Transparency in Commodity-Rich Countries: Is State Ownership to Blame?

Since the late 1990s, transparency has emerged as a major governance pillar helping resource-rich countries improve their performance and escape the resource curse. Within this debate, a few scholars have pointed to the correlation between ownership structure and transparency, and have argued that under state ownership, transparency should not be expected, as government officials refrain from strengthening institutions to retain their discretionary power. This study attempts to challenge scholarly existing knowledge by comparing transparency performances in two resource-rich countries with similar ownership structures, Norway and Russia. To this end, it analyses data from the Revenue Governance Index (2017). Overall, such a correlation is not confirmed. While in some cases, state ownership can in fact generate greater opacity, the example of Norway confirms that retaining control can also enhance transparency. As a result, it is suggested to look attentively at the features of state ownership, and in particular, at countries’ institutional quality.

The European Union’s Policy towards its Eastern Neighbours: The Crisis in Ukraine

The European Union’s neighbourhood is complex and still far from being stable. In Ukraine, significant progress has occurred in many areas of transition; however, much work remains to be done, especially in the field of regional development and governance where many legacies of the Soviet model remain. At the crossroads between East and West, Ukraine presents an interesting case of policy development as an expression of European Union (EU) external governance. This paper asks the question: why was the relationship between the EU and Ukraine fairly unsuccessful at promoting stability in the region and in Ukraine? What was missing in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in Ukraine that rendered the EU unable to prevent a conflict on the ground? By identifying security, territorial, and institutional challenges and opportunities the EU has faced in Ukraine, this paper underlines the most important factors accounting for the performance of its external governance and crisis management in Ukraine.

Introduction: Integration Through Crises

The introductory paper to this Special Issue discusses the idea of crisis in relation to European integration from a historical perspective in order to contextualize four different current events in the European Union (EU) in turn – euro area crisis, migration crisis, Brexit, and the rise of populist responses to EU governance. We turn to the wider scholarly concept of ‘crisis’ and apply it to large-scale events affecting the EU, in order to relate events to broader theoretical discussions about the progression of the EU. Existing literature on the topic highlights different varieties of crisis scenarios: those that undermine the basic integrity of the undertaking; those that threaten certain domains or the activities of certain groups; and those that reflect short-term, but acute dangers that may be overcome without structural damage. This introductory contribution situates each of the four above-mentioned ‘crises’ in the context of these varieties and offers suggestions for how each crisis might influence the future direction of European integration by using illustrations from each of the articles in this special issue.

The European Stability Mechanism and the IMF: From the Enhanced Cooperation to Embedded Supervisor

This paper examines the role played by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), finding that the ESM has greatly expanded the IMF’s surveillance and oversight roles in the European Monetary Union (EMU). Building from a liberal intergovernmental framework of integration analysis, this paper argues that the IMF’s function as a de facto EMU supervisor in the ESM, a significant break from prior European integration, stems from the alignment of crisis response preferences amongst the EMU’s largest economies, the erosion of the credibility of the European Commission as an enforcer of structural reforms, and the IMF’s close fit with the preferred institutional arrangements that derived from the bargaining dynamics between euro members.

Economic Patriotism After the Crisis: Explaining Continuity and Change in European Securities Enforcement

Since the global financial crisis, European governments have sought to intensify the supervision of financial markets. Yet, few studies have empirically examined whether regulatory approaches have systematically shifted in the aftermath of the crisis, and how these reforms have been mediated by longstanding national strategies to promote domestic financial interests in the European single market. Examining hundreds of enforcement actions in three key European jurisdictions, I find a mixed pattern of continuity and change in the aftermath of the crisis. In the UK, aggregate monetary penalties and criminal sanctions have skyrocketed since 2009, while in France and Germany, the enforcement pattern suggests continuity, with both countries assessing penalties and prosecuting insider trading at similar rates before and after the crisis. I conclude that financial regulation is still structured by longstanding industrial strategies (Story and Walter, 1997), but where pre-existing regulatory approaches were seen as contributing to the crisis, a broader regulatory overhaul has been pursued. Thus, in the UK, where the financial crisis served as a direct rebuke to the country’s “light touch” regulation, financial supervision was overhauled, and monetary sanctions dramatically increased, to preserve London’s status as an international financial centre. By contrast, in France and Germany, where domestic regulatory systems were implicated by the financial crisis, domestic securities supervision and enforcement was less dramatically altered. While the crisis has led to the further institutionalization of European-level supervisory institutions, these changes have not yet led to convergence in national regulatory approaches.

