Ideas on Europe Blog

Meng-Hsuan Chou

In July 2015, UACES’s (The Academic association for contemporary European studies) European Research Area collaborative research network (CRN) held its second workshop at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) in Cambridge. Knowledge policies continue to be at the forefront of contemporary global politics. There is an accepted belief among policymakers that knowledge is the foundation on which societies coalesce and economies thrive. Indeed, the competition for knowledge can be said to be driving the global race for talent. Building on the theme of the CRN’s first workshop, which explored the diverse roles of the ‘four I’s’ – ideas, interests, instruments and institutions in the ‘knowledge area building exercise’, this workshop invited contributions to examine the politics of knowledge policies in Europe and beyond.

ERA CRN workshop participants (From left: Hannes Hansen-Magnusson, Julie Smith, Inga Ulnicane, Mari Elken, Luis Sanz-Menendez, Laura Cruz-Castro, Pauline Ravinet, Peter Erdelyi, Hannah Moscovitz; Seated: Meng-Hsuan Chou and Mitchell Young) (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

Opening the session on ‘International policies, norms and knowledge policies’, Hannes Hansen-Magnusson (University of Hamburg) proposed a way to account for knowledge in practices of responsibility. In this co-authored paper (with Antje Wiener and Antje Vetterlein), he argued that researchers should uncover meso-level norms in order to ‘increase long-term sustainable normativity under conditions of globalisation’.

Is education policy an ‘internal consolidator or foreign policy vehicle? Amelia Hadfield (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Robert Summerby-Murray (Saint Mary’s University) asked. Using the EU and Canada as their examples, they highlighted how education policy has been co-opted to serve multiple purposes—as the modus operandi for cultivating notions of statehood and belonging, and as an extension to others of prevailing national cultural norms and understanding.

Turning to the session on ‘Regions and the re-configuration of knowledge policy areas: Examples from Canada, Europe and South East Asia’, Hannah Moscovitz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) compared how Quebec and Wallonia used higher education as a tool for identity promotion. She found that their approaches were distinct: whereas Quebec used knowledge policies to consolidate and foster its distinct identity, Wallonia used higher education policies as a promotional tool (the image of ‘Wallonia-Brussels’) to place itself on the global higher education map.

Pauline Ravinet (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

Offering another comparative perspective, Meng-Hsuan Chou (NTU Singapore) and Pauline Ravinet (Université Lille 2) discussed the rise of what they called ‘higher education regionalisms’ around the world. They showed how the supranational and national policy actors in Europe and South East Asia articulated their ambitions to establish common higher education areas in similar ways, but ultimately they adopt very different institutional arrangements for achieving their goals. Chou and Ravinet argued that there are varieties of ‘higher education regionalisms’ around the world and encouraged researchers to examine them empirically.

In the session ‘Studying Europe’s open labour market for researchers’, Inga Ulnicane (University of Vienna) presented the research design for a study for on the European Research Area. Her study will combine academic research and published studies to identify the shortcomings and gaps in priority areas of the ERA such as effective national research systems and transnational cooperation and competition.

Peter Erdelyi (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

In the penultimate session—‘Knowledge policy instrumentation: from failure to reform?’—Péter Erdélyi (Bournemouth University) discussed the rise and fall of UK’s Business Link, a policy instrument the government adopted for furthering its knowledge economy. In this co-authored paper (with Edgar Whitley), he showed the implementation challenges associated with Business Link the UK government faced in its attempts to address market failures impeding the growth of SMEs.

Examining the relationship between ideas and instruments, Mitchell Young (Charles University in Prague) argued that policy instruments embed politics. Using the cases of the new Swedish and Czech performance-based funding tools, along with EU’s framework programmes, he showed how studying policy instruments reveal the ideas and narratives steering politics.

Is there standardisation in higher education? Mari Elken (NIFU and University of Oslo) asked. Taking the case of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and its subsequent translation through National Qualifications Framework (NQF), she showed how the EQF has generated standardisation pressures across Europe. The most surprising element, Elken revealed, has been the voluntary nature of the instrument.

Closing the workshop with the session ‘The institutional design and implementation for excellence’, Thomas König (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) presented three aspects concerning peer reviewing: (1) how it is defined; (2) when it entered the world of research funding; and (3) how the notion is applied in academia and research funding. He showed that peer review plays a very different role in research funding than in academia. In research funding, peer review is used to legitimise funding decisions and is greatly valued for its procedural flexibility.

Finally, in a co-authored paper (with Alberto Benitez-Amado), Luis Sanz-Menendez and Laura Cruz-Castro (both CSIC Institute of Public Goods and Policies) analysed the participation of Spanish universities in the European Research Council (ERC) funding calls. Studying a representative sample of eighteen universities across Spain, they found that Spanish higher education institutions did not respond to the calls in the same way. Put simply, there is no homogeneity in how Spanish universities approach ERC funding calls.

The European Research Area CRN would like to thank UACES and POLIS (University of Cambridge) for their generous support in the hosting of this workshop.

For further information: http://eracrn.wordpress.com

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Carb-loading for the autumn ahead

In these dog days of summer, there’s not much happening in the world of EU politics. Except the on-going debates on the third Greek bailout, arguments about managing asylum applicants and immigrants and the simmering British renegotiation. And the third of these is very much the least, certainly in Continental terms.

To date, the renegotiation has been very low-key: a round of visits to capitals by David Cameron, the briefest of discussions at a European Council and now more substantive talks about nuts and bolts. With most of the British principals on holiday, fighting leadership contests or generally keeping a low profile, it’s an opportunity to see some of the underlying currents more clearly.

This week’s mini-revelation was an article in the Times, claiming that former health secretary, Andrew Lansley, had told a private meeting that the government’s plan is to have a confected ‘row’ with the French, which would be ‘won’ by the British, about the time that the renegotiation was coming to a head, so that the British public could be presented with a stronger-looking package on which to vote (in September 2016, according to Lansley).

Cue much comment from those on the ‘no’ side, decrying the cynicism and the brazenness of the claims.

On the face of it, this is an odd state of affairs. Lansley is one of the more pro-EU figures in the party,  and not obviously a fool, but it’s hard to see how he couldn’t have foreseen his comments being used by others against him. Perhaps he intended his words to be comfort to his audience, in that there would be something to show for the government’s efforts, but one has to wonder.

However, whatever his intentions, the leaking of Lansley’s comments are indicative of the way this renegotiation and referendum campaign have been going.

To date, the main thrust of debate has been procedural, rather than substantive. Cameron has kept his list of objectives deliberately vague, leading to the odd situation where his actual words bear little difference to the rhetoric of reform found in other capitals or in Brussels. Consequently, different groups produce their own wishlists of reforms, but without producing any public debate, beyond that linked to specific issues in the news (most obviously immigration).

Instead, the talk has been about how things are being organised: what’s the wording of the question? what’s the franchise? what limits on campaigning will there be? what about purdah?

The reason for this is two-fold. The first, already mentioned, is that there’s little of substance to discuss. The second is the neither side has any great trust in the other. Certainly, the ‘no’ side seem to hold a genuine fear that each and every opportunity that the government and the ‘yes’ side can take to win some advantage, they will do just that.

Now, one could argue that this is all just part of the way that referenda work, especially when they are within the gift of the government. As the old (political) truism goes, you only hold a referendum when you know what the result is going to be. In this case, Cameron’s hand was forced somewhat, but that doesn’t change the basic calculation, namely that he needs to win this vote and he will do what he can to achieve that. Put like that, one could imagine a sceptical government in this position entertaining similar ideas about generating some helpful outrage as a prelude to a vote on leaving the EU. That doesn’t make it right – certainly in the eyes of voters who are already pretty disillusioned with politicians – but it does make it more understandable.

Of course, by printing Lansley’s comments, the Times has done something more cunning. It has closed down much of the benefit of the potential opportunities to create a positive story around the renegotiations. Imagine that the government does genuinely have a spat (journalese alert) with another member state, which it genuinely resolves to its advantage: even if everyone says it wasn’t contrived, it will be easy for the ‘no’ camp to point to this week’s story and say “I told you so.” In short, this is a lovely bit of political jujitsu, turning a ‘yes’ gain into a loss.

The upshot of this is that no-one is talking about the referendum as a point of resolution, but as a staging post to the next round of the debate. Short of a very substantial majority on a high turnout, the losing side will be able to claim that the vote wasn’t ‘fair’ and that they must fight on – and both sides are willing to do that.

As noted before on this blog, if that meant that there was a national debate about what the UK’s role in the world should be, then that might be alright, but so far this referendum smells of party politics and opportunism. All might well be fair in love, war and referenda, but it doesn’t address the long-term problems confronting the country or the state of democracy.

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A popular saying goes that ‘all politics is local’. While public debate on climate change often focuses on international summits and the political drama of negotiations, the real steps to address climate change will be have to be implemented at a much more local scale. Ultimately, the way we lead our lives – how we use energy, design our communities, how and how far we travel, to name but a few examples – drives our personal climate impact and that of our communities. But although scientific insights indicate that climate change impacts are much closer than one may think, many of us still envision it as a far-away problem that will affect other parts of the world in the future. [1] Unfortunately, we don’t care much about problems that will happen later and mainly to others. But we need to care. Scientists, journalists and communicators have thus turned to highlighting the local consequences of climate change – such as extreme weather events, sea level rise and the like – with the assumption that doing so will persuade people, and their policy-makers, to act. For example, in 2003, Rajendra Pachauri—then the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—stressed that “I am aware that there is an opportunity for much political debate when you start to predict the impact of climate change on specific regions. But if you want action you must provide this information”.[2] In a recent study, we tested this assumption about the effect of local climate information empirically. Our research[3] suggests that simply highlighting local climate impacts may not be enough stimulate action and could in some cases even backfire.

In an experiment, we asked people, who live in the U.S. state of Vermont, to what extent they care about other communities/people (self-transcendent values), or their own status and power (self-enhancing values). Prior research suggests that people with self-transcendent values tend to be more concerned about environmental issues and act on them compared with their self-enhancing peers. After assessing value orientations, our study participants received information about climate change. One group[4] received information on local climate impacts (in the Vermont region), while another group received information on global climate impacts (focusing on other regions in the world – i.e., not in Vermont). A control group received no climate information. Following this stage, we asked participants how important they thought climate change was, the extent to which they were willing to make changes in their lives to reduce their personal contribution to climate change (e.g., driving less), and their support for climate policy measures. As we expected, regardless of the kind of information (global or local), participants who held a strong, versus weak, self-transcendent values were more concerned about climate change, more willing to engage in pro-environmental behaviour (such as switching to public transportation), and more supportive of climate policy. However, the focus of the climate information – local or global – greatly mattered for individuals with strong self-enhancing values. For these individuals, hearing about likely local impacts of climate change was demotivating. Instead of spurring action, hearing the local projections about increased flooding and other likely local outcomes made self-enhancing people care less than their similar self-transcendent value oriented peers who read about global outcomes.

