1.1 The Focus and Aims of the Book
This book examines whether small state governments in the European Union (EU) exercise influence in decision-making legislative processes. It empirically examines small state governmental capacities and strategies to produce findings that reveal that at times (and depending on the presence of these factors), small states and their governments, contrary to what one might assume, may exercise influence in EU decision-making processes. It, therefore, asks the following main questions:
- Are EU small member state governments able to exercise influence in EU legislative decision-making processes? In other words, from the evidence of the Maltese cases presented in the bookās empirical chapters, do small states exercise influence in these processes? And if so, how and at which stage do they do this?
To answer these questions, the book focuses on the smallest state in the EUāMalta and its governmentās capacities and strategies in EU uploading processes, i.e., the formation of EU legislation in two distinct stagesādecision-shaping and decision-taking. The reader must bear in mind that the book focuses solely on EU ālegislativeā decision-making, i.e., Maltaās exercise or non-exercise of influence in the formation and approval of selected EU legislation in the Council of the EU (and partially, on its channels of influence in the European Parliament).
One will ask the question: what is so interesting about small states and why should we focus on them? Neumann and Gstƶhl (2006: 16) provide an answer to that question:
small states are not just āmini versionsā of great powers but may pursue different goals and policies worth studyingā¦ small state studies have several insights to offer to the broader discipline of International Relations.
This is in fact confirmed by Kirt and Waschkuhn (2001: 23ā25) who maintain that the study of small states, besides being relatively young, occupies a niche in International Relations (IR). They maintain that such studies present opportunities for future research to concentrate on single small state studies as well as theoretical assumptions that are relevant to IR and, more specifically, to the study of the EU and its decision-making process.
Likewise, other authors such as Veenendaal and Corbett (2015) emphasize that small states are particularly absent from mainstream comparative political science. They attribute this absence to certain size-related factors such as the small populations and insignificant role that small states maintain in IR. As a consequence, these authors argue that political science is much poorer for not seriously utilizing small states as case studies for larger questions, something which is taken at heart by this book which attempts to remedy and provide answers to the question of small state influence in EU decision-making processes. As they observe:
our call, therefore, is for scholars of comparative politics to be more reflexive about their exclusion of small states and its negative repercussions for the subjects they studyā¦ Furthermore, if a choice is made to leave out small states, in our opinion, scholars should also explain and justify their threshold of exclusion, that is, why countries below a certain size are less interesting cases than those that rank above this cut-off point. (Veenendaal and Corbett 2015: 543)
In short, this is the inspiration behind this research which in a similar manner to these authors identifies studies on small states as being significant contributions to the discipline of political science.
This leads us to ask other questions of a more direct nature to this topic such as: do small states suffer from their smallness? And are they able to manifest influence in the international or European arena? Such potential difficulties faced by small states have been the subject of widespread discussion that has gained momentum over the last five decades (Robinson 1960; Benedict 1967; Dobozi et al. 1981; Kaminarides et al. 1989; Thorhallsson 2000; Wivel 2005; amongst others).
The good news is that in contrast to the established literature on small states, innovative literature that views smallness from the opposite spectrum is now being developed. In fact, the bookās passion is in this direction arguing that small states, if opportunistic enough, capitalize upon their smallness precisely as a resource (Browning 2005) to exercise power and influence in the EUā particularly in its legislative decision-making processes. In order to find out whether this is correct, it is first necessary to conduct an analysis of whether a small state possesses relevant ācapacitiesā. Second, it requires an analysis whether such capacities are exploited to employ āstrategiesā to influence EU legislative decision-making processes. This is precisely what the book examines empirically in its latter chapters. Together, small state capacities and strategies represent the bookās centerpiece.
Of relevance, there are various authors who have devoted themselves to the study of state influence in EU decision-making who agree that power is no longer a question of military capacity or necessarily of size, but of the capacity to influence the political agenda. They identify power and persuasion in the EU as being based on a number of factors that enable policy practitioners to take advantage of the multi-actor, multi-level governance system that characterizes the EU (see Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch 1995) and its institutions (March and Olson 2005).
