National Minorities, Nationalizing States, and External National Homelands in the New Europe. Notes toward a Relational Analysis. Institute of Advanced Studies Political Science Series, 11 December 1993

Nationalism remains central to politics in and among the new nation-states. Far from »solving« the region's national question, the most recent reconfiguration of political space – the replacement of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia by some twenty would-be nation-states – only recast it in a new form. It is this new phase and form of the national question that I explore in this paper. I begin by outlining a particular relational configuration – the triadic relational nexus between national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands – that is central to the national question in post-Soviet Eurasia. In the second, and most substantial, section of the paper, I argue that each of the »elements« in this relational nexus – minority, nationalizing state, and homeland – should itself be understood in dynamic and relational terms, not as a fixed, given, or analytically irreducible entity but as a field of differentiated positions and an arena of struggles among competing »stances.« In a brief concluding section, I return to the relational nexus as a whole, underscoring the dynamically interactive quality of the triadic interplay.

Europe as International Actor: Maximizing Nation-State Sovereignty. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 06.3, 1996

The continually increasing literature on foreign- and security-policy dimensions of the European Union (EU) has provided no remedy for the widespread helplessness in gaining a purchase on Europe as an international actor. The basic hindrance to understanding this policy comes from an all-too-literal interpretation of the acronym involved: the CFSP is understood as a total or partial replacement of the nation-states' foreign and security policy. This article aims to point the way to a new understanding of the CFSP in which this policy is not based on the integration of nation­ state foreign and security policy. I suggest that the proper way to grasp the phenomenon of the CFSP is to describe it as an international regime whose goal is to administer links between economic integration and foreign- and security­ policy cooperation in the sense of maximizing the sovereignty of member states. This requires, on the one hand, the prevention of "spillovers" from the economic area that could interfere with the foreign- and security-policy indepen­ dence of member states. On the other hand, it demands applying the EU's economic potential to reinforce the foreign- and security-policy range of member states. Due to the logic of this policy, CFSP priorities and fields of ac­ tion differ profoundly from those of a national foreign and security policy. Expectations on the evolution of the CFSP must be aware of these basic characteristics of this policy.

The Legal Construction of Membership: Nationality Law in Germany and the United States. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers No. 00.5, 2000

The argument of this paper is that several empirical puzzles in the citizenship literature are rooted in the failure to distinguish between the mainly legal concept of nationality and the broader, political concept of citizenship. Using this distinction, the paper analysis the evolution of German and American nationality laws over the last 200 years. The historical development of both legal structures shows strong communalities. With the emergence of the modern system of nation states, the attribution of nationality to newborn children is ascribed either via the principle of descent or place of birth. With regard to the naturalization of adults, there is an increasing ethnization of law, which means that the increasing complexities of naturalization criteria are more and more structured along ethnic ideas. Although every nation building process shows some elements of ethnic self-description, it is difficult to use the legal principles of ius sanguinis and ius soli as indicators of ethnic or non-ethnic modes of community building.

Reflections on the institutional balance, the Community Method and the interplay between jurisdictions after Lisbon. Research Papers in Law, 04/2012

[Introduction.] Over the last two years, not only inside but also outside the framework of the EU treaties, far reaching measures have been taken at the highest political level in order to address the financial and economic crisis in Europe and in particular the sovereign debt crisis in the Euro area. This has triggered debates forecasting the “renationalisation of European politics.” Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, countered the prediction that Europe is doomed because of such a renationalisation: “If national politics have a prominent place in our Union, why would this not strengthen it?” He took the view that not a renationalisation of European politics was at stake, but an Europeanization of national politics emphasising that post war Europe was never developed in contradiction with nation states.1 Indeed, the European project is based on a mobilisation of bundled, national forces which are of vital importance to a democratically structured and robust Union that is capable of acting in a globalised world. To that end, the Treaty of Lisbon created a legal basis. The new legal framework redefines the balance between the Union institutions and confirms the central role of the Community method in the EU legislative and judiciary process. This contribution critically discusses the development of the EU's institutional balance after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, with a particular emphasis on the use of the Community Method and the current interplay between national constitutional courts and the Court of Justice. This interplay has to date been characterised by suspicion and mistrust, rather than by a genuine dialogue between the pertinent judicial actors.