Crisis, Contestation and Social Order in Europe: A Sympoietic Analysis

Europe is facing multiple existential crises at once. I argue that these crises are rooted in larger, older patterns of structural contestation that have always animated the EU. Drawing from these patterns, I contend that there are at least two conceptions of social order at work within the EU – an autopoietic model based on bounded hierarchy and a sympoietic model based on decentralization and compromise. I argue that the autopoietic aspects of the Union, and neo-liberal representative democracy in particular, continually produce systemic crises. At the same time, sympoietic practices of inter-institutional adjustment allow us to weather such challenges, albeit imperfectly. Ultimately, I conclude that escaping the cycle of structural crisis requires moving more definitively towards sympoiesis by radically decentralizing and democratizing political and economic power in Europe.

Towards a New EU: Why Populism Can Save the European Union

Europe has seen an alarming increase of populist parties throughout the last two decades. The European debt crisis has only added to their strength and support, and Eurosceptic attitudes have only increased, as exemplified by the recent Brexit vote. However, this exploratory paper will argue that the crisis to which populism has given rise allows the EU to critically reflect on itself and fix many of the fatal flaws that the increase in populist support has pointed out. It will be argued that the EU needs to create a strong civic society to help mend its democratic deficit. Finally, it will be argued that by incorporating particular elements of populist thought and critique (i.e., democratization and fairer economic policies), that is, implanting an “alter-europeanization,” that the ugly side of populism (its xenophobia and racism) will begin to lose support within European countries.

Mapping of Population Diversity in Canada and Germany: Different Strategies, Similar Pragmatism

The aim of this paper is to compare the respective approaches of Canada and Germany in statistically mapping population diversity and to offer possible explanations for the differences and commonalities observed. In order to investigate this, the paper takes into account the concept of ‘politics of belonging’ as a theoretical background and considers the functions of national statistics in categorizing different groups of people. There are different strategies of mapping population diversity and, inter alia, two models can be distinguished: while some countries explicitly include questions on elusive concepts of ‘origin’ in their population data collection, others refrain from doing so and instead derive different subgroups from information on citizenship and place of birth. Taking Canada as an example of the first group of countries and Germany of the second, and delineating recent changes within their respective strategies of measuring diversity within their populations, this paper argues that Canada and Germany converge towards a new pragmatism in the approaches of measuring diversity in population statistics.

Citizenship Ceremonies in Germany: A More Universalist Kulturnation

After 2000, a profound liberalization of naturalization criteria in Germany was followed by culturalist setbacks: language requirements were tightened, a civics test, a pledge of allegiance, and citizenship ceremonies were introduced. Can these developments be termed a liberal assimilationist turn in what it means to be a citizen or is this a revival of the old notion of a German cultural identity as Kulturnation (cultural nation)? The qualitative study of German citizenship ceremonies presented herein, provides an in-depth analysis of the logics of “liberal assimilation” and the nexus between culture, citizenship, and national belonging. At the ceremonies, “culture” is referenced as a universally human feature that binds people together. Conversely, culture is also presented as an individual folkloristic asset that can be used for profit and for contributing to the value of diversity. This twofold conceptual specification of “culture” is then discussed as an adaptation of the originally universalist Kulturnation idea and as a modern solution to the problem of societal integration.