The limits of external governance: implementing EU external migration policy

Abstract

The European Union's (EU's) attempts to extend its policies into non-member states have been conceptualized as ‘external governance’ and have become particularly visible in projects towards neighbouring countries. The article shows the theoretical limits of the external governance approach for assessing their implementation and argues for adopting an organizational perspective to overcome these limitations. It distinguishes macro-political, distributional and organizational factors and their influence on implementation of external policies in order to evaluate the empirical limits of external governance. External migration policy is used as a test case to assess implementation dynamics of a EU priority towards Ukraine and Morocco. Rather than a story of policy transfer, this article indicates that distributional and particularly organizational factors draw out the limits of EU external governance in non-accession countries when engaging in concrete external action.

Keywords:

• European Union
• external governance
• implementation
• migration policy
• organizational sociology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Andrew Geddes, Richard Whitman and Tina Freyburg, as well as the participants of the UACES-funded workshop ‘Implementation of EU External Policies in Non-member States’, 6–7 May 2011 at the University of Bath, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal, for their comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

‘Organization’ is defined as a collective goal-oriented social arrangement based on a physical, legal entity. Using the European Commission as an example, its Directorate Generals can be seen as relevant entities and in consequence the Commission as a ‘multi-organization’ with conflicting identities and interests (Boswell 2008; Cram 1994).

For codes and interview details, see Table 1.