We had expected that giving self-enhancing people information about local climate impacts that could affect their personal status (e.g., through reduced incomes in the Vermont skiing industry) would highlight the importance of climate change and thus lead to increased action. But perhaps those high in a need for status, enhancement, and power, feel particularly threatened by reading about the local impacts of climate change.  This is a reminder that any connections among caring, values, and proximity are complicated and that there is not one message that will work for everyone. However, recent research hints at approaches that could prevent this backlash. Researchers from Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions  found that simply asking people to consider their legacy can increase environmental concern[5].  Perhaps if we had simultaneously grounded our self-enhancing individuals in local outcomes while asking them to consider their personal legacy, our findings would have been different. Future research should further explore the effects we identified, particularly in other regions of the world. But until we have better knowledge, we would caution against simply assuming that local information frames will increase concern and action, because doing so may prove ineffective or even counter-productive with some people.

Please note: this article has also been published on Talking Climate and the Tyndall Centre‘s website.

[1] E.g., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Smith, N. (2011). Global warming’s six Americas. Yale University and George Mason University.

[2] Schiermeier, Q. (2003). Climate panel to seize political hot potatoes. Nature, 421(6926), 879-879.

[3] Schoenefeld, J. J., & McCauley, M. R. (2015). Local is not always better: the impact of climate information on values, behavior and policy support. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 1-9.

[4] Group assignment was random.

[5] Zaval, L., Markowitz, E.M., & Weber, E. U. (2015). How will I be remembered? Conserving the environment for the sake of one’s legacy. Psychological Science, 26, 231-236.

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The car is important for our personal mobility; it gives you freedom and independence. In rural areas and small towns a car is necessary to be able to get around, whereas people living in cities often do not own a car as their mobility is orientated towards walking, biking or public transport within the urban environment. The following blog post explores how our choice of place to live influences our personal mobility, especially the difference between car owners and users of public transport, and our orientation towards the urban or rural.  Many of the observations are based on my personal experience as a non-car owner, which are linked to my research interests in mobility and politics of sustainable mobility.

Currently, new students across Europe are moving away from home and looking for accommodation near their universities. Roskilde University (RUC) is located 24 min by train from Copenhagen central station, although there are halls of residence available next to RUC most students prefer to live in Copenhagen because the capital offers lots of opportunities e.g. cafes, bars and shops. Some students even think the train journey from Copenhagen to RUC is too long or too expensive instead their personal mobility is orientated towards their local neighbourhood instead of their place of education.  (Please note most RUC students do come to university, my comments refer to a small minority). After graduation, some RUC students move to Roskilde[i] to live with their families because the town gives them a better quality of life compared to central Copenhagen. Throughout our lives we have different life style preferences, different use of infrastructure changes together with these stages and the choices we make about which life style we want.

Living in Roskilde; I have always seen myself as having a broad mobility horizon, yet not owning a car does limit my mobility.  I often take the train to Copenhagen to use cultural opportunities available in the capital and to visit friends. Crucially the public infrastructure mainly feed traffic between the capital and surrounding towns instead of connecting urban and rural areas. Consequently, I have neglected exploring the rural area west of Roskilde[ii], partly because it is not well connected by public transport – typical 1 bus per hour or 1 bus every 2 hour. Interestingly, when I was living in Leeds (the UK) I would often take the bus to Ilkley and go hiking in the Ilkley moors[iii], something I have missed whilst living in Roskilde for the past 3 years.  Thus I have certain mobility biases, which are shaped by my interests, social network and lack of car-ownership!

This spring a friend invited me to a fruit wine festival in Falster, which is a 2 hour drive from Roskilde. The farm can only be reached by car. In Australia, the USA or Germany people travel for several hours to watch a football match or visit friends/family. The size of Denmark makes it possible to reach most corners within a 5 hour drive, but in most countries non-car owners are restricted by availability of public transport, which mainly connects the territorial core and urban areas because it is not economic sustainable to run public transport is rural areas. Hence, due to my non-car ownership I had missed out tasting some amazing apple ciders!

It can be challenging to visit a friend if you do not have a car, unless the friend lives in an urban area with good access to public transport. It takes 24 min by car from Roskilde to visit a friend, who lives 26 km away in a small town in the rural area of Zealand (the same distance to Copenhagen city centre) yet by public transport it takes either 45 min or 1h 14 min depending on which route you take, just as there is only one connection an hour and only during the day.  It can take just as long to reach friends living in suburbs near Copenhagen, yet there are more connections, which makes it more accessible. Interestingly, the main climbing wall in Copenhagen is located on Refshaleøen, which is an island in central Copenhagen, yet there is limited public transport after 6pm. By comparison the climbing club in Hvalsø, south west of Roskilde, is accessible by hourly train from Roskilde. Thus, urban areas have pockets which are inaccessible by public transport.

The above three examples tie into the ongoing Danish political debate about rural versus urban (udkantsdanmark), which essentially is about the economic core versus economic periphery. The debate has mainly focused on housing market and investment in transport infrastructure. Our choice of living is structured by our work place, income, social network, children’s day care facilities and accessible infrastructure. Yet we have agency to choose where we live, our preference for a rural, village, town, suburban or city life style influence our choice of place to call home. Importantly, an urban/city dweller can still enjoy nature and a rural dweller still enjoys the cultural attractions of the city. Life is not static, as a student you have different preferences compared to a family, a single person or a pensioner, so it is natural to move between city, suburban and rural living. Indeed I know several people who have made the transition between city and rural lives successfully. Each type of life style and stage in your life require access to infrastructure, and our patterns of mobility will be affected by our choice of place to live. Here the question of car ownership and availability of public transport is important for us as individuals, yet our personal mobility is also influenced by political priorities in relation to investment in road infrastructure versus public transport.

(I would like to thank fellow kayaking enthusiast E.B. for inspiration and challenging my urban non-car ownership life style)

[i] http://www.visitroskilde.dk/roskilde-lejre/turist and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskilde

[ii] Skjoldungelandet (Sagnlandet, Boserup skov og Bognæs), several local microbreweries

[iii] http://www.ilkleymoor.org/

The post Personal mobility – life without a car appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference marked a shift in international climate governance. As the system of agreeing international emissions reductions targets and then negotiating individual country contribution towards that target proved increasingly unworkable, there has been a drive towards a much more bottom-up form of climate governance. In preparation for the Paris summit later this year, countries are submitting Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the international community, hoping that together, these contributions will add up to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. These national pledges are—at least in part—backed up by a range of decentralized activities by countries, regions, cities, as well as businesses, civil society and others, who have been taking their own initiatives to address climate change. But what do we know about this bottom-up approach to climate governance and can it work?

In a recent article published in Nature Climate Change[1], we seek to shed some light on the distribution, the origins and the consequences of these bottom-up approaches to addressing climate change. Past research highlights a proliferating number of initiatives at various levels and in various places. For example, studies have documented a great number of international initiatives, transnational approaches[2], as well as a significant growth in national legislation to address climate change with 500 laws and policies addressing climate change in 66 countries in 2013, up from only 40 in 1997. We also know that there is a range of motivations for politicians, business leaders and others to engage in mitigation of climate change – some financial, some non-financial incentives. However, while this body of knowledge has accumulated, we know comparatively little about the consequences, or effects, of these bottom-up approaches. A key question is does bottom-up climate governance add up to something significant? And does it deliver? And by which criteria should it be evaluated?

Evaluating the performance of these bottom-up forms of governance raises a range of technical and political challenges. The international climate regime has struggled to consistently evaluate performance, such that much depends on self-reporting by states and other actors. In these compliance exercises, the focus has often been on whole countries and sometimes whether certain country characteristics, such as institutions or democratic governance drive performance, but often not individual policies. For instance, while we know that the European Union has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, much less is known about the causal factors behind this – was it simply a renewal of old industries (e.g., after German reunification or the switch from coal to gas in the UK), the economic crisis, carbon leakage to countries not bound by emission reductions or policies that created incentives for renewable energy, legislation for energy efficiency, emissions trading, or a combination of all these factors? The ever-increasing number of bottom-up approaches, with some reaching beyond national borders, exacerbates these evaluation challenges.

There is very little comparative data on individual climate policies and initiatives, particularly on a range of intended or unintended (and often important) side effects beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions. In particular, while the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) focuses on ex-ante predictions of actual policy effects, there is currently a dearth of information on ex-post (i.e., retrospective) evaluations of policy effects. Technical difficulties and low resources may partly explain this lack of knowledge. But policy-makers may lack incentives to provide such information, because it could potentially highlight the ineffectiveness of ‘their’ policies.[3]

We know even less about the effects of transnational approaches, where an energetic debate is underway regarding the criteria to use for evaluation. Evaluation research has taught us that complex activities need to be evaluated using multiple criteria.[4] ‘Hard outcomes’ such as greenhouse gas emission reductions are the ultimate proof, but they may not materialize immediately, and ‘soft’ outcomes such as building trust and learning may be necessary to create conditions for significant reductions of emissions. But to learn more we need to investigate effects from multiple perspectives and with multiple tools, including an examination of some very simple features, for example whether new initiatives incorporate monitoring and evaluation that support learning from all the new efforts. Another important question to ask is whether these approaches last long enough to have enduring effects.

Taken together, we conclude that much remains to be learned on the effectiveness of bottom-up climate governance. The jury is still out on whether it can fill the gaps left by the Kyoto-based international climate regime. To make robust conclusions possible we need a concerted research effort on the merits of these new approaches to climate governance. Policy-makers would be well advised to support new approaches, but not to abandon the more traditional international negotiation processes before we know more about what actually can be achieved through bottom-up climate governance.

[1] Jordan, A.J.; Huitema, D.; Hildén, M.; van Asselt,H.; Rayner, T.J.; Schoenefeld, J.J.; Tosun, J.; Forster, J.;  Boasson, E.L. Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects Nature Climate Change. Available at http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2725.html

[2] Bulkeley, H. (2014). Transnational climate change governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Hildén, M., Jordan, A., & Rayner, T. (2014). Climate policy innovation: developing an evaluation perspective. Environmental Politics, 23(5), 884-905.

[4] Mickwitz, P. (2013). Policy evaluation. In A. Jordan, & C. Adelle (Eds.), Environmental policy in the EU: Actors, institutions and processes (pp. 267-286). London; New York: Routledge.

