Liberal Intergovernmentalism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Moravcsik
Keyword(s):  
Regional Integration ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Liberal Intergovernmentalism ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S

Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI) is the contemporary “baseline” social scientific and historiographic theory of regional integration—especially as regards the European Union. It rests on three basic assumptions, which in turn support a three-stage theoretical model of integration and the elaboration of numerous distinctive causal mechanisms. Considerable historical and social scientific evidence supports the LI view, but room also remains for scholars to extend and elaborate its framework in promising ways. Three prominent criticisms of LI exist. Some scholars of “administrative politics” charge that it applies only to treaty-amending decisions and other rare circumstances. “Historical institutionalists” charge that it overlooks endogenous feedback from previous decisions. “Post-functionalists” and “constructivists” revive discredited claims from the 1960s that functional theories neglect the central role of identity claims and ideology in explaining national interests. While each criticism contains some truth, LI possesses rich theoretical resources with which to address them fruitfully and musters compelling evidence to support its empirical claims. This confirms LI’s preeminent role in scholarly debates and suggests a soberly optimistic future for European and regional integration.

scholarly journals Intergovernmentalism: Old, Liberal, and New

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Verdun
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Liberal Intergovernmentalism ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
National Governments ◽  
The Eu

European integration theories help us understand the actors and mechanisms that drive European integration. Traditionally, European integration scholars used grand theories of integration to explain why integration progresses or stands still. Born out of assumptions that are prevalent in realist international relations theories, intergovernmentalism was first developed as a theory in opposition to neofunctionalism. In a nutshell, intergovernmentalism argues that states (i.e., national governments or state leaders), based on national interests, determine the outcome of integration. Intergovernmentalism was seen as a plausible explanatory perspective during the 1970s and 1980s, when the integration process seemed to have stalled. Despite the fact that it could not explain many of the gradual incremental changes or informal politics, intergovernmentalism—as did various other approaches—gained renewed popularity in the 1990s, following the launch of liberal intergovernmentalism. During that decade, the study of European integration was burgeoning, triggered in part by the aim to complete the single market and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty that launched the European Union (EU). Intergovernmentalism also often received considerable pushback from researchers who were unconvinced by its core predictions. Attempts to relaunch intergovernmentalism were made in the 2010s, in response to the observation that EU member states played a prominent role in dealing with the various crises that the EU was confronted with at that time, such as the financial crisis and the migration crisis. Although intergovernmentalism is unable —and is not suited—to explain all aspects of European integration, scholars revert to intergovernmentalism as a theoretical approach in particular when examining the role of member states in European politics. Outside the EU, in the international arena (such as the United Nations), intergovernmentalism is also observed when studying various forums in which member states come together to bargain over particular collective outcomes in an intergovernmental setting.

The Institutional and Constitutional Aspects of the Arab Maghreb Union and the Dispute on Western Sahara as an Obstacle: What Role does the European Union Play in Promoting Maghreb Regional Integration?

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 284-318
Author(s):  
Mohamed Riyad M. Almosly
Keyword(s):  
Regional Integration ◽  
English Language ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Western Sahara ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Cooperative Methods ◽  
Single Approach ◽  
The Eu

The current era is witnessing a proliferation of challenges of a transnational character that do not recognize the geographical limits of sovereign States, such as human traficking and pollution. Therefore, States have to establish new regional cooperative methods to find effective solutions for these challenges. Although the Maghreb States (i.e. Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia) have been suffering from the negative impacts of such challenges over the last few decades, they have not yet created an effective regional cooperative framework. In this respect, since its establishment in 1989 among the Maghreb States, the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU, Union) has not been successful in stimulating Maghreb regional integration. The current study addresses a topic that has not yet been fully exploited by legal studies in the English language. It examines, first, the genesis and institutional structure of the AMU as well as the constitutional aspects of the 1989 AMU Treaty; second, the role of the EU’s multilateral and bilateral instruments in promoting Maghreb regional integration; and third, the dispute on Western Sahara between Morocco and the Polisario Front and its effect on Maghreb regional integration. The article concludes that Maghreb regional integration has so far failed due to the institutional and constitutional limits of the AMU Treaty and the political division among the Maghreb States resulting from the Western Sahara conflict. In addition, the EU so far has not followed a consistent and single approach in promoting the Maghreb integration nor did it play any role in solving the dispute on Western Sahara.

Labour Immigration Policy in the European Union: How to Overcome the Tension between Further Europeanisation and the Protection of National Interests?

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-223
Author(s):  
Jean-Baptiste Farcy
Keyword(s):  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Added Value ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Labour Immigration ◽  
Eu Directives ◽  
The Eu

Abstract This article critically assesses EU harmonisation in the field of labour immigration. It argues that EU directives are limited both in scope and intensity which explains their relatively low effectiveness and added value. Given the current political and institutional context, the article claims that a truly common labour immigration policy is unrealistic. Labour immigration remains a predominantly national prerogative and EU rules have done little to overcome normative competition between EU Member States. Looking forward, the EU should adopt complementary measures to Member States’ policies. The role of the EU in this sensitive policy area should be better defined and justified, in particular in relation to the principle of subsidiarity.

scholarly journals Poverty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cycle Of Poverty

This paper discusses the role of social scientific expertise in the emergence of poverty as a problem and a priority for public intervention in the United States during the 1960s. That the social scientific experts defined “the poverty problem” narrowly, as a problem of individuals lacking income or otherwise caught in a “cycle of poverty,” can be understood in terms of a series of historical transformations that played out in overlapping processes of disembedding: of social science from social reform; of economic from social and political knowledge; and of poverty from the study of structured patterns and experiences of stratification and inequality. The structurally disembedded, individualized concept of poverty that emerged from these transformations presented Great Society liberal reformers with a legible problem that they could fix without recourse to major reforms. It would eventually be recast by neoliberal reformers to justify a more ideological form of disembedding that shifted the boundaries of responsibility for dealing with poverty from the social and the public to the individual and personal.

