Suchergebnisse

Federal systems face specific challenges in fulfilling their international commitments. In cases of shared jurisdiction, the federal government needs the sub-federal level to contribute to the implementation process. Both Canada and the EU have used side-payments to bring and keep on board reluctant and opposing provinces and member states in the implementation of international agreements. However, both cases have experienced the limits of this strategy. This article aims to make a theoretical contribution by identifying the causal conditions and processes that help explain the success and failure of using side-payments to encourage sub-federal support for the implementation of an international agreement. Based on the study of the implementation of the Paris Agreement in Canada and the EU, I develop a two-fold argument. First, side-payments can be an effective tool to persuade sub-federal governments if they are generally interested in contributing to implementation. They do not work for governments of powerful entities that are unwilling to implement. Second, sub-federal governments react to other actors' conduct. Side-payments can keep reluctant governments of weak entities on board only as long as no alliance of powerful sub-federal entities is formed that resists the implementation of an international agreement.

The European Parliament and the European Council have been considered the two winners of the Lisbon Treaty reforms. Through their different structure and democratic legitimacy, the institutions can be understood as the antipodes in a bipolar system. Their struggle for political orientation and leadership shapes the entire system. Against this backdrop, the article examines the competition between the two institutions and the implications for the institutional structure of the European Union (EU). The authors use two theoretical models to examine six arenas of EU decision-making, which were shaped by either of the institutions or by joint action of both of them in the last ten years. The analysis shows that both European Parliament and European Council have had successes. Treaty provisions, the presence of crisis moments and the intra-institutional cohesion are key factors that influence success and failure in the institutional competition.

In the last decades, EU studies have increasingly broadened in terms of their theoretical and methodological approaches. By now, comparative concepts and theories are an integral part of studying the EU, which aids the study of its polity, politics, and policies. Despite the indisputable peculiarity of the EU as a political system, many scholars have stressed the value of using comparative approaches to study it. This thematic issue aims to investigate a specific case—the political system of Canada—as to its merit for comparison with the EU. While both systems have been described as sui generis in the past, forming a class of political system by themselves, recently the similarities between both have been stressed. This thematic issue gathers articles that compare different aspects of these two systems—focusing on polity, politics, and policy—to reap the benefits of the comparative approach and gain new insights into the functioning of both systems. The contributions to the thematic issue show the benefits that both Canadian political science and EU studies can gain from engaging in comparative exercises.