Having said this, the study of small state influence in the EU, particularly during the shaping phases of EU legislative processes, has received less attention from academic circles which have tended to concentrate more on the final phases of decision-taking (Peterson and Bomberg 1999: 2). Besides, although the focus of this book is primarily on Malta as the smallest EU member state, it aims to produce findings that go beyond a single country dimension which could be applied more generally to small states and their influence in EU decision-making. The thrust of this argument is that if the smallest EU state does exercise influence in EU processes then, in principle, so should other small EU states with larger administrations and generally more expertise. As is indicated in the final paragraphs of the book, this presents itself as a potential subject matter for future research.
This research puts forward the hypothesis that in the EU context, āsmall stateā does not mean āweak stateā and that certain vulnerabilities related to their size can be overturned with appropriate capacities and strategies employed during EU decision-making. It is, therefore, not only concerned with which strategies are used or whether different strategies are more successful than others in EU decision-making, but equally important, whether a government maintains the necessary capacities which determine whether an EU government is likely to exercise influence in EU processes. As empirically analysed in Chaps. 7 and 8, this last argument is even more crucial for small states than for large states in the EU.
In short, governmental capacities and strategies form the backbone of this research in its quest to examine and measure a small stateās governmental influence in EU legislative processes. As indicated in the bookās abstract section, this is an innovative way of how to look at the study of small states in the EU which should thus be able to advance knowledge on this subject matter.
Before moving on, it is relevant to point out that there are a number of distinguishing features about the book worth spelling out at this stage. First is the point just mentioned above about its framework sub-dividing decision-making processes into two main stagesādecision-shaping and decision-taking. One must realize that there is an overall lack of academic attention devoted specifically to the decision-shaping stage. This, therefore, represents one of the main driving forces behind this research, i.e., to study how this very crucial stage contributes and influences EU decision-taking (the subsequent stage which is involved with the adoption of EU legislation).
Second and as aforementioned, the book focuses on the smallest state of the EU, Malta, and its government, on which not much has been written at least in so far as its behaviour is concerned in the uploading process of EU legislative negotiations. As being highlighted in Chap. 2, since Malta is a relatively new EU member state having only adhered in 2004, it is, therefore, new to EU processes, not least to EU decision-making, with consequently not much research having been undertaken on. This means that the book is meant to contribute to literature on small states, particularly that on Malta in the EU.
Third, and linked to the previous point, the book does not only focus on small stateās capacities (something which a lot of literature on small states does and which is reviewed in Chap. 2). It also focuses on small state strategies in EU decision-making (which is based on the work of Liefferink and Skou-Andersen 1998; Haverland 2009; Bƶrzel 2002; amongst othersāsee Chap. 3). This is novel and is emphasized by Diana Panke (2010) who reiterates that there is, indeed, a gap in the literature about insights on small statesā negotiation behaviour (see Chap. 2). By focusing on the smallest EU stateās strategies employed in specific EU legislative negotiations, the book is thus able to produce innovative research in under-explored territory.
The fourth point is about clarification on the term used throughout the book, i.e., āsmall state governmentsā as against that generally used by other research on this topic referring to them as āsmall statesā. The term āsmall state governmentsā refers to the governments of the small EU member states involved in EU decision-making processes. This clarification is required for two main reasons. First, it is necessary to avoid uncertainty and confusion about the use of this term. And second, it is required to denote that any other category of policy actor that may exist within a state other than the government itself is not part of the focus of this book. In this scenario, policy players such as domestic economic and social partners (trade and social unions), lobby groups, the private sector, regional or local government, and any other type of policy player that is active in a state and that may be involved in EU decision-making processes, are excluded.
Finally, the last point has to do with the bookās methodology which collects six main variables (as part of its methodology to test a small state governmentās capacities and strategies in EU decision-making processes) from the existing literature on small states. This has already been pointed out earlier in the abstract and is entered into more detail in the next section (see also Chap. 5...