From Europeanisation to Diffusion

Tanja A. Borzel, Thomas Risse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000155679
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a comprehensive account of the extent to which policies and institutions of the European Union (EU) spread across different contexts. Are the EU's attempts to transfer its policies and institutions to accession and neighbourhood countries sustainable and effective? To what degree do other regions of the world emulate the EU's institutional features, what are the mechanisms of, and conditions for, their diffusion? Chapters deal with Europeanization in the new EU member states, particularly in Romania and Bulgaria, in current accession candidates, i.e. the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well the Eastern (Southern Caucasus) and Southern Neighbourhood (Israel and the Maghreb). In addition, authors investigate the diffusion of EU policies and institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The authors place Europeanization studies in the wider context of research on transnational diffusion, and examine the relevant mechanisms and processes, including incentives and capacity-building, socialization and learning as well as functional and normative emulation. Finally, the book discusses what conditions lead to the successful diffusion of European institutions and policies, such as domestic incentives, degrees of (limited) statehood, regime type, and power (a)symmetries.

This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

From Europeanisation to Diffusion: Introduction

TANJA A. BÖRZEL and THOMAS RISSE

This special issue explores to what extent policies and institutions of the European Union spread across different contexts. Are the EU’s attempts to transfer its policies and institutions to accession and neighbourhood countries sustainable and effective? To what degree do other regions of the world emulate the EU’s institutional features; what are the mechanisms of, and scope conditions for, their diffusion? This introduction provides the conceptual framework of the special issue. First, it specifies EU-related institutional change as the ‘dependent variable’. Second, it discusses how Europeanisation research and diffusion studies relate to each other and can be fruitfully combined to identify processes and mechanisms by which ideas and institutions of the EU spread. Third, we introduce scope conditions which are likely to affect domestic (or regional) change in response to the promotion or emulation of EU ideas and institutions.

This special issue explores to what extent policies and institutions of the European Union spread across different contexts. Are the EU’s attempts to transfer its policies and institutions to accession countries sustainable? To what extent does the EU promote its institutions beyond its borders and beyond Europe? To what degree do other regions of the world emulate or copy the EU’s institutional features, what are the mechanisms of this diffusion – and what are its limits?

In EU studies, these questions have been the subject of Europeanisation research, which has explored the EU’s impact on the domestic policies, institutions, and political processes of the member states as well as on the accession candidates, particularly with regard to its Eastern enlargement (overviews in Börzel and Risse 2007; Featherstone and Radaelli 2003; Graziano and Vink 2006; Sedelmeier 2011). Students of Europeanisation have identified both necessary conditions (‘misfit’ giving rise to adaptational pressure) and causal mechanisms (legal imposition, positive and negative incentives, and socialisation by persuasion and learning) through which ‘Europe hits home’.

These approaches have been increasingly criticised by their top-down perspective, which tends to prejudge the EU as the main source of domestic change ‘screen[ing] out other domestic causes’ (Bulmer and Burch 2005: 864; also see Radaelli and Pasquier 2006). Moreover, they rely heavily on the ‘shadow of hierarchy’, which not only allows the EU to legally impose its policies and institutions on its member states but also provides important incentives for them to comply. The further we move away from the EU and its immediate neighbours, the more this criticism seems to hold and the less it makes sense to call the spread of EU policies and institutions ‘Europeanisation’. The EU Treaties influenced the ASEAN Charter in 2008 (see Jetschke and Murray 2012), and the Andean Court of Justice was modelled on the European Court of Justice (ECJ; see Alter 2012; also Alter and Helfer 2010). But neither Asia nor Latin America are becoming European in the process. Nor is the EU the only source of regional and domestic institutional change. Even in current candidate countries, for which EU accession requires direct institutional changes, the EU is not the only game in town in driving domestic reforms (Noutcheva and Düzgit 2012). Moreover, with geographical proximity to the EU and Europe in general decreasing, the EU’s ability to make non-members comply with its standards and its institutional prescriptions becomes weaker. Last but not least, the more distant countries and regions are from Europe, the less significant efforts by the EU become to directly influence institutional change. Instead, Latin American, Asian, and African countries may actively adopt or mimic European institutional solutions and adapt them to their specific needs.

