or whatever. UK national parties are not interested in what goes on in the EP. MPs don’t overall regard other institutions as being as legitimate and as democratic as they are. Westminster is the only thing that really matters.

In a similar vein, one Conservative MEP stated that:

Our MPs think that MEPs, when they say they they’ve got powers, are just trying to pick themselves up and look important, and try to be more important than they are. But the fact is that MEPs do have a big role, and the UK doesn’t punch its weight properly because we don’t have as effective links with the national party as MEPs in other countries have. So you’ve got more powerful, but there is no evidence that they want to know more about us or do more with us. The truth is that there is often more resentment and hostility.

Researching these questions may seem superfluous after the Brexit vote. Why should we care about the position of Britain’s MEPs if, after all, they are likely due to leave soon? One reason is that this sort of ‘Westminster attitude’ to MEPs is not confined to the UK. MEPs in other Member States face similar difficulties. The question then becomes: What impact does this attitude have?

First, the way Westminster that has dealt with the EP does not seem to have been effective. After all, pretending that the European Parliament is just a talking shop and that MEPs are second-order politicians will not bring powers back to national parliaments. Politicians should approach situations as they are, rather than as they wish them to be.

In other words, national parliaments and politicians should finally accept that the EP and MEPs do have powers, and then try to make the most of it. Second, this attitude may be counterproductive – as demonstrated by the fact that the UK has been underrepresented in terms of EU senior staffing.

Third, and probably most relevant, is the negative impact that this approach can have on the legitimacy of the European polity. By neglecting the role and powers of the only directly-elected EU institution, national politicians certainly do not help the EU gain legitimacy vis-à-vis citizens. If national party leaders and MPs don’t pay attention to the EP and MEPs, why should citizens?

Although the UK has decided to leave the EU, we can still learn from the flaws in its relationship with the EU as a member. In this regard, it is not fanciful to say that this Westminster attitude played its part in the referendum result, by contributing to the development of a biased and uninformed political narrative around the EU.

In EU decision-making, disregarding the role of the EP has not helped it gain legitimacy vis-à-vis citizens. Despite increases in its powers, the European Parliament continues to be considered a secondary institution.

This reinforces that power is nothing without acknowledgment. In other words, having a more powerful European Parliament does not help foster EU representative democracy if the institution is not perceived as such. Hopefully, the rest of the EU will learn lessons from what happened on 23 June.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Student Forum or UACES.

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Margherita de Candia
King’s College London

Margherita de Candia is PhD Candidate in European and International Studies at King’s College London. Her research focuses on national political parties and the European Parliament.

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A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 42 per cent of Europeans were keen for some ‘powers’ to be returned to the national level, with only 19 per cent favouring further centralisation at EU level. The idea of ‘less Europe’ is not new: calls for it date back to the great subsidiarity debate of the 1990s that followed the Danish ‘No’ vote on the Maastricht Treaty. But have these repeated demands led to anything? Does the European Union have a reverse gear, or is ‘more Europe’ always the default choice?

Rollback, or policy dismantling, is a distinctive direction of policy change. It is the opposite of policy expansion. As policy is made at different levels in the EU, in theory so can policy dismantling happen both at the EU and national (even regional) levels.

In the EU context, national policy dismantling can happen when disparate national policies are removed and replaced by a common EU rule (‘positive integration’). Conversely, EU policies can be dismantled if certain policies are ‘returned’ back to the Member States. Crucially, despite repeated calls for returning certain policies, no such ‘repatriation’ of EU policies or competences has happened.

This does not mean that EU policies are necessarily eternal, or that further policy expansion is a given. Instead, it means that dismantling may still be happening, but from within the EU policy-making system. Indeed, EU policies can in principle also be dismantled at EU level, through legislative reform, if a new directive removes or waters down existing provisions, reduces the scope of application or the penalties for non-compliance.

In order to investigate whether the EU has a reverse gear, we studied changes to EU environmental rules, a policy area which has featured prominently in calls for cutting EU ‘red tape’ and for greater subsidiarity. In the 1990s, EU water and air directives were targeted, and in the 2000s, the EU’s waste legislation and again air policy were the focus. The 2010s saw calls to weaken biodiversity, chemicals, waste and air legislation.

We identified all pieces of EU environmental legislation targeted for dismantling over a 22 year period (1992-2014), which had been subsequently revised through the EU legislative system. The dataset comprises 19 directives and regulations, revised between one and five times, which yielded 75 legislative texts. These policies cover a wide range of environmental issues from bathing water and eco-labels, to air quality and electronic waste.

We developed a new coding scheme and policy typology, and coded changes to directives and regulations across six different dimensions: changes to policy density (eg the number of instruments within a directive, or directives within a policy area), scope (eg how many businesses are affected by the rules) and settings (eg how ambitious it is) at both the level of the entire piece of legislation and that of its individual instruments, comparing different generations over tim

We found that some EU policies have been dismantled in part. But dismantling is not a frequent direction of policy change. In our 19 directives, 16 experienced some kind of policy dismantling. Most policy dismantling appeared to take place at the level of instruments, not of the whole piece of legislation – small changes to policy instruments, not cuts across the board. Within policy instruments, dismantling was most frequent when considering density (removal of existing instruments), not scope or settings (weakening of existing instruments).

These results are striking, as our dataset is composed of directives and regulations openly targeted for dismantling. Yet even for these, dismantling was the least frequent direction of policy change (Figure 1). Moreover, there was more policy expansion than policy dismantling.

Figure 1. Directions of policy change across policy instruments’ density, scope and settings (own data)

These results confirm that the EU has a reverse gear. The EU is not only a driver of policy dismantling in its Member States. It has become a new locus of dismantling in its own right. These results, along with growing calls for austerity and cutting red tape at EU level, underline the need for further research.

First, how significant is policy dismantling? This question raises major methodological considerations regarding how dismantling is measured, in particular whether expansion in one area can offset dismantling in another. Second, is it just a story of EU environmental policy, or does it apply to other policies as well? Recent work on the reduced rate of policy proposals has shown that the European Commission has slowed down policy expansion across a number of policy areas, but is dismantling also widespread?

Third, what of the politics of dismantling? Why (and how) is dismantling taking place at EU level? The mix of expansion and dismantling found at EU level echoes existing research on welfare state retrenchment in consensual systems and ‘expansionary dismantling’. Examples of policy dismantling occurring through the EU legislative process appear to confirm that supranational institutions, namely the European Commission and the European Parliament, are not ‘hard-wired to seek ever closer union’ through policy expansion, or even in favour of maintaining the status quo.

More research is needed to understand these respective roles and rationales in pursuing policy dismantling. Addressing these and other questions, such as the role of non-state actors or the strategies used to build dismantling coalitions in the EU, constitutes a rich and promising research agenda on EU level dismantling.

This blog post draws from the authors’ recent open-access publication in the Journal of European Public Policy special issue ‘Best Papers from the European Union Studies Association 2015 Biennial Conference’: Does the European Union have a reverse gear? Policy dismantling in a hyperconsensual polity. It was originally published on European Futures, the academic blog on Europe and European affairs from the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Europa Institute. 

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To pit one narrative against another, that is the way of human life. Imagine all the people, living life as one – but people do not live lives as one. They live lives deeply embedded in spaces – space and orientation, Ordnung und Ortung, or perhaps rather a dis-orientating orientation through ordered space.

Institutionalised politics is the most widely known form of how human beings deal with power and the distribution of power. The distribution of power has vast effects on how we see and deal with reality. The proliferation of nation states and nation state borders in the 20th century was a shaky ride, but the solidification of borders as national and the subsequent post War ordering and orienting of politics based on the assumption of the reality of these borders gave rise to a new geopolitical reality. The response in Europe was premised on the assumption  that, to prevent the 20th century atrocities  in the future, the possibility for warfare should be minimised.

Integration and cooperation were seen as the best bet. Given recent history in western Europe, they were quite probably right. Yet the European Union, despite populist talk of faceless bureaucrats and a ‘loss of control’, is itself premised on the reality of nation states. The legal constructions that allow for free travel of people, goods, services and capital throughout many EU countries is created in response to having to take borders not as a spatial reality, but at least as one that bears a cultural-political expression that cannot be denied.

In what follows, I discuss the nature of borders, the symbolic aspect of bordering through physical as well as mental representations, their relation and bearing on spatial constructions of identity and lay out some of the consequences of exporting political ideologies in the recent past. In the concluding paragraphs I briefly outline the major implications.

 

Bordering is filtering

The real nature of a border is a farce. Even the mightiest, and perhaps oldest, symbols of bordering – the construction of walls -  find most of their power in a symbolic, fictive display of stability. Such impressive symbolic powers have stifled through from popular imagination into political discourse (if it were ever absent there). Even in historical themes central to Western thought and identity construction – the onset of philosophy, the age of the Greek  – walls come to set the stage. The stage – order and orientation: The walls of Troy, but also how it was passed and hence surpassed. In the digital world walls have equally come to occupy our imagination. The Great Wall of China became the Great Firewall, and like of old, filtering is its purpose. And although the symbolic power and place of walls in our thinking is perhaps stronger than ever, it is hardly a coincidence that the symbolic power of the Trojan Horse has accompanied the concept of the wall throughout history.

Borders always have to be created and maintained in order to be real. Not merely physically. Physically, the imagination only needs to be stirred briefly to think of borders as real. From feeble fence work to billion dollar concrete walls equipped with cameras, barbed wire and mines that attempt to settle any doubt as to its real nature. I  remember well the holidays to Germany as a kid and how upon approaching the border, the attention of my parents, sister and me would immediately be drawn to our surroundings. How that space was ordered would simply draw your attention. And you would orientate yourself, wouldn’t you? Signs telling the remaining distance to Germany; the different colours, brands and striping of police cars; the concrete booths with thick, protective glass and the boom barriers. It just so happened that with the booths unoccupied and the border police standing with carefully maintained stern, but rather forlorn expressions, it was always quite an odd impression. More than anything, it made me feel that borders – that which separates where I live from where others live – were becoming a thing of the past.

 

Bordering an identity

National language and identity are compellingly persuasive as complementary political arguments in the construction of a territorial history that belongs to a nation state. Such history is normative. It is premised on the belief in national borders as stable, whereas they never have been. The ordering and orientation of borders has only ever changed. Our thinking on these matters – often the result of an emotional, much more than a rational response – has been shaped by many forces. One of these is a striking resemblance to religion: Were you to be born in France, your nationality would be French. If you are born in a predominantly Christian region, you would most likely become Christian too. This is not to say that it cannot be any other way, only that  identity is a spatial concern. Spatial concerns enter our thinking from a young age. At primary school, the first maps of this world – with stable lines and given names – start to shape your perspective. It is nothing short of learning a rendered version of geography based on ideological cartography that is existentially tied to a state. This coupling of language, identity and territory determines the scope of the discourse-framework of political sovereignty, but sadly also often that of political participation.

It is almost amusing to think how far this can go. I am not a nationalist. I’d almost be offended if you thought I were. Yet this does not mean that nationalism has no effect upon me. For me, even as a football fan , this year’s European Cup was always going to be boring with the absence of the Netherlands. Now I’m not talking about the football being dreadful – it was, we’ve all seen it – but about the experience of enjoyment,  emotional bondage and passion. There was no narrative I have grown up to relate to, not in an environment where nothing other than national identity is decisive. So suddenly nationality becomes a factor in terms of whom I do or do not support. Persuasion comes at the end of reasoning, when all else ceases to be an argument, not because the argument to support the best playing team has no value in terms of sports-value or entertainment-value, but simply because it is not persuasive. I have already been persuaded to support Holland. A long time ago.

