Suchergebnisse

The introduction of the euro and closer coordination of economic policies in the European Union are fuelling a debate on Europe's representation in the international financial institutions. A single EU representation at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would affect the balance of power in the institution through a fundamental reallocation of quotas and executive directors among its membership. A reduction in the number of European executive directors, and in the total voting power of Europe and in its contribution to the Fund's general resources, could go hand in hand with an increase in the Union's impact on IMF decision-making. Such a change would also weaken the cooperative nature of the Fund through a reduction in the number and impact of mixed constituencies.

As opposition to globalization grows, many governments seek policy responses. One response – the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund – provides support to workers in European Union member states who are made redundant as a result of globalization. Proponents argue that by offsetting some of the costs of globalization, the programme may bolster public support for international economic integration and the political parties that support it. I investigate the impact of the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund on voters' support for protectionist political parties using a difference-in-differences research design and official election results at the district and commune level. I also examine individual-level voting data. I find that in regions exposed to rising imports, assistance from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund generates a small decrease in the vote share of one of Europe's most prominent anti-globalization parties, which ranges in magnitude from 0 to 1.5 percentage points. While consistent with the logic of embedded liberalism, the finding suggests that the theorized connection between compensation and support for globalization may be conditional rather than categorical.

This article analyses how economic intervention affects individuals' political behaviour by assessing the impact of intervention on aggregate and individual turnout. The intervention of the European Union in a selection of member states is viewed as having negative consequences for democratic choice, reducing the ability of voters to select between distinct policy alternatives, resulting in the absence of the primary benefit of voting: choice. It is argued that when voters are faced with electoral choices without the ability to shape policy alternatives, they are less likely to vote. Moreover, the negative effect of intervention is found to be conditioned by both individuals' level of education and ideological identification. Voters on the centre and the left who feel abandoned by left-leaning parties, who have prioritised being responsible to their European paymasters, are significantly more likely to abstain when exposed to intervention. Empirical support for the argument is found via the analysis of aggregate turnout as well as individual level data from the European Social Survey from across fifteen Western European states.

Abstract
This article provides an overview of cases decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning contract law. The present issue covers the period between the beginning of July 2019 and the end of December 2019.

In order to cope with the economic fall-out from the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU countries hit hardest by the virus requested fiscal support from the other EU member states. Likewise, the Eurozone arguably depends on some form of a fiscal union. This international redistribution critically depends on citizens' support. Do politically knowledgeable citizens develop preferences for fiscal redistribution that are different from those of ignorant citizens? Based on the 2014 European Election Study, this article argues that knowledge plays a limited and conditional role. It hardly exerts a systematic independent effect. Rather, it helps crystallize party cues and basic European integration values. My findings are consistent with a theory, according to which knowledge eases the process of rationalizing preferences that originate in previous basic orientations.

Analyzing international negotiations among the member states of the European Union raises a number of analytical issues, especially in unusual circumstances such as the Eurozone crisis. Our article discusses these issues in the light of existing theory and informed by the empirical analyses assembled in this special issue. 'National preferences' or ideal points of the governments involved are driven by their domestic socio-economic and political conditions and institutions, the dimensionality of the negotiations, and strategic considerations. We then discuss how national preferences, states' bargaining power, the strategic and institutional bargaining context, and the bargaining dynamics jointly influence the bargaining outcome. Examples from European negotiations in the context of the Eurozone crisis illustrate both the complexity of the process and the value of serious, theoretically informed, empirical analysis.

When do parliaments debate European Union policies? Normative arguments suggest that debates enhance government accountability. Others warn of government bias, declining debate near elections, and parties avoiding Eurosceptic publics. Our conclusions are more differentiated. We argue that rank-and-file parliamentarians rather than leaders initiate debates. Political incentives guide their debate selection towards salient policies in the countries in which voters care most. However, where the motivation Eurosceptic publics provide and institutions facilitating rank-and-file agenda-setting are lacking, EU law-making and European Council priorities will raise little parliamentary attention. Analysis of original data, using a Bayesian and multilevel framework, lends credibility to our views. Claims of a government bias, election effects, or trends towards more debate are unlikely to hold in all countries.

