How does the public form preferences about differentiated integration (DI)? The literature on masselite linkages offers two perspectives: top-down, political elites cue the public, or bottom-up, political elites react to public preferences. This paper develops expectations based on both perspectives, and presents novel empirical data on citizens, political parties, and governments to test them. We distinguish preferences over differentiated policy integration, like "Opt-Outs", from preferences over polity differentiation, such as "Two-Speed Europe". Although our evidence is observational and therefore cannot establish causal relationships between elites and the mass public, our results are most compatible with the notion of a top-down linkage. This is because DI preferences are generally of low salience, and first revealed at the European level in the context of negotiations. Subsequently, this revelation of DI preferences shapes domestic discussions about DI, especially at the level of political parties. Yet, this mostly pertains to situations when governments do not yet have clear DI preferences of their own, meaning government preferences are not yet formed and revealed in the context of the supranational negotiations. Overall, this study suggests that mass-elite linkage in the preference formation on DI might be more tenuous than either the top-down or bottom-up perspective might assume.
National borders constitute barriers to social, economic and political processes and, thus, tend to contribute to the peripheralisation of border regions. The paper compares the evolution of two euroregions in peripheral central European border regions, whose objective is to overcome such negative border effects by promoting cross-border cooperation at the regional level. On a theoretical level, the paper argues for an understanding of euroregions as soft spaces. Rather than viewing them primarily as instances of state rescaling, the paper emphasizes their role as adaptive service providers for local constituencies. It is suggested that their long-term stability depends on their relation to, and the internal dynamics of, politico-administrative hard spaces at the regional, national, and supranational level. While hard spaces are associated with the notion of the Weberian bureaucratic state, soft spaces combine many of the ideas of the New Public Management literature. Building on an organizational ecology perspective, the paper forwards the argument that stable, resourceful, and accessible hard spaces constitute a predictable and engaging environment within which softer arrangements may compete for the delivery of services. However, the interplay between soft and hard spaces tends to have an impact on the euroregions’ agendas. While EU cohesion policy provides incentives to strengthen horizontal cross-border coordination, the organizational integration of the two euroregions remained rather loose, testifying to the continued importance of domestic prerogatives.
Judging by its name, the objective of the European Union's (EU) Cohesion Policy (CP) seems clear: to promote cohesion in the EU. But what do we mean when we talk about cohesion? Answering this question is complicated for two interrelated reasons. First, the main legal basis for CP-Article 174 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union-provides an exceedingly broad and vague definition of "economic, social and territorial cohesion". Rather than contributing to a better understanding of the concept, this
The report investigates two questions regarding the Irish governmental discourse on differentiated integration (DI). First, how much did Irish governments talk about differentiated integration. Second, what positions did Irish governments take on differentiated integration. The report covers the time period 1990-2019. It distinguishes three conceptual levels: DI models ("multi-speed EU" and "multi-end EU"), DI mechanisms (enhanced cooperation and "opt-outs"), and DI instances (twenty-one differentiated EU policies). It finds that DI is a low salience issue, expect in the context of certain key events (i.e. EU treaty change). Moreover, the positions of Irish governments are highly policy-and context dependent. Over time, a principled negative assessment of "enhanced co-operation" has developed towards a more pragmatic approach, allowing other MS to cooperate in policy-fields where Ireland does not seek closer cooperation.
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