Political Science

Globalization here is understood to be a multicentric, multiscalar, multitemporal, multiform, and multicausal process, which has much less of an explanans and more of an explanandum. In recent analysis globalization has been found to be about place, space, and scale. Yet, following its title, this paper argues that it is about time too. In other words, globalization is also a spatio-temporal process. The nature of this process, its relation with the development of capitalist economies and the role of the state, are at the core of this paper.

As I worked through the revisions of this paper I realized that I was to a great extent returning to the dominant themes from one of the first books I ever published. This was Can Government Go Bankrupt?, written with Richard Rose and published in 1978. That book and this paper both deal with the authority of governments and their capacity to govern. Dror (2001) provides a very detailed analysis of governance capacity, but much of that analysis will actually come down to the presence of legitimacy for the governing system, and the capacity to use steering instruments effectively to reach desired collective goals. The issues to be raised in this paper are concentrated primarily on governance questions at the level of central governments and multi-level interactions, rather than of the international system, but much of the same logic of sovereignty/authority is in operation.

Scholars of European Integration have recently shown increasing interest in the implementation phase of the EU policy cycle, particularly in the extent of, and the reasons for, national non-compliance with European rules. According to an intergovernmentalist perspective, implementation problems should only occur when member states failed to assert their interests in the European decision-making process. Focusing on 23 infringement procedures from the area of labour law, we show that such “opposition through the backdoor” does indeed occur occasionally. However, we demonstrate that opposition at the “rear end” of the EU policy process may also arise without prior opposition at the “front end”. Our findings indicate that national non-compliance may also be due to administrative shortcomings, interpretation problems, and issue linkage.

Fritz W. Scharpf (2000 and 2002) defines the term Europeanization as the progressive shift of governmental tasks to the European level. According to this understanding he identifies four modes of Europeanization. Further, he recognizes the establishment of minimum standards and the open method of co-ordination as specific modes of Europeanization. This paper first relates the welfare political goals and problems of both named methods of Europeanization in social welfare politics, then describes the political processes which accompany them, and subsequently tests whether Scharpf’s analysis can be affirmed.

The article analyzes new modes of governance in Europe. Firstly, different types of new governance, the open coordination method and voluntary accords, and their individual elements are identified. The theoretical discussion about them points out the reasons of their emergence, their mode of operation and the links to the ‘classical’ forms of decision-making. Secondly the simple question of the relative importance of new modes of governance in European policy-making is raised. Looking at the policy measures from the beginning of 2000 until July 2001, the analysis found that only a minority of measures can be considered new modes of governance, defined in the above terms. A third question raised concerns political institutional capacity. Finally the question or instrumental capacity or effectiveness is raised.

Since the Treaty of Maastricht transparency and openness have been prominent catchwords to counter the European Union’s (EU) so called ‘democratic deficit’. The working paper discusses the rank and position of these principles in democratic theory and looks at their realisation at the EU level. Since the EU-bodies equal transparency and openness mainly with access to information the paper concentrates on the question, which institution is willing to provide best for access to documents. In the course of shaping a new regulation on access to documents in May 2001, the contrasting views of Commission, European Parliament and Council showed up in their respective draft proposals. The different proposals are analysed and assessed with regard to transparency and openness.

This paper focuses on the policy-finding process prior to the drawing up of selected national position papers in the context of the 5th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration. The paper aims to explain the differences in the process of establishing national positions in Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden between 1996 and 1997. Three main factors build the framework for such an explanation: the differences in the structures of national innovation systems, the forms of interest aggregation and transmission between state and economy (which are reflected in the national and the EU-related research and technological development policies) as well as the date of EU-accession.

The previously neglected phenomenon of governance by committees has recently received increasing attention in the academic literature. This paper focuses on the consequences of the arrangements prevailing in the committees active in the implementing phase of EU-legislation on the practice of democracy and legitimacy. The so-called “comitology committees” can be seen as a good example of the tension between input- and output-based sources of legitimacy. On the one hand the EP has demanded its increased involvement in this system ever since these committees were established. On the other hand (preliminary) studies have shown that Members of the European Parliament seem to be overwhelmed with the scrutiny or even the filing of draft implementing measures. This gives rise to the question of increasing the legitimacy of committee work and at the same time preserving the “efficiency” of this (presumably) cooperative form of decision making. This phenomenon is illustrated by means of a case study of committees active in the field of health and consumer protection.

The interdisciplinary FDI-CEEC project was an international cooperative effort between the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Austrian East and Southeast European Institute with four partner institutes in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. We have analysed the effects of foreign direct investment on the knowledge bases of the four respective Central and East European countries (CEECs). Amongst other things we have concentrated on the inclusion of CEEC firms into national and international production networks. Moreover, we have looked into human resource development and the effects of the changing industrial structures on the research institutions.

Can you measure democracy? Based on previous attempts to operationalise the term “democracy” in such a way that it can be used as a measuring instrument (especially on David Beetham’s indicator-system which forms the basis for his “democratic audit”), a concept will be presented that does not (mis-)understand democracy from the outset as a specific set of institutions but (1) connects democracy firmly to the self-determination of individuals and (2) puts the political institutions in relation to the respective societal structure. Several political systems are then measured by applying this “measure for democracy:” the “motherland of democracy” Great Britain, the “half-direct” democracy of Switzerland and the still evolving political system of the European Union. The following points will be up for examination: - the centres of decision-making and the main actors (inter alia with respect to the question: who takes the final decision?) - the societal structure - the “opportunity structures”; i. e.: where do the “people” come in?