Ethnicity and Elections under Authoritarianism: The Case of Kazakhstan

Despite the ethnicisation of power since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has managed to maintain political stability without experiencing large-scale mobilisation to oppose Kazakh domination. This paper examines government strategy to avoid ethnic voting in an attempt to explain why ethnic divisions were rarely reflected in the struggle for power in the republic. While the arbitrary use of legal provisions considerably limited participation in elections by ethnic leaders, powerful pro-president parties that exhibited a cross-ethnic character were created to curtail ethnically based movements. The control strategy in elections aimed not simply at ethnicising the parliament in favour of Kazakhs, but at having loyal Russians and other minorities represented in the legislature through nomination by the president and catch-all pro-regime parties, or through the presidential consultative body—Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan. This well-controlled representation of minorities served not only to placate non-Kazakhs but also to provide legitimacy for the Kazakh-dominated leadership by projecting the image of cross-ethnic support for the president and some degree of power-sharing.

The International Human Rights Policies of New Democracies: Brazil and Chile in Comparative Perspective

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the majority of Latin American states have attempted to incorporate in some way or another human rights concern into their respective foreign policies, highlighting a history of human rights abuses and the return of democratic political rule as a trigger for galvanizing a commitment to assist in preventing such violations in other countries. Yet, while human rights have come to play a non-trivial role in the contemporary foreign policy of many Latin American states, there is great diversity in the ways and the extent to which they go about incorporating human rights concerns into their foreign policies. Explaining the diversity of human rights foreign policies of new Latin American democracies is at the heat of this project. The main research questions are the following: Why do new democracies incorporate human rights into their foreign policies? And what explains the different international human rights policies of new democracies? To answer these questions, this research compares the human rights foreign policies of Chile and Brazil for over two decades starting from their respective transitions to democracy. The study argues that states commitment to international human rights is the result of the intersection of domestic and international influences. At the international level, the search for international legitimacy and the desire for recognition and credibility affected the adoption of international human rights in both cases but with different degrees of impact. International values and pressures by themselves, while necessary, are an insufficient condition for human rights initiatives perceived to have not insubstantial political, economic or strategic costs. New democracies will be more or less likely to actively include human rights in their international policies depending on the following four domestic conditions: political leadership legitimizing the inclusion of human rights into a state's policies, civil society groups connected to international human rights advocacy networks with a capacity to influencing the foreign policy decisions of their government, and the Foreign Ministry's attitudes towards international human rights and the degree of influence it exercises over the outcome of the foreign policy process.

Participatory approaches in the management of Natura 2000: when EU biodiversity policy gets closer to its citizens. Bruges Political Research Paper No. 26/May 2012

The Habitats Directive has created a European network of protected areas combining environmental protection with social and economic activities. Although not clearly advocated in the Directive, participatory approaches have incrementally emerged in order to ensure an adequate management of the Natura 2000 network. This paper looks at the reasons why the European Commission on one side and the national/local authorities on the other side chose to engage in participatory approaches and assesses the structure, degree and scope of these approaches in the light of input and output legitimacy. Main findings are that participation was mostly implemented as a reaction to conflicts and out of a concern over policy implementation, two elements that continue to drive the philosophy of the Natura 2000 network‘s management. The limits of participation in Brussels are contrasted with the potential for more genuine and effective participation mechanisms on the field.

Revisiting the Measurement of Anomie

Sociologists coined the term "anomie" to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as 'a state of society' and as a 'state of mind', we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the 'state of society'. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.e., disintegration as lack of trust and erosion of moral standards) and a perceived breakdown in leadership (i.e., deregulation as lack of legitimacy and effectiveness of leadership). Across six studies we present evidence for the validity of the new measure, the Perception of Anomie Scale (PAS). Studies 1a and 1b provide evidence for the proposed factor structure and internal consistency of PAS. Studies 2a-c provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, assessing PAS in 28 countries, we show that PAS correlates with national indicators of societal functioning and that PAS predicts national identification and well-being (Studies 3a & 3b). The broader implications of the anomie construct for the study of group processes are discussed.

National Parliaments and their Role in European Integration: The EU’s Democratic Deficit in Times of Economic Hardship and Political Insecurity. Bruges Political Research Paper 28/2013

The article describes and assesses the role of national parliaments in EU legislation considering the reforms introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. This is closely connected with the understanding and (political) application of the principle of subsidiarity. After an analysis of the possibilities and limitations of the relevant legal regulations in the post-Lisbon age, alternative ways for participation of national legislators on the European level are being scrutinized and proposed. The issue of democratic legitimization is also interconnected with the current political reforms being discussed in order to overcome the Euro Crisis. Finally, the authors argue that it does not make sense to include national parliaments in the existing legislative triangle of the EU, but instead to promote the creation of a new kind of supervisory body.