This is odd, to say the least. And with odd I do not mean explanatory evasive, but odd because of my natural habitat. Despite the geographical closeness to Germany of the region where I was born, the cartographic representation of the Netherland determined the orientation. Dutch language made up the world – literally. And it did so effectively, because to this day, I often refer to the Netherlands as Holland – effectively the centre of its economic activities, now and historically – even though it is not. To this day, I support the Dutch football team. To this day, I remember the song about Piet Hein, celebrating the sinking of the Spanish Silver Fleet. Narratives of nationality are pitted against one another. If there is no ‘them’, there is no ‘us’. This is not the same as saying that narratives always exclude other narratives, but that there is always a struggle of recognition. The cartographic map must first be drawn, before there is territory to be recognised in the first place. Between Spain and France this works quite well, but between Spain and Catalonia things are not quite so simple. The construction of political reality has followed this principle of recognition – of sovereign recognition of sovereignty, the founding myth of the state. Think only of the League of Nations, the European Union or any other collection of states.

What’s in a map?

What modern maps primarily show are economic zones. These economic zones are within states, but it is an illusion to think that all that dwells within these zones is subject(ed) to sovereign law. The reality of economic life is that it has to act in response to the ordering of space as national, but this also means it can profitably adapt to any shortcomings of such an ideology. Here one could think of migrating flows of money through tax havens – effectively using one recognised national order to avoid the financial consequences of another – but also of infamous ghost companies, where both the economic  and legal complexity in and among states have granted creative accounting a realm of its own.

The colonial heritage is that a commonplace approach towards the global market is fashioned in neo-liberal outfits, developed, produced and reproduced in the US and EC/EEC. Through international institutions – the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, etc – the global economy has been ordered and oriented around vested interests, and as a result political norms that shape our judgement of what constitutes a correct political response are heavily biased. This influence reaches far and goes deep. In the 1980’s, for instance, the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies demanded structural cuts from governments without exempting health care and education. If governments would not agree, no loans would be provided. In that same decade, the World Bank, WHO and UNICEF suddenly came to envision healthcare with similar ideological charge. Only a couple of years after the famous Alma Ata healthcare conference on universal primary healthcare, selective primary health care became a trending topic: Investing only where significant gains could be expected, while expressing metrically and in the jargon of finances where results would make political sense.

The world is dealing with this legacy. The cartographic drawings determined the political order and orientation in Africa and the ‘Middle-East’ were drawn and solidified in our thinking in the aftermath of colonialism. Many states’ border lines have created divisions where there were none before, through geopolitical decisions based on the political interests of those who were drawing the lines on the map. Only narrow (and often economic) depictions of what modern states are – and modern nominally, not as the equivalent of the developed-developing dichotomy – depend on the popular belief in national borders. This is a phenomenon that can easily be observed. The influx of migrants into Europe has upset political status quo in a few years’ time.

Control issues: in denial

What has happened since? States have vehemently tried to reshape landscapes. They have created borderscapes, frontiers and god knows what else, but they have always done this somewhere. Somewhere is essential. No politics without a place. Migrant detainee camps have become political tools in gathering round everyone that has not passed European border-filtering practices. To too many a passport means that you shall not pass, or – if you do – at least a political attempt will have been made to make it difficult. Attempts at isolating groups happen, but in Western European countries, in a time with more information and research available to critically assess the development of political discourse, it is striking to see how states’ political spheres mimic the type of order and orientation that is based on a fictional, narrow and normative history of demarcated and supposedly sovereignly controlled territory.

It was only ever to be expected that the horrors that have taken place in Europe in the 20th century would fade from memory. The reality of war has become a reality of other spaces. Terrorism has already questioned the naïve but popular perception of a walled world where whole populations can be isolated at will, if only we tried. No politics without space. We have built and most likely will continue to build walls, create borderscapes and filter at hubs near popular routes in accordance with a set of norms, just to prove the reality of an internally ordered space. To prove the difference between the there and here, or perhaps to create it.  So in order to solve European political concern, politics is simply relocated to other places. Turkey, Libya or Lebanon – if the problem is not on our property, the problem must be someone else’s, so the question of responsibility becomes one of international relations, where a different order allows for a different orientation.  So long as peace and serenity at ‘home’ continue, we may yet succeed in keeping the fiction of a bordered world alive, but what inflated price tag will come with it?

 

——

Should you be interested in topics that relate to states and borders, be sure to read Wendy Brown’s ‘States of Injury’. To explore border enforcement from a conceptual point of view, Brown’s book ‘Waning Sovereignty, Walled Democracies’ is an excellent, accessible introduction. Also, have a look at some of the articles published by the Guardian on walls. Simply googling ‘walls the guardian’ will get you there.  

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At a first cut, the 23 June referendum result has been the clearest possible vindication of the many years of concerted action by British Eurosceptics: on a high turnout, a majority of people voted to leave the EU, even if many of them wouldn’t have particularly described themselves as Eurosceptics. The result has opened up a new path, out of the Union and into some new situation. Even if we don’t know what that situation might be, the mere knowledge of its existence will prove to be an attractive lure for others.

And yet, in this moment of triumph there is a serious question for the British Eurosceptic movement: what is it for?

For the quarter century since the Maastricht treaty, which crystallised critical British attitudes into a constellation of groups, there has been the critique – something’s wrong with the EU – and a solution – reform or exit that organisation. Now that the country is indeed exiting, both the casual observer and the academic scholar might ask: what happens next. Does the movement continue, change or die?

Some context

Before we can answer this question, it’s helpful to set out some context, of how the UK arrived at this place and where this place is.

In many ways the UK has been the wellspring of Euroscepticism. This was the country that invented the very word, back in the 1980s, and saw the creation of the very first modern Eurosceptic groups at the end of that decade, building off Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech. The Maastricht treaty provided further mobilisation opportunities, with a raft of groups from across the political spectrum being formed and creating the basis for a much more critical political space in the UK for discussing European integration.

Aided and abetted by a print press willing to give a platform to these groups and a succession of governments not prepared to go beyond reactive problem/crisis management with regard to the EU, Eurosceptics were able to set public agendas to a very considerable extent, even if their power to make decisions remained very limited.

This last point is an important one, especially given the claims made by the likes of Nigel Farage after the referendum. For all the media attention that more focused, single-issue Eurosceptics received, it was those political actors for whom Euroscepticism was only one part of their make-up who actually shaped the political trajectory vis-à-vis the EU. The path to the referendum is a case in point.

The pressure from the 2000s on for popular referendums to underpin treaty reforms came from a broad spectrum, from those keen to build a stronger EU through to those wishing to slow or stop it. In the UK, the election of David Cameron as leader of the Conservative party in 2005 and his backtracking on a referendum on Lisbon once it made into force in 2009 provided a clear opportunity for his backbenches to pressure him towards every more critical positions on the EU.

That pressure came from a number of sources. The rise of UKIP from the late 2000s onwards had made some in the Tory party nervous that their voter base was at risk. But just as important were factors more internal to the Conservatives: the growing number of new MPs for whom Euroscepticism was a visceral part of their political being, drawing on a very-oversimplified image of Margaret Thatcher as an unbending critic of European integration.

All of this points to a number of key conclusions that we need to keep in mind as we consider the future possibilities.

Firstly, Euroscepticism is clearly shaped by the context within which it operates. It is not the main driver of political or social change, but rather a marker of other forces, notably around dissatisfaction and disengagement, nationalism and identity politics, economic and social marginalisation.

Secondly, there is no ‘Euroscepticism’, only Euroscepticisms. There is no positive ideological core to this phenomenon, only the negative one of disliking some aspect of European integration. Instead, we find conservatives and socialists, greens and liberals, racists and libertarians all using their ideological bases to justify their attacks on the EU. Those who consider the EU to be the whole problem and the sole problem can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Thirdly, and very much as a function of the first two points, Euroscepticism is contingent. As I have argued before, this does not mean that it is ephemeral, but rather that while it provides a convenient proxy for other discontents, it has achieved sufficient critical mass to transcend those specific discontents. Maybe the most useful analogy is of a relay team, passing the baton from one to the next: however, this is a relay with no course or specific finish line.

Three paths for British Eurosceptics

With this in mind, we might discern three main paths that the current Eurosceptic movement might move down. This is based on both the constellation of actors involved and the changing opportunity structures that present themselves. In particular, it recognises that with the securing of a Brexit majority in the referendum, we have now moved into a fundamental different situation.

This matters because it would appear to remove the key objective of the movement and thus the source of much of the mobilisation that has occurred. That mobilisation has three main elements, roughly equivalent to the point at which individuals became mobilised. 

The ephemeral newcomers

The most recent supporters – those who only came to matters as a result of the referendum campaign – are arguably the least engaged with the issue of European integration. While they might have been active in the Leave campaign, for many this was primarily an opportunistic move to register discontent, either with the EU or with something else, such as the government.

If we take a working assumption that 37% of the UK’s adult population (the 52% majority on the 71.8% turnout) is not completely dissatisfied with the political system – and that would seem to be supported by the outcome of the 2015 general election – then we would expect these recent Eurosceptics to disappear back into the general population. As I noted in a previous piece, there are serious questions – both political and academic – about whether the Leave campaign could really be described as Eurosceptic, but even if we take a generous view, we would still anticipate that the passing of the moment will see some activists being lost to the movement. The obvious category of people here would be those who now regret their choice in June. 

The ideological masses

The second – and probably largest – group of Eurosceptics are those of more long standing, individuals who have been interested in the issue for some time and who might well have joined a pressure group or political party prior to 2015. For them, the European issue is more central to their political make-up, but probably still only part of their political identity.

As we know from various studies, even the most obvious destination for these people, UKIP, is a very broad church, in ideological terms. The party has no core ideology, only a shared negative of disliking the EU and, more latterly, of uncontrolled immigration. This breadth is seen in the various polls that have shown a small minority of UKIP supporters voting Remain, to take a more egregious example.

That breadth is seen across the Eurosceptic movement; indeed, it partly explains why there have been so many groups formed over the past 25 years – there is as much to divide as to unite. Thus, all political parties have their sceptics, as do trade unions, businesses and the rest. The organisational churn that has characterised the movement throughout its history will undoubtedly continue.

However, in the changed context of Brexit, we might expect that the force and effort of this second group will become redirected. This follows a logic of “we’ve won this one, so on to the next fight, to achieve our goals”. Here you can take your pick about where the next fight might be, but we can offer some obvious locations.

English nationalism has been highlighted by several as a very strong proxy for Euroscepticism and in the context of a revived Scottish independence movement the notion of enhancing (or even simply protecting) England’s place in the United Kingdom will become a more pressing issue. Add to this the scope for Northern Irish discontent over the reconstitution of the peace accords following Brexit and there is even more potential for Englishness to occupy a more central position in political debate. It touches on many of the same nexus of issues as Euroscepticism: representation, proximity of decision-making, group identity and ‘fairness’.

The immigration issue also still has much life in it, and even as the European dimension moves away from its current central position, there will be substantial pressures to keep the broader question alive. The likely persistence of high levels of immigration, whatever the regime for EU nationals, and the continued lack of central government policy to tackle the resolution of migration-related problems will provide a fertile ground for both more nativist and more moderate expressions of displeasure and concern. UKIP made use of this in their expansion since the mid-2000s, and any new leader of the party might decide that this is their best bet for continued relevance.

Finally, we might imagine that if there is a split in the Labour party between the Corbynistas and what used to be New Labour, then there is potential for a general reshaping of the party political system in the UK. In this scenario, the main cleavage would be between liberal cosmopolitans and more reactionary elements. This would offer new opportunities for members of this section of the Eurosceptic movement to move more fully into the party political system, again influenced by their ideological preferences. 

The true believers

The final group of Eurosceptics to consider are those for whom the EU is their sole focus. This includes the most long-standing individuals and those who have chosen to devote all of their energies to this one cause. Almost by definition, it is the smallest of the three segments we consider here, but it is also the most obdurate and determined.

Some years ago, I wrote about this group as the rock in the sand, the stable base around which others have built their efforts. For them, the EU is either all that they care about, or is so consuming that they must see things through to the very end.