The post How Well Does Bottom-Up Climate Governance Work? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

• Inaccurate and misleading: The Daily Mail’s reporting of Calais asylum seekers

Setting the tone for the week, the ‘Mail on Sunday’ in their front-page report expressed outrage that hundreds of ‘illegal’ migrants arriving in Britain from Calais are being put up in hotels at tax payers’ expense. The problem?  There were not ‘hundreds’ but at most one-hundred being temporarily accommodated in hotels, and these people were not ‘illegal migrants’ but asylum seekers fleeing war and terror.

The next day the Mail continued its onslaught against the Calais refugees with another front page claiming that, ’70% of the thousands of migrants massing at Calais are making it to Britain.’  The problem?  The Mail had misquoted the Chief Constable of Kent’s evidence to Parliament.  He said that 70% of the migrants in Calais leave within four months but it wasn’t known how many of them go elsewhere in France or reach Britain.

As the independent fact checking organisation, Full Fact, pointed out:

‘There’s no evidence that 7 in 10 Calais migrants are entering the UK’.

This the Mail did report in their story, but much lower down on the inside pages, when they accurately quoted Kent’s Chief Constable, Alan Pughsley, as telling Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee that it could not be ascertained, ‘whether these migrants leave to go elsewhere in France, or whether they enter the UK.’

But this little half-hidden full-truth in the story didn’t stop the Mail calculating all their statistics on the false premise that Mr Pughsley had instead said, as their opening story claimed, that 70% do make it to Britain (even though Mr Pughsley never said that).

On that basis then, since there are estimated to be 5,000 migrants now ‘amassed’ in Calais, according to The Mail statistics department it must mean that around 3,500 (i.e. 70% of 5,000) were making it to Britain.  Oh and that of course must surely mean that 900 of these ‘illegal’ migrants are arriving from Calais to Britain every month.

It’s nonsense of course, but this is the world as The Mail sees it; or rather as they want their readers to see it, because this misinformation (rather than the truth) reinforces their readers prejudices against asylum seekers.  And that, of course, is how the Mail sells their newspapers to their ‘market’.

Having reported the mistruth as an established fact, with the unwitting source being the Chief Constable of Kent (without his knowledge or consent), the Mail could then refer to this as a ‘fact’ in future stories and editorials.  So, last Friday, in their leading editorial comment, the Daily Mail felt confident to repeat their ‘fact’ and pontificate:

‘As we learned this week, 70 per cent of those who reach Calais eventually make it to England.’

Voila, the Mail’s mistruth was now an established truth: 70% of Calais migrants were making it to Britain.  The Mail could now unashamedly quote this as a fact, without even bothering to refer to their maligned original source (after all, why would the Mail want to alert the Chief Constable of Kent that what he had told a prominent Parliamentary Committee was being grievously misquoted by the newspaper?)

Since this was now being repeatedly circulated by The Mail as the truth, other media and politicians could quote from it, reinforcing that yes, the Mail must be right, others are saying it too. If anyone asked the Mail where this so-called ‘fact’ came from, the Mail could vaguely answer oh, it was the Chief Constable of Kent who said this, and he must surely know!

The same technique was employed in the ‘Mail on Sunday’ story claiming that ‘hundreds’ of migrants illegally arriving from Calais were being put-up in hotels at tax payers’ expense. That’s at least what the story reported on the front page and first paragraphs.

Lower down the story on the inside pages, however, the Mail added, as an aside to the main thrust of their article, that only 100 were being accommodated in hotels by Serco, the private firm contracted by the government. Did the Mail hope that readers wouldn’t spot the difference between ‘hundreds’ and ‘one hundred’?

And only lower down the story did The Mail stop referring to ‘illegal’ migrants and instead correctly describe them as ‘asylum seekers’.

So when I complained to the Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday, Mr John Wellington, that the Mail’s story had incorrectly reported that ‘hundreds’ of asylum seekers were being temporarily accommodated in hotels, whereas in fact there were just one hundred, he was able to respond to me, “The figure was clearly presented as an estimate and explained lower down in the story when we said that Serco admitted 100 recent arrivals were staying in hotels.”

It seems that at the Mail’s highest management not an eyebrow is raised nor a forehead furrowed when it’s pointed out that so-called ‘facts’ presented in the opening headlines and paragraphs of an article don’t match what’s presented “lower down in the story”.

Those who have studied the Daily Mail method of  journalism might agree with me that this is a well known technique.

In my view, these two Daily Mail stories misreported the truth to enable a sensational front page headline and opening paragraphs, which were then ‘balanced’ by more accurate information albeit subtly hidden ‘lower down’ the story.  That way the Mail, if challenged (as indeed I have challenged them) can respond that that their story, after all, was accurate, because look, there it is ‘lower down’ in the story.  (Even though the front page headline and opening sentences didn’t match what was presented ‘lower down’).

This is surely too clever by far to be considered a mistake? Could this be a purposeful technique employed by the Mail to enable them to fashion their headlines and stories to match a view of the world which they know will appeal and therefore sell to their market (readership)?

I wonder how many Mail readers actually spotted that the headlines and opening paragraphs in these two stories bore little resemblance to the more accurate but less noticeable reporting that inconspicuously took place ‘lower down’?  In fact, how many readers just glanced at the front page headlines and never actually read the rest of the story on page 5 or 10 or wherever?

Some might consider that presenting seemingly incorrect or misleading information in the headline of a story and then subtly balancing it with more accurate information ‘lower down’ to be the work of geniuses, worthy of a post-graduate thesis on effective propaganda techniques.

But I consider this to be the lowest form of journalism, that does not serve the interests of this country or its citizens well, or that of refugees who are fleeing horrible wars and terror.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related stories by Jon Danzig:

• Daily Express business model: selling prejudice and bigotry?
• Mail outrage: Asylum seekers are given food and board
• Daily Mail and Calais: Making it up as they go along?
• Calais: Questions the Mail must answer
• Calais: Mail inaccuracies not significant, says Editor

• New Facebook page:  Jon Danzig Writes. On Facebook, click the ‘Like’ button to get updates

#DailyMail coverage of #Calais #refugees crisis is a disgrace. Read and share my latest blog: http://t.co/mnXOT3rCNd pic.twitter.com/EcoGOch8Ps

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 10, 2015

I report #DailyMail’s #Calais misquote to @kent_police and @UKParliament Read latest update http://t.co/j93Lrrrx1R pic.twitter.com/7GhCdFZ5TR

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 10, 2015

8 Steps Towards #Genocide – and how the #DailyMail portrays #immigrants and #refugees See: http://t.co/ohg4Z83TTh pic.twitter.com/r8VuI6Ibrm

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 16, 2015

There are 8 steps to #Genocide says @genocide_watch. Is the #DailyMail stepping closer? Read http://t.co/oO2t3hoaL0 pic.twitter.com/otvydSUucH

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 17, 2015

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In a press release of 1st July 2015, the German electrolyser plant construction company ETOGAS, reported how it delivered an electrolyser system to a site used by the Austrian energy company RAG Rohöl Aufsuchungs Aktiengeselleschaft in the town of Unterpilsbach in Austria. According to the press release, the equipment consisted of a 40 foot electrolysis container and a 20 foot transformer/ rectifier container.

The statement went on to say: “It will supply hydrogen for the flagship project ‘Underground Sun Storage’, which is managed by RAG. This project is the first to explore the option of storing wind and solar energy in a former natural gas reservoir.”

Electrolyser manufacturers such as ETOGAS and ITM Power, are showing energy companies how solar and wind power generation can become more efficient with the help of energy storage. The key to this process is the electrolyser, which uses the electricity generated from renewable energy sources of solar and wind power to produce hydrogen gas. The gas can either be injected directly into the gas supply network – as is happening at the Thüga Group’s power-to-gas plant at Frankfurt-am-Main, which uses ITM Power’s PEM electrolyser to produce hydrogen – or in the case with RAG’s Underground Sun Storage project, the gas can be stored in an underground storage facility until it is needed at times of peak demand.

These recent developments show how gas from sustainable sources may one day supersede the supply of natural gas and oil from fossil sources. The old argument that wind turbines and solar panels are unreliable as they only produce electricity when it is windy or when the sun is shining has become outdated, because with the conversion and storage of electrical energy as gas, the gas can be turned back into electricity at other times such as on a still day or at night or when there is greater consumer demand. In doing so it will help to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Sources

http://www.etogas.com/news/aktuelles-news/

http://www.underground-sun-storage.at

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2015

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Early this morning, the President of the EU Council has announced that a deal had been reached. After one referendum and a collection of ultimatums, Grexit is out of the question, for now. The details of the agreement remain unspecified as I write these lines. The Guardian reports that, this last intense weekend, the German Government proposed measures such as Greece leaving the Euro temporarily if it refused a new bailout or, Greece setting aside €50 billion worth of assets as collateral for an eventual privatisation (hopefully, the Acropolis wasn’t in the list of assets). The paper says that the proposals “did not enjoy a consensus among eurozone leaders”, which is a slight relief.

At this point, the exact lyrics of the song have not been made public, but the stage where they have to be performed is well known. In 2013, the UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights warned that “the prospects of a significant number of Greeks securing an adequate standard of living in line with international human rights standards have been compromised by bailout conditions imposed by Greece’s international lenders”. After visiting the country, he denounced that more than 10% of the population lived in extreme poverty. National economy has shrunk by a quarter since the beginning of the implementation of extreme cuts in 2010, with rocketing unemployment (nearly 30%), especially among youngsters (twice that percentage). In late 2014, the FIDH and the Hellenic League for Human Rights reported a similarly bleak picture, with radical cuts in minimum wages since 2012 (22-32%) and rising inequality.

164 countries from all over the world, including all EU Member States, have ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), which demands from Governments the adoption of all necessary measures to achieve progressively the full satisfaction of the rights to work, housing, health and education, among others. All EU Member States have also ratified the European Social Charter, either the original (1961) or the revised one (1996). Economic, social and cultural rights are also included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000), “which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties” (Article 6.1 of the Treaty of the European Union, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009). State Parties ratified these international treaties freely and in exercise of their national sovereignty. They are required to abide by their clauses, which in many cases are considered to be part of domestic law. Most countries have even proclaimed one or more socioeconomic rights in their national constitutions.

A number of commentators have written that European countries are genuine believers in human rights, and particularly, of economic and social rights (Whelan, 2010). For some, rights would belong to their “cosmopolitan creed” (Brysk, 2009). For others, countries would promote human rights norms “for reasons that relate to their identities as members of the international society” (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). It has also been said that “human rights have become a central factor in the interests of democratic nations because they increasingly define social identities”, and “it would be very difficult for a European state to consistently abuse human rights and still be deemed to belong to contemporary ‘Europe’” (Adler, 1997).