Moving away from Europe allows us, first, to systematically vary several factors that have been identified as crucial by Europeanisation research, such as the ‘shadow of hierarchy’ (in the case of member states, see e.g. Börzel 2010) or the ‘shadow of conditionality’ (in the case of accession candidates, see e.g. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005). Second, it provides us with the opportunity to systematically explore more indirect mechanisms by which the EU may influence institutional change that may be better captured by diffusion approaches.

This special issue embeds Europeanisation studies into the larger research on transnational diffusion processes (see e.g. Gilardi 2012; Holzinger et al. 2007; Meyer et al. 1997; Simmons et al. 2008). We argue that the mechanisms and scope conditions of Europeanisation are largely compatible with various factors identified in the study of transnational diffusion, while the latter is better suited to capture the more indirect ways in which the EU may affect domestic or regional institutional change.

The articles in this special issue explore transnational diffusion processes with regard to Europeanisation after accession (Sedelmeier 2012; Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012), accession candidates (Turkey and Western Balkans: Noutcheva and Duüzgit 2012), the European neighbourhood in the Southern Caucasus (Börzel and Pamuk 2012) as well as the Middle East (Magen 2012; van Huüllen 2012) and in other regions of the world (Alter 2012 on the emulation of the European Court of Justice; Jetschke and Murray 2012 on East Asia; and Lenz 2012 on the diffusion of EU institutional models in Latin America and Africa).

This introduction provides the conceptual framework that guides the articles in their venture to study the spread of European policies and institutions. First, we specify institutional change as the ‘dependent variable’ of this special issue. Second, we discuss how Europeanisation research and diffusion studies relate to each other and can be fruitfully combined to identify processes and mechanisms by which ideas and institutions of the EU spread. Third, we introduce scope conditions which are likely to affect domestic (or regional) change in response to the promotion or emulation of EU ideas and institutions. Finally, we give a brief overview of the special issue.

The ‘Dependent Variable’: Institutional Change

The articles in this special issue share institutional change as their dependent variable. The authors explore the degree to which these changes can be traced back to the EU and its policies and institutions, be it directly through coercion, conditionality, socialisation, and persuasion, or indirectly through normative emulation, lesson-drawing, and competition. Some of the papers concentrate on institutional change only, while others include behavioural change following institutional transformations (e.g. Börzel and Pamuk 2012; Noutcheva and Duüzgit 2012; Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012). In some cases, the causal pathway moves from behavioural or policy change toward institutional change (e.g. Sedelmeier 2012 investigating post-accession compliance of new member states and Magen 2012 exploring Israel’s emulation of EU standards and institutions).

By focusing on institutional change as our dependent variable, we follow the lead of Europeanisation research which has convincingly argued that policy change in response to the EU is not particularly puzzling for member states and accession candidates which have to comply with EU rules and regulations anyway (see Börzel and Risse 2007; Cowles et al. 2001; Goetz and Hix 2000; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005). This ‘compliance pull’ is at work even in many neighbouring countries that are required to adopt parts of the acquis communautaire if they want to do business and trade with the EU and its members (Börzel and Langbein 2012). The more interesting question is under which conditions the adoption of EU policies results in domestic institutional change and to what extent EU institutions directly induce such changes. The more we move away from the EU and its neighbours, the more unlikely institutional change adapting or responding to EU policies and institutions becomes. In this sense, institutional change is harder to demonstrate empirically than policy change.

The articles in this special issue use a rather broad and encompassing understanding of institutions. We understand institutions as social structures and systems of rules, both formal and informal (following e.g. Hall and Taylor 1996; March and Olsen 1989; Powell and DiMaggio 1991). Organisations are formal institutions with written rules and procedures prescribing behaviour. Organisations also encompass informal understandings such as bureaucratic routines and cultures. But there are also entirely informal systems of rules and norms, the latter defined as expectations of appropriate behaviour based on a given collective identity (see Jepperson et al. 1996).