With that in mind, we would expect that this group will be in the vanguard of policing Brexit negotiations, stopping any backsliding in either overt or covert manner by the government. They have been the ones who have pushed hardest in the movement for speedy Article 50 notification, who have defended the result of the referendum most heartily, who have the most detailed plans of how to move through this phase to a new situation and who will still be on this issue when most others have gone. Indeed, they will be the core of any post-Brexit anti-EU group that will be set up – much on the lines of Norway’s Nei til EU – to ensure that the UK does not drift back into the EU’s orbit.

Concluding thoughts

The British Eurosceptic movement is a creature of its age. Its formation and evolution have followed and – to some degree – shaped the changing landscape of British politics. It is this basic characteristic that has informed this quick overview and which will be borne out by whatever actually comes to pass.

These changes again offer an excellent opportunity for us to consider what ‘Euroscepticism’ actually means (if anything) and to consider the subtle and wide-reaching effects that it has on the domestic and European political order. We stand at a crucial point in the development of Euroscepticism, as one country has chosen a path out of the Union and Eurosceptics elsewhere have to make decisions about whether this is a path worth following. Even if British Eurosceptics are unlikely to be the force that they once were, they might still find themselves role-models for many across the continent.

 

This post originally appeared on the EPERN blog.

The post Dissipation, redirection and staying true: What future for Euroscepticism in the UK? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Turkey has, for unfortunate reasons, been covered extensively in the news over the past weeks. There appears to be consensus in Europe that neither political coups, nor subsequent mass repression, are acceptable. Moreover, the crackdown after 15th July is only the last item on a long list of measures taken over the past years which would have made Kemal Atatürk revolt. But the AKP leadership does not seem very impressed by negative media coverage or foreign condemnations, and even seems to be challenging the EU. One of the questions therefore is: how should the EU react, and can relations with Azerbaijan perhaps provide an answer?

 

PLAYING WITH THE NARRATIVES – AN AZERBAIJANI TALE

I believe that Turkey’s reaction to the EU is in several ways comparable to that of Azerbaijan. Let me emphasise that the similarities exist not in the nature of the regimes, but in the (foreign) policy strategies applied by both the Azerbaijani and increasingly also by the Turkish government. These governments are starting to use the same diplomatic tools as the EU to advocate their interests in international relations and are becoming more assertive in 1) defending their own policies; 2) reacting to EU criticism; 3) acting pro-actively and try influence relations with the EU.

First, the Turkish president has complained about foreign, including EU, ‘interference in domestic affairs’, an expression used to politely clarify that they don’t need any help with the ‘cleansing’ operation. Any potential criticism is undermined in advance by pointing out (possibly flawed) comparisons to policies within the EU –  for instance that France has also installed a state of emergency. The Azerbaijani government under Aliyev engages this strategy too, especially when it comes to human rights issues.

Second, the Turkish president has gone a step further by spinning the narrative around, and in turn accusing the West of supporting the coup attempt. Brussels and other European capitals would furthermore be doing so indirectly by condemning the government’s call for demonstrations in Member States. In sum, this turning of the narrative -a much-liked strategy of Aliyev too – thus catches two birds with one stone: denouncing external criticism, and criticising the critics themselves.

President Aliyev of Azerbaijan (L) and President Erdoğan of Turkey (R). Source: mfa.gov.tr

 

PLAYING WITH THE NEW KIDS

Of course this strategy is not unique for Turkey and Azerbaijan: for instance, Russia and Egypt have responded in similar ways to EU criticism before – these reactions should therefore also be seen in a broader context of contestation. Yet what makes these two cases remarkable is that Ankara and Baku have for a long time been considered close allies in the region, who had a favourable attitude towards Europe and the West more broadly.

But both Ankara and Baku now explicitly question this previously uncontested co-operation. Having alternative alliances available significantly increases one’s bargaining power. This is a second main similarity in their foreign policy strategies.

Azerbaijan has had such multi-vectored policy ever since the 1990s, when the then-president Heydar Aliyev installed a foreign policy of ‘balancing’ between the big regional powers, to ensure Azerbaijan’s independence. Being considered the ‘little brother’ of Turkey, such policy made full sense for a relatively small and young state. What is new, however, is the way in which the regime plays out this availability of alternatives in negotiations with the EU. This, again, can be seen in light of the growing assertiveness of the country’s establishment – and is at the same time probably a logical consequence of changing regional power dynamics, with the EU becoming a less appealing partner while other actors in the region, such as Russia or Iran, are rapidly gaining strength and appeal.

Turkey, likewise, has always had strong connections to the region and for several years seemed to profile itself as a bridge between West and East. But in the last few weeks, this foreign policy is presented in a more hostile way, as a turn against the West and towards the East. Whether or not this is a feasible option for Turkey, remains unclear. After all, ties between Turkey and the EU cannot be overlooked that simply. Rather, it seems part of a reactionary discourse, a form of resistance to practices of the past decades whereby the EU would take the lead in setting the agenda on cooperation. By turning away from the friendly discourse towards Europe and through rapprochement with notably Russia, Turkey makes a statement about its own independence, and against dominance of European agenda-setting.

This assertiveness will be played out on different levels. Meetings with president Putin, but also setting an ultimatum about the Migration Deal, are expressions of this policy strategy. Turkey is now showing its growing bargaining power and its increased self-awareness in full. It tries to signal that roles have been changed: The EU can no longer tell Turkey what to do.

The EU and Turkey in happier times, when the Migration Deal was agreed, in March this year. Source: SputnikNews

 

SO (HOW) SHOULD THE EU RESPOND?

Different EU, Member State, and scholarly views on how the EU should act in regards to Turkey, again seem to come down to the values-versus-pragmatism debate – a debate to which there is no answer, and which is highly political in itself. There seem to be several considerations to take into account:

a)       There is a changing power dynamic going on in the region, whereby non-EU states are becoming increasingly powerful, but also assertive enough and sufficiently self-aware of their potential. There is increasing resistance to EU normative pressure.

b)      There are different extents to which these states capitalise on their resources and potential. So far, Azerbaijan was an outlier in the region, but Turkey under AKP leadership is catching up with this move quickly and, as has been shown above, has now also started to apply similar strategies in its foreign policy to undermine EU criticism and to enforce its own bargaining position.

c)       In Turkey, the EU has significant strategic interests. Often mentioned are trade, geostrategic and security considerations (Turkey being a member of NATO, an ally in a volatile region, supporting the so-called ‘international coalition’ against ISIS) and the recent Migration Deal. But let’s not overlook special relations concerning movement of people (both ways), and most importantly, the fact that values promotion could also be a vital interests of the EU in the case of Turkey. Since the country is in the accession process with the EU, its success or failure will set an example for others but also reinforce or undermine internal legitimacy of the EU itself.

d)      The EU’s selective trade-offs between values and pragmatism do not help its credibility or legitimacy. Long-term, broader, considerations will certainly play a role in determining the EU’s reaction to developments in Turkey.

e)      Lastly, in the case of Azerbaijan, the EU has seemingly chosen a middle ground by not choosing at all. There are clear elements of values promotion in policies vis-à-vis Baku, but these have been systematically ignored or undermined by the authorities; which would be very likely the case in Turkey, too, if the EU were to install stronger measures on issues such as political prisoners, capital punishment, freedom of media and organisation. The result in Azerbaijan is a strange status quo limbo with which both sides seem relatively happy for now – the question is if such situation would suffice for the EU in relations with Turkey, as there is possibly more at stake.

 

CONCLUSION: THE EU’S ETERNAL DILEMMA

No policy decision towards Turkey will be the right one – possibly, the EU will once again end up in a lengthy reactive process with ad hoc decisions.

The question of the EU’s response is nevertheless still worth asking, because it is an issue of a much larger scale which reaches well beyond relations with Turkey. The EU cannot overlook the fact that more and more countries in the region are standing up against the EU’s top-down attitude and its exclusive policies. A more pro-active strategy to deal with changing power dynamics in the region seems needed (and the June Global Strategy won’t do it).

This may require more controversial policy choices, such as more inclusive forms of policy-making together with the current Turkish regime. On the other hand, such rather pragmatic approach will be subject to heavy criticism and will undoubtedly raise questions about the EU’s own legitimacy. No one may want to or can afford to burn their hands on this.

Unfortunately, the EU’s dilemma in relations with Azerbaijan therefore now seems to be applied to Turkey too: Brussels is caught between a rock and a hard stone. But they’d better try to get out of that position, soon.

 

Much gratitude goes to Igor Merheim-Eyre and Zhouchen Mao for their comments and suggestions for this post.

The post “Turkish and Azerbaijani foreign policy strategies of resistance to the EU”, by Eske van Gils appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

From Thursday, I will again teach a 2-week European Studies intensive course here in Munich, with students from China, South Korea, Jordan, India, Canada and different EU countries.

When I taught the course for the first time in 2014, I was just back from living in Brussels where I had worked for the EU Office of Transparency International, fresh after the European elections and with Jean-Claude Juncker just selected as designated Commission President. At that time, there was no POLITICO Europe around, so I mainly lived on my own experience of EU politics and what EU-focused research could provide.

Last year, I produced a Wordle of all POLITICO Europe Playbook newsletters of July 2015, and as you can see below, Greece was still very high on the agenda (most of you might not even remember…), before August and September became the months in which migration turned out to be the EU mega-topic for the rest of the year. I made my students read the newsletter every day, and it actually generated some interesting discussions at the start of each session.

Wordle.net-generated word cloud with the top 200 words from July 2015 POLITCO Europe newsletters, with the final parts (birthdays, thanks, sponsor message etc.) removed.

Ahead of this year’s class, I did the same type of word cloud again, and it turns out that Brexit, the Commission and “President”-ial politics (both Juncker and Trump-Clinton, I guess) have been dominating the July newsletter. Migration has almost disappeared again from the political attention – you find it just below “also”, as if “also migration” might suggest that, after Brexit, it’s just one of many issues again.

Wordle.net-generated word cloud with the top 200 words from July 2016 POLITCO Europe newsletters, with the final parts (birthdays, thanks, sponsor message etc.) removed.

Still, this year’s schedule of the summer programme, I’ve added one session on theories of European disintegration followed by a session on EU referenda. When I proposed the programme, I did not yet know the results of Brexit, so I’ll also take a look at some of the other referenda that have shaped EU politics (like the ones in France and the Netherlands in 2005).

I also upgraded the session on justice, home affairs and migration to a double session on migration and Schengen to reflect the events of last year and the events still unfolding. And I keep a strong focus on EU lobbying, as this was something students have been very interested in in past years (and it remains a major issue in the Brussels bubble).

What is different this year to the past two years is that my own research focus has moved on to the UN system (as you can see on this blog), so I feel I have much more distance to EU matters and look at them with a much broader angle than I used to do – which I hope is a good thing!

So, as in the past two years, I’m very much looking forward to this course as I’m (re-)learning as least as much in the preparation and execution of the course as (I hope) my students do during the coming two weeks. Thanks to the multi-cutural group, I also have to look at EU politics from a different angle than what I get from my EU bubble social media stream every day, so I may end up learning even more!

The post European Studies Summer School 2016: what is Brussels talking about this year? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Since Britain voted to leave the EU are we any wiser what it all means? Uncertainty seems the safest prediction for now. Yet given that Britain has played an important role in EU environmental policy, we need to try to make some sense of it.

Towards a more German style EU environmental policy?

In the 1980s, Britain preferred generalist environmental quality standards, whereas the Germans wanted strict emission limits and targets. EU environmental policy now has both! Yet without British experts at the table, across all the EU institutions, future EU environmental policy will unquestionably change in tone and quality. Perhaps it will become more comprehensively German?

Would that be a bad thing given that Britain has played an almost laggardly role in some recent EU environmental negotiations (notably the new Renewables Directive)? However, the hope that Brexit might actually be a boon for more ambitious EU environmental policy making is naïve. There are plenty of other states, such as Poland, willing to dilute Brussel’s green credentials. In fact, the absence of Britain will more likely weaken green agendas in policy sectors such as agriculture and fisheries, two areas where the British have long demanded ‘greening’. 