Explaining Euroskepticism as a function of regional representation. ACES Working Papers No. 3, August 2008

Recent scholarship has suggested that nation-states will gradually fade away in favor of regions and super-regions as the main actors within a European Union characterized by strong regional identities. At the same time, recent developments have shown that citizen support for European integration is essential for any future development of the Union. The puzzle inspiring this paper is the finding that the greatest support for the EU increasingly stems from minority nationalist regions seeking to bypass their central states to achieve their policy goals at the EU level. This paper empirically tests this suggestion, while shedding light on the relationship between the quality of representation of regional interests at the EU level and positive citizen attitudes towards the EU. In particular, it finds two explanations for cross-regional variation in the relationship between Euroskepticism and representation: (1) a cultural explanation, embodied by a difference in the nature and quality of representation between regions that are linguistically distinctive and regions that are not; and (2) an institutional explanation, embodied by a difference in the nature and quality of representation between regions from federal and non-federal member states. The paper uses an eclectic methodological approach, first utilizing multivariate regression analysis, estimating logistic and ordinal logit models that help explain variation in Euroskepticism at the regional level. The results are then complemented by the findings of in-depth elite interviews of regional representatives - more specifically the directors of a selection of the many regional information offices present in Brussels. This paper takes the study of Euroskepticism to a new level, as most previous scholarly work has focused on explanations at the individual or at the member state level. At the same time it strengthens the notion of a growing importance of a "Europe of the regions."

The Eurozone crisis and the erosion of democratic legitimacy: Lessons from the gold standard. ACES Cases No. 2013.3

This paper makes four propositions. First, it argues that the euro’s institutional design makes it function like the interwar gold exchange standard during periods of stress. Just like the gold exchange standard during the 1930s, the euro created a ‘core’ of surplus countries and a ‘periphery’ of deficit countries. The latter have to sacrifice their internal domestic economic equilibrium in order to restore their external equilibrium, and therefore have no choice but to respond to balance of payments crises by a series of deflationary spending, price and wage cuts. The paper’s second claim is that the euro’s institutional design and the EU’s response to its ‘sovereign debt crisis’ during 2010-13 deepened the recession in the Eurozone periphery, as EMU leaders focused almost exclusively on austerity measures and structural reforms and paid only lip service to the need to rebalance growth between North and South. As Barry Eichengreen argued in Golden Fetters, the rigidity of the gold standard contributed to the length and depth of the Great Depression during the 1930s, but also underscored the incompatibility of the system with legitimate national democratic government in places like Italy, Germany, and Spain, which is the basis for the paper’s third proposition: the euro crisis instigated a crisis of democratic government in Southern Europe underlining that democratic legitimacy still mainly resides within the borders of nation states. By adopting the euro, EMU member states gave up their ability to control major economic policy decisions, thereby damaging their domestic political legitimacy, which in turn dogged attempts to enact structural reforms. Evidence of the erosion of national democracy in the Eurozone periphery can be seen in the rise of anti-establishment parties, and the inability of traditional center-left and center-right parties to form stable governments and implement reforms. The paper’s fourth proposition is that the euro’s original design and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis further widened the existing democratic deficit in the European Union, as manifested in rising anti-EU and anti-euro sentiment, as well as openly Eurosceptic political movements, not just in the euro periphery, but also increasingly in the euro core.

Europäische Integration aus historischer Erfahrung, Ein Zeitzeugengespräch mit Michael Gehler = European integration from a historical experience, A Discussion with Michael Gehler. ZEI Discussion Paper C227, 2015

From 1995 to 1999 Monika Wulf-Mathies served as EU commissioner responsible for regional and cohesion policy. She tells us the story of the EU Commission under President Jacques Santer with regard to the historical development of the preparation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the Union Treaty of Amsterdam (1999) and the EU-Eastern Enlargement. She touches also controversial aspects of the Santer Commission, which led to her collective demission in 1999. According to Wulf-Mathies the increase of EU's democracy deficit is result of an erosion process of the common institutions caused by the nation states which contributed to their weakness. The democratic substance of the union suffers because of the 'summarization' of the EU decision making processes. Monika Wulf-Mathies argues in favor of the community method, which needs revitalization. She proposes European democracy enforcement and transfers of the national budget und economy policies to EU bodies. This eyewitness talk offers an actual EU analysis as well as an assessment of the Santer Commission.

