scholarly journals Integrality in the Design of Urban Development Plans. Analysis of the Initiatives Promoted by the EU in Spain

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1047
Author(s):  
María José Dorado-Rubín ◽  
María José Guerrero-Mayo ◽  
Clemente Jesús Navarro-Yáñez

Policy integration is a substantive and innovative strategy, used to address complex problems that go beyond the scope of sectoral policies, and require a joint and integrated response. While theoretical advances have been made in the field, there have not been many empirical proposals of a comparative nature. This paper develops a proposal for the analysis of integrality in the domain of urban policies, in which the integrated strategy has become a key component. Following a literature review, three dimensions were defined, referring to the diagnosis, the action strategy, and the project governance, which have allowed us to examine the presence of an integrated strategy in the designs of the projects developed within the framework of the URBAN and URBANA, initiatives implemented in Spain between 1994 and 2013, promoted by the European Union (EU). The results show that, as occurs in other public policies, the extent of the integrated strategy is limited and varies according to the dimensions. Moreover, the differences found between the two initiatives support the idea that policy integration is a gradual and dynamic process, with a certain learning effect, which develops over time and in which the dimensions of integration do not evolve in a coordinated manner.

2020 ◽  
pp. 096977642097061
Author(s):  
George Petrakos ◽  
Alexandra Sotiriou

Almost 30 years since the Maastricht Treaty and 20 years since the introduction of the euro, it is clear that the European Union (EU) has lost its appeal to wider constituencies and citizen groups that realize that the promises for convergence and prosperity have not been delivered. Rising dissatisfaction and Euroscepticism (expressed both in the ballot box and in Eurobarometer reports) is evident even in traditional pro-EU countries of the European core. As this long decade comes to an end, incidents (or accidents) like these ones, either in the form of open discontent, or in the form of rising populism, will exert pressure on the EU policy agenda that will either increase the frequency of deadlocks and inefficiency in policy making or will eventually lead to an honest effort to address the roots of these phenomena. This paper examines the drivers behind these two incidents (and the ones that may follow) and the limits of the current market and policy integration arrangements in the EU, arguing that a new policy agenda addressing the real weaknesses of the Union is inevitable if disintegration is to be avoided. Luckily enough, some elements of this new policy agenda may already be here.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Carpenter ◽  
Moneyba González Medina ◽  
María Ángeles Huete García ◽  
Sonia De Gregorio Hurtado

This paper explores the dynamics of urban policy transfer in the European Union (EU), critically examining the process of Europeanization in relation to urban issues. The paper takes a comparative approach, analysing the evolution of urban policy and Europeanization in four member states: France, Italy, Spain and the UK from the 1990s up to the current Cohesion Policy period (2014–2020). Using an analytical framework based on three dimensions of Europeanization (direction, object and impact), we examine the extent to which urban policies are moving towards an integrated approach to sustainable urban development, as supported by the EU. The paper highlights the contradictions between processes of convergence through Europeanization, and path-dependent systems and trajectories that forge alternative paths. In doing so, it advances wider debates on the impact of Europeanization in a neo-liberal context by arguing that member states more likely to be affected by Europeanization are those most impacted by national austerity measures. A process of ‘variegated Europeanization’ is proposed to capture the differential practices taking place within the EU with regard to the circulation of the EU’s approach to urban policy.


2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (S1) ◽  
pp. 139-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNHARD PETERS ◽  
STEFANIE SIFFT ◽  
ANDREAS WIMMEL ◽  
MICHAEL BRÜGGEMANN ◽  
KATHARINA KLEINEN-VON KÖNIGSLÖW

While many important social processes cut across national borders and have transnational institutions to regulate them, democratic participation still occurs almost exclusively within individual nation states. Public information and debate are essential ingredients of democracy, and their confinement to the individual national public sphere threatens the democratic aspirations and legitimacy of transnational institutions. Therefore, it is often argued that the European Union can only achieve greater legitimacy if there is a Europeanization of national public spheres. Has public discourse in fact Europeanized in the last decades? Here we present results from a study of major national newspapers from five European countries. Europeanization is defined in three dimensions: Europeanization of contents, Europeanization of public identities, and Europeanization of communication flows. Our results show that national public spheres are, in fact, quite resilient and that change is slow or halting. We discuss several possible explanations for this resilience, and go on to question the assumption that the legitimacy of European institutions depends on Europeanization of public discourse.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matilde Ceron ◽  
Carlo Maria Palermo ◽  
Daniele Grechi