Environmental policy during the renegotiation

In the forthcoming negations the only slight advantage the UK may have is that the EU states could be quite divided over how to treat the British. However, the Article 50 process has a timer attached, so after two years, Britain is ejected from the EU – deal or no deal. That will put British negotiators under a lot of pressure. Single market access, free movement of people and adherence to the acquis (the body of EU rules) will likely form the substance of negotiations. As such it is not likely that environmental policy will feature extensively. That might be a good thing, because the British may simply agree to continue to apply the EUenvironmental acquis, as far as is practicable, or some such formula.  

Until negotiations are finished, EU environmental policies continue to apply and have force of law. That point is not trivial because the EU has been central to recent British litigation on air pollution and potentially fracking, where litigants were hoping to get a referral to the EU Court of Justice. Presumably post 2019 or later, that strategy will be exhausted. After Brexit we can suggest that British environmental law remedies will be simply less diverse and more uncertain, unless perhaps litigants can make extensive use of the EFTA Court.

Whatever party is in power in Whitehall will in the future matter more, because they will be less constrained by EU laws. A future Tory government, hell bent on fracking and perhaps led by an open climate skeptic, would have more freedom to dismantle key policy norms that have underpinned British environmental policy in the last decades, notably the centrality of climate change.

What UK influence in the future?

One immediate consequence of Brexit must be that British negotiating power over existing environmental policy dossiers is now badly dented, as nobody will take their views seriously.   This raises a question of future influence for business and government alike. The British chemicals industry must be left puzzling its fate. On the one hand many firms would be delighted to see the back of the demanding REACH directive, and perhaps they may sense an opportunity for competitive advantage. On the other hand, access to the single market will probably require that British chemicals be produced to EU standards. The same logic will apply for what is left of the British car industry. Crucially, there will be no British negotiators at the table when rules on chemicals and cars are eventually toughened up. 

Policy after Brexit

How will British environmental policy style and content likely change? Literature on policy path dependence would suggest much of the detail of British environmental policy will carry on as it was before Brexit. Literature on policy convergence and learning, might suggest that even outside of the EU, British thinking and policy on environmental matters will continue to be influenced by, or copy and learn from EU approaches; although Britain may become more open to policy learning from the USA, Australia or New Zealand as well. Divergences will likely be slow enough to gather pace, however, after two decades, British environmental policy may be quite different, at least as regards specific details.

The Norwegian experience in perspective

Finally, the Norwegian experience has been bandied about as a guide for what the future will look like: formally outside, yet informally following and applying many EU policies in return for single market access. This suggests we should expect continuity. Yet this ignores key details, notably scale. Norway is a small state, for whom the borrowing of standards from a large regulatory regime such as the EU simply makes sense. However, Britain as a very large state may not embrace this “policy follower” role. Moreover, the Norwegian party political elite have a working consensus on engaging with the EU in this way. Norwegian civil servants are dispatched to Brussels to follow policy developments, they attempt to influence negotiations and agendas from the outside as best they can, and then work hard to implement whatever deal emerges, back home in Oslo. Pragmatism rules.

There is no guarantee that future Tory or Labour governments will endorse that sort of sensible, if servile, relationship. Moreover, while Norway agreed in 1994 to implement most of the environmental acquis, the agreement did not include environmental measures relating to a number of key areas: farming, fishing, forestry, conservation, or climate change. Would the UK split the environmental acquis the same way….or perhaps agree to continue to implement those laws and policies in place before 2019….or 2016? The Norwegian precedent raises as many questions as it resolves. 

We are back then where we started: uncertainty. For which, a quote from Voltaire seems most apt for our first stab at making sense of Brexit: “uncertainty may be uncomfortable but certainty is absurd.”

The post What a difference a vote makes? Second guessing British-EU environmental policy interactions after Brexit. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Jens Jungblut

The 24th World Congress of Political Science organized by the International Political Science Association (IPSA) took place from July 23 until July 28 2016 under the title “Politics in a World of Inequality”. The conference was held in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland) and around 3000 participants, mainly from political science, were attending it.

Originally the conference was supposed to take place in Istanbul, but due to the security situation as well as the contentious relationship between the Turkish political scientists and the Turkish government the IPSA and the local Turkish organizers decided earlier this year to move the conference to Poland. In light of this and due to the recent events in Turkey the topic of academic freedom was a reoccurring theme at the conference being addressed both in the opening as well as closing ceremonies and in the context of a special roundtable.

Members of the ECPR Standing Group on Politics of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation organized a panel at the conference under the title “Knowledge Policies and the State of Inequality: Instruments For or Against?”. The panel examined how policy actors instrumentalize knowledge policies to increase and decrease the state of inequality between citizens, between nations, and between the world’s geographical regions. As a point of departure, the panel assumed that policymaking is a complex process, involving multiple actors across governance levels with diverse interests and preferences, and that instrument choice thus reflects the policy actors’ ambitions, compromises made, and the intended effects of implementation.

Martina Vukasovic. Photo credits: Deanna Rexe

The panel consisted of three papers. First, Dr. Martina Vukasovic from the Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent (CHEGG) at Ghent University presented a paper entitled “The legitimation of funding decisions in higher education: the role of policy framing” that she co-authored with Dr. Jelle Mampaey (also CHEGG). The paper explored the frame elements employed by various actors – government, higher education institutions and associations, student unions etc. – in the public debate on increasing tuition fees in Flanders. The paper in particular distinguished between three frame elements – cognitive, normative and causal – and explored which actors use which frame elements and whether this mix changed over time. The findings from the Flemish case highlighted the strong reliance on causal elements – claims about expected effects of specific policy decisions – as well as increasing use of normative elements as the debate progressed. In addition, the actors who argued against the increase of tuition fees employed the normative elements more often than the actors arguing against. Second, Dr. Deanna Rexe from Simon Fraser University presented her research paper titled “Tuition Policy Instruments in Canada: Public Policy Choices for What Problems?“, which explored policy actor perceptions of higher education problems and policy instruments in Canadian higher education policymaking systems, and their effects on both substantive and procedural policy instrument selection.

Jens Jungblut. Photo credits: Deanna Rexe

Finally, Dr. Jens Jungblut from the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel presented a paper that he co-authored with Prof. Peter Maassen from the Department of Education at the University of Oslo. In their study, entitled “The Quality of Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Comparing Intra-regional Inequalities in Higher Education”, the authors used higher education as an exemplary part of the public sector to explore three sets of changes: 1) the dynamics regarding higher education’s provision of service to society, 2) recent changes in the quality of governance in higher education, and 3) the relationship between the two. They assume that due to higher education’s growing importance for national development strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the importance of the quality of governance for social progress, it can be expected that there is a link between an improved provision of service to society and increased quality of governance. In their conceptualization of the quality of governance they follow Fukuyama and suggest that the two main dimensions of the concept are capacity and autonomy of the administration. As their research project is still in the phase of data collection, the authors were only able to provide some empirical results on recent changes with regard to the delivery of services to society. Their results showed that universities in Sub-Saharan Africa significantly increased their student enrollments, numbers of graduates as well as the number of research articles produced. In a second analytic step the authors plan to survey and interview a number of administrators both in higher education institutions and the government to assess potential changes in the quality of governance in the sector as well as relate these findings to the ones regarding the delivery of service.

The 25th World Congress of Political Science will take place in July 2018 in Brisbane (Australia).

The post Knowledge Policies and the State of Inequality: Instruments For or Against? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Can and should NATO learn from the EU?

When a group within the Turkish military attempted a coup to overthrow the current government under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) last Friday, the world knew that chaotic times will be ahead. This was however not the first coup d’état in Turkish history. While Erdoğan is now ‘able to do whatever he wants’ and working on restoring his power in Turkey, it would be interesting to see how the international community deals with the country. And even more striking would be to see and hear the reactions by the two organisations most important for Turkey, NATO and the EU. The lack of NATO’s responses and measures suggest that it may have to learn a lesson from its counterpart, the EU.

The international community has responded to the events in Ankara and Istanbul immediately after the clashes: UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon called for calm, US President Barack Obama demanded to Turkey to support its democratic institutions, German Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the attacks in Turkey, and even the newly elected British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson expressed his concerns about the situation unfolding in Turkey.

European Council President Donal Tusk called for a return to constitutional order and Frederica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, warned the Turkish government to take steps against the constitutional order and said that the rule of law needs to be protected, but another voice remained rather neglected. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did condemn the occurrences in Turkey, but solely called for calm and restraint.

Whereas the EU takes the lead in criticising the Turkish government and Erdoğan’s reaction after the failed coup, NATO seems to be impotent. The EU has the necessary instruments to sanction Turkey at its disposal: economic sanctions, suspending visa liberation and EU accession negotiations, and it could even withdraw the country’s candidate status. Following Frederica Mogherini, ‘no country can become an EU member state if it introduces death penalty’. NATO, on the other hand, is not indifferent or stunned, but it does not possess any sanction instruments vis-à-vis its member states. But saying that NATO is paralysed would do the alliance wrong. According to the North Atlantic Treaty, it cannot interfere in a member states’ domestic politics. As a reaction, US Secretary of State John Kerry therefore stated that NATO will nevertheless observe closely the events in Turkey and that the Alliance ‘has a requirement with respect to democracy and NATO will indeed measure very carefully what is happening’.

Gauging the measures at disposal of the EU and NATO leads to the question whether the Alliance could and should learn from the EU in regard to treating (candidate) member states. Since NATO has evolved over the past decades and transformed from a military alliance to, what Wallander and Keohane have coined, a ‘security management institution’, it has acquired a much broader political dimension than initially anticipated. So far NATO has not recorded any incidences in which it was forced to interfere in the domestic affairs of one of its member states. Yet, the alliance is founded on democratic principles and has committed itself to democratic values and norms; this counts for both candidate states and allies within the organisation.

The country at the Bosporus is a vital ally, however, and should not be just suspended or kicked out as suggested by John Kerry. Rather, suspension should go hand in hand with additional measures. In any way, Turkey plays a strategic not only for NATO but also for the EU – it borders both Syria and Iraq, and is therefore a vital ally in the fight of terrorist threats. Hence, not only the EU, but maybe even more importantly, NATO and its allies should take stricter measures to urge Turkey to return to constitutional order.

 

By Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters, PhD Candidate, University of Kent, Canterbury

The post Chaotic Turkey, paralysed NATO, lead-taking EU?! appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The momentous decision to opt for exit from the European Union that was made by a slim majority of the British public on 23 June immediately will have long-lasting effects which will linger for years to come. The immediate result of the Brexit decision was profound domestic political and economic turmoil in the UK. This is likely to be followed by years of insecurity for both the UK and the rest of the EU as the new British government led by Theresa May prepares to enter into difficult exit negotiations.

The outcome of the referendum is not surprising for anyone who is familiar with the evolvement of the domestic political debate on EU membership in the UK. Overall the British public has never been at ease with their country’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) and later the European Union. The exception is Scotland, where membership of the EU continues to be considered as an opportunity to enhance the region’s autonomy. The UK joined the EEC in 1973 mainly for economic reasons. The British economy had slipped in and out of recession during the 1960s while growth rates in the six Common Market countries were comparatively strong. The UK had reluctantly applied to join twice in the 1960s and both times was vetoed by French president De Gaulle. De Gaulle was concerned that as a member the UK would try to fundamentally change the nature of the EC towards a loose free trade area. Moreover he was convinced that American influence in the EC would grow once Britain was on the inside. After De Gaulle’s departure the new French president Pompidou had shown a more pragmatic attitude towards British membership. This allowed the Conservative government under Edward Heath to take Britain into the EEC on 1 January 1973. Heath, an ardent pro-European, was convinced that the economic benefits of membership of the Common Market would outweigh the political costs of joining a Community that had been predominantly shaped by France and Germany and where the UK would immediately turn into a net budget contributor. Heath famously stated that the UK would be ‘part of Europe by geography, tradition, history an civilization’[i].

