Europeanization, Integration and Identity

A Social Constructivist Fusion Perspective on Norway

Gamze Tanil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415698498
• eBook ISBN: 9781136451232
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses how domestic and European structures impact on national actors' identities, interests and foreign policy practices. Employing Norway as the case study area, the author uses this nation as an example to assess Europeanization and identity politics across the European Union (EU).

Utilising an original and innovative approach called 'social constructivist fusion perspective', the author addresses Europeanization across several key factors. The author assesses the influence of the EU on 'half-way member countries', and the impact of identity politics and domestic structures, which factors contribute to or hinder Europeanization, and attempts to empirically measure Europeanization at the actor level. It analyses the impact of domestic and European structures on the identities, interests, attitudes and foreign policy practices of the Norwegian policy-makers. Whilst contributing to knowledge and literature on how constructivist approaches can be utilized in empirical studies of political elites, this book goes beyond theory to demonstrate that Europeanization is not only institutional, and provides evidence of the influence of identity politics.

Europeanization, Integration and Identity will be or interest to students, scholars and policy-makers in the field of European Union politics, international relations, social constructivism and Scandinavian politics.

1 Introduction

Norway and the European Union: a variable geometry

This book¹ analyses the impact of the European Union on Norway focusing on the Norwegian policymakers and Norwegian policies. In this sense Norway is ‘a crucial laboratory for studying processes of Europeanization’ (Trondal 2009) due to its position as a ‘half-way member of the EU’.²

Norway is currently an associate member of the European Union through various sectoral treaties and agreements with the Union on areas such as Justice and Home Affairs (JHA), Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Internal Market, research and higher education. The European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement integrates the remaining the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries (except Switzerland) into the European Union’s internal market with a purpose is to maximize the freedom of movement of persons, capital, goods and services in all of the EEA, and to strengthen and spread the cooperation to neighbouring policy areas. The European Union’s Directorate General for External Policies argues that

despite two failed attempts by referendum to enter the European Community in 1972 and the European Union in 1994, Norway is solidly attached to the European construction through the EEA Agreement and through its membership in all relevant multilateral organizations including the Nordic, Barents and Baltic Councils, EFTA, OECD, WTO, Council of Europe and OSCE.³

(Report 2006–099:15)

In this regard, Norway’s close cooperation with the European Union in almost every possible policy area provides Norway high level of economic integration and political cooperation with the European Union similar to that of member states.⁴

However, there is clear demarcation to that integration in two senses: First, there are certain policy fields left out of the EEA Agreement. The EEA Agreement does not integrate Norway into the European Union’s fisheries, agriculture and foreign policy, customs union, and common commercial policy. Norway therefore negotiates and speaks on its own behalf in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and is free to determine tariff rates, enact trade sanctions and enter into trade agreements with third countries (Eriksen 2008). Second, although participating at the preparatory stages in the policy formulation on equal grounds with the EU member states, Norway remains a non-member of the Union with no power in the decision-making or implementation stages, and no political representation in the Commission, the Council or in the European Parliament (Trondal 2009:240; Egeberg and Trondal 1999:133). This situation leaves Norway subject to incorporate all EU law that is of relevance to the EEA Agreement.

Therefore, the EEA Agreement has an asymmetrical impact on Norway in two senses: First, it does not harmonize all Norwegian policy areas with the European Union evenly. Second, its impact on Norway is both active and reactive: in some areas, it is forced upon Norway by being part of the acquis, in others it represents a notable choice by the Norwegian political elite to be involved in aspects of European integration. Nation states’ different degrees of interaction with different Union bodies and policies are described as variable geometry or differentiated integration, and Norwegian case is a good illustration of this.

The explanation of different levels of harmonization of the domestic policies with the European Union might be found in identity politics. Different policy areas might have different levels of identity and interest linkages impacting on their openness to the institutionalization of new (European level) ideas and policies into the domestic structure. The domestic structure, which is made of ideas, norms, interests and identities, might be an important factor impacting on the level of Europeanization in a policy area.

Theorizing the EU effect: Europeanization

In the last two decades, the European Union has been developed from being merely an intergovernmental organization into a supranational one with distinct institutions, rules and norms influencing the member states as well as others in the region. Now the European Union can be defined as a ‘community of values’ based on a set of explicitly stated principles in a variety of policy areas which have strong implications in terms of ethics: the fight against racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, anti-discrimination, the mainstreaming of human rights in EU policies (Leconte 2008:1072). This evolution is reflected in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, in the Treaty itself, and in secondary EU law. As a result, ‘the European Union is having an increasing impact on the allocation of values and norms in Europe’ (Hix 1999:70). The question is how the EU structure fuels process of Europeanization of domestic institutions, policy processes and actors.