Against democratic deficits of European Union (EU) governance, recent literature emphasizes the communicative function of national parliaments. Yet, arguments from the broader EU politicization literature have been only rarely applied to public parliamentary debates. This article integrates arguments about supranational authority and partisan competition as key drivers of debates on the EU and tests respective implications by an automated text analysis that retrieves EU references in all 1,393 plenary debates of the German Bundestag during 1991–2013. A panel analysis identifies authority transfers as the strongest predictor for EU salience in the plenary. EU references furthermore increase with supranational policy output, public EU visibility, and a differentiating public opinion. With regard to partisan emphasis, mainstream and particularly governing parties push European issues in the German Bundestag.

Recent studies have shown that the most important factor explaining opinions on European Union issues is attitudes towards immigrants. Two arguments are given to explain this effect. We contend that these arguments are both built on the idea that people with anti-immigrant attitudes frame other Europeans as an out-group. We then test the validity of these arguments by measuring how respondents in a voter survey frame the issue of Turkish membership. We find that framing the issue in terms of out-groups indeed mediates the effect of anti-immigrant attitudes on support for Turkish membership. This finding offers new insights into why levels of public support vary over different EU issues, because opposition is likely to increase when an issue is more easily framed in terms of out-groups.

The article suggests an explanation for seemingly diverse patterns of change in domestic economic institutions following the establishment of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). It argues that EMU participants redesigned ill-fitting domestic fiscal and wage-setting institutions in order to counter the anticipated destabilizing effects of the 'one size fits all' monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB). After outlining the argument, the article identifies general economic and institutional conditions that are required for the use of fiscal and wage-setting institutions as effective stabilizers in a monetary union. It then undertakes a comparative assessment to detect country-specific mismatches between anticipated needs and the available domestic economic institutions. Finally, the article surveys institutional changes in 10 member states between the mid 1990s and 2002 and shows that the observed institutional adjustments largely correspond to the expected correction of initial mismatches.

This article maps and investigates public support for different types of differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union. We examine citizens' preferences for DI using novel survey data from eight EU member states. The data reveals substantive differences in support for different types of DI. Factor analyses reveal two dimensions that seem to structure citizens' evaluations of DI. The first dimension relates to the effect of DI on the European integration project, the second concerns the safeguarding of national autonomy. Citizens' attitudes on this second dimension vary substantively across countries. General EU support is the most important correlate of DI support, correlating positively with the first and negatively with the second dimension. Our results underline that while citizens generally care about the fairness of DI, balancing out their different concerns can be a challenging political task.

Here, I introduce a novel approach towards data collection for comparative research and present a new data infrastructure on parties, elections and governments, the Parliament and Government Composition Database (ParlGov). This data infrastructure combines a database, data presentation in webpages and software scripts in order to generate more dynamic datasets and to facilitate cooperation. So far, it includes information about more than 1000 parties, around 600 elections (national and European Parliament) and almost 1000 governments with their party composition. These observations are linked to a wide set of information about party positions and make it possible to derive various datasets for studies in political science. To provide a first glance into the potential of this new data infrastructure, I map the political space of the European Union (EU) by drawing on this source.

The second part of the second ordinary session of the Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU) was held in Strasbourg from October 11 to 13, 1956, under the chairmanship of Mr. J. S. Maclay (United Kingdom). Following examination of a report presented by its General Affairs Committee, the Assembly adopted three recommendations to the WEU Council, concerning, respectively, cultural matters, WEU's activities in the Saar, and social questions. On October 12, the Assembly discussed the state of European defense, on the basis of a report presented by Mr. J. J. Fens (Netherlands, Popular Catholic). Following its debate, the Assembly adopted two further recommendations. The first called upon the Council to take an immediate decision concerning the nature of the reorganization of western defensive forces, and to give a clear lead to public opinion in the matter; it continued that it must be accepted that substantial conventional forces be retained in order to meet all eventualities, and that the west German contribution to European defense should be made effective as soon as possible. In the second recommendation, the Assembly expressed its belief that it could not hold an informed debate unless, with due regard to the requirements of security, all the documentation necessary was made available, and recommended that the Council urgently review its interpretation of the Brussels Treaty as regarded WEU's function in that field. The latter resolution, according to press reports, followed a debate marked by a sense of frustration, with nearly all the speakers complaining that the Council had not given the Assembly's defense committee sufficient information on which to base recommendations. A majority of the continental deputies were reported to favor the Council's becoming responsible to the Assembly, rather than to member governments, for its decisions, but they were reported to realize that the United Kingdom parliament would never accept the consequent limitation of sovereignty. However, in the meantime, the feeling was reported to be that governments could still do much to strengthen WEU.