Initially it seemed as if the majority of the British public were beginning to warm to Heath’s view. At the first membership referendum held by the Labour government under Harold Wilson on 5 June 1975 67.5 per cent of voters opted to stay in the EEC. The referendum was the result of the deepening divisions within the Labour Party towards the EEC. The eurosceptic left wing of the party led by Tony Benn rejected EEC membership on the basis that the Community would be a capitalist club that was making it impossible to implement a socialist political agenda in the UK. In contrast the Conservatives remained the pro-European party with even the new Conservative opposition leader Margaret Thatcher campaigning strongly for staying inside the Common Market in the 1975 referendum campaign. This changed drastically after Thatcher had become prime minister in 1979. Once in office she realised that her priority for market liberalisation was at odds with the Franco-German desire to deepen the political integration of the Community. Thatcher therefore adopted an increasingly non-cooperative attitude and demanded clear red lines to safeguard the UK’s national sovereignty and limit the contributions to the Community budget. At the 1984 Community summit in Fountainebleue Thatcher negotiated a permanent budgetary rebate for the UK by stating that ‘I want my money back’. During her famous speech at the European College in Bruges on 20 September 1998 warned of the dangers of a European federal superstate: ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels’[ii]. This eurosceptic rhetoric occurred against the background of Thatcher having previously signed up to the Single European Act (SEA). The SEA not included measures to accelerate market liberalisation in the EEC but also laid the foundation for deeper political integration by introducing qualified majority voting for economic and social affairs. Moreover the SEA paved the way for the creation of the European Union and a concrete timetable for the establishment of monetary union under the subsequent Maastricht Treaty.

Thatcher and her followers believed that the main purpose of the EEC should be to act as a free trade area which strengthens trade between the member states. Thatcher mainly blamed Germany for pushing towards the deepening of political integration. She was deeply suspicious of German European policy motives. In her political memoirs Thatcher characterised Germany as a ‘destabilising force’ which would waver between ‘aggression and self-doubt’[iii]. While she was still in office she allowed her Trade and Industry Secretary Nicholas Ridley to characterise the EEC as Germany’s means to subjugate Europe. Ridley equated the transfer of Britain’s national sovereignty to the Community with conceding it to Adolf Hitler[iv]. The tradition of Thatcherite predominantly English euroscepticism has consequently fed itself from the scaremongering about German hegemonial aspirations in the EU. This has been a prominent feature in the eurosceptic tabloid press, especially in papers like The Sun and the Daily Express, where engagement in the EU is persistently portrayed as ‘surrendering’ to foreign interests, most of all those of Germany and France. These sentiments also featured in the recent EU referendum campaign when prominent VoteLeave campaigner Boris Johnson, now Britain’s new foreign secretary, compared the EU with Nazi Germany. On 15 May this year Johnson emphasised in an interview with The Telegraph that it was his belief that the EU shared Nazi Germany’s desire to unify Europe under ‘one authority’, albeit with ‘different methods’[v].  Johnson’s comments reflect the deep-seated hostile perception of the EU and European integration amongst particularly the English public.

This is not only the result the failure of successive governments since Thatcher to make a positive case for British engagement in Europe. Apart from the brief period of constructive rhetoric on the EU during the first parliament of Tony Blair’s New Labour government (1997-2001), who aspired to turn the UK into a leading player in the EU but eventually gave up this ambition over his support for George W. Bush’s military invasion in Iraq, British governments allowed the eurosceptics in the Conservative Party, UKIP and in the media to set the tone of the debate. The fact that the EU has come under almost exclusive semi-hegemonial German leadership since the onset of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis has deepened this euroscepticism across England and now also in Wales. German chancellor Angela Merkel’s relentless drive towards deeper policy coordination in the eurozone and beyond has contributed towards pushing an already sceptical British public further towards the EU’s exit door. David Cameron’s renegotiation of the British membership terms and the subsequent referendum were a response to growing euroscepticism within his own party but also amongst the wider British public, which was illustrated by the electoral successes of the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).  Cameron chose to adopt a defensive position and to focus on the renegotiation of the membership conditions rather than to try to take a leading role in the EU. He therefore missed the opportunity to challenge Merkel’s dominant position and to promote an alternative reform agenda for the EU. If Cameron had exercised strategic leadership he would have most likely won over France, Poland and other countries in Southern and East-Central Europe, which are critical of the German agenda, as allies to promote institutional reform towards greater subsidiarity and enhanced democratic accountability. Cameron’s defensive strategy instead concentrated on negotiating a permanent British opt out from political integration in the EU. His intention was essentially to ensure that differentiated integration between the eurozone core and the outsiders could be maintained. Cameron argued that ‘far from unravelling the EU, this will in fact bind its members more closely because such flexible, willing cooperation is a much stronger glue than compulsion from the centre’[vi]. In the end Cameron, who lacked both the popular appeal and the intellectual ability to make a convincing pro-European case, was unable to convince a sceptical public in England and Wales to remain in the EU. Cameron had run a lacklustre referendum campaign during which he allowed his chancellor George Osborne to determine a predominantly defensive strategy. The Remain strategy hence concentrated on emphasising the potential negative economic effects of Brexit rather than to make a positive case for staying in. Meanwhile the Vote Leave camp was able to put issues such as migration, contributions to the EU budget and Turkish membership of the EU on the agenda. This ultimately led the majority of voters to the conclusion that staying in the EU would potentially be a greater financial and political risk than leaving.

The public decision in favour of Brexit pushes both the UK and the EU into uncharted waters. Never before has a member state invoked article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty under which a request to leave the EU can be formally submitted to the European Council. The decision is even more profound as the with the UK the third largest member state will exit the EU. This will fundamentally alter the EU’s internal power balance. Without the sustained engagement of the remaining larger countries France,  Poland, Italy and Spain the EU is likely to remain under German semi-hegemony for the foreseeable future, which could contribute to a further rise in euroscepticism. Brexit will also weaken the EU’s external economic and political influence. With the UK the EU loses a vibrant services economy and a net contributor to its budget. Moreover the UK is currently the only country alongside France that is able to make a substantial contribution towards the EU’s military capabilities. These facts should however not mislead Theresa May and her ministers into assuming that the UK can expect substantial concessions during the Brexit negotiations. Once the British government decides to invoke Article 50 the negotiations are expected to be concluded within a period of two years. During this period the UK will negotiate with the remaining 27 member states, which are formally represented by the European Commission, bilaterally as an outsider. In practice this means that ‘the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it’[vii]. The EU-27 governments, in cooperation with the Commission and the European Parliament, therefore have the final say over the conditions of the UK’s status after exit from EU. The British government can try to lobby individual governments for favourable conditions but it has no veto over the final deal and also no guarantee that its proposals will be supported.

The remaining EU-27 member states are unlikely to show much goodwill to the new British government led by Theresa May after a referendum campaign in which the Vote Leave applied xenophobic rhetoric and half-truths to win over the public. Although May declared herself to be in favour of the UK remaining in the EU it is well know that she is a moderate eurosceptic. As home secretary May initiated the UK’s gradual withdrawal from the EU’s justice and police cooperation and repeatedly expressed her concerns about the freedom of movement. At the 2015 Conservative Party annual conference May emphasised her belief that ‘the numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change’[viii]. The new PM has decided to put the Brexit negotiations into the hands of eurosceptic right-wing Conservative David Davis, who will have to work with foreign minister Boris Johnson to secure a deal. EU leaders reacted with bewilderment to the appointment of Johnson and he was widely criticised for his ‘dishonest’ campaign promises on NHS spending and immigration control. Johnson’s comparison of the EU with Nazi Germany particularly angered France and Germany, which was illustrated by the hostile comments of the French and German foreign ministers on Johnson’s appointment[ix].

It is crystal clear that the Vote Leave campaign promises to completely pull the UK out of the EU regulatory domain and to replace the freedom of movement with an Australian style points-based system can only be realised if Britain leaves the Single European Market. This means that in practice Theresa May’s demands to end the freedom of movement comes at the price of having trade tariffs reinstalled between the UK and the EU. Currently none of the countries who are not members of the EU but have full access to the Single Market, has been able to negotiate an opt out from the freedom of movement (with the exception of tiny Lichtenstein). Even if France and Germany proposed to accept concessions on the freedom of movement for the UK after Brexit these proposals would most likely be vetoed by the countries in Central-Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania. As a considerable number of citizens from these countries currently reside in the UK their governments are adamant not to jeopardise the freedom of movement to prevent a substantial return migration wave which could hardly be absorbed by the fragile domestic labour markets and would also considerably burden their welfare states. The freedom of movement is consequently the issue upon which the future shape of relations between the UK and the EU will be determined. The Brexit negotiations will be further complicated by the likely demands of the Scottish government for a renewed referendum on the region’s post-Brexit status.

Until the British government formally invokes article 50 and puts concrete proposals for the UK’s post-Brexit status on the table the insecurity about the medium- to long-term consequences of the referendum outcome will remain. The immediate result has been unprecedented domestic political turmoil in the UK with deep internal infighting within the Conservative and the Labour Party. Although the potential future risks of Brexit for the UK and the EU are profound and real they can be avoided if the process is properly managed. This will demand that the May government is willing to compromise on freedom of movement and that the EU-27 governments act in the spirit of collective solidarity instead of negotiating individually with the UK. If the UK manages to maintain full access to the Single Market after Brexit it would help it to avoid profound adverse economic implications for the domestic economy and also for the wider Europe. The IMF has already warned that Brexit is likely to push the UK into recession and to severely undermine economic recovery in Europe and even globally[x].

Ultimately Brexit does not only pose risks but also offers an opportunity for the EU-27 governments to relaunch the European project by working towards implementing profound reforms of the EU’s institutions and decision-making processes with the aims of achieving greater policy efficiency and public legitimacy. Both the UK and the EU-27 governments will need steadfast stewardship to sail through the current tides of insecurity that Brexit has pushed them into to avoid  ending up shipwrecked. If the current leaders in London, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Rome and Madrid  are able to provide this stewardship at the end of the day is more than doubtful given their failure to reach a joint approach on resolving major challenges, such as the eurozone and the migration crisis, Ukraine, Syria and more recently Turkey. Brexit therefore remains a scary and unpredictable choice for everyone or, to quote David Cameron, ‘a leap in the dark’.

[i] Quoted from Hugo Young (1998), This blessed plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair,  London and Basingstoke: MacMillan, p. 220.

[ii] Margaret Thatcher (1988), Speech to the College of Europe. ‘The Bruges Speech’, 20 September, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107332.

[iii] Margaret Thatcher (1993), The Downing Street Years, Glasgow: Harper Collins, p. 791.

[iv] David Gowland and Arthur Turner (2000), Britain and European Integration 1945-1998: A Documentary History, London and New York, p. 178.

[v] Tim Ross (2016), ‘Boris Johnson: The EU wants a superstate, just as Hitler did’, 15 May, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/14/boris-johnson-the-eu-wants-a-superstate-just-as-hitler-did/ [accessed 19 July 2016].

[vi] Prime minister David Cameron’s  EU speech at Bloomberg , 23 January 2013, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-speech-at-bloomberg [accessed 19 July 2016].

[vii] European Union (2012), Consolidated version of the Lisbon Treaty, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A12012E%2FTXT [accessed 19 July 2016].

[viii] Theresa May (2015), Speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 6 October 2015, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-s-speech-to-the-conservative-party-conference-in-full-a6681901.html [accessed 19 July 2016].

[ix] Angelique Chrisafis, Luke Harding and Arthur Neslen (2016), ‘ “Outrageous” and “a liar” – Germany and France lead criticism of Boris Johnson’, 14 July, available athttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/14/french-foreign-minister-boris-johnson-is-a-liar-with-his-back-against-the-wall  [accessed 19 July 2016].

