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EU Trade Agreements and European Integration studies 50 bilateral trade agreements negotiated by the European Commission from 1970-2008 and how they shaped European integration. The book argues that the Commission used these trade agreements, signed primarily with countries in Asia and Latin America, to advance European integration by ensuring that they became wider in scope and institutionally deeper by establishing joint bodies' - even in the face of resistance from member states in the Council of the European Union. Drawing upon principal-agent theory to explain Commission autonomy and Council control as well as extensive archival material and other sources across six in-depth case studies, it shows that the Commission primarily relied on asymmetric information to shape trade agreements in earlier negotiations. In later negotiations, the Commission harnessed its agendasetting power to submit agreements that the Council could only accept or reject. Overall, the book argues that these 50 trade agreements significantly impacted European integration by increasing the Commission's external action capability, transforming it into a truly global political actor - one trade agreement at a time. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of European Union Studies and EU policy-making, practitioners involved in trade and external relations, and engaged citizens in Europe and abroad, particularly in India, which is prominently featured in the book. Introduction Chapter of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Which member states could leave the European Union in the years ahead? To answer this question, I develop the 'EU Exit Index' measuring the exit propensities of all European Union member states. The index highlights that the United Kingdom was an outlier and uniquely positioned to leave the European Union. While all other states are far behind the United Kingdom, the index still reveals substantial variation among them. Moreover, the index allows monitoring the development of exit propensities over time. It shows that the European Union is in better shape today than before the Brexit referendum and that, currently, no further exits are on the horizon. Still, this could change in the future and the EU Exit Index provides systematic and reproducible measurements to track this development.

Which member states could leave the European Union in the years ahead? To answer this question, I develop the 'EU Exit Index' measuring the exit propensities of all European Union member states. The index highlights that the United Kingdom was an outlier and uniquely positioned to leave the European Union. While all other states are far behind the United Kingdom, the index still reveals substantial variation among them. Moreover, the index allows monitoring the development of exit propensities over time. It shows that the European Union is in better shape today than before the Brexit referendum and that, currently, no further exits are on the horizon. Still, this could change in the future and the EU Exit Index provides systematic and reproducible measurements to track this development.

First published online: 15 March 2021 ; Which member states could leave the European Union in the years ahead? To answer this question, I develop the 'EU Exit Index' measuring the exit propensities of all European Union member states. The index highlights that the United Kingdom was an outlier and uniquely positioned to leave the European Union. While all other states are far behind the United Kingdom, the index still reveals substantial variation among them. Moreover, the index allows monitoring the development of exit propensities over time. It shows that the European Union is in better shape today than before the Brexit referendum and that, currently, no further exits are on the horizon. Still, this could change in the future and the EU Exit Index provides systematic and reproducible measurements to track this development. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 840135.

Ever since the United Kingdom (UK) decided to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016, one question has been on the minds of many Europeans: which other member states could leave the EU in the years ahead? In this paper, I develop an 'exit index' to measure each individual member state's propensity to leave the EU, based on conjectures on how member states would generally decide to leave. After a discussion of methodological choices connected to composite indices, I use this index to define the 'cores of Europe'. My results show that the UK is an outlier in terms of exit propensity. The only other country giving cause for some concern is Italy. Still, while practically all member states other than the UK are far from leaving the EU, the exit index brings to light substantial variation among them. Moreover, the exit index allows constant updating of exit propensities and could thus serve as an 'early-detection system'. By sounding the alarm bell, it may perhaps even help to prevent future exits. Finally, the index allows modeling the effect that Britain's exit will have on the exit propensities of other member states, thereby providing an objective means to assess the risk of contagion effects.

First published online: 12 June 2017 ; The use of simulations in higher education teaching is burgeoning in political science curricula, particularly in international relations and European Union studies. This article contends that most simulations suffer from complexity bias and put too much emphasis on substantive knowledge. Drawing on the author's experience, two ideal types of simulations are developed. 'Complex' simulations focusing on negotiating content and 'simple' simulations focusing on negotiating dynamics. It is argued that the transmission of transferable skills is facilitated by multiple repetitions of similar negotiating contexts within the same module. This suggests that instructors face a trade-off between teaching transferable skills and substantive knowledge and should locate their simulations at either end of this continuum. Where students are not native speakers, not yet familiar with specialised terminology or simply unversed in negotiating dynamics, there is a particularly strong argument to make for carrying out simple simulations first, followed by complex simulations later in the curriculum. Finally, opportunities for collaborative research are highlighted. Gathering and pooling data from simple simulations bridges pedagogy and research at minimal additional cost.

Published online: 16 Sep 2015 ; We argue that one prime source of Commission autonomy in bilateral trade negotiations was the informational advantage that it acquired during the pre-negotiations, which is the phase preceding the adoption of negotiating directives by the Council. Initially, the Commission was entirely unmonitored owing to the lack of Treaty provisions applying to this stage in the negotiations. The Commission used this information asymmetry strategically vis-a-vis the Council to move outcomes closer to its ideal point. Later, member states have stepped up police-patrol monitoring manifesting itself empirically through two different channels. First, they have shifted the institutional arena for more political aspects to annual ministerial meetings. Second, preparatory works on a technical level are today followed by national experts. We examine this argument by adopting a principal-agent perspective and against the backdrop of EU-India relations. ; Is based on chapter of EUI PhD thesis, 2014

Many international agreements of the European Union establish what we call joint bodies (JBs). Examples of such bodies include joint committees, joint sub-committees, and association and cooperation councils. Over the years, the EU has built an impressive global web of JBs, which bring together EU and third-country executive officials and play a key role in governing EU external relations. But not all of them are created equal, with some considerably stronger than others. What explains this variation in 'JB strength'? We formulate a cost–benefit argument, where stronger JBs generate greater costs and are primarily included in agreements promising greater benefits. Benefits, in turn, are greater if implementation helps the EU attain its goals, parties are interdependent, and agreements have a broad scope. Drawing on an original dataset of 547 agreements concluded since 1992, we find support for the argument that the EU strategically establishes joint bodies 'where they matter most'.

AbstractHow can we measure and explain the precision of international organizations' (IOs) founding treaties? We define precision by its negative – imprecision – as indeterminate language that intentionally leaves a wide margin of interpretation for actors after agreements enter into force. Compiling a "dictionary of imprecision" from almost 500 scholarly contributions and leveraging insight from linguists that a single vague word renders the whole sentence vague, we introduce a dictionary-based measure of imprecision (DIMI) that is replicable, applicable to all written documents, and yields a continuous measure bound between zero and one. To demonstrate that DIMI usefully complements existing approaches and advances the study of (im-)precision, we apply it to a sample of 76 IOs. Our descriptive results show high face validity and closely track previous characterizations of these IOs. Finally, we explore patterns in the data, expecting that imprecision in IO treaties increases with the number of states, power asymmetries, and the delegation of authority, while it decreases with the pooling of authority. In a sample of major IOs, we find robust empirical support for the power asymmetries and delegation propositions. Overall, DIMI provides exciting new avenues to study precision in International Relations and beyond.