The European Union’s Democratic Deficit and Options for EU Democracy in the 21st Century. EU Centre Singapore Working Paper No. 22, August 2014

The European Union (EU) is widely acknowledged as a successful example of economic and political integration of nation states today – a slate of democratic institutions such as the European Parliament have also been developed and European citizens now possess extensive political and civil rights by virtue of the introduction of European citizenship. Nevertheless, the EU is said to suffer from a so called “democratic deficit” even as it seeks deeper and closer integration. Decades of institutional design and elite closed-door decisions has taken its toll on the inclusion and integration of European citizens in social and political life, with widening socio-economic inequalities and the resurgence of extreme-right parties during in the wake of the debt crisis in the Eurozone. This paper attempts to evaluate the democratic development of the EU through the use of a process-oriented approach, and concludes at the end with discussions on the various options that the EU and its citizens can take to reform democratic processes and institutions in Europe.

Social Democracy, Globalization and Governance: Why is there no European Left Program in the EU? CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 00.6, April 2000

This paper addresses globalization and governance in the EU by attempting to generate some plausible hypotheses that might explain the policy choices of the 12 out of 15 European democratic left governments. With all of the discussion in recent years of a democratic deficit, and then need to maintain a "social Europe," why have these governments not produced more explicit left-wing policies? It suggests three possible hypotheses to account for this apparently mysterious outcome. Hypothesis #1: They want to but they can't. Hypothesis #2: They don't want to because they aren't really left anymore. Hypothesis #3: They could, but they all are suffering from a fundamental failure of imagination. The paper explores each of these hypotheses in two ways. First it examines the initial years of the Schröder government in Germany apparently, pursuing each of these three hypotheses and different times during this period. Then it looks more systematically and comparatively and each of the three hypotheses by including analysis both of Germany and several other EU member states. The larger goal of this work is to provoke discussion and research on what role left political movements can actually play. Is it even reasonable to expect such a group of nation states to develop innovative forms of cross-national governance? Or are new and/or revised forms of representation and governance beyond traditional nation-state models.

Imperial legacy? The EU's Developmental Model and the Crisis of the European Periphery. CES Papers - Open Forum #19, 2013-2014

The high hopes for rapid convergence of Eastern and Southern EU member states are increasingly being disappointed. With the onset of the Eurocrisis convergence has given way to divergence in the southern members, and many Eastern members have made little headway in closing the development gap. The EU´s performance compares unfavourably with East Asian success cases as well as with Western Europe´s own rapid catch-up to the USA after 1945. Historical experience indicates that successful catch up requires that less-developed economies to some extent are allowed to free-ride on an open international economic order. However, the EU´s model is based on the principle of a level-playing field, which militates against such a form of economic integration. The EU´s developmental model thus contrasts with the various strategies that have enabled successful catch up of industrial latecomers. Instead the EU´s current approach is more and more reminiscent of the relations between the pre-1945 European empires and their dependent territories. One reason for this unfortunate historical continuity is that the EU appears to have become entangled in its own myths. In the EU´s own interpretation, European integration is a peace project designed to overcome the almost continuous warfare that characterised the Westphalian system. As the sovereign state is identified as the root cause of all evil, any project to curtail its room of manoeuvre must ultimately benefit the common good. Yet, the existence of a Westphalian system of nation states is a myth. Empires and not states were the dominant actors in the international system for at least the last three centuries. If anything, the dawn of the age of the sovereign state in Western Europe occurred after 1945 with the disintegration of the colonial empires and thus historically coincided with the birth of European integration.