[x] Larry Elliot (2016), ‘IMF cuts UK growth forecasts following Brexit vote’, 20 July, available at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/19/imf-cuts-uk-growth-forecasts-following-brexit-vote [accessed 19 July 2016].

The post The EU and Brexit: Sailing in uncharted waters appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In the wake of the Brexit earthquake, experts are sifting through the rubble, assessing the damage, and checking the stability of remaining structures. Advocates of ambitious climate policy have been particularly active. Since the late 1990s, the UK has been a leader on climate change, both domestically, within the European Union, and through its active role in global negotiations.

But can this be maintained? At home in particular, can it follow the pithy advice of UN climate chief Christiana Figueres who, harking back to the wartime spirit, urged Britain to “stay calm and transform on”?

Yet even if the UK is able to keep its green policies broadly on track, committed politicians and activists should reflect on where best to focus their efforts given so much had been developed through Europe.

Norway or Switzerland?

What happens next will largely depend on how the government renegotiates the country’s relationship with the EU. Participation in the EU’s internal energy market has kept energy costs down and fostered UK energy security. Energy industry insiders regard it as crucial to the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.

One increasingly discussed possibility is the “Norway option”: join the European Economic Area (EEA) and maintain access to the single market without EU membership, in exchange for following many European laws. Under this scenario, the UK would remain subject to the EU Emissions Trading System, the Fuel Quality Directive, and the Renewable Energy Directive among other climate and energy laws, while having no say in their development.

Norway follows EU energy laws, but can’t change them.
V. Belov/Shutterstock

Alternatively, the UK could attempt to strike a complex series of bilateral deals with the EU, while remaining outside of the EEA (what some have termed the “Swiss model”). In this scenario such laws would not necessarily apply, and the UK would likely need to develop its own emissions regulations, renewable targets and so on. Climate legislation would then need to fight for parliamentary time against other priorities. Looser arrangements, involving reverting to World Trade Organisation rules, would present far greater levels of policy uncertainty.

The best-case scenario is therefore likely to involve the UK retaining a close relationship with the EU within the EEA. Although advocates of climate and environmental protection are likely to speak out in favour of joining the EEA, it won’t be their concerns that ultimately decide the outcome. They would be well-advised to engage in some scenario planning both for life inside the EEA, and in a world outside where EU rules have no effective influence.

Leadership by example

Regardless of what the post-Brexit relationship looks like, the UK will no longer be able to participate directly in EU policy-making. Those wishing to maintain the UK’s reputation will have to content themselves with leadership by example, at best.

In a promising development that has eased fears of a post-Brexit “coup” by climate sceptics within the Conservative party, the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has announced that it will implement the Fifth Carbon Budget, as required by the 2008 Climate Change Act. This means a reduction of 57% in UK carbon emissions from 1990 levels for 2028-32 is now official government policy. Of course, this commitment will not implement itself, and ironically could still be undermined if the EU, now lacking one of its principal climate champions, lags behind in its own target setting. A decision by David Cameron to ratify the Paris agreement on the UK’s behalf before he steps down as prime minister would send a strong signal that the country will not be diverted from its path to decarbonisation.

A continuing challenge will be that the Fifth Carbon Budget and other UK climate policies have been designed assuming that the UK would remain an EU member state. This again highlights the importance of some kind of EEA-based arrangement. In implementing the UK’s own domestic commitments, sustained investment and regulatory stability – of a kind that EU membership broadly provided – will be key. Government ministers must realise that these are severely compromised by the kind of unexpected energy policy “resets” witnessed from the incoming Conservative government after the last election. And in a volatile economic climate, institutions such as the Green Investment Bank may need to increase their efforts to finance investment in renewable energy projects.

Reframing climate policy

NGOs must respond to the likelihood that UK governments will be Conservative-led for the foreseeable future. Given that party’s often unconvincing commitment to climate protection, advocates would do well to frame their efforts not just in terms of climate, but of air quality and jobs too.

Some innovative solutions arguably have potential to mend some of the damage from the referendum. For example, the development of tidal lagoons in Wales has considerable potential both to cut emissions and create jobs. Ambitious deployment of such technology could, according to its advocates, contribute as much power as the proposed – but increasingly untenable – Hinkley C nuclear plant.

The architecture of the UK’s pioneering Climate Change Act of 2008 has so far proved robust to the shock of Brexit. Ensuring that it remains so, and continues to deliver meaningful decarbonisation, will be an enduring concern for many in post-Brexit Britain, and for supporters of ambitious climate policy around the world.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post How the UK can still lead on climate change – even after Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Since June 23rd volumnes of analysis and comment have already been written in newspapers and online, about the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union as the result of a referendum. However, nobody fully understands all of the consequences of Brexit, as 43 years of treaties – between the United Kingdom and her nearest neighbours – will have to be taken apart. The immediate consequence of the result was that the value of the pound fell.

Once the UK leaves the EU after two or more years of negotiations: British passport holders will have to wait in the queue for “All other passport holders” to enter a member state of the European Union, opposite to the queue they now wait in as “Citizens of the European Union”. If the EU decides to impose visa requirements on British passport holders entering a member state of the EU as a consequence of Brexit, then it means that the status of a British passport has also been devalued. How will the British economy fare by being excluded from the European single market? The 27 remaining members of the EU might not be willing to give British goods and services privileged access to the single market.

Many other benefits of EU membership will be lost for British citizens because of Brexit. These include the Charter of Fundamental rights which protects the human rights of EU citizens by law, and environmental protection policies. The EU has a policy to fight climate change by imposing caps on greenhouse gas emissions. This is part of a policy to create a low-carbon economy as Europe re-invests in renewable forms of energy, and energy storage: to create new jobs to replace jobs lost in tradtional industries.

While the United Kingdom is a member of the EU a British citizen has the right to live, work, and travel in any EU country, but these rights are threatened by Brexit. Will thousands of retired British people living in Spain be forced to return to the UK, because they no longer have the legal right to reside in an EU member state? Will British workers in Germany lose their jobs, because they will no longer have the automatic right to work there?

How much funding will local communities lose throughout the United Kingdom as a result of the decision to leave the EU? European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) provide grants for regions in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to help fight climate change with a “Low Carbon” grants; financial help to make small businesses more competitive “SME Support”; support for “Research and Innovation”; and grants that provide “Access to Employment”, and “Learning and Skills”. Details of these EU funded grants can be seen on a UK government website at https://www.gov.uk/european-structural-investment-funds . All of these grants will be terminated once the UK leaves the EU.

It is hard to understand why 52 percent of voters in the EU referendum decided that the UK should leave the EU, when there was so much to lose? The Vote Leave campaign had been very successful in getting its message across, which said to voters in a leaflet: “We send the EU £350 million a week – let’s fund our NHS instead”. However, this claim has been disputed: where did the Vote Leave campaign get the figure of £350 million a week from? And if the UK were to leave the EU, could the British public trust Tory ministers who are committed to austerity and public spending cuts to redirect the UK’s EU membership fees into the NHS and other public services?

Vote Leave effectively used the fear of mass immigration to gather support for the UK to leave the EU. The Vote Leave leaflet said: “Over a quarter of a million people migrate to the UK from the EU every year”. What the leaflet did not say is how many people leave the UK every year in order to move to another EU country?

Another Brexit campaign group, Leave.EU, used other methods to get to the electorate. An article by Robert Booth entitled: “Paul McKenna worked on Leave.EU ads”, (The Guardian, 2nd July 2016), said: “The Brexit campaign enlisted TV hypnotist Paul McKenna to advise some of its campaign broadcasts, it has emerged.”

An anonymous source from the Leave.EU campaign was quoted in the article as saying: “We didn’t hypnotise anyone”. How did this source know that nobody was hypnotised? Perhaps members of the Leave.EU campaign team were also hypnotised, along with the target audience of the campaign broadcasts?

The Guardian article also said, “The hypnotist is said to be a friend of Arron Banks, the Bristol-based multimillionaire insurance businessman who bankrolled the Leave.EU campaign with a £5.6m donation.”

In a separate article entitled “Leave donor plans new party to replace UKIP – possibly without Farage in charge” (The Guardian, 29th June 2016), Arron Banks was quoted as saying: “What they said early on was ‘facts don’t work’ and that’s it. The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.”

The quotation above is a stark admission from a Brexiteer that those voting for the UK to leave the EU were responding to emotional stimulus rather than facts. Under these circumstances people could easily have been made to vote against their own self interest. In considering everything that will be lost by the UK’s departure from the EU, a large part of the electorate were voting for: Brexit austerity; a Brexit recession; the removal of legislation which is there to protect them not only as citizens of the United Kingdom, but also as citizens of the European Union. A vote to leave the EU was a vote for destruction.

Sources

http://europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/about/index_en.htm

https://www.gov.uk/european-structural-investment-funds

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/01/eu-referendum-leave-hypnotist-paul-mckenna-nigel-farage

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2016

The post A vote for destruction appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In theory, building a tall structure has no upper limit.  Given a sufficiently large base resting on bedrock, the right materials and deep pockets, a skyscraper could literally reach the upper atmosphere and even beyond.  This architectural fact was discovered millennia ago, but only came into its own in the period of Europe’s great Gothic cathedrals.  Once the problem of supporting the outer walls was solved with ‘flying buttresses’ and other techniques, medieval builders were soon engaged a fierce and expensive competition to outdo one another.  At Chartres, Reims, Cologne, Paris and countless other cities, civic leaders vied with one another in an expensive and lengthy contest with their neighbours to build taller and more elaborate cathedrals to demonstrate their faith, wealth, ingenuity and pride.

This enterprise, sometimes called the ‘Gothic imperative’ by historians, came to a sudden and dramatic halt in the French city of Beauvais.  Visit today, and one learns that this rather strange structure was begun in 1225 by Bishop Milo of Nanteuil and financed by his family.  Even as it is, the Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais is regarded as a typical example of French Gothic – minus one important feature: its tower.  Intended to be the tallest structure in the world at the time, the architects and craftsmen pushed this defining feature of the medieval Gothic church to an extraordinary 153 meters, the height of a modern fifty story skyscraper.  Then, in 1573, having tested the technology of the time to its limits, the tower collapsed, and with it Beauvais’ hope of becoming the proud centre of dominance in stone and mortar of human endeavour.  Cathedral construction in Europe continued, but with far less hubris and arrogance.  Architects and their patrons across the continent were duly chastised, and literally “went back to the drawing boards.”  The Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais remains unfinished to this day, a testament to the folly of over ambitious goals.

Now, many of Europe’s leaders seem obsessed with another ‘imperative’ – the construction of a federal state, what many refer to as the ‘United States of Europe’.  Their rationale is persuasive.  More than two dozen modern nations, joined in creating a ‘supernation’ with a central government, finance system, foreign policy and trade relations with the rest of the world, perhaps even an army, and a population of more than 500 million. A truly united Europe is an attractive and appealing prospect, the logical outcome of the dream of the European Union’s idealistic founders who wanted a continent united in peace and prosperity.

Since it appears to be the model, perhaps the ‘United States of America’ itself is worthy of closer examination in terms of its own path to unity and federation.  How did it come about? What is the ‘glue’ that holds it together? And crucially, is it the model Europe should follow?

§

“Politics follows nationality wherever politics is free.” The view of American political scientist Michael Walzer.  He points out that from Plato through Marx to the near present, all political thinkers have assumed “One people equals one nation.”  He adds: “The only exception to this is the United States.”

Take a typical American street in an archetypal American Midwestern town, say, Lafayette, Indiana. Roberts Street in this very ordinary community is short, less than a half mile long.   Perhaps forty homes line the leafy avenue, stretching from a small local factory at one end to a school at the other.  When the first grade teacher at Linwood School, Mrs Goris, (Dutch) calls the roll of her six-year-olds, the names sound strange to the English ear: “Sietsma, Hockema, Van de Graaf, Dwyer, Korschatt, Buit, Wieringa, Kellogg, Niemansverdriet, Klaiber, Grey” and on.