Europeanization implies that the integration process in the European Union becomes more relevant and important as a factor leading to adaptations and changes in domestic institutional and administrative arrangements (Olsen 1996, 2001; Sverdrup 2000). It refers to a process by which change occurs due to membership in or exposure to political and economic cooperative institutions in the European Union. Radaelli defines Europeanization as:

processes of construction, diffusion, institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ways of doing things, shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the making of European Union decisions and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public procedures.

(Radaelli 2003:30)

For Larsson and Trondal (2005), the European Union and its many institutions and common policies mobilize particular modes of behaviour, identities and role conceptions among the actors involved which results in Europeanization of domestic institutions and policies.

Europe is thus ‘a laboratory for getting at some bigger issues concerning the relation of institutions, states, and individuals’ (Checkel 2005:802). When do international institutions create senses of community and belonging? If and when this happens, what does it mean for individual and state allegiances, interests and identities? What processes underlie such transformative dynamics? What happens to the national and domestic in such situations? These are big questions, ones to which we still have incomplete answers.

Different theories have been used to explain differentiated processes of Europeanization of domestic structures and actors. The institutionalist approach, organizational approach, social constructivist approach and fusion approach reveal how the EU organizations matter for the actors involved, and how the ‘EU effect’ is filtered and mediated through pre-existing domestic institutions, rules, norms and cultures.

Institutional approaches analyse Europeanization focusing on the change in core domestic institutions of governance and politics, understood as a consequence of the development of European-level institutions, identities and policies. European-level development is treated as the explanatory factor and changes in the domestic institutions and systems of governance as the dependent variable (Olsen 2001:12). The research tasks are to account for variations in European impacts and to explain the varying responses and robustness of domestic institutions against pressures from the European level. The bulk of the empirical literature concerns effects of the European Union on the member states focusing on its impacts on domestic policies and behaviour.

Institutionalists put forward that the degree to which Europeanization impacts on the domestic institutions varies considerably among states. Although European developments are an important reason for administrative reforms and improved domestic coordination (Kassim et al. 2000:236), governments and administrative systems differentially adapt to European pressures on their own terms: ‘Adaptation reflects institutional resources and traditions, the pre-existing balance of domestic institutional structures, and also the broader matrices of values which define the nature of appropriate political forms in the case of each national polity’ (Olsen 2002:935). Such an argument brings the ideas and values into the picture.

Europeanization, in institutionalist account, is not limited to institutional changes in the domestic context. Sociological institutionalism is interested in the capacity of cultural and organizational practices (institutions) to mould the preferences, interests and identities of actors in the social world. As Hall and Taylor note, sociological institutionalism emphasizes the way in which institutions influence behaviour by providing the cognitive scripts, categories and models that are indispensable for action because without them the world and the behaviour of others cannot be interpreted (Hall and Taylor 1996:948). In addition, sociological institutionalists place emphasis on the ‘mutual construction’ of institutions and the actors that populate them. For them, interests as well as the contexts of action are socially constructed by institutional scripts. They argue that institutions perform a ‘symbolic guidance function’ and contribute to actors’ senses of who they are and what their interests must be.

There are clear affinities here with social constructivism in the analysis of the subjective aspects of social life: how actors construe the world in which they operate and what the implications of those construals might be in terms of choices and constraints on action. In terms of EU studies, sociological institutionalist approaches together with social constructivist approaches produce several routes into the study of ideas, beliefs, knowledge and discourses and their application to EU policymaking. The thesis here is not only that the discourses are shapers of policy initiative, but also that the capacity to shape and deploy these ideas is a powerful strategic tool.

Another approach to the analysis of Europeanization is the organizational theory. Olsen explains organizational theory based on two key assumptions: (1) the organization of political life can make a difference and political institutions can have an independent explanatory effect; and (2) institutional genesis, developments, performance and effects are generated by standard, comprehensive processes that are unlikely to be specific to Europe (Olsen 2010:25).

In addition, Trondal argues that organizational theory can be used to answer two general questions: (1) under what circumstances will an institution that is thought to challenge the existing power structure be established? And (2) if established, under what conditions will institutions be able to actually transform politics and policies? (Trondal 2010:10).

Organizational theorists argue that political processes and political systems cannot be adequately understood or explained without including the organizational dimension(s) of executive orders. Focusing on the organizational dimension(s) of executive orders entails studying how organizations are formally structured, the mutual relations that may emerge between organizations and their incumbents, and ultimately their effects (Trondal 2010:10).

According to this approach, organizations ‘buffer the information and role expectations relevant for civil servants, thereby simplifying their search for alternatives, their preference formation and ultimately their choice of decision-making behaviour’ (Egeberg 1999; Trondal 2010:11). The local rationality of civil servants is systematically aggregated by this buffer function into organizational rationality. Consequently, the organizational selection of relevant information, of premises for decision-making and of role enactment affects how civil servants think, feel and act (ibid.:11).