I believe the Greek tragedy proves them wrong. Economic and social rights have played absolutely no role in the discussion of the austerity pack imposed on Greece. Arguably, not even economics mattered that much, on the basis of the failure of austerity to lift any significant indicator.

European countries have ratified most major human rights treaties, including those related to economic and social rights. However, if Europeans truly believed in economic and social rights, the austerity imposed via bailout would have had to respect those very rights. But the story went differently, as Greeks know too well.

European countries ratify and promote international human rights norms, but they do not do so as a matter of justice. They must have other reasons to endorse the international human rights regime.

Koldo Casla

@koldo_casla

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Of the four main European Institutions,[1] the European Parliament (EP) has most struggled to be heard on the recent crises affecting Europe (monetary, economic, social, environmental…).[2] At a time when the European project is at great risk, and when European leaders struggle to define a common European interest, it is perhaps time to turn to the EP, and to give more powers to the only directly elected institution at EU level. After all, the EP is conventionally presented[3] as less bound by national interests, and in certain policy areas such as environmental policy, social justice or civil liberties, as being more ambitious than the Council of Ministers. Hence empowering the European Parliament could be a way of determining a common European interest and alternative solutions to the European crises than those currently supported by the European Commission and the European Council.

But all of these speculations rest on one key assumption: that we know how a stronger European Parliament would behave. More precisely, that it would rise above national interests and deliver a greener EU that is more socially-inclusive and respectful of civil liberties. But would the European Parliament necessarily behave like that? In this blog post, I argue that before granting yet more power to the European Parliament, we need to analyse what impact new powers have had on the EP in the past.  I argue that we cannot always expect the European Parliament to be more liberal and greener than the rest of the institutions. But even though the EP is not green by default, including the EP in policy discussions yields interesting outcomes, opening the way for an alternative take on the different crises to be aired at EU level. I build this argument based on a paper I presented at the 16th UACES Student Forum conference held at Queen’s University Belfast last week, as well as on the other papers on our panel on the EP as an actor, by Martin Wirtz and Ching-Yi Chen.

There is a growing literature which investigates whether greater power means the EP’s more radical policy positions (greener, more attentive to civil liberties etc.) gain greater clout at EU level, or whether the EP changes positions once granted further powers, becoming a tame team player. Work by Burns & Carter on the environment or by Ripoll Servent on civil liberties and trade [4] tend to stress that the EP is losing its unique voice as it gets more powerful. To a certain extent, our discussions in Belfast confirmed this finding. Thus,  by looking at the recent 2013 CAP reform, Martin Wirtz showed in his paper that MEPs are not necessarily impervious to national interests — when distributed costs among member states are clear, national voting patterns can emerge. This raises doubts as to whether the EP could be better at coming up with a common solution than the European Council or the Council of Ministers, if it is also bound by national interests in situations with clearly distributed costs. Not only is it doubtful that the EP would propose a more “European” solution, it is also doubtful that it would propose a greener one. Hence in my paper on greening in the latest CAP reform I explain how the European Parliament, working together with the Council of Ministers, hollowed out the Commission’s flagship greening initiative, the Green Payment.

These two cases offer a clear warning to people keen to pin their hopes on the European Parliament. But we should not take these cases to mean that we can expect nothing new or different from the Parliament compared to what the other institutions would produce. For example, our discussions in Belfast shed light on two key characteristics of the EP’s actions: the EP can be unpredictable and it can be increasingly independent. First, Ching-Yi Chen’s paper on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a perfect example of the EP’s unpredictability. As directly elected politicians, MEPs can be more easily swayed by citizens’ mobilisation than the rest of Brussels. In the case of ACTA, civil protest in Central and Eastern Member States served to shed light on the negative impacts ACTA would have on the rights of internet users. This helped foster opposition to ACTA among left wing parties in the EP, as well as to split the main right wing group, leading the EP to reject ACTA. The shadow of ACTA’s rejection still hangs over the current discussion within the EP about TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, currently discussed with the US government – which contrary to ACTA could have strong environmental consequences – making other EU actors as well as the EP leadership very wary of how a vote on TTIP would go. Second, my paper on the CAP reform puts forward the argument that the EP did not simply weaken the Commission’s green agenda, it proposed and fostered an alternative path to greening the CAP – through stronger voluntary payments – a clear sign of the EP following its own independent path.

To conclude, looking back at the effects of recent changes to the EP power, it is far from certain that  further empowering the European Parliament would give way to a more “European” and greener response to the different crises shaking the EU. The EP is not always impervious to national interests, nor is it necessarily greener. But empowering the EP nevertheless shakes up discussions in Brussels, giving voice to an unpredictable and increasingly independent actor.

[1] The European Parliament, European Commission, Council of the European Union (ex. Council of Ministers) and the European Council.

[2] As illustrated by Angelos Loukakis’s paper on discussions on the Greek crisis and the EP’s failure to reply to the European Commission’s 2015 Work Programme, even though the programme contained some highly contested measures regarding environmental policy.

[3] Indeed a previous post on this blog presents a short overview of the academic debate on the question.

[4] See for example Neil Carter & Charlotte Burns’ project “Is the European Parliament an Environmental Champion?” and, on trade and civil liberties, the work of Ariadna Ripoll Servent.

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Little over a month ago, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was still claiming that his party’s electoral victory last January had put an end to bailout programmes. A few days ago, he told the Greek people that a ‘No’ vote in the Greek referendum would lead to a deal with Greece’s creditors within 48 hours. More than 48 hours after the ‘No’ vote, there is no deal and his government has formally requested a third bailout programme.

This request coupled with Mr. Tsipras’ decision to replace controversial Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis might produce the impression that the Greek government’s position has shifted closer to that of its creditors and that an agreement has become more likely. Sadly, this is not the case. Since the Greek government decided to abandon negotiations with its creditors to hold a referendum, the distance between the Greek government’s position and that of its creditors has grown greater.

The Greek people rejected the last offer that Greece was made before their government abandoned negotiations with its creditors. Additionally, the Greek government’s request for a third bailout programme has raised the issue of debt relief yet again. Greece’s creditors, however, have indicated that a third bailout programme will require Greece to accept stricter conditions than those included in the offer that the Greek people rejected. As far as debt relief is concerned, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was perfectly clear: ‘There can be no question of a haircut’.

Given that the distance between the Greek government and its creditors has increased, an agreement seems unlikely. Even if the Greek government agrees to stricter conditions than those that the Greek people have rejected, ratification of such an agreement by the Greek parliament cannot be guaranteed. In fact, the large margin by which the Greek people rejected the last offer of Greece’s creditors and the fact that their offer was rejected in every single constituency suggest that the seats of those MPs who might vote against stricter conditions are safe.

An agreement without stricter conditions might be possible, if Greece’s EU partners decided that ensuring the irreversibility of Eurozone integration is more important than enforcing compliance with Eurozone rules. Ratification of such an agreement by national parliaments cannot be guaranteed either. Opposition to additional financial assistance to Greece runs at about 70% amongst the German public. The seats of those MPs who might approve such financial assistance would not be safe.

Several months ago, then SYRIZA MEP Manolis Glezos had the integrity to apologise to the Greek people for his role in creating the ‘illusion’ that SYRIZA’s electoral victory would put an end to bailout programmes. Mr. Tsipras should follow his example. Not only has his government requested yet another bailout programme for Greece, but it also seems to have placed itself in a position, from which an agreement on a third programme seems unlikely.

Kyriakos Moumoutzis is a Lecturer in European and International Politics at King’s College London.

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What I want to offer you, is a simple definition of globalization. I said, a simple definition. But what I mean by that is, in fact, two things. Globalization is two things. It’s the extension, intensification, and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. And at the same time, it’s a big buzzword. A big buzzword of political speech that’s used by business leaders, by political leaders, by protestors, in different ways but nevertheless, used as a buzzword to make politically charged arguments about how the world is shaping up and where it should be headed.

Now, to understand globalization we have to understand both these definitions at the same time and look carefully at how they interact with one another. So let’s look first at globalization in the first sense. Globalization as the extension, intensification and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. What are those interconnections? Well, all together they form ties, global ties, or interdependencies as some social scientists call them. These include global trade ties, the global ties of workers and consumers, the ties of global finance and money flows, the ties of global law-making through trade agreements and human rights law-making, the ties of governments to one another, but also the ties that markets increasingly have around and through government action, including the ties markets have on our governance of our personal relation, the ties also of our spaces, between spaces, between territories, and ties that therefore also change the meaning of territory and the ties of global health.

These are all some of the key interdependencies that we’ll be looking at in the upcoming articles. But as we do so, I want to emphasize that it’s very important that we keep the second definition of globalization in our minds at the same time. This is  globalization with a capital G or big G globalization, as I refer to it in some of the upcoming articles.

Now, looking at globalization with a capital G means paying close attention to how it does discursive work, how it makes political arguments in a simple sound bite. The protestors in Seattle, back in 1999, who were protesting the World Trade Organization often carried banners that said, no globalization without representation. And they, in a sense, were using globalization as a, a political politically charged term of discourse when they were doing so. Of course, they were harkening back to the old  arguments of the American revolutionaries of no taxation without representation. But they were doing so to make an argument that global market ties were creating a kind of market like globalization that came without any kind of political representation for ordinary people. So they were contesting a certain standardized vision of globalization, a packaged market vision of globalization. And so they were using the term in the big G kind of way. But as they did so, I think they did another thing, whether they meant to or not.

They basically said with that slogan no globalization without representation, that globalization is always an act, when it’s used as a term, it’s always an act of representation. It involves representational politics. And this is something I want to address both today and in the upcoming lectures.

So why the need to distinguish between little g globalization, the term for global interdependency, and big G globalization, the term for the buzzword in political speak? I think there are at least three good reasons for doing this. First of all, I want to avoid gesture or tendency that’s found in a lot of other introductions to globalization. Introductions by other academics who offer great studies of the interdependencies, but who often think that we can put the politically charged arguments to one side.

When they do this, they go through what I like to call the Globalization 3 Step. They say first of all, that there’s too much exaggeration by what they call hyper-globalists. The hyper-globalists who exaggerate globalization, who make too much a big deal out of big G globalization, and confuse everybody by making exaggerations and making politically charged arguments. They don’t want to be like that. But secondly, the second move of their 3 step, they also don’t want to be like, what they call the skeptic. The skeptics who are so serious, they think everything is just continuing the way it always has done historically. You know, nothing much has changed, the governments of the world still run their countries, borders still exist. Globalization is all hog wash and too much exaggeration, say the skeptics.