Abstract The symmetric shock of the Covid-19 pandemic has come with heterogeneous consequences across the world. Within the common institutional framework of the European Union, the outbreak has put under extreme stress governance and interplay between the national and supranational level. Under some coordination, responses have remained largely in the hands and on the shoulders of the Member States. In this context, the article classifies pandemic outbreaks and responses along the containment and fiscal support dimensions to uncover whether a common model for Covid-19 crisis management arises across the EU27 or rather different policy choices patterns emerge within the continent. Based on indicators covering the three dimensions derived from the Oxford Covid Government response tracker, the John Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 database and the European Commission Autumn Forecasts, the paper employs hierarchical cluster analysis to uncover response group across countries and characterize them by the outbreak, containment and fiscal support strengths, delineating as well the geographical distribution across and within the clusters. The findings present the heterogeneity of response models, robust to alternative specifications and timeframes across the first and the second wave, deriving broader implications for the outlook for the vaccine-roll out and exit from the crisis. The dynamics in 2020 are also considered in the context of the shortcomings of supranational governance within the EU and the current policy reform debate, highlighting the high stakes for the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe. The contribution of the work is furthered by offering a systematic methodology and framework to study heterogeneities of pandemic responses within the EU paving the way for further analysis of contributing factors explaining decision-makers policy choices as well as performance concerning political, social and economic outcomes across the models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Šoltés ◽  
Mária Vojtková ◽  
Tatiana Šoltésová

AbstractWith respect to the fulfillment of the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy, the threat of poverty and social exclusion has not been sufficiently reduced in the European Union (EU) over the past decade, and large regional disparities persist. Young people are the most affected by the problems of income poverty, material deprivation and labour market exclusion, which are the three dimensions of poverty and social exclusion. In this article, we focus on comparing the EU countries in terms of the three listed dimensions, while revealing similarities and differences in the incidence and severity of these social phenomena among youth. In addition to measuring dimensions by the currently used AROPE (at risk of poverty or social exclusion) rate, we also use a larger spectrum of relevant indicators for a more comprehensive analysis. While the AROPE aggregate indicator uses the same methodology for the population of young people as for the whole population, our approach includes indicators that are specific to young people. We assume that all dimensions affect each other, so we apply multidimensional statistical methods such as principal components and cluster analysis to analyse them. These methods have revealed that some dimensions affect poverty and social exclusion to a greater extent and others to a lesser extent than might appear to be the case, based on AROPE’s partial rates. Moreover, we present quantified integral indicators that together with the results of the multivariate methods, provide a rather complex picture concerning the geographical distribution of poverty and social exclusion, as well as their dimensions in the EU, for the population of persons aged 18–24 years in 2008 and 2017.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarle Trondal ◽  
Michael W. Bauer

Acknowledging that both analysts and practitioners face problems of meaningful categorization of social order in general, and the European political-administrative system in particular, this article suggests a conceptual frame through which European administrative order may be understood. Providing such a frame is important, because the catalogue of categories of the European Union (EU) polity developed so far fails to acknowledge its administrative dimension. Given that the ongoing political transformation in the EU implies ever more administrative interaction between political levels in order to coordinate, manage and implement policies, this administrative dimension becomes ever more important. This article thus sets out a threefold agenda: First, it offers a supplementary conceptual frame that takes the ‘administrative dimension’ seriously. It is suggested that the European politico-administrative organism should be conceived as a European multilevel administrative system (MLA) consisting of three dimensions: Institutional independence, integration and cooptation. Second, the article suggests how the MLA approach differs from one of its main conceptual rivals – the multilevel governance approach (MLG). Finally, the article offers some empirical illustrations of the value of the developed MLA approach for our understanding of the contemporary European administrative system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19(34) (1) ◽  
pp. 133-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Twardowska

The article raises the issue of dependence between agricultural land prices in the European Union countries. The aim of the article is to provide an answer to the following question: if the level of agricultural land price differentiation in the European Union is diminishing. The analysis covered prices of agricultural land in selected the EU countries in the period 2006 - 2016. The study was based on the occurrence of convergence in three dimensions: throughout the European Union, between the so-called old EU and between the so-called new EU countries. As a result of the conducted analyses, the phenomenon of sigma-convergence of agricultural land prices across the EU was confirmed. It was also found that in the so-called new EU countries and in so-called old EU countries there is no sigma convergence of agricultural land prices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-197
Author(s):  
Jakub Gábor

AbstractThe United Kingdom has left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Discussions that preceded such a move were conducted in three dimensions: they pertained a post-Brexit relationship between the UK and EU, future conduct within the UK and the one within the EU. Whilst public discourse has been dominated by the first two, this paper approaches the third one – on how Brexit has affected relationships between remaining 27 EU Member States. Stemming from the calculation of Banzhaf indices, it assesses the impact of Brexit on the voting power of remaining Member States in the Council of the EU – arguably the most important body within the EU institutional architecture – and identifies which countries are going to record the most significant gains and losses in this respect.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Carmel ◽  
Regine Paul

