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Abstract
This article comments on the special issue from a political science perspective. It starts with an attempt at interpreting the contributions from a diffusion perspective. The articles show a sophisticated understanding of diffusion as “interdependent decision-making”, that is multi- rather than uni-directional, focuses on diffusion as a process (not an outcome), and takes a decidedly agency-centered view. The article then highlights some of the empirical findings in this special issue. This concerns, among others, the crucial role of the Council of Europe (CoE) as a laboratory for generating new policy ideas and an agenda-setter, as well as the equally important function of the various parliamentary assemblies as mechanisms by which policy ideas diffuse. At the same time, there is also a power story in this special issue. The EC ultimately dominates the processes in most policy areas. The article concludes with remarks on the fruitfulness of an interdisciplinary dialogue between historians and social scientists as documented by this special issue.
Acknowledgement
This special issue originated from activities directed by Wolfram Kaiser and Kiran Patel at the Research College ‘Transformative Power of Europe?’ at the Freie Universität Berlin, which Tanja Börzel and I have been co-directing since 2008 and which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). I am very grateful to Wolfram and Kiran for inviting me to contribute to this special issue.
Notes
1. Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe. For a similar approach by a historian see Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State.
2. Haas, The Uniting of Europe; Haas, Beyond the Nation-State.
3. In the following, I mostly use the term EC, as the special issue deals with the time period from 1967 to 1992. Is use the term EC/EU when I mean the European Union in general.
4. Patel, ‘Provincialising the European Union’; Kaiser and Schot, Writing the Rules for Europe.
5. E.g. Fawcett and Hurrell, Regionalism in World Politics; Katzenstein, A World of Regions; Börzel and Risse, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism.
6. For the distinction between ‘scope’ and ‘level’ of regional cooperation see Börzel and Risse, Introduction, 7–8.
7. For the following see Risse, The Diffusion of Regionalism.
8. Strang, ‘Adding Social Structure to Diffusion Models’, 325. See also Strang and Meyer, ‘Institutional Conditions for Diffusion’; Gilardi, Transnational Diffusion; Solingen, ‘Of Dominoes and Firewalls’; Simmons et al., The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy.
9. Convergence as a diffusion outcome is usually identified with the Stanford School of sociological institutionalism; see, for example, Thomas et al., Institutional Structure; Meyer et al., ‘World Society and the Nation-State’. On policy convergence in particular see Holzinger et al., Environmental Policy Convergence in Europe.
10. Details in Risse, The Diffusion of Regionalism.
11. For a similar criticism see Solingen, ‘Of Dominoes and Firewalls’; see also Solingen and Börzel, The Politics of International Diffusion.
12. The translation perspective in cultural studies has made this point for quite some time. See, for example, Bachmann-Medick, ‘Introduction: The Translational Turn’; Bachmann-Medick, The Trans/National Study of Culture; Freeman, ‘What Is “Translation?”’; Venuti, Rethinking Translation. For an application to European studies see, for example, Mörth, Europeanization as Interpretation, Translation, and Editing of Public Policies.
13. Overview in Ribeiro Hoffmann, Inter- and Transregionalism. See also Baert et al., Intersecting Interregionalism; Hänggi et al., Interregionalism and International Relations.
14. See Panke and Stapel, ‘Exploring Overlapping Regionalism’; Chacha, ‘Regional Integration and the Challenge of Overlapping Memberships on Trade’; Gomez-Mera and Molinari, ‘Overlapping Institutions, Learning, and Dispute Initiation in Regional Trade Agreements’.
15. See Hofmann, ‘Overlapping Institutions in the Realm of International Security’; Hofmann, ‘Why Institutional Overlap Matters’.
16. On Sub-Saharan Africa see Hartmann, Sub-Saharan Africa. On Latin America see Bianculli, Latin America.
17. Transnational networks are dense patterns of interactions among actors whereby at least one non-state actor is involved (see Keohane and Nye, Introduction), while transgovernmental networks encompass subunits of national governments and of international/regional organizations (see Keohane and Nye, ‘Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations’).
18. On epistemic communities in general see Haas, Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination; Haas, Epistemic Communities, Constructivism, and International Environmental Politics. On epistemic communities with regard to regional environmental governance see Haas, Regional Environmental Governance.
19. On TAN in general see Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
20. On the various roles of parliaments in regionalism see Rittberger and Schroeder, The Legitimacy of Regional Institutions; Lenz, The Politics of Institutional Symbolism; Rüland and Bechle, ‘Defending State-Centric Regionalism Through Mimicry and Localisation’; Dri, ‘Limits of the Institutional Mimesis of the European Union’.
21. For similar transgovernmental networks in the transatlantic area see Newman, ‘Building Transnational Civil Liberties’.
22. Overview in Simmons et al., ‘Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism’; Gilardi, Transnational Diffusion.
23. None of the three handbooks on European (Union) politics covers the Council of Europe in a separate chapter; see Magone, Routledge Handbook of European Politics; Jorgensen et al., The Sage Handbook of European Union Politics; Jones et al., The Oxford Handbook of the European Union. See, however, Checkel, ‘Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change’; Schimmelfennig, Europe.
24. On the evolution of the EPC in general see Smith, Europe's Foreign and Security Policy; Howorth, Security and Defense Policy in the European Union.
25. This resembles the role of the EPC throughout the Helsinki Process; see Thomas, The Helsinki Effect. For a discussion of the larger European influence on American foreign policy during the Cold War era see Risse-Kappen, Cooperation among Democracies.
26. On policy cycles in general see Jann and Wegrich, Theories of the Policy Cycle.
27. For social-constructivist approaches on European integration see Christiansen et al., The Social Construction of Europe.
28. For a general discussion see Risse, A Community of Europeans?
29. On this point see Börzel and Risse, Three Cheers for Comparative Regionalism.
30. For different dimensions of power see Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’.