Well, the advocates of the middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism think that the skeptics have got it wrong too. That things have changed, that the interdependencies are consequential and they have really changed the world. They’ve changed our everyday lives. They think, therefore, that we can chart a sober and unbiased analytical middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism. And in some respects, I want to follow them in, in, that middle way myself. But, I don’t want to put big G Globalization to one side. I actually am interested in why some people want to be skeptics and why other people want to be hyper-globalists.

I want to look at what arguments those people are making and what they want to achieve politically by making them. So introducing this term, big G Globalization, allows us to do that. It allows us to look at the impact of the discourse on the reorganization of
society around the world. And there are a number of scholars to have done this. Manfred Steger, for example, in his book Globalisms is an example of someone who’s interested in how discourses about globalization make a difference in the world.

So introducing this doubled up definition of globalization not only allows us to look at how big G discourses of globalization have shaped the world, but it also allows up to look at how the world and global dynamics, global interdependencies shape discourses
about globalization.

The relationships go both ways and this in turn helps us understand how academic approaches to globalization have themselves been shaped by the history of global development. The modern social sciences and the humanities the fields of study that give us the, the richest picture of globalization, at least in the way it’s going to be discussed in my upcoming lectures, are all disciplines that have emerged out of a particular kind of global history.

This has enabled them to see the world in particular ways, but it’s also limited what they can see, particularly in our own contemporary moment of globalization. And that’s because many of them were founded in the 19th century and the 20th century, when the nation state was the major object of focus of study, the major analytically counting center for all kinds of statistics. The word statistics goes back to the nation-state, state-istics.

I want to explain why it’s important by turning to the old, very globally traveled fable of the elephant and the blind villagers. Now in the traditional telling of this story, the villagers can’t work out what the elephant is. They feel the side and thinks it’s a wall. They feel the tusk and thinks it’s a spear. They feel the tail and they feel, they think it’s a rope. That’s the traditional idea.

In some religious retellings of this story, it’s as if the elephant is a God that ordinary mortals cannot understand. And to some extent, that’s a good metaphor for big G Globalization, because it’s often invoked as a kind of God about which we cannot fully understand, that has all these grand effects that we can’t fully come to terms with, but that’s not my main point here. I’m interested more in, in how the social sciences are a little bit like the the blind villagers and that they all need to go beyond the limitations of their own particular perspectives by fashioning an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization, the elephant as a whole. To make my point a little bit clearer, let’s think about some social sciences. Economics, for example, sees something of a tusk or a spear of globalization in following the money flows of global finance and of global economic integration. But it doesn’t always put those money flows and economic data into a political context. Political science does focus on the political context but because of its foundation in the modern 20th century tends to look at nation states as the most important political context and doesn’t always look at the transnational state making that has arisen because of economic ties across borders. Geographers my own discipline, tend to focus on what globalization looks like on the ground and the way it’s changed the ground, but in ways that don’t always fully examine the history of globalization. Historians, and, and scholars of English literature, or other world literatures, tend to focus on national history or national culture in ways that don’t fully examine the interconnections of culture and history globally.

Now in all these disciplines you can find examples of scholars, many examples, in fact, of scholars who reach beyond the national template and try to fashion an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization.

The post Defining Globalization. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons

Dovilė Rimkutė

As Majone (1999) has observed, the approval of EU authority – as a predominantly regulatory political system – is based on the perception that supranational regulation corrects market failures by relying on a technical exercise and scientific knowledge managed by independent regulators, e.g. the European Commission and European independent agencies. Experts and scientific knowledge has played a key role in EU politics and its significance is increasing as well as takes on new shapes (Gornitzka and Holst, 2015). However, against this backdrop, an increasing body of literature has observed that scientific experts’ involvement in regulatory processes is rather contested (Gornitzka and Holst, 2015; Schrefler, 2010; Radaelli, 2009; Boswell, 2008). Scholars argue that even though regulatory duties are deemed to be a highly scientific pursuit predominantly focused on the technical-instrumental use of scientific knowledge, expertise can actually have many functions in policy/decision-making. That is, alongside the technical-instrumental (or problem-solving) use of knowledge, European regulators can also employ strategic or symbolic uses of scientific expertise.

To that end, the recent publications of Rimkutė and Haverland (2015) and Rimkutė (2015) contribute to this scholarship focusing on the role and functions of scientific knowledge by empirically examining how expertise is used by European regulators and by providing theoretical explanations regarding the variance in scientific knowledge use by supranational regulators.

How do scientists perceive their role in EU policy-making?

The article entitled “How does the European Commission use scientific expertise? Results from a survey of scientific members of the Commission’s expert committees” builds on the recent scholarship introducing a typology of knowledge use (Schrefler, 2010; Radaelli, 2009; Boswell, 2008) and suggests further improvements in its conceptualisation and operationalization, however, in particular it aims at empirical contribution. The article informs the debates on the role of scientific expertise in European Union policy-making, a query that is particularly relevant in the case of the Commission’s exclusive responsibility and duty to initiate proposals. In this article, we sought to go beyond the existing case studies by systematically tapping into the use of scientific knowledge across various policy issues and Directorates General (DG) of the Commission. We contribute to the literature with a large-N study in which we surveyed more than a 100 scientists who had participated in the Commission expert groups. In particular, we focused on how scientists’ advice was used by the Commission, and asked: what attitudes do scientists providing scientific advice to the European Commission hold regarding their contribution to policies shaped and adapted at the EU level? How do scientists perceive their role in EU policy-making?

When and under what conditions different uses of scientific expertise prevail

The article “Explaining Differences in Scientific Expertise Use: The Politics of Pesticides” further explores how European regulator – European regulatory agencies – actually contend with their core tasks of providing scientific advice to EU institutions. In this contribution, I go one step further and contribute to the theoretical explanation of when and under what conditions different uses of scientific knowledge prevail. I draw upon the theoretical insights of sociological institutionalism and resource dependence theory. The core argument of the article is that whether the regulatory policy process can yield efficient and credible problem-solving solutions is contingent upon both (1) the external environment in which a certain scientific output production process takes place, i.e. the level of formal and informal pressure and (2) the internal agency’s capacity to produce science-based outputs (Rimkutė, 2015: 116).

Risk assessments by the European Food Safety Authority

In empirical analysis, I focus on one type of knowledge use – strategic substantiating – that refers to those practices in which an agency seeks to promote and justify its own or external actors’ predetermined preferences, which are based on certain values, political or economic interests. The strategic substantiating use of scientific knowledge is expected to occur under the conditions of high external pressure and high scientific capacity.  To test this theoretical expectation, the case of the neonicotinoid pesticides risk assessment for bees has been selected. The risk assessment has been produced by the key European risk assessor in food safety regulation – European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The empirical analysis combines a variety of data sources including official documents, press releases, scientific outputs, and 10 semi-structured interviews with the academic and industry experts involved in the process.

Specifically, the case of neonicotinoid pesticides has been selected as EFSA in this particular case possessed a high capacity to produce scientific expertise because it successfully mobilised internal human resources: the largest EFSA’s unit—the Pesticides Unit— was in charge of drafting scientific outputs. In addition, EFSA had much sound external research evidence at its disposal when drafting scientific conclusions: extensive sources of expertise, data, knowledge, and understanding of honeybees and the neonicotinoid pesticides. However, the organisational field in which EFSA had to deliver its scientific opinion consisted of defined opposing positions (laboratory research vs. field research) and the conflicting configurations of inter-organisational structures competing with each other (industry vs. beekeeping associations and NGOs). The biggest chemical manufacturers in Europe, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta AG, have been actively involved in the process and in due course have filed legal actions challenging the Commission’s restrictions and accused the Commission of not relying on the entire scientific evidence available and, in so doing, they challenged the EU pesticide regulation.

The article empirically illustrated that such conditions paved the way for the strategic substantiating use of expertise. It concludes that the interaction between high external pressure and high internal capacity leads to the strategic substantiating use of expertise, in which scientific evidence is used to promote the inclinations of actors upon which the agency depends most.

This study develops starting points for further research as it introduced a general theory explaining the differences in scientific expertise use, which have been tested only partly and in one particular context, i.e. one issue within one EU regulatory agency. However, the theoretical argument of the article could be said to be relevant to all expertise bodies acting on the basis of scientific knowledge, including the Commission, comitology committees, national agencies, international organisations, or other executive, regulatory or information bodies whose expertise feeds into various policy-making stages. To that end, I suggest that testing the theoretical explanations outlined in the article in different contexts would clearly be a requisite for further research.

Dovilė Rimkutė has been a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München, Germany since March 2014. Before joining LMU she held a Marie Curie scholarship for Early Stage Researchers and worked as a Research Associate at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research. Her research interests cover a range of European Union policy/decision-making topics, however, risk regulation and evidence-based governance in EU regulatory processes and factors affecting it take a central role. In her PhD research, Dovilė examines regulatory science practices employed by EU (quasi-) risk regulators – European regulatory agencies – by drawing upon the theoretical insights of sociological institutionalism and resource dependence theory. Contact: Dovile.rimke@gmail.com

References:

Boswell, C. (2008). The political functions of expert knowledge: Knowledge and legitimation in European Union immigration policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 15(4), 471-488.

Gornitzka, Å. and Holst, C. (2015). The Expert-Executive Nexus in the EU: An Introduction. Politics and Governance, 3 (1): 1-21

Majone, G. (1999). ‘The regulatory state and its legitimacy problems’, West European Politics, 22 (1): 1-13.

Radaelli, C.M. (2009). Measuring policy learning across Europe: regulatory impact assessment in comparative perspective, Journal of European Public Policy, 16 (8): 1145–1164.

Rimkute, D. (2015). Explaining differences in scientific expertise use: The politics of pesticides. Politics and Governance, 3 (1): 114-127.

Rimkute, D. and Haverland, M. (2015). How does the European Commission use scientific expertise? Results from a survey of scientific members of the Commission’s expert committees. Comparative European Politics, 13 (4): 430–449.

Schrefler, L. (2010). The usage of scientific knowledge by independent regulatory agencies. Governance, 23(2): 309-330.

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When Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras decided to unilaterally abandon negotiations over Greece’s so-called ‘bailout programme’ and to propose a referendum on the latest offer that Greece had been made, he employed a tactic that is common in negotiations in the European Union (EU): using difficulties with domestic ratification of EU agreements to extract concessions. Paradoxically, no agreement was reached in this particular case, but Mr. Tsipras believes that once the Greek people have rejected the latest offer of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the three ‘institutions’ will have to make them a better one. As he put it: ‘The day following the democratic choice, and a proud “No” to subjugation and to indignity, our country will have a much stronger negotiating position, and it will be the moment of truth for the creditors. They will finally understand that Greece is not going to surrender, that Greece is not a game that is over’.