This article examines how the EU regulates the rights of migrants as a matter of regional-level governance, and with what implications. To expose the differential logics behind the governance of migrant statuses by the EU, we compare the regulation of 12 legal categories of migrants, across three dimensions of rights: civil, economic, and social. We find that while asylum seekers are unequivocally subject to the most conditional regulation of rights, at the other end of the hierarchy, EU citizens' rights are subject to caveats and ambiguity. The allocation of diverse statuses to migrants privileges different kinds of rights for different categories of migrants, and does not construct clear hierarchies of rights or statuses. This complex stratification of migrant rights highlights the important role of EU-level regulation in generating a migrant rights regime, with substantive implications for migrants entering and living in the European Union.Spanish Este artículo examina cómo la Unión Europea (EU) regula los derechos de los migrantes como una cuestión de gobernanza a nivel regional, y sus consecuencias. Para exponer las lógicas diferenciales detrás de la gobernabilidad de los estatus migratorios de la UE, los autores comparan la regulación de doce categorías legales de migrantes, a través de tres dimensiones de derechos: civiles, económicos y sociales. Un notable hallazgo es que mientras los solicitantes de asilo son inequívocamente sujetos a la regulación más condicional de sus derechos, en el otro extremo de la jerarquía, el estatus de los derechos de los ciudadanos de la UE está supeditado a advertencias y ambigüedad. Para otras categorías de migrantes reguladas por la UE no se observaron jerarquías claras en ninguna de las dimensiones de los derechos, y la asignación de diversos estatutos a los inmigrantes es tal que instituye una compleja estratificación que privilegia diferentes tipos de derechos para las diferentes categorías de migrantes. La emergente estratificación compleja de los derechos de los migrantes en la gobernanza europea, tiene implicaciones más amplias para los derechos de los migrantes dada su articulación con la normatividad coexistente de los Estados miembros. French Cet article examine comment l'UE réglemente les droits des migrants à l'échelle régionale et ce que cela implique. Afin d'exposer les logiques différentielles qui se situent derrière la gouvernance des statuts des migrants par l'UE, nous souhaitons ici comparer la réglementation de douze catégories légales de migrants, à travers trois dimensions des droits de l'homme: civils, économiques et sociaux. Nous constatons que les demandeurs d'asile sont sans conteste soumis à la réglementation la plus conditionnelle des droits l'homme tandis que, de l'autre côté de l'échelle, les droits de l'homme des citoyens de l'UE font l'objet de circonspection et d'ambiguïté. Pour ce qui est des autres catégories de migrants réglementées par l'UE, on n'observe de hiérarchies précises dans aucune des dimensions des droits de l'homme et la répartition des divers statuts de migrants représente une stratification complexe dans laquelle sont privilégiés les différents types de droits pour les différentes catégories de migrants. Cette stratification complexe des droits des migrants souligne le rôle important que joue la gouvernance de l'Union européenne dans la conception d'un régime des droits des migrants et les implications significatives qu'elle a sur les migrants qui entrent et vivent dans l'Union Européenne.


2021 ◽  
Vol 105 (5) ◽  
pp. 32-44
Author(s):  
Tatyana Romanova ◽  

Emmanuel Macron‟s 2017 speeches gave start to the discourse on the European Union‟s (EU‟s) sovereignty. This discourse has been advanced by the national and supranational elite of the EU as well as by its expert community. The article identifies key characteristics of this discourse and its potential consequences for the EU and its relations with Russia. The four ways (attributes) in which sovereignty has been used as identified by Stephen Krasner are used as the theoretical basis of the analysis. With the help of discourse analysis, the author identifies three dimensions in the EU‟s discourse on sovereignty: these are Westphalian, interdependence and domestic sovereignties. The first and the second manifest themselves in the economic field (in particular, in the regulation of the digital sphere), the third one is linked to the discussion on cooperation in the field of security and defence. The discussion on strengthening of the supranational level in the field of security and defence substitutes the absence of the discussion on citizens as holders of domestic sovereignty; it limits the potential of the EU‟s sovereignty. De facto, the discourse on the EU‟s sovereignty is a response to global processes, where the EU finds challenges and threats for itself. References to values and to the EU as its agent form an important component of the discourse on the EU‟s sovereignty. Externally the EU as a result demonstrates both its wish for more independence from external players and its determination to maintain its participation in the globalization processes. The rhetoric of sovereignty also conceptually means the EU‟s refusal of ambitions to be a normative power. Sovereignty has also been an integral part of EU-Russian discussions. Yet the EU‟s discourse on sovereignty does not create any prospects for improving this relationship.


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