The Élysée Treaty and European Integration Theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Yannis Karagiannis
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Incomplete Contracts ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Integration Theory ◽  
German Foreign Policy ◽  
Anomalous Event ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism ◽  
Delegation Of Powers

According to neoliberal institutionalism, states create international institutions to limit information asymmetries, monitor compliance, and ensure the credibility of commitments to agreed-upon policies-in short, to minimize transaction costs. Although this view can help explain the delegation of powers to supranational bodies such as the European Commission, it cannot account for the signature of the Élysée Treaty between France and Germany in January 1963, which reversed the logic of supranational delegation. Understanding the causes and the consequences of this apparently anomalous event is therefore a major challenge facing scholars of international organizations, European integration, and German foreign policy alike. To start addressing the issue, this article develops an explanation based on incomplete contracts theory. In a nutshell, I argue that the Élysée Treaty aimed at securing the equal treatment of French and German interests in the process of European integration, thereby allowing the deepening of European integration.

Democracy from the Outside-In? International Organizations and Democratization

2002 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon C. Pevehouse
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
The World

Scholars and policymakers alike have recently begun to tout the ability of international organizations (IOs) to encourage and secure democracy throughout the world. Despite this stance, little theoretical attention or empirical investigation has attempted to ascertain why or whether this relationship truly exists. One challenge to answering this puzzle is that extant theories of international institutions do not generally delineate clear hypotheses about how IOs influence domestic politics. In this article, I address this paucity of both theory and empirical evidence. I delineate three causal mechanisms that link IOs to domestic actors' calculations about political liberalization and test the argument. I find that membership in regional IOs is correlated with transitions to democracy during the period from 1950 to 1992.

scholarly journals The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett ◽  
Martha Finnemore
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Dysfunctional Behavior ◽  
Constructivist Approaches

International Relations scholars have vigorous theories to explain why international organizations (IOs) are created, but they have paid little attention to IO behavior and whether IOs actually do what their creators intend. This blind spot flows logically from the economic theories of organization that have dominated the study of international institutions and regimes. To recover the agency and autonomy of IOs, we offer a constructivist approach. Building on Max Weber's well-known analysis of bureaucracy, we argue that IOs are much more powerful than even neoliberals have argued, and that the same characteristics of bureaucracy that make IOs powerful can also make them prone to dysfunctional behavior. IOs are powerful because, like all bureaucracies, they make rules, and, in so doing, they create social knowledge. IOs deploy this knowledge in ways that define shared international tasks, create new categories of actors, form new interests for actors, and transfer new models of political organization around the world. However, the same normative valuation on impersonal rules that defines bureaucracies and makes them powerful in modern life can also make them unresponsive to their environments, obsessed with their own rules at the expense of primary missions, and ultimately produce inefficient and self-defeating behavior. Sociological and constructivist approaches thus allow us to expand the research agenda beyond IO creation and to ask important questions about the consequences of global bureaucratization and the effects of IOs in world politics.

scholarly journals Equal treatment in agreements concluded between European Union and third countries

Ratio Juris ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (30) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Liakopoulos
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Member States ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Court Of Justice

The purpose of this work is to bring the legal status of third-country citizens closer to that of member states, as a different special regime according to the relative agreements concluded for certain categories of foreigners without disregarding the value of some elements of fact, such as residence, family ties, performance of specific economic activities or interests of international politics for respect of these obligations, with the not always uniform content that the union evidently had to entrust to member states a union of intent through “supervision" as well as the interpretation carried out by The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) which has strongly reduced state's competences aiming at a European integration still in progress and especially after Brexit.

scholarly journals German Foreign Policy in the Face of Current Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
V. B. Belov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
German Foreign Policy ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Rapid Restoration

The article analyzes the features of German foreign policy on the eve of the September (2021) elections to the Bundestag and the gradual overcoming of the crisis consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. The priorities of the foreign policy based on the value approach remain the European and transatlantic vectors, as well as relations with the main system-forming international organizations. The postulates of value are prompting Berlin to increasingly intensify criticism of Russia and China, incl. due to the signifi cantly increased, from his point of view, threats in relation to Germany and other states of the collective West. Germany still relies on France in European politics. Their tandem continues to determine the political and economic processes in the European Union, as well as to infl uence the formation of the EU mechanisms for overcoming the coronavirus crisis. Despite the rapid restoration of constructive relations with the new American administration, a number of controversial issues remain in bilateral relations, including defense spending and the economy. In recent years, Germany has been able to strengthen its positions in Europe and the world and expects to strengthen its role as a global actor, especially in international organizations. Nevertheless, the German expert community critically refers to its current foreign policy status quo. The author explores the latest trends in German foreign policy, gives an assessment of its development after elections to the Bundestag, pays special attention to the prospects for relations with the Russian Federation.

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