Prior to Mr. Tsipras’ announcement regarding the referendum, the ratification difficulties that he has tried to use were real. The constituency in favour of the policies that Greece’s two bailout programmes included was never particularly large. The (partial) implementation of the two programmes reduced its size further. Many of those whom the two programmes have left worse off and supporting Mr. Tsipras’ Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) used to feel that they have nothing left to lose and that anything would be better than the continuation of austerity. As one of them put it: ‘[A choice] between more austerity or chaos? Chaos’.

The irony for Mr. Tsipras is that as soon as he made his announcement regarding the referendum, ratification of any agreement on any offer that the three ‘institutions’ might make Greece became less difficult. Ratification difficulties diminished as the Greek people caught a glimpse of the alternative to non-agreement/non-ratification. Queues outside banks, in supermarkets and at petrol stations and living in fear of banks running out of money and of shortages of food and fuel. ‘Chaos’, it seems, is no longer preferable to austerity. Opinion polls showing the ‘Yes’ vote ahead have already been reported. Mr. Tsipras has hinted that he will resign if the Greek people vote ‘Yes’. Rightly so. A ‘Yes’ vote will mean either that Mr. Tsipras has failed to implement the mandate that he has been given or that the Greek people have rescinded their mandate. If this proves to be the case, the announcement regarding the Greek referendum will have been the beginning of the end for Mr. Tsipras.

Kyriakos Moumoutzis is a Lecturer in European and International Politics at King’s College London.

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There is much to give concern in the world of European politics these days. From Greece to the UK, the Mediterranean to Finland (even Austria), you don’t have to look far to find examples of ‘how it’s all going belly up’ (to quote one of my colleagues).

It would be simple to take the counsel of despair, throw our hands up and reject it all. Surely everything tells us that Nigel is right and we should just put ourselves out of our own misery now. What possible value can there be in a system that tramples on Greek democracy, demonstrates scant respect for those who have risked their lives to reach our countries and apparently couldn’t organise an economic recovery worth the name, when everyone else did it some years ago?

Eurosceptics have long made much of how the EU holds back states, either economically or politically (or both), but never have such arguments had such resonance: my Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of people decrying it all and wondering it’s worth it any more.

I have a degree of sympathy with such views: certainly the Greek crisis has been a masterclass in how to make things worse, with all sides making unreasonable assumptions and not accepting that they have to make some concession. The realisation of the profound interdependence between all the actors is there, but only partial – each knows that it has the other over the proverbial barrel, but hasn’t yet worked out that they are in the same situation too.

And yet.

All of these things highlight that we do live in an interconnected system, where the actions of one affect the lives of others. Contrast this to the dark days of 2008/9 as the great recession broke. Then the reflex was to national action, supported by global coordination: the European level of governance felt (and was) largely irrelevant. For all that people talk of being ‘ruled by Brussels’, Brussels mostly sat on its hands or followed the lead of the G20 or of member states: anyone who thinks the 6-pack resolved the situation needs to go and look again.

But now the European level is central once more. This is partly because of the issues involved: Greece’s economic situation is directly linked to its membership of the Euro, the migrant crisis is linked to the Dublin Convention and Schengen, the British Tories seem to focus on little else. But it’s also because the EU is a relevant political arena and the way in which European states treat with each other is very different from how it used to be.

And here’s the rub. as Rafael Behr rightly pointed out in a great piece yesterday, the EU isn’t here to crush democracy. I wrote something similar last autumn:

The EU is not a hegemonising monster, intent on steam-rolling everyone and everything into uniform submission, but a mechanism for accommodating differences.

That might feel somewhat unsatisfactory, but Behr asks us to consider the alternatives.

A collapse of the Union would certainly come with transition costs, whatever the ultimate outcome, particularly for states like Greece. The removal of a system of institutionalised interaction might offer succor to those who would take a more autarkic and/or nationalistic view of the world, if only because goodwill might be in short supply.

If this sounds like ‘Project Fear‘ again, then maybe reflect on this last point. Perhaps the only reason people feel they can confidently talk about stepping away from the EU model is precisely that model has made a more stable and non-conflictual way of working with each other possible. The big question then has to be whether attitudes have changed fundamentally or remain contingent.

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From the beginning, the European Union has been polarising in Britain. The past four decades of membership have been marked by sustained debate on the extent and shape of British participation in the European project. Some have always rejected the notion that Britain can and should integrate with the rest of Europe. Others have supported Britain’s involvement in parts of the EU, particularly in the economic sphere. Few have wholeheartedly embraced European integration to the levels historically seen in the ‘core’ of Europe.

European Council 7-8.2.2013, European Council, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In this respect, British reluctance to sign up to different aspects of the EU has been a function of internal prevarication on setting a foreign policy that reflects Britain’s place in the world. The question of ‘Europe’ has divided parties from within and without. Consequently, the UK’s ongoing renegotiation and eventual referendum on EU membership need to be filtered through the lens of national context. Both are the result of electoral politics in Britain rather than momentous change in the EU’s design.

The Prime Minister’s renegotiation will naturally derive its objectives from domestic political considerations. The outcome of the renegotiation, however, will depend greatly on the willingness of Britain’s European partners to work with the suggestions placed before them. This external dimension – the politics at European level – is fundamental to any deal which may be agreed.

By definition, a negotiation necessitates negotiating partners. In this case, the UK government’s main interlocutors are the governments of the other EU Member States (with a role for the EU institutions as well). These governments do not all share the same interests nor have they presented a united front against Britain in its desire to change how the EU works – far from it. A number of EU countries support some of the options for reform emanating from London. At the same time, three main points on which they broadly agree might make the renegotiation more challenging than hoped.

First, they have other pressing issues on the European agenda. The sovereign debt difficulties facing Greece, garnering great attention is recent weeks, is only one of a number of serious questions preoccupying European leaders. These pressing issues may take priority over discussing the details of the UK government’s demands to amend EU rules. Considering the tight timetable the Prime Minister has set himself, the postponing of solving the ‘British question’ to a later date could make securing a deal even more complicated.

Second, Europe’s leaders are generally happy with the EU’s architectural framework and not predisposed to making dramatic alterations. Desire to weaken the integrity of the internal market by altering the rules of the free movement of persons, for example, is minimal. Nor are other EU countries keen to see the multiplication of opt-outs or special rules just for Britain. While the will exists to work with the UK government to address its concerns, any EU changes agreed are likely to be relatively modest.

Third, the countries which share the single currency may well amend the governance of the Eurozone without changing the EU treaties. It seems unlikely, therefore, that Britain can simply tack on its demands to treaty reform certain to happen. The EU treaties could eventually be updated to incorporate the Fiscal Compact and related measures, but this prospect seems years down the line. In any case, securing treaty change in time for a referendum by 2017 would be a Herculean feat.

The obstacles to securing a substantive renegotiation within the set timetable are numerous. However, the actual renegotiation is but one part of the equation in (re)shaping Britain’s relationship with the EU. How the deal is presented at home and the arguments made in the campaign are likely to be much more influential to the referendum result. The external dimension may well determine the substance of the renegotiation, but the national context, as ever, will determine the outcome of the referendum.

This article was originally published on European Futures.

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Shortened link: britainseurope.uk/20150626

How to cite this article:

Salamone, A (2015) ‘The External Dimension to Britain’s EU Membership’, Britain’s Europe (Ideas on Europe), 26 Jun 2015, britainseurope.uk/20150626

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Even this is not going to cut it…

Earlier this morning – a bit before 8am, in fact – a family friend turned up at our house, ‘for breakfast’. This turned out to be a misunderstanding of what we had thought was a jocular exchange of texts last night and certainly was not one the house was prepared for. Of course, being archtypes (of a type), we just put the kettle on and had a laugh about it.

I mention this as a very mundane example of a perception gap, the mis-signalling of intentions and actions. In much of our lives, we can just have a cuppa and move on, but this week is demonstrating how sometimes that process can run away from people. Today’s European Council is a case in point.

It’s as depressing an agenda as you’ve ever seen, from Greece to Calais, with a detour to the UK over dinner. It looks very hard for anyone to pull much positive news out of that little pile.

But rather than dwell on that aspect, it’s perhaps more productive to consider the perception gap between the UK and the EU.

For those critical of the EU, we might break down their views of the different problems into the following categories:

“The EU is ineffectual”

The Calais strikes and attendant migrant crisis have been treated with much restraint by the Government, who recognise that annoying the French authorities isn’t any kind of productive option right now. But sceptics have been much more free-flowing in their attacks.

To take just one example, the UKIP MEP Nathan Gill tweeted: “Absolute chaos at Eurostar as all trains cancelled due to migrants storming the tunnels. #NoThanks to EU open borders” Quite what he thinks the EU should have done to stop or remove the strikers or the migrants isn’t clear, but the failure to have (relatively) free movement is clearly a stick with which to beat those in favour of integration.

Likewise, criticism of the French government for allowing migrants to traverse France to get to Calais in the first place highlights a lack of understanding about Schengen, not to mention a questionnable attitude to the use of profiling in police checks. Would they be any happier if the gendarmerie stopped anyone who looked like an ‘illegal migrant’? A difficult stance, especially for UKIP with its professed non-racist or xenophobic position.

“The EU is other people’s problems”

As today and tomorrow will expose all too clearly, one country’s problem is actually every countries’ problem in the EU. This has always been true, but until the Union institutionalised the interdependencies that wasn’t always so evident. Thus what happens with Greece has material impacts on all other member states, regardless of whether they are eurozone members or not.

Which makes the heterogeneity of Cameron’s talking point all the more obvious. In a system of give and take, he has to sit through long discussions about Greece - without being a eurozone member – and the migrant crisis – without being a Schengen member, and having made clear the UK won’t take any quota of migrants – before asking everyone to do him a favour. Small wonder that attitudes have been cool and distracted: other member states’ governments appear more comfortable with accepting that they are part of a system that requires some leaning-in and helping out, not just injunctions to ‘sort it out’.

“The EU has no future”

The concatenation of problems now facing the EU makes this argument seem ever more compelling. One does not have to look far to see the signs of discord and tension, from Hungary questioning its Dublin Convention commitments, to Marine Le Pen talking of leaving the Union, to Renzi’s secretive ‘Plan B‘ to handle the influx of Mediterranean migrants. Everyone looks hacked off, everyone seems on edge.

In the British context, that has some impact on the referendum debate, as the ‘No’ side continue to paint a picture of a deadweight EU, dragging down the UK. Business for Britain’s ‘Change or Go‘ report – being slowly released this week – is very much in this vein of thinking.