Relative direct democratic legitimacy. CEPS Commentary, 26 June 2014

As the European Council convenes today and tomorrow (June 26-27th) to confirm Jean-Claude Juncker as the candidate for President of the European Commission, CEPS Director Daniel Gros shows in this Commentary that the Council should de facto also be considered more a 'mini parliament' than an assembly of states and that the European Parliament cannot claim the monopoly on democratic legitimacy. For a practical application of the principles Gros presents in this commentary, see his column in Project Syndicate, 17 June 2014, in which he rejects the view that Jean-Claude Juncker has a democratic mandate to lead the European Parliament (www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/daniel-gros-rejects-the-view-that-j...

Ten Years of EU Membership – The Maltese Parliament. Occasional Paper 1/2014

Introduction. The European Union has long seen the use of enlargement as a means to transform its neighbours. For many of the 2004 enlargement countries, membership was a means to open economically and politically. For Malta and Cyprus, established democracies with extensive trade links across Europe, EU membership still had the capacity to transform their political and economic systems and hence the need, a decade on, to take stock. With this in mind and conscious that the EU political system has often raised concerns over legitimacy and accountability, attention is increasingly being focused on how the complexities of the EU political system, and the role national governments play in that system, impacts the legitimacy and accountability of the domestic political system, in particular the functioning of the national parliament. To this end, this paper will analyse how the Maltese Parliament has been impacted by membership and seek to establish whether there has been a significant alteration in its ability to hold the national executive to account.

EU Democratic Legitimacy and National Parliaments. CEPS Essay No. 7, 25 November 2013

The role of national parliaments in the EU has been at the centre of a long debate. Since the Maastricht treaty, new powers to the EU level have been accompanied not only by an increasing role of the European Parliament (EP) in the legislative process, but also by a number of declarations and protocols to ensure that national parliaments received the information and documents required to effectively monitor their governments in EU affairs. The Lisbon Treaty extended the guarantees and also included new modes of direct participation. The proper use of the mechanisms in place, namely, the subsidiarity checks, the political dialogue with the Commission and the inter-parliamentary cooperation with the European Parliament, has become of vital importance in view of recent developments in EU economic policy and beyond. The choice for increasing inter-governmentalism in decision-making and the centralisation of the implementing and supervisory powers in the Commission and the Central Bank have raised questions about political accountability and the appropriate involvement of parliaments. However, the extent to which national parliaments should be more involved is also rather controversial. This essay examines the difficulty of defining and addressing the question of the democratic legitimacy in the EU. It examines the role of the national parliaments in the treaties and explores ways in which they can contribute to improving that legitimacy.

The Political Logic of Disintegration: Seven Lessons from the Soviet Collapse. CEPS Essay (No. 1), September 2012

In short, the European Union, as we know it, no longer exists. The very foundations on which it was built are eroding. Shared memories of the Second World War have faded away – half the 15- and 16-year-olds in German high schools do not know that Hitler was a dictator, while a third believe that he protected human rights. The collapse of the Soviet Union has stripped away the geopolitical rationale for European unity. The democratic welfare state that was at the heart of the post-war political consensus is under siege by, among other things, sheer demographics. And the prosperity that bolstered the European project’s political legitimacy is vanishing. More than six out of ten Europeans believe that the lives of today’s children will be more difficult than those of people from their own generation. Against this background, how unthinkable is the EU’s disintegration? Should Europeans make the mistake of taking the Union for granted? Should they assume that the Union would not collapse because it should not collapse? Here, Europe’s capacity to learn from the Soviet precedent could play a crucial part. For the very survival of the EU may depend on its leaders’ ability to manage a similar mix of political, economic and psychological factors that were in play in the process of the Soviet collapse. The game of disintegration is primarily a political one driven much more by the perceptions and misperceptions of the political actors than simply by the constellation of the structural factors – institutional and economic.

Economic Approaches of the Internal Market. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 13/April 2008

What is ‘the’ EU internal market, as economists see it? The present BEER paper attempts to survey and help readers understand various ‘economic’ approaches to the internal market idea. The paper starts with a conceptual discussion of what ‘the’ internal market is (in an economic perspective). Six different economic meanings of the internal market are presented, with the sixth one being the economic benchmark in an ideal setting. Subsequently, the question is asked what the internal market (i.e. its proper functioning) is good for. Put differently, the internal market in the EU Treaty is a means, but a means to what? Beyond the typical economic growth objectives of the Rome Treaty (still valid today, with some qualifications), other Treaty objectives have emerged. Economists typically think in means-end relationships and the instrumental role of the internal market for Treaty objectives is far from clear. The ‘new’ Commission internal market strategy of 2007 proposes a more goal-oriented internal market policy. Such a vision is more selective in picking intermediate objectives to which ‘the’ internal market should be instrumental, but it risks to ignore the major deficits in today’s internal market: services and labour! The means-end relationships get even more problematic once one begins to scrutinise all the socio-economic objectives of the current (Amsterdam/Nice) Treaty or still other intermediate objectives. The internal market (explicitly including the relevant common regulation) then becomes a ‘jack of all trades’ for the environment, a high level of social protection, innovation or ‘Social Europe’. These means/ends relationships often are ill-specified. The final section considers the future of the internal market, by distinguishing three strategies: incremental strategies (including the new internal market strategy of November 2007); the internal market as the core of the Economic Union serving the ‘proper functioning of the monetary union’; and deepening and widening of the internal market as justified by the functional subsidiarity test. Even though the latter two would seem to be preferable from an economic point of view, they currently lack political legitimacy and are therefore unlikely to be pursued in the near future.