Multilevel governance or multilevel government?

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 776-783
Author(s):  
Tanja A Börzel
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Multilevel Governance ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Liberal Intergovernmentalism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Societal Actors ◽  
Public Interest Groups ◽  
The Government

The commentary returns to the beginning of the career of multilevel governance as a distinct perspective on the European Union and European integration. At the time, multilevel governance allowed a generation of students to overcome the stylised debates between Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Neofunctionalism on how to best capture the ‘nature of the beast’. At the same time, multilevel governance still privileged the role of public authorities over economic and societal actors. While subsequent studies broadened the focus to include the social partners or public interest groups, Hooghe and Marks have retained their public authority bias. The commentary argues that the focus on multilevel government rather than multilevel governance has increased the scope or applicability of Hooghe and Marks’ approach, both within the European Union and beyond. At the same time, the government bias has prevented the multilevel governance approach from unlocking its full explanatory potential.

scholarly journals The role of regional integration in the international balance of power The European Union and the Shanghai Organization as a model

2020 ◽  
pp. 481-505
Author(s):  
سعد عبيد علوان السعيدي
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Economic Effect ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Integration Formulas ◽  
Cognitive Power ◽  
The Cold War

The various regional integration formulas, have become prevalent since the second half of the twentieth century under the influence The need dictated by the data of growth and the economic interests of the members of integration, the conviction dictated by economic objectivity based on theories of integration and economic cooperation and its positive economic effect, or data of change and the balance of international powers and the nature of The global system, including. The end of the Cold War helped the power mechanisms witness a temporal and spatial change that made the economic and cognitive power the rest of the power variables. And he identified the new power structures and imposed new rules in the interaction of countries, and produced patterns of relations and different interactions in terms of type, goals and roles, and established a new style in the mechanisms of influence and power and making regional and international poles after pooling capabilities in larger structures in which roles and resources are distributed according to economic logic. Hence, it is possible to focus on two models of integration forms, namely the European Union and the Shanghai Organization. In this framework, two levels of research were focused on the outcomes of integration at the level of members and the bloc in general, and the second focuses on the roles that integration provides in the field of regional and international balance, where it will be imposed New integration force factors are a new pattern of power balance.

14. Coreper: National interests and the logic of appropriateness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Council Of Ministers

This chapter examines the role of the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) in the European Union. Coreper originated as a diplomatic forum to meet regularly and prepare meetings of the Council of Ministers. It evolved into a locus of continuous negotiation and de facto decision-making, gaining a reputation as ‘the place to do the deal’. Coreper is the site in EU decision-making where national interests and European solutions interact more frequently, more intensively, and across more issue areas than any other. The chapter first provides an overview of the origins of Coreper before discussing its structure and powers. It then considers how Coreper, as an institutional environment, gives rise to what neo-institutionalists call ‘logic of appropriateness’, which informs bargaining behaviour and influences everyday decision-making outcomes.

16. Enlargement

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana E. Juncos ◽  
Nieves Pérez-Solórzano Borragán
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Liberal Intergovernmentalism ◽  
Geographical Expansion ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Euro Area Enlargement

This chapter examines the implications of enlargement for the shape and definition of Europe in general and for the institutional set-up and the major policies of the European Union in particular. It first provides a historical background on EU enlargement before discussing the enlargement process itself, with a focus on the use of conditionality and the role of the main actors involved. It then considers the contributions of neo-functionalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, and social constructivism to explaining the EU's geographical expansion. It also evaluates the success and prospect of future enlargement in the context of wider EU developments, especially the effect of the financial crisis in the euro area, ‘enlargement fatigue’, the domestic context in the candidate countries, and evolving relations with Russia.

Fifty Years of Migration, Fifty Years of Waiting: Turkey, Germany and the European Union

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Mandel
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Large Population ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
Past Half

This article describes and analyzes the complex relationship between Turkey, Germany, and the European Union over the past half-century. It asks why numerous other countries have jumped the queue and managed to gain entry, whereas Turkey has been left knocking at the door, presented with increasing obstacles through which it must pass. The role of Islam is examined as a motivating factor in the exclusion of Turkey. Also, the historical memory of the Ottoman Empire's relationship with Europe is discussed. The mixed reception and perceived problems of integration of the large population of people from Turkey and their descendants who arrived in the 1960s as "guestworkers" is put forth as a key obstacle to Turkey's admission to the European Union. Contradictions in policies and perceptions are highlighted as further impediments to accession.

Problems of Initiating International Knowledge Transfer

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-85
Author(s):  
Katri-Liis Lepik ◽  
Merle Krigul ◽  
Erik Terk
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Regional Competitiveness ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Policy Priority ◽  
International Knowledge ◽  
Innovation Approach ◽  
Theoretical Paradigms

Regional competitiveness is a policy priority of the European Union. This article explores cross-border knowledge transfer for regional integration and development. The focus of this research is the role of cross-border co-operation in development of innovative forms of co-operation, initiating and supporting knowledge transfer. The article presents a theoretical-methodological analysis of new complex tasks and theoretical paradigms emerging in the context of increasing integration and convergence of cross-border co-operation: method’s innovation approach, knowledge and knowledge transfer. A cross-border co-operation organisation’s potential model for enhancement of complex regional co-operation has also been described based on Helsinki-Tallinn Euregio’s case. The article then focuses on investigating the international transferability of the Living Lab’s method. The article concludes by presenting the opportunities and principles of activities of a cross-border co-operation organisation to support the knowledge transfer process.

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