This is the exception Walzer means.  Each of the families these children represent can trace their American identity back no more than one or two – or, at a stretch – three generations.  They are of Dutch, Irish, German, Italian, Czech, Scot and English descent.  Indeed, many of their grandparents would struggle with the English the children readily use each day.  Somehow, these disparate peoples – mostly European migrants – left behind their European identity, much of their culture, their ancient rivalries, and ultimately their language to become something new and different: Americans.

They are the product of the largest single voluntary peacetime migration in world history, and it took place largely in the 19th century.  Within decades of their arrival – mostly through Ellis Island in New York Harbour – Chicago had more Poles than Warsaw, New Jersey more Italians than Milan, New York more Jews than Tele Viv, and Cincinnati more Germans than Cologne.  Later they would be followed by wave after wave of Hispanics whose arrival would eventually make America the third largest Spanish-speaking country on Earth after only Mexico and Spain itself.   The ‘melting pot’ was truly blending mankind’s many ‘flavours.’  It continues to this day – America is genuinely a ‘work in progress’, unfinished but with a clear trajectory, a ‘nation of nationalities.’  It justifies E pluribus unum, the Latin slogan that appears on everything from the Presidential seal to dollar bills, “Out of many, one.”

These immigrants were to make their new homes in a democratic republic, the first to be freely established since the ill-fated Roman endeavour two millennia before.  Moreover, it was a federal republic, what the Merriam-Webster dictionary says is a nation -

formed by a compact between political units that surrender their individual sovereignty to a central authority but retain limited residuary powers of government

The founders of this new and revolutionary project, were very nervous, fearful even, of central government.  Their carefully worded constitution for the thirteen original states made it clear that only those powers that the states specifically delegated were to be exercised by a central governing authority located in the new capital of Washington.  This historically unique limitation on power was the defining characteristic of the new Republic of the United States of America.  For the next two centuries, indeed, to this day, it was to become the main focus for political turmoil and eventually, a bitter and costly civil war.

After all, the thirteen had only come together in the Philadelphia meeting in 1787, eleven years after the American Revolution that had separated all of them from the British Crown of George III.  Their first years were not happy ones.  As former colonies their rivalries and differing views about the future soon surfaced, and the nascent national government spent much of its time arbitrating their many disputes.  Something had to be done.  Their shared experience against the British, their isolation from Europe, their fear of another war with their former colonial master, their problematic relationship with the native American Indian tribes among them, and now the recognition that they needed to act in greater harmony – all provided the reasons behind the gathering in Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence itself had been signed.  It was May of 1787.

These were all ‘transplanted’ Europeans.  The infant Congress had asked each of the thirteen states to send representatives to the Pennsylvania.   Fifty-five, representing the four million citizens of the newly independent colonies, were to craft a new agreement or alter the existing one.  That became the central question: “Do we fix the present government we have, set up in haste in the days and weeks after the Revolution, or do we create a new one?” Were they thirteen individual nations in need of a supra-national agency to do their bidding, or where they a country requiring a central government?

When the latter was agreed, their attention turned to a myriad of details focusing on how much power this new national institution was to have, and what was to be retained by the former colonies.  Some argued that ‘States Rights’ should be enshrined in the document.  Others wanted a stronger central government.  The result was the Tenth Amendment, an attempt to disperse and weaken any attempt by future Presidents and Congresses to accumulate more and more power to themselves.  As James Madison, an advocate of a new central government, wrote:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace negotiation, and foreign commerce; the powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.

Incorporated into the famous Bill of Rights – itself a historic departure from any system of government in the past – the Amendment comprised a mere 28 words:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The fundamental premise of a new federal government had now been agreed.

§

In the first half of the nineteenth century, arguments over states’ rights arose in the context of slavery. From the 1870s to the 1930s, economic issues shaped the debate. In the 1950s racial segregation and the civil rights movement renewed the issue of state power.  Were the fears of the signers of that new constitution justified?  Almost certainly, few would today recognise the structure of the government they fashioned or had in mind, one in which in Lincoln’s memorable words was to be “for the people, by the people and of the people.”

When an American President can threaten lawsuits and withdrawal of federal aid to local schools that refuse to let transgender pupils use toilets matching their gender identity; when the FBI can steadily expand its jurisdiction over a wider and wider range of crimes, all at the expense of local law enforcement agencies; when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Congress exceeded its power to regulate interstate commerce when it extended federal minimum wage and overtime standards to state and local governments; when Presidents and Republican and Democrat lawmakers in Washington  push for even more federal regulations, laws that would pre-empt state statutes, especially state laws that attempt to regulate financial corporations and other types of business – then it is clear that the 250 year old battle by state governors, state legislatures, local mayors, city and county councils to cling to their ‘reserved powers’, has lost ground, a continues to do so.   Even the effort to reverse the trend by one of America’s most popular presidents, former California governor, Ronald Reagan, failed, prompting him to remark: “The most alarming words in our language are: ‘I’m from your federal government and I am here to help.’”

Americans wrestled then, and continue to this very day, with the ‘dual sovereignty’ concept behind the thinking of the framers of the country’s constitution.  Remarkably, much of the heated language in the recent debate in Britain about the future course of the European Union would be recognised by those early American statesmen.   Substitute ‘Brussels’ for Washington and ‘State’s Rights’ for national sovereignty, ‘federal government’ for the European Commission, and you have an uncanny yet almost identical echo of the phrases any historian of the American experience would immediately recognise. Moreover, the vote to leave by more than half of the participating British electorate gives real meaning to Professor Walzer’s observation that “Politics follows nationality wherever politics is free.” Walzer’s prescient views are contemporary and clearly have relevance today.  But he comes as the latest in a long line of scholars and political philosophers who have tried to unravel the complex knot we know as ‘nationality.’  Many of them were European, for whom understanding nationality essentially meant fathoming the reasons behind the most puzzling conundrum in Europe’s long history – why so many wars?

Indeed, it largely goes unremarked that Europe has been a uniquely dangerous place in modern times.  The conflicts that have involved European nations over the last two centuries alone total nearly 150, from the hideous World Wars which began in Europe and then engulfed the entire planet, to countless smaller and forgotten civil confrontations and uprisings. The unmistakeable conclusion? Europeans have often resorted to violence to resolve many of their differences, behaviour that contrasts sharply with their self-image as the seat of modern civilisation and culture.  Sadly, they continue into our own day.

§

“We were not allowed to go into this room.” Marie-Helene Von Mach is showing the BBC’s Allan Little the Belgian country house where she had a modest role in the founding of the European Union. “I was only twenty, and a typist for all of these important people.”  The building is Chateau de Val Duchesse, which in the summer of 1956 was where Marie-Helene reported at eight o’clock each morning.  She was sworn to secrecy about the goings-on inside this former priory, built in 1780.

The “important people” can be compared to those American patriots who gathered in Philadelphia in the 18th century.  And the Chateau was the equivalent of Independence Hall, except for one fact: only a handful of selected government officials and senior civil servants knew what was happening within the walls of Val Duchesse.  Allan Little takes up the story:

This is where they wrote the Treaty of Rome.  Its driving force was Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian foreign minister who would go on to become secretary general of Nato. Like most Europeans of his generation, Spaak had lived his entire life in the shadow of war: twice in 30 years, conflict between France and Germany had led to a global conflagration that had now left Europe in ruins. The six nations (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) that gathered at Val Duchesse that summer had something in common: they had seen democracy and individual liberty swept away by dictatorship; national sovereignty swept away by invasion, military defeat and foreign occupation. The leaders of all six had lost faith in national sovereignty; they wanted to build a new kind of political Europe.

Intent on creating a United States of Europe, Spaak and his dedicated colleagues worked almost entirely behind the walls of the Chateau.  Only a handful of high-ranking politicians in the participating countries had any idea what was going on.  Allan Little again:

Marie-Helene and the others had to sign contracts which banned them from talking about their work, even to their families.  There was little reference to public opinion; the political elites laboured on in splendid isolation.

What Marie-Helene was typing, and re-typing, were drafts of the Treaty of Rome, Europe’s equivalent of the American Constitution.  But there was no public debate, and certainly no media coverage, meaning that the European Community we know today, and that Britain has just voted to leave, could be seen as an elitist, ‘top-down’ endeavour that, once agreed by the six nations, would be presented to their people as a fait accompli, suggesting a kind of intellectual arrogance that Americans find baffling.  Why?  As Little notes: “From the beginning they struck a tone that dogs the European project to this day: they worked largely in secret…”

In contrast, the fifty-five delegates from the thirteen colonies who began their work in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787, were very well informed about the voters’ views on their assignment.  When the early and soon-to-be replaced Congress resolved to set up the constitutional convention in the February of that year, the act became a major news story.

In his Selling of the Constitutional Convention, American historian John K. Alexander closely follows the news coverage the Congressional resolution provoked.  More than half of the young nation’s nearly sixty newspapers quoted the entire resolution, and soon their readers and columnists took up what was to become a heated debate.  Rivalries and fears were played out, and the shortcomings where one state accused another became front page news.  Rhode Island, for example, was seen as a hotbed of anti-federalist intrigue. But overwhelmingly, the press supported a stronger central government, with one writer arguing that without robust federal institutions, tyranny, anarchy or worse – the complete failure of the American experiment – would result. The delegates at Philadelphia were listening.

§

Political legitimacy derives from openness, surely a truism in the affairs of a nation, or, in this case, a group of nations, whether American or European.  In creating any supra national institution, from the United Nations to the World Bank to the International Court of Justice, there is much to overcome.  Above all is nationalism, the almost unexplainable feeling of loyalty we have to the place where we were born, simply because we were born there.  But it is far from that simple.  Long before Paul-Henri Spaak and his colleagues began their mission, determined to unify Europe for all time, a distinguished 19th century French philosopher made it clear that neither race, religion, geography, nor even a community of interests were sufficient to create a nation.

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things which, properly speaking, are really one and the same constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received. Man does not improvise. The nation, like the individual, is the outcome of a long past of efforts, sacrifices, and devotions. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past with great men and glory (I mean true glory) is the social capital upon which the national idea rests. These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them again. One loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles that one has suffered.

Ernest Renan, writing in 1882.  From Brittany, Renan was one of France’s leading scholars and historians.  In the same treatise, he prophetically added: “Nations are not eternal. They have a beginning and they will have an end. A European confederation will probably replace them.”

Indeed, now a ‘confederation’ is building, much of its foundation in place, the edifice climbs higher and higher.  The architects of a united Europe seem confident of success, as confident as those medieval artisans of Beauvais.  The stunted Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais remains today a reminder of what can go wrong with the best of plans.  Indeed, it might be visible from the top floor of the Berlaymont building, headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, even from the offices of Jean-Claude Junker, the President. He’s on the 13th floor.

 

The post Europe’s Halting Struggle Towards Federation appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Look! A distraction!

Another day, another upheaval in British politics. In the 21 days since the EU referendum, we’ve had more changes of more consequence than in any time since the second world war.

All very grand to say that, but where are we going with all this?

Until yesterday, it was very hard to say, precisely because so much was up in the air. However, with Theresa May’s installation as Prime Minister and his first round of senior appointments to her Cabinet we now have a bit more of a clue.

The starting point is that there is no Tory split, and there is little chance of one any time soon. With the speedy and painless removal of Cameron and Osborne, May has led the pragmatists that make up the bulk of the parliamentary party over to a Brexiting position and brought in the more genuinely sceptic into some positions of consequence. We can take the comparison with Labour as the most instructive one here.

May is also trying to not be overly-defined by Brexit – to listen to her speech outside Number 10 last night, it was only a part of her bigger project to tackle social injustices – and so she has taken several steps to try and achieve this.

The first is to ensure Leavers got the Brexit briefs. David Davis will head up the new department running the negotiations with the EU27, while Liam Fox takes on the establishment of new trading links with the rest of the world. This makes it much harder for critics to say May is backsliding in her approach, but it also ring-fences Brexit so that other ministers have half a chance to get on with their own projects. That’s a sensible move, if an optimistic one: as Brexit proceeds, it’s clear that it will touch (or, more accurately, go to the heart of) many areas of public policy, so May will find herself arbitrating more and more between competing dynamics.