That might all be true, but the great unknown is whether any of the alternatives facing Europe are any better. If the EU breaks up, then what happens to the liberalisation of markers that has run far ahead of the rest of the world? What happens to an Eastern Europe confronted by a Russia that is already highly adept at exploiting division? What happens to all the other institutions of cooperation, like NATO? If we can’t prosper together, why should we apart?

This is the point where someone accuses me of doom-mongering, and I guess there is an aspect of that, but it would surely be remiss not to at least consider such questions, at least to come to answers that provide some reassurance.

The EU isn’t perfect, but perfection is impossible. Perhaps if we worked to make what we have better, rather than scrap it all, we might make some progress.

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Tomorrow, on 24 June 2015, the European Parliament is expected to approve the legal details of Jean-Claude Juncker’s investment plan and the related European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). This plan has been sold as a major innovation, but our research has shown that it is actually the continuation of existing EU policies, just at a larger scale. Does it still mean we are on the way towards political budget cycles in the EU?

Next week, we – Klaus H. Goetz (with whom I work here in Munich) and myself – are going to present a paper* titled “From Politicised Budgeting to Political Budgets in the EU” at the Milan International Conference on Public Policy.

At the centre of our attention is the Juncker investment plan and whether it is a sign that we are going to see more pronounced political budget cycles in the European Union in coming years. With the promise of achieving up to € 315 billion in new investments, more than double the amount of the EU’s annual budget, Juncker’s initiative definitely looked like something was in the air into that direction when we started working on our paper.

What we find (see Section V. of the paper) is that there are quite a number of ways to interpret what the Juncker plan means for the future – from a just a gradual move in the direction of multiple paths that have started years ago to a quite a radical post-electoral politicisation of EU budgeting.

More interestingly, we found that the leveraging model that was presented as Juncker’s ‘baby’ and innovation has not just been around for ten years but that it was actually already on the political agenda of Barroso five years ago, just a little less ambitious.

To see the striking similarity between Barroso’s and Juncker’s plan, see first this quote from the Juncker’s political agenda in 2014:

I do believe that we can make much better use of the common EU budget and of Union financial instruments such as the European Investment Bank (EIB). We must make use of these public funds available at Union level to stimulate private investment in the real economy.

Now, see the the second quote from Barroso’s political agenda in 2009:

We should work more closely and imaginatively with the European Investment Bank and the private sector. Within the existing instruments, we must further improve the blending between grants from the EU budget and EIB loans, in order to increase the overall leverage effect.

If you read our paper (in particular Section IV) you will understand more in detail how the Juncker plan has evolved over time from an unknown EU policy, and how it was  made something ‘big’ and ‘new’ by increasing scope but also by using quite some political communications to make it look novel and big. How to interpret this in the wider development of EU budgeting is part of a debate worth having.

I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on our paper and our findings. If you happen to be at ICPP in Milan next week, don’t hesitate to contact me in advance for a chat!

Update: See also yesterday’s background paper by the European Parliament Research Service on the EFSI.

*The paper is part of a research project on budgeting in international organisations as part of a larger Research Unit on International Public Administrations, financed by the DFG.

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On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization

From 17 to 19 June 2015, I attended the 14th Annual Conference of the International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC) “Reconstructing Social Theory, History and Practice” at the University of Cambridge, with presentation “On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization” on the 17th of June 2015.

First, the ISTC conference addressed reconstruction, deconstruction, as the past thirty years can been named Age of Deconstruction; and possibilities of a return of history, discussing, whether there are limits to the deconstruction project? Have these limits been reached? What are the possibilities for the “reconstruction” of narratives of long-term historical change? Is it possible to incl. and integrate the insights and contributions of various critiques of knowledge, while at the same time developing new forms of knowledge? Can we submit the project of deconstruction itself to deconstruction? Etc.

Return to history acknowledges history’s “continuing importance as a social-theoretical category and frame, considering [history’s] persistent utility after […] realizations, and accepting the fact that, by most accounts, history has not reached its end.”

“● How would social science disciplines benefit from new perspectives on understanding long-term change?

● What might, could and should a new philosophy of history – subsequent to so many “turns” – look like?

● What are the possibilities for practice in addressing social justice and democracy, with the benefit or in the absence of long-term historical consciousness?”

Second – The text of my presentation:

The Structure:

Two main premises:

1)  The philosophy of history could have had different development as it has today;

2)    Could there be an alternative or alternatives to neoliberal globalization.

Subquestions:

● Socialism (revolutionary socialism, reformist constitutional socialism) vs. industrial capitalism – as a starting point

● „Traces of moral thought“ and „religious injunctions“ influencing law (Klabbers, Piiparinen)

● Defining normative order (Klabbers, Piiparinen), political ideology (Heywood) and morality (Kant)

● Justifiability of law on moral grounds or on normative grounds (religion, social norm, cultural practice, etc.)

● Examples of different levels (Christianity-Judaism; Judaism-Islam; Marxism-capitalism; Soviet socialist law-capitalist civil law; structuralists-poststructuralists; poststructuralists-Islam; Western cultural practice-Islam; etc.) /The initial idea was to compare modernism-postmodernism, socialism-postsocialism, liberalism-neoliberalism, critical theory-positivism, naturalism-positivism, and then postsocialism-postpostsocialism, postmodernism-postsocialism, poststructuralism-postmodernism, neoliberalism-psotstructuralism, etc./

● Kant’s idea of international and cosmopolitan justice – perpetual peace – in the light of the previous

● The politics of framing in global (and EU) governance / agenda setting

● The role of a lawyer – drawing extralegal concerns into law?

● Who could decide?

Problems:

● Could legal history have developed differently if human thought had in history developed differently?

● Why could there be alternative(s) to neoliberal globalization?

For the structure, I have used the texts of Kant, Klabbers/Piiparinen in order to make my argument that follows in the body:

[I] most recently have worked with EU accountability, incl. political accountability

According to Aristotle, things have both: form and substance / content.

For better understanding political accountability, I first attempted at mapping politics, by mapping political parties at European level and in Estonia, which method – combined with history research – allowed me to estimate transformation of politics in Estonia. – Such research was oriented toward form / structure, and did not say much about political (party) ideologies, except making some conclusions according to the parties’ own assertions about their position on the political right-left scale, although my research also established that more important than what a political party says about its ideology, should be its actual behaviour.

My research also established – agreeing with Chantal Mouffe – that political party ideologies are not easily distinguishable in the contemporary World, because – and Mouffe names two reasons: 1) the right-wing addresses for populist aims left-wing arguments, whereas the left-wing uses right-wing arguments, and 2) there are certain concerns that all political parties would address, such as environment, women’s rights, etc.

Mouffe concludes that although it is dangerous phenomenon, because it limits choice – and, consequently, antagonism always remains and should remain into politics – today’s political parties mostly seem to have reached consensus at the centre btw. centre-right and centre-left.

Mouffe explains such as impossibility to find an alternative to neoliberal globalization.

Now, this was the turning-point for me, because it made me think about the history of political thought from different angle.

One example of antagonism is socialism that – as utopian idea and reaction – appeared against industrial capitalism, resumed by Heywood as having an aim to end capitalist economy and replace it with common ownership. Such development can be divided into: revolutionary socialism (that developed into Communism), and reformist constitutional socialism that turned into social-democrat ideologies.

I understand Mouffe’s conclusion about impossibility of finding an alternative to neoliberal globalization as a-kind-of stop in socialist thought, although neoliberalism refers to greater community / State influence in markets (and, thus, to socialist influence).

One has to take into account that reality exists independently of human cognition, even though humans may not identify it and despite our understandings of reality, which is an old description of the relation btw. objectivity and subjectivity (the latter being constrained in time and space too much to adequately understand and communicate objectivity.)

The relevance for law of the previous:

Jan Klabbers and Touko Piiparinen in book “Normative Pluralism and International Law” (Cambridge University Press, ASIL Studies in International Legal Theory, 2013), explains law as a social phenomenon, containing: “traces of moral thought” or “religious injunctions” detaining meaning and changing over time. They establish that also religions contain normativity, and define “normative order” as “normative control system” – signifying a set of related commands: “Do’s” and “Don’ts” that stem from the same or related source(s).

That way, normative orders are understood as wholes of norms of social control.

Based on understanding “norms” as “rules of behaviour” … whiches breach is accompanied by liability. For that reason, Klabbers and Piiparinen see law as a distinct normative order.

Similarly, religion can be regarded as distinct normative order.

What concerns morals, I would understand morals as quite a distinct from normativity phenomemon, because all human thought does not contain coercive capacity like law or norms. I would derive from Kant who explains morals also as sth. Developing through experience, incl. knowledge about different thinkers.

At the same time, law is related to political morals, ideologies and philosophical thought. We all live in politics – a human being is already by the very nature Zwv noLitikwov.

Schaffer has a concern related to that – if decisions in a society are not grounded in empirics and experience (for example, here lies an advantage of American sociology that is indexial), they can be dangerous, unpredictable, and even have disastrous consequences.

Unger if of opinion that law is an expression of political ideology – thus, the same applies toward legal decisions, and applies toward international law that regulates international relations – thus also social and political processes.

There coexist several normative orders, for example, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, in addition to law. Then, there exist different political ideologies, such as social-democracy, … And there coexist different moral theories, most recently, such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, neoliberalism, critical theory, etc., the latter do not entail enforcement mechanisms.

Although these all are not equal categories, one can bring the following examples: 1) while Christianity is centred around liberation, Islam and Judaism are centred around commandments, thus, prescribing for the “free will” how to behave for the benefit of the community and the governors – thus, Islam and Judaism can actually be considered political ideologies, too, although normative; 2) while Marxism favours nationalization, capitalism favours unequal distribution of capital; 3) while speculation under Soviet Socialist laws was punishable under criminal laws, regulation of resale forms a common part of capitalist civil laws; 4) while structures / forms are important for structuralists, poststructuralists consider ideas / content more important than form; 5) while poststructuralists justify human pleasure, some forms of it are forbidden in Islam; 6) while headscarves are not common in Western cultural tradition, they are prescribed for women in Islam. 7) One could continue here, and actually, before reading Klabbers, Piiparinen, my initial idea was to that way compare modernism-postmodernism, socialism-postsocialism, liberalism-neoliberalism, critical theory-positivism, naturalism-positivism, and then postsocialism-postpostsocialism, postmodernism-postsocialism, poststructuralism-postmodernism, neoliberalism-psotstructuralism, etc.

Thus – society (and law) have to deal with collision of norms, but not solely of norms, but also of concerns of real politics or justice.