Organizational variables regulate, constitute and construct the decision-making processes that emerge within political institutions, ultimately affecting the decisions being made: ‘Working rules of behaviour inform the everyday boundaries of what governmental officials must do, what they can do and what they can expect others to do’ (Skowronek quoted in Trondal 2010:11). Organizational theory has succeeded in explaining decision-making processes and human behaviour by focusing on explanatory variables such as ‘the formal organizational composition of institutions, types of organizational affiliations among actors, degrees of organizational compatibility across levels of government, patterns of actor-level interaction, recruitment procedures’ (Trondal 2010:12).

Social constructivist approaches analyse how European values and policy paradigms are internalized at the domestic level, shaping discourses and identities. It is argued by social constructivist scholars that institutions like the EU impact on the national elite substantively through the socialization process since an institution is nothing but ‘a relatively stable structure of identities and interests’ (Wendt 1992:399). Such structures are often codified in formal rules and norms, but these have motivational force only in virtue of actors’ socialization to and participation in collective knowledge. As collective knowledge, they are experienced as having an existence ‘over and above the individuals who happen to embody them at the moment’. In this way, institutions come to confront individuals as more or less coercive social facts, but they are still a function of what actors collectively know. Identities and such collective cognitions do not exist apart from each other; they are ‘mutually constitutive’. In this view, institutionalization of new rules and norms occurs as a process of internalizing new identities and interests (ibid.:399). Therefore, agents adopt prescriptions embodied in norms, which then become internalized and constitute a set of shared intersubjective understandings that make behavioural claims (Checkel 2001b:57).

In sum, European-level developments do not dictate specific forms of institutional adaptation but leave considerable discretion to domestic actors and institutions. Governmental elites choose specific policies, policy ideas, strategies and concrete interests because they (or their justifications) are consistent with more general, deeper, collectively held ideas or discourses (Marcussen et al. 1999, 2001; Checkel 2005). Adaptation reflects variations in European pressure as well as domestic motivations and abilities to adapt. European signals are interpreted and modified through domestic traditions, institutions, identities and resources in ways that limit the degree of convergence and homogenization (Olsen 2001:16).

Fusion approaches also contribute to the understanding of the processes of Europeanization of domestic institutions, policy processes and actors. The institutional fusion approach (Rometsch and Wessels 1996; Wessels et al. 2003) seeks to explain the reactions and adaptations of national institutions to the EU policy-making cycle, and assesses the Europeanization and institutional adaptation within national governments. The fusion perspective, focusing on the national policymakers, or the national elite, and their EU perceptions and EU attitudes, analyses the attitudes and policy priorities of national policymakers responsible for the formulation of national EU policy (Miles 2002, 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2007, 2009).

Miles (2005a) conceptualizes the national elite perceptions of the European Union by employing the notions of performance fusion, political fusion and compound fusion, which are central concepts prevalent within the thinking of most national elites dealing with questions of European integration. First, he claims that most countries favour joining the Union not because they have a ‘vision’ of an integrated Europe, but largely because they perceive there are substantial ‘output’ benefits in utilizing EU supranational policymaking. In other words, national governments want to solve domestic and other problems efficiently using EU decision-making procedures (performance fusion). Then, he moves on the form of this cooperation by arguing that dissatisfied with both the intergovernmental cooperation and the construction of a federal state, national elites embrace supranational decision-making to secure the benefits of performance fusion (political fusion). Finally, he argues that national political elites are willing, albeit to a limited extent, to pool sovereignty if the Union is perceived as providing value-added for the member states. Consequently, the joint use of public instruments (compound fusion) is perceived, where governments, administrations and actors increasingly pool and share public resources from several levels to attain commonly identified goals (Miles 2005:52).

Some scholars validate fusion by analysing the interaction and convergence of institutional, organizational and constitutional traits of the European Union and the national governments (Börzel 2002:15; Wessels et al. 2003; Olsen 2007; Trondal 2007). Other scholars measure fusion by assessing processes of policy shaping, policymaking, policy implementation and policy reformulation (Rometsch and Wessels 1996; Egeberg 2006; Miles 2005). What this research contributes to the existing literature on fusion approach is that it takes into account the identity politics while analysing the interaction between national and European actors, and theorizes and explores the impact of the EU structure (European-level ideas, norms, procedures, policies and ways of doing things) on the Norwegian government officials who are in close contact with the EU institutions.⁵

Aims of the book and primary research questions

This book asks several questions: how the European Union impacts on the national ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theoretical framework
• 3. Foreign and security policy
• 4. Justice and home affairs policy
• 5. Energy policy
• 6. Agricultural and food safety policy
• 7. Fisheries policy
• 8. Conclusions
• 9. Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index