Secondly, she’s played the distraction card, early and hard.

It would be fair to say that in the round ofi nterviews I’ve done since last night, the main topic has been Boris Johnson. I’ve been asked why he got appointed, was he any good, and was it true he ruffles his hair to make it look even more dishevelled than it seems. Let’s tackle the first two elements of this.

Johnson has been brought in close to May by his selection as Foreign Secretary. He was clearly as shocked as everyone else by the decision, because he’d worked out the consequences.

Cast out by his failure to contend the Tory leadership, he looked like toast, destined for a career on TV chat shows. But May has taken the emblematic Brexiteer and stuck him in a position that plays to his strengths, while also limiting his capacity to cause trouble, either for the UK or for May.

It’s fair to say that the past couple of decades have seen a considerable down-grading of the status of foreign ministers, especially in Europe. Prime Ministers and Presidents have become much more engaged in international diplomacy (think of the EU, but also the G7 or G20): at the same time, the intrusion of international cooperation into the full spectrum of public policy has meant other ministers also are taking more of a role. Consequently, foreign ministers’ traditional gate-keeping role has shrunk considerably. They now do some coordination, manage a centre of diplomatic expertise and sell their country around the world.

Seen in that light, Johnson is ideal as Foreign Secretary: charismatic, charming, intelligent, multilingual. Yes, he’s got some apologies to make, but as the UK’s salesman, he’ll do a stand-up job.

Moreover, recall that he’ll be a Foreign Secretary deprived of the two key tasks he might have done: re-forming the UK’s relationship with the EU, and setting up new trading arrangements with everyone else. A man who’ll be spending much of his time on a plane to press the flesh is also a man with less energy and less opportunity for plotting. And ultimately, if he’s no good at his job, he’ll not be able to blame anyone else: it’s not a push to imagine May say, more in sorrow than anger, that Johnson is simply not up to the job and she’ll have to move him on (and out).

So far, then, so clever. Unite the party, sell potential opponents a dummy [sic], contain Brexit and generally make a good fist of things. What could go wrong?

Plenty.

Firstly, we still lack a clear timetable on Article 50 notification. Logically, this will still be in the autumn, when the new government is a bit clearer about things. The EU27 will wait until then too, because they have process and substance debates to settle themselves. But if we get to October without a firm date for notification, then things get much harder for May. The EU27 will be very unhappy (but will have to wait), markets will start making waves, and Brexiteers will start wondering what’s going on.

This said, it’s hard to see this being an issue, as May looks to be very firmly pursuing Brexit, albeit on her timetable and terms. It’d be surprising if we don’t have some indication in the next week on this.

Secondly, there’s the containment issue mentioned above. Brexit is almost inevitably going to eat up much government time and effort, both on the big questions and the fine print. Even if Article 50 is essentially a process of the UK deciding whether to accept the EU27′s offer – rather than a negotiation of equals – there’s still lots of scope for disagreement and surprise.

And this leads to the third element. As decisions and choices are made, some people are going to be unhappy. The Brexit coalition was always far too broad to be satisfied by any given deal, so May has to decide who she’s going to annoy. Right now, that looks like being the harder end of the spectrum, who reject the EEA/Norwegian style model that May seems to favour.

That’s not only an issue with the public, but also within the party. Recall that there is a very small majority, so it only takes a small number of rebels to make May’s life very hard, especially because she doesn’t look like someone going for a snap election.

This is the final paradox. An autumn election would be a distraction, but it would strengthen May’s personal mandate and muzzle Tory critics much more (both through the manifesto commitments and the likely increase in Tory majority). Unfortunately, this is a card she can best play now: if she waits until things look more tricky, then the benefit is likely to be much smaller.

If the past three weeks have been unsettled, then you shouldn’t hold out for a quiet summer.

The post May’s foreign policy gambit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember my (past) obsession with the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) thanks to my PhD research on information flows in EU policy-making during the recent CFP reform.

In a new paper posted on arxiv.org by titled “Exploring the Political Agenda of the European Parliament Using a Dynamic Topic Modeling Approach“, Derek Greene and James P. Cross look into the question what topics are discussed in MEPs’ speeches from 1999-2014 and how to detect this with text mining.

On page 23 of the paper, they show a chart with the number of MEP speeches relating to EU fisheries policy, with a visible spike in the 2009-13 period (my PhD looked in particular at 2009-11), i.e. during the time of the recent CFP reform, with additional spikes at key events.

[Chart from p. 23 about here, will ask the authors whether I can use it]

The authors argue on the following page that:

“As can be seen, MEPs pay a reasonably stable level of attention to fisheries between 2000 and 2010. This trend is interrupted in 2010, when MEP attention to fisheries increases.”

What is ignored in this interpretation is that there had already been a  CFP reform in the early 2000s, including with a 2001 Green Paper on CFP reform. However, different to the 2009 Green Paper, there was no spike in 2001 and also no spike after the 2002 reform proposal was published in late May 2002. I suppose that MEPs’ attention where probably as high back than as it was in the 2010s, but the competencies of the EP to deal with this topic was lower.

Assuming that the data is correct, it shows that making the EU Parliament a co-legislator in core CFP matters under the Lisbon Treaty has made a big difference between 2001-02 and 2009-13. I didn’t study the 2002 reform for my PhD, but one could also assume that the difference in public attention by MEPs in the 2000s and 2010s may also have had different effects on media and general public attention to the topic of EU fisheries policy in both periods.

These observations don’t change the overall argument of the paper by Greene and Cross (where CFP is anyway just one of several topics and by far not the focus). Strictly speaking, it could also be put in line with a more complex view of the punctuated equilibrium theory that they refer to to explain the 2010s spike. But since the paper is just on arxiv.org, I still thought to point this out for the CFP, supposing there is time to reflect this in a version that might go into peer review.

What the data for EU fisheries policy shows in any case is that the agenda dynamics observed by the authors through their data also have to do with the overall competencies of the European Parliament. These have changed over time, not least through the Lisbon Treaty, bringing new topics at the centre stage of the plenary, something that probably will come up quite frequently in the analysis on other policies, too. 

The post What a difference a Treaty makes: CFP reform debates in the 2000s and 2010s appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Drove back from Germany with enough Dylan CDs to cover the ten-hour drive. And had a revelation! This unequalled expert in messy break-ups sounded like he was commenting Brexit in every second song! It’s even possible to put together a full heart-breaking post-referendum dialogue only using Dylan quotes:

UK:

I’ll make my stand and remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give a damn.[1]

EU:

What was it you wanted? Tell me again so I’ll know.
We can start it all over, get it back on the track… [2]

UK:

Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb,
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from.[3]

EU:

I know you haven’t made your mind up yet, but I would never do you wrong,
I’ve known it from the moment that we met, no doubt in my mind where you belong![4]

UK:

The walls of pride are high and wide, can’t see over to the other side.[5]
I’m gonna have to put up a barrier to keep myself away from everyone.[6]

EU:

That’s how it is when things disintegrate.[7]
One more cup of coffee for the road?[8]

UK:

Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay…[9]

EU:

You must leave now, take what you need you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.[10]

Conclusion to the whole drama:

We live in a political world, where courage is a thing of the past.[11]

Albrecht Sonntag,
@albrechtsonntag

[1]              Restless farewell (from The Times They Are A-Changin’, 1964)

[2]              What Was It You Wanted? (from Oh Mercy, 1989)

[3]              Not Dark Yet (from Time Out of Mind, 1997)

[4]              Make You Feel My Love (from Time Out of Mind, 1997)

[5]              Cold Irons Bound (from Time Out of Mind, 1997)

[6]              Dirt Road Blues (from Time Out of Mind, 1997)

[7]              Can’t Wait (from Time Out of Mind, 1997)

[8]              One More Cup of Coffee (from Desire, 1975)

[9]              Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1962)

[10]             It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue ( from Bringing It All Back Home, 1965)

[11]             Political World (from Oh Mercy, 1989)

The post A slow train coming up around the bend appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Paris Agreement opens a whole new chapter in the history of climate change governance, which will also require a paradigm shift in research. What are the main challenges in bringing about this shift?

A remarkable feature of the 2015 Paris Agreement is that it allows countries to draw on a vast array of governance options to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. And yet, knowledge about these governance options remains scarce. Even more complex is the issue of how to address climate change more effectively. How can well performing policies be diffused more rapidly and effectively? How can their effectiveness in reaching different types of climate-related goals be better assessed? Will citizens accept future costs and/or change their behaviour? Providing answers to these questions challenges researchers to clearly identify and devise potential remedies.

Fifteen early career researchers based at several European universities met in February 2016 to discuss these very issues. The two-day workshop “Understanding data frontiers in climate governance research” was hosted by the Department of Political Science of the University of Zurich. While aspiring to respond to the questions posed earlier goes beyond our scope, in this post, we want to draw on the discussions around them that took place during the workshop.

Workshop participants in discussion

The Paris Agreement represents a paradigm shift for climate policy and challenges regarding its implementation and evaluation have been mentioned elsewhere already. Little attention has however been paid to the data-related obstacles to governing climate change after Paris. This is what we focused on during the workshop and would like to briefly outline here.

Firstly, it is clear that no one policy can address the complex task of mitigating climate change alone. This means that we need to consider policy mixes – the interactions between all policies – and also other governance arrangements, including private ones – that may impact climate-related goals in a specific jurisdiction, even if these policies are not specifically meant to address climate change. But, what are relevant policies and how do we assess them? How can their effects be assessed and weighted against each other? Crucially, what data and information do we need to successfully identify and evaluate these policy mixes? From this, it becomes evident that there is an overwhelming need to employ existing – and built new – indices and databases in innovative ways building on bottom-up contributions coming from state and non-state actors. One needs to keep in mind too that for the first time in history Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have been prepared by 189 countries (latest being Guyana’s submission on 20th May 2016), so that information will be needed for a much larger set of countries than ever before.

With regards to climate change adaptation, the picture is especially unclear. A topic that has been heatedly debated since the early 2000, many scientific discussions still focus on establishing what adaptation measures really comprise. In a research field where many different ideas and concepts exist but data is scarce and often contested, efforts to track adaptation in a systematic manner are not only welcomed but greatly needed. The fact that nation states are now formally yet not bindingly requested by the UNFCCC to report their strategies and measures for adaptation, is a useful tool for comparative climate change research. However, particularly for the case of adaptation this comes with a range of challenges. Adaptation policies have implications for an array of different sectors and often, policy choices are constrained by decisions taken at the national level while benefits of adaptation measures are predominantly expected at the local level.

Finally, the change of paradigm requires a better understanding of drivers of policy change, because states will be expected to improve their climate-related policies and commitments in five-year cycles. They will thus need to know how to best encourage those policies that work better. This aspect is probably the most political of the ones featured. However, so far we do not have sufficient systematic information about, for example, the positions that political parties have on issues closely related to climate change mitigation or adaptation. Some recent experimental research has provided insights into citizens’ needs and motivations regarding climate policy.

Beyond the traditional role of states in climate governance, the Paris Agreement highlights the role of non-state actors and how they can cooperate with states in a way that catalyses efforts to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action. Also in this area there is substantial room for improvement. Given the myriad of non-state initiatives that seem to emerge, and how they are strongly interlinked, having comprehensive and accurate information regarding their goals, scope, membership and actual implementation is extremely challenging. Many datasets are emerging that seek to address this goal. However, the available information particularly on effects and effectiveness remains very limited.

The workshop proposal has been jointly written by the Early Career Investigators Network of the COST-funded action INOGOV. The participants owe special thanks to Paula Castro and Jonas Schoenefeld, who dedicated a lot of time and effort to organize this event. The workshop would not have happened without the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The authors wanted to thank Paula Castro, Sebastian Sewerin and Jonas Schoenefeld for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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