Immanuel Kant – who has defined morals – advanced the idea of international and cosmopolitan justice – perpetual peace – being possible, when mature societies reach consensus in peaceful coexistence. All moral questions, according to Kant, are thought in a particular situation – thus “applied moral questions.” Kant also talks about inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another, because various selves interrelate in a community.

Francis Fukuyama’s idea was that liberal democracies do not go to war with each other – and here, to my mind, the word “democracy” refers to consensus and “common moral character.”

Thus, it is relevant to relate law with morals, and in such context analyse historical development of moral thought.

Piiparinen claims that not only one but more spheres of authority are in control of the World – and they may all derive their authority from legal or other norms and theories, for legitimacy.

Still, my presentation derives from the premises that: 1) law should be morally respectable; 2) law should be in harmony with the society it aims to regulate; 3) law can have effects on the society if regulates.

Important is what are the individual moralities who should shape law (that shapes individual moralities) similarly to different normative orders.

Klabbers and Piiparinen explain such as the politics of framing. And to illustrate that, asks, whether the intervention over Kosovo should be judged by moral standards or legal standards?

For lawyers, such position of question is connected with legitimacy, meaning – if illegal, would one be allowed to derive justification from morals (which could be a slippery slope, because morals is fragmented – a comprehensive understanding of universal morals is absent, and understanding and interpretation of morals is subjective, depending on the interpreting person’s education, life experience, intellectual and cognitive abilities, etc.)

Klabbers and Piiparinen still conclude that if morally acceptable, an illegal practice may be accepted and even become new law. The same authors see the problem in drawing the line btw. morally justifiable and morally unjustifiable – which is determined by subjective people.

The problem is that if to question people, many would feel that there was a conflict btw. law and morals at Kosovo, but if to ask people to specify what kind of morals was breached in Kosovo, even the lawyers would have problems with finding the relevant arguments.

On the other hand, maybe such is not the task of lawyers at all – because a good practising lawyer is supposed to rather apply law as precisely as possible than to make a new law through interpretation (be it critical or not).

Then – where from and how to draw extralegal concerns into law? With the aim to justify illegal acts?

Because if every judge or other person applying law would independently justify by moral concerns – such could easily laed to a situation, where, say, judge A would justify a behaviour by poststructural “praise” of pleasure, whereas judge B would justify the same behaviour by Islamic understanding.

Could there exist a common understanding of which religion (if religion to be brought into play at all) or which morals or politics to follow in case law is silent or just does not seem right. (Could such be allowed at all, as by such law looses some of its authority.)

If still needed, could a “common frame of reference” be here possible for global governance? Because – according to Aristotle, democracy is only democracy if everyone feels s/he belongs, and no one feels oppressed, excluded or disempowered.

Politics of framing in global Agenda-setting.

Legitimacy is one of the magic words, justifying moral grounds. Hanecke who has interpreted Hegel, talks about psychological need for Recognition, and I would connect that somehow with legitimacy.

Then – can legitimacy take place of normative orders and morals, and if so – who would shape in media and educational processes the common understanding of situations? Who would guide communitarism?

Klabbers and Piiparinen pose such: Who would decide (for common people) what qualifies as legitimate?

The most reasonable way seems to find a reason from history of philosophical thought – and therefore, I would suggest History of Philosophy for the modern society to replace the position, Marxism had before its aims collapsed. Such common theory as one common frame of reference, could demonstrate how politics and law are always contextual and historically situated. There is no such thing as a purely original idea, but development based on previous developments, changing in line with changing contexts.

Not a small problem is that the so-called “Western” philosophical thought could not be understandable (and thus, acceptable) by the rest of the World, which means that if we base international decisions on Western morality solely, we might only be legitimate in the eyes of the Western part of the world.

I ended here, I did not explain, although in the beginning I intended to, why did I head my presentation as “On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization” instead of “On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Democracy,” that could have demanded analysis of democracy and offering alternatives to democracy. As I could not think out more other than meritocracy, it was easier for me to talk about globalization instead.

Theory or ideology – as cultural artefact –may well be replaced by some other cultural artefact. This also applies toward neoliberalism. It is difficult to agree upon political action that could be regarded as “best utopian practice.” The question is how to reach an agreement btw. different multicultural actors on some basis of equality that applies toward democratic law-making procedures as sth. similar to Kantian theory of law describing all legal philosophies, while critical interests are only subjective and everyone’s critical interests cannot be the same over all history. I would not dare to say that sth. ontologically new should emerge, but development has entailed certain rules – a new development always builds on previous development.

Questions my presentation received (as far as I am able to de-/reconstruct):

-Is Mouffe arguing for de-antagonistic politics?

-Why did socialist movements emerge? And don’t they emerge anymore as capitalism is still criticized by socialist ideas?

-What is legitimacy?

-Doesn’t legitimacy mean institutional legitimacy? (I explained that L. has different dimensions and levels; in addition, today I started to think that L. probably may mean Hegelian “Recognition,” too.)

Other important questions raised:

The post On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This week I’m in Moldova, for a workshop of our TEMPUS project INOTLES. You’ve probably not been to Moldova, but Chisinau is a very pleasant city around which to walk, albeit one in which the local UNDP office looks like one of the more important buildings.

To be here – in a country that has possibly the lowest GDP per capita in Europe and a geographical location that might best be described as exposed – the world looks a lot different from the view afforded to those living in the UK. Which makes it all the more important to reflect on those differences.

Over the past couple of weeks David Cameron has continued to get his proverbial ducks in a row on the EU referendum. That’s meant both more talks with counterparts elsewhere in the EU and an increasingly fraught passage of the referendum bill through Parliament. That Tory backbenchers are not going to let Cameron get away with anything at all is now very evident, their obstinacy only being encouraged by his apparent unwillingness to defend any position for long.

But the issue for the external observer – perhaps in the Moldovan foreign ministry across the road from where I write – is that the entire enterprise of renegotiation and referendum looks ill-timed and ill-conceived.

For Moldova – and for a lot of other places like it – the EU remains a veritable cornucopia of economic opportunity and safety. This is a country that has suffered at the hands of various forms of external rule, colonialism in all but name. The Transnistria conflict remains frozen after 15 years, and the ructions in Ukraine feel too close for comfort. The EU might be a difficult partner, but at least is one that offers an implicit security guarantee and an institutionalised voice at the table.

That might sound like it’s all well and good for Moldova, but so what for the UK?

The argument would be that the UK is just as exposed as Moldova, albeit for very different reasons. The latter can get by through virtue of being small and having (relatively) small objectives. The former has much bigger objectives – to be a consequential player on the world stage – and so it has to play a different game.

Where the UK has continued to struggle is in its view that the EU is an ‘either/or’ proposition: either you put all your eggs in the one basket with other member states, or you have nothing to do with them.

A moment’s regard to France – still pursuing its own foreign policy – or Germany – still accessing export markets – should demonstrate that the Union is actually a ‘also/and’ organisation: membership is an occasion to further bolster one’s objectives. As I’ve argued here before, European integration can be largely understood as a way for states to secure things that they cannot by themselves.

In addition, there has to be a recognition that the fates of individual European states are bound up together: Moldovans will know this better than Brits, but it’s true for both. As the absolute tragedy of Greece is demonstrating, what happens in one part of the continent matters for everywhere else.

This is not to preach some kind of universalism about European integration, that it accommodates everyone, all the time. However, in a globalising and changing world, the song that drifts across the western Steppe sounds particularly mellifluous: we would do well to listen to it harder across the Channel.

The post The view from Chisinau: Cameron’s fantastic(al) luxury of choice appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

There’s of course nothing wrong with the commemoration of historical battles. Quite the contrary: each time I took students to the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, they got a better idea of why European integration might actually be a good idea. And most of the four-year-long commemorative flow on World War I is produced, if not always in perfect taste, at least with mostly good intentions.

The bicentenary of Waterloo, however, seems to produce the kind of re-enactment and narrative that leaves a sour aftertaste. The very name of the battle is already too closely linked to the Napoleonic epic, and commemoration almost inevitably drifts into the realm of myth and legend. All over the 19th century literature, music, art and historiography have patiently and steadily built the Napoleonic myth of ‘the Great Man’ – whether despised as megalomaniac tyrant or glorified as hero – and it’s difficult to emancipate from this heavy cultural conditioning.

Waterloo has been the object of works by the most prominent novelists and poets of the 19th century. As early as 1815, some months only after the actual event, William Wordsworth, Clemens Brentano and Casimir Delavigne already had made it the topic of their poetry, Lord Byron followed one year later. In the 1830s and 1840s, Balzac, Stendhal, Grabbe, Chateaubriand, Thackeray and Victor Hugo also gave in to the morbid fascination of a battle that had left a minimum of 47,000 dead on a single day.

Emile Erckmann and Alexandra Chatrian.

The best antidote to any temptation of nostalgic glorification of historical warfare, however, can be found in the very credible account of a fictitious French conscript named Joseph Bertha created by Emile Erckmann (1822–1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826–1890) from Alsace-Lorraine. Published in 1864 (and quickly sold in over 1.5 million copies to a mostly rural public), their Waterloo takes the form of a ‘flashback’, in which an old man recollects his memories, emotions and lessons from fifty years ago.

The anti-militarist and anti-nationalist attitudes expressed by the protagonist, who is drawn by force into a war he does neither understand not approve, are a remarkable counterpoint to the zeitgeist of a late 19th century rather characterised by jingoism and revanchism. And the utter realism of his account of battle – clearly based on extensive research by the authors – made even Emile Zola refer with admiration to the authors’ ‘extreme power of description’.

Joseph Bertha as old man. Illustration to the Erckmann-Chatrian novel by Riou (1833-1900).

What is particularly convincing in Joseph Bertha’s narration is the fact that he must admit that as young man he had not been insensitive to ideas of ‘grandeur’ et ‘gloire’, rather easily manipulated by demagogic nationalist brainwash, and even prone to a certain admiration for ‘L’Empereur’. Fifty years later, however, his judgement is unambiguous:

‘I know well that these things are called “glory”, but people would be well advised not to glorify individuals of this kind…’

Erckmann’s and Chatrian’s seemingly ‘naïve’ novel of 1864 is a more than interesting companion through the commemorative frenzy of 2015. It is a stunning account of the reality of war at an age where there were no photographs or amateur videos. And it is a most welcome reminder that ‘greatness’ or ‘glory’ are dangerous and altogether meaningless categories, both for individuals and entire nations. In the Europe of the 21st century they sound hollow and empty, and it’s good to know that they already did for some enlightened Europeans a hundred and fifty years ago.

Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute, ESSCA School of Management.

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