A new balance of power in the Council? Yes, but not yet… CEPS Commentary, 19 December 2014

On the 1st of November, the double majority system established by the Lisbon Treaty for qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council entered into force. The shift in the balance of power, however, will not be effective before April 2017, given the possibility for member states to invoke the Nice rules until that date. While acknowledging that the new voting system in the Council promises to do away with the difficult negotiations of the past among member states to reallocate voting weights, this commentary finds that it is questionable whether it will achieve its ultimate aim to substantially improve democratic legitimacy and efficiency.

EU Migration Policy in the wake of the Arab Spring. What prospects for EU-Southern Mediterranean Relations? MEDPRO Technical Report No. 15/August 2012

The outbreak of the Arab Spring and the unrest, revolution and war that followed during the course of 2011 have forced the EU to acknowledge the need to radically re-think its policy approach towards the Southern Mediterranean, including in the domain of migration. Migration and mobility now feature as key components of High Representative Catherine Ashton’s new framework for cooperation with the region (Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity), while the EU has declared its intention to strengthen its external migration policy by setting up “mutually beneficial” partnerships with third countries – so-called ‘Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security’ – now placed at the centre of the EU’s renewed Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). However, the success of this approach and its potential to establish genuine cooperative partnerships that will support smooth economic and political transformation in North Africa hinge on the working arrangements and institutional configurations shaping the renewed GAMM at EU level which has long been marked by internal fragmentation, a lack of transparency and a predominance of home affairs and security actors. This paper investigates the development of the Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security with the Southern Mediterranean in a post-Lisbon Treaty institutional setting. It asks to what extent has the application of the Lisbon Treaty and the creation of an “EU Foreign Minister” in High Representative Ashton, supported by a European External Action Service (EEAS), remedied or re-invigorated the ideological and institutional struggles around the implementation of the Global Approach? Who are the principal agents shaping and driving the Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security? Who goes abroad to speak on the behalf of the EU in these Dialogues and what impact does this have on the effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability of the Dialogues under the renewed GAMM as well as the wider prospects for the Southern Mediterranean?

Syria and Lebanon: Diverging paths of state unsustainability. MEDPRO Technical Report No. 6/June 2011

Any analysis of the prospects for stability and sustainability in the states of Syria and Lebanon reveals the strong ties that exist between these two countries and the impact of external influences on their overall development. Their trajectories, while starkly divergent in terms of the challenges confronting them at present, converge on a path of long-term unsustainability. Lebanon is in the midst of yet another transition phase, triggered by the collapse of Hariri’s government in January 2011. The current situation might be described as one of deteriorating status quo; the state is performing poorly in terms of its delivery of fundamental public services and its institutional legitimacy is tenuous in the face of emerging para-state structures and latent (occasionally active) violence. In Syria, challenges to the sustainability of the state have evolved dramatically since the beginning of 2011, and are now nearing a tipping point. In view of the mounting unrest and violence in the country, the future prospects for its economic and political development are dim. More ominously, the risk of widespread conflict, with sectarian overtones, cannot be discounted.

The Criminalisation of Irregular Migration in the European Union. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 80/2015

This paper offers an academic examination of the legal regimes surrounding the criminalisation of irregular migrants in the EU and of acts of solidarity with irregular migrants, such as assisting irregular migrants to enter or remain in the EU, and other behaviour that is motivated by humanitarian instincts. The research analyses EU law and its relationship with national provisions regarding the criminalisation of irregular migration and of acts of solidarity vis-á-vis irregular migrants. A comparative analysis was made of the laws of the UK, France and Italy, supplemented by an analysis of the laws of Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. By considering the role of public trust in fostering compliance with the law, the paper explores the impact of criminalisation measures on institutions’ authority to compel individuals to comply with the law (institutional legitimacy). The study finds that certain indicators question institutional legitimacy and reveals the varied nature and extent of penalties imposed by different member states. The paper concludes that there is an important role for public trust in immigration law compliance, not just in measures directed towards irregular migrants but also towards those acting in solidarity with irregular migrants.

The sense and nonsense of Eurozone level Democracy. Egmont Paper No. 70, October 2014

The democratic functioning of the EU is frequently called into question. Increasingly, the focus of this criticism is the perceived lack of legitimacy in eurozone policymaking. The eurozone has gained a firmer grip on national policymaking in recent years, but has not adapted its democratic structure to reflect this. To tackle this problem, European and national policymakers have committed to improving the eurozone’s legitimacy and accountability. One of the rare concrete proposals by policymakers is the institution of parliamentary control that deals specifically with eurozone matters. This Egmont Paper examines whether it would be beneficial to have eurozone level democracy. This is defined as parliamentary scrutiny of, by and for the eurozone. It would deal with issues that solely concern the eurozone, and decisions would be made solely by parliamentarians from the eurozone.