Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article critically engages with Sabel and Zeitlin's important notion of experimentalist governance (EG). It is cast as a "recursive process of provisional goal‐setting and revision based on learning from the comparison of alternative approaches to advancing them in different contexts." This is a useful heuristic device to capture policymaking and implementation in complex, dynamic, and highly diverse political entities. This article discusses the micro‐foundations underpinningEG, how it relates to hierarchical modes of governing, and how well it captures the distinctive traits of theEU. It also discussesEGfrom a democratic perspective. In democratic termsEGis understood as a form of direct deliberative polyarchy. This article notes that the question ofEG's contribution to democratization cannot, however, be adequately addressed unless we pay more systematic attention to representation and representative democracy.

Recent years (pre-Obama) of transatlantic rifts should not deceive us into ignoring the great attraction that the United States has exerted, and continues to exert, on Europeans. This article, first, seeks to uncover the normative assumptions that underpin the US as an exemplar or polity model for the EU, as seen from a European perspective. Second, it briefly considers whether the traits that Europeans find attractive about the US as a polity model have much real bearing on the EU, not in terms of how Europeans would want the EU to be but in terms of how the EU presently is. The point is to get a sense of the empirical distance that Europeans would have to travel if they were to transpose what they find attractive about the US to the EU. Are the features Europeans hold up as attractive about the US also available in Europe? These two undertakings set the stage for the third and most original, endeavour, which is to consider whether there are entities that are more compatible with what we currently find in Europe. The case singled out here is another American state, namely Canada. A clarification and critical assessment of what is referred to here as 'Europe's American Dream' are intended to serve as a kind of mirror for Europeans to consider whether the European project is: (a) one of emulating the US; (b) a unique experiment; or (c) an EU that is closer to Canada than the US. If the reality of Canada is more proximate to the reality of the EU, should then Canada instead serve as Europe's American Dream?

Introduces a journal issue devoted to the Dutch idea of gidsland ("mentor state"), ie, a state that guides countries out of nationalist conflicts to proper international behavior. Human security & other policy doctrines & orientations looking to move beyond political realism characterize gidsland. In addition to human security, the concept of nation-state permeability is touched on. Contributions examining these issues and highlighting policy substance are summarized here. D. Edelman