Suchergebnisse

This Working Paper is a background paper delivered to frame the workshop 'Global Governance by Indicators: Measuring corruption and corruption indicators' convened by the Global Governance Programme of the European University Institute in Florence on 17 and 18 October 2013. Successively it was developed further in EUI RSCAS WP 2014/37 - http://hdl.handle.net/1814/30582 ; The development of more sophisticated corruption measures has been stimulated by consistent and compelling demands for more effective action against corruption. However, the production of these indicators has rarely been addressed as a 'technique of governance' (Davis et al., 2012), or an instrument of 'governance without government' (Rosenau & Czempiel, 1992). The first section (1) reviews the major existing measures of corruption, by focusing on different categories of indices and indicators. The second part (2) pays particular attention to the major ontological and methodological criticisms, constraints and pitfalls, connected with these indicators. The third part (3) presents a comparative analysis of two of the most widely used indicators of corruption: the World Bank's Control of Corruption indicator (CC) and Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The fourth section (4) evaluates the policy implications embedded in the construction and employment of indicators, while the last part of the paper (5) concludes by summarizing the most important questions raised by this analysis.

Using the 2010 Hungarian media law as a case study, this article traces the process in which an issue in the domestic politics of a ('new') EU member state is transformed into a transnational political conflict. How and why do political actors 'upload' issues from the domestic to the EU level, specifically into the European parliamentary arena? How do others with conflicting interests resist such a change? The analytical framework is based on venue shopping, a concept hitherto mainly utilised in the context of interest group behaviour. Contestation around the Hungarian media law illustrates that a number of conditions related to the existing links of the uploading political actor with the new venue and the nature of the issue itself are necessary to make uploading a viable strategy. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of the present article is to assess the main aspects of the institutionalization of party politics at the European Union level. The Political Parties at European Level (PPELs) originated outside the European institutions and were basically, before the approval of Regulation 2004-2003, transnational federations of national political parties. The introduction of public funding from the EU budget to the PPELs aimed to institutionalize and reinforce these organizations. However, the influence of PPELs in the European political sphere is still limited. Two institutional and political changes - namely the approval of a new Statute for European Parties and the nomination of candidates for the Presidency of the EU Commission - have been implemented, but their consequences on the consolidation of PPELs still need to be verified empirically. Adapted from the source document.

The article investigates the Europeanization of party politics by examining the accession of national parties to Europarties as a process of European regional integration. The advanced theoretical framework combines International Relations and Comparative Politics approaches and analyzes the dialectic relationship between the European People's Party (EPP) and Ukrainian domestic parties based on a systemic analysis of party manifestos and official documents, as well as discourse analysis. The study argues that the EPP has a direct, though weak, influence on aspiring Ukrainian members because of the low incentives, low degree of clarity of membership requirements and context-specific factors. In these circumstances, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung represents an informal channel for the Europeanization of Ukrainian center-right parties. A main finding is that despite the low size of material incentives and the lack of EU membership, both Ukrainian parties and the EPP engage in transnational cooperation following political incentives and ideational arguments. Adapted from the source document.

We analyze forms of environmental activism that eschew the 'information and socialization' politics typically associated with Transnational Advocacy Groups (TAGs) and instead favor direct, confrontational strategies, whose aim is to enforce international law. While mainstream TAGs typically seek influence through norm entrepreneurship, lobbying or 'naming and shaming', what we label Direct Enforcement (DE) intervenes directly to halt (purportedly) illegal practices by states and private actors. DE activism has been most visible in transnational campaigns to protect endangered marine species, where environmental groups have resorted to damaging equipment used for illegal fishing and boarding fishing boats to enforce maritime conservation law. Often branded as eco-terrorism, such confrontational strategies have been largely ignored by scholarly literature on transnational activism. We contend that DE merits closer attention by IR-scholars for two reasons. First, DE activism plays an important role in enhancing the compliance pull of international laws in an area-the global environment-where states often lack capacity and political will to enforce international agreements. Second, an analysis of DE-activism provides important insights about issue selection and relative campaign success under different structural circumstances, thereby expanding our understanding of transnational advocacy more generally. Adapted from the source document.

'Naming and shaming' those accused of abuse and misconduct is one of the most common strategies of transnational activists. Yet both qualitative and quantitative studies show that the policy and behavioural effects of naming and shaming are often contradictory. Named and shamed actors do respond at least partially by adjusting their policies and behaviour to some extent, but the actions challenged publicly as human rights violations may not cease and can even become more widespread. This ambivalent outcome is usually explained by the uneven capacity of the target to reform or by its 'strategic' response to escape the consequences of naming and shaming. By contrast, I show that naming and shaming can be brought to a standstill when the frame used by transnational activists is ambiguous. I trace the role of framing ambiguity during the Human Rights Watch (HRW) 'naming and shaming' campaigns against the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in the course of the July-August 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war (Lebanon war), and the December 2008-January 2009 Israel-Hamas war (Gaza war). I argue that HRW's use of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a frame led to an argumentative deadlock (frame implication contest). This legal frame, and the process of legal framing, did genuinely constrain the IDF, affecting its operations and behaviour. However, the ambiguity of the frame also provided the IDF with a range of material and ideational assets that gave it scope to claim that its actions were actually in conformity with applicable law, and to justify continuing to use force in densely populated areas. Adapted from the source document.

In 2009, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenged the European Union (EU)'s interpretation of Article XXIV GATT in bilateral trade talks. Based on a legal analysis that West African activists initially provided, ECOWAS established that the clause allowed for more flexibility on market opening than the EU expected. Since then, market access constitutes one unresolved issue slowing down negotiations between the trade power Europe and trade- and aid-dependent ECOWAS. The example challenges the political economy literature dealing with trade policy-making on at least two accounts, namely the role of typically sidelines actors such as poor countries and transnational activists; and the role of the law in mediating strategic and discursive aspects of trade political processes. To assess the evidence and its theoretical implications, I combine the analytical concept of political opportunity structure developed in the transnational studies literature with pluralist approaches to law. I argue that trade political actors can become aware of the pathways to influence that legal uncertainty opens, in particular under conditions of multi-level governance where national, regional and international legal orders are intertwined. Overall, the way in which the law mediates ideas and interests thus deserves scrutiny in political economy approaches to trade. Adapted from the source document.

This conference, organized by Arnd Bauerkämper, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Anna Lena Kocks and Silvia Madotto, and supported by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung and Freie Universität Berlin, offered important insights into various aspects of the study of transnational fascism and diverse forms of connections and co-operation between fascist movements and regimes in Europe between 1918 and 1945. It fostered the concept of fascism as a border-crossing phenomenon albeit with strong national and local roots. The conference made clear that even without an institutionalized 'Fascist international,' fascism was a transnational phenomenon, which affected national societies and non-national groups. By widening the perspective on different forms of European fascism, the participants of the conference managed to highlight connections, interactions and entanglements not considered by the previous historical research. The conference demonstrated how this methodological approach proves useful for a more comprehensive understanding of the complex phenomenon of fascism and the numerous interactions between fascist activists, groups, parties, movements and regimes.