The first part of this special issue dealing with new member states, accession candidates, or countries in the EU neighbourhood concentrates on domestic institutional change as the dependent variable. Sedelmeier (2012) looks at the degree of lock-in in the new Central East European member states in the case of institutions promoting gender equality at the workplace, while Spendzharova and Vachudova (2012) examine the consolidation or lack thereof of democratic reforms in post-accession Bulgaria and Romania. The institutionalisation of the rule of law is the dependent variable in the article on the accession candidates Turkey and the Western Balkans by Noutcheva and Duüzgit (2012). With regard to the EU neighbourhood, Börzel and Pamuk (2012) examine – again – the establishment of the rule of law and the fight against corruption in the Southern Caucasus while van Huüllen (2012) investigates the (limited) effects of EU democracy promotion on domestic institutional reforms in the Maghreb and Magen (2012) explores broader institutional change in Israel in response to the EU.

The articles in the second part of the special issue, looking at Latin America, Africa, and Asia, focus on the extent to which regional institutions adapt to, emulate, or resist EU institutions. Alter (2012) examines to what extent the institutional design of the European Court of Justice has been emulated in various parts of the world. Lenz (2012) analyses the diffusion of EU institutions to Latin America (Mercosur) and to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), while Jetschke and Murray (2012) look at the degree to which the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has emulated EU institutions.

Demonstrating that the EU has induced institutional change directly or indirectly tells us little about compliance with these institutions, however. In fact, diffusion research leads us to expect that the more formal institutions and organisational features are simply copied from different local or regional contexts leading to institutional isomorphism, the more likely becomes decoupling between formal rules, informal understandings, and behavioural practices (DiMaggio and Powell 1991). Merely downloading institutional designs from one context into another is likely to lead to less behavioural compliance with the rules and regulations than active adaptation and alteration of institutional features to a given domestic or regional context. Some, but not all, articles in this volume investigate whether indeed behavioural practices follow institutional change (see particularly Börzel and Pamuk; Jetschke and Murray 2012; Sedelmeier 2012; Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012).

Having clarified our dependent variable, we now move toward our theoretical framework, namely the integration of Europeanisation studies into the larger diffusion research.

From Europeanisation to Diffusion: Mechanisms

The special issue starts from the assumption that Europeanisation and diffusion research can be fruitfully combined in order to overcome problems of ‘top-down’ approaches that tend to over-emphasise the role of the EU and legal compliance for (institutional) change. More specifically, we argue that Europeanisation research can be regarded as a special instance of policy and institutional diffusion. Diffusion is conceived as a process through which ideas, normative standards, or – in our case – policies and institutions spread across time and space (see Gilardi 2012; Simmons et al. 2006; Strang and Meyer 1993). Like Europeanisation mechanisms, the various diffusion mechanisms discussed below relate to the major logics of social action that rest on distinct assumptions about actors and their relations with social structures and institutions (see Börzel and Risse 2009a, for the following). It should be noted, however, that these logics of action are ideal types that rarely occur exclusively in real life:

1. Instrumental rationality or logic of consequences: actors are conceived as (mostly self-interested) utility maximisers who select their course of action according to cost–benefit calculations.
2. Normative rationality or logic of appropriateness: actors are thought of as rule followers who ‘do the right thing’ because they want to be part of a particular community and have been...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. From Europeanisation to Diffusion: Introduction
• 2. Is Europeanisation through Conditionality Sustainable? Lock-in of Institutional Change after EU Accession
• 3. Catching Up? Consolidating Liberal Democracy in Bulgaria and Romania after EU Accession
• 4. Lost in Europeanisation: The Western Balkans and Turkey
• 5. Pathologies of Europeanisation: Fighting Corruption in the Southern Caucasus
• 6. Israel and the Many Pathways of Diffusion
• 7. Europeanisation through Cooperation? EU Democracy Promotion in Morocco and Tunisia
• 8. The Global Spread of European Style International Courts
• 9. Spurred Emulation: The EU and Regional Integration in Mercosur and SADC
• 10. Diffusing Regional Integration: The EU and Southeast Asia
• 11. When Europeanisation Meets Diffusion: Exploring New Territory
• Index