Call for Papers: "New Challenges to European Solidarity" at Cambridge (March 9-10, 2017)

Network member Alicia Hinarejos (Cambridge) has written to pass along a call for papers for a terrific-looking workshop at Cambridge in March 2017.  Entitled "New Challenges to European Solidarity," the event aims to bring younger scholars to Cambridge for two days to share their ideas and receive feedback from one another as well as participating senior academics.  It is funded by a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award.

The call for papers follows below: further information is available from Alicia.

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New Challenges to European Solidarity: Call for Papers

The European Union finds itself at a historical crossroads. It currently faces a number of existential threats that need a common and unified response; yet such a common response is likely to require unprecedented pooling of sovereignty and sharing of financial burdens among the individual Member States. In other words, these challenges require a new understanding of solidarity among the States and peoples of Europe. The responses that the Union gives to these challenges will shape European integration for the foreseeable future. This workshop will bring together young scholars who are conducting research on challenges to European solidarity, including e.g. in the context of Economic and Monetary Union, social policy, or migration. The event will provide a forum for researchers working in these areas to meet each other, present their work, and discuss their ideas with policymakers and other scholars, including senior academics who will provide feedback.

The event will take place over two days (afternoon of the 9th of March and morning of the 10th of March 2017) in Cambridge. The project is funded by a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award and organised by Dr Alicia Hinarejos, University Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge.

Advanced PhD students, postdoctoral scholars and early career academics are invited to apply by Friday, 13 January 2017, with an abstract (500 words maximum) and a recent CV to solidarity.cambridge@gmail.com. Submission of draft papers with the application is encouraged, but not required. Selected applicants will be informed of the outcome before the end of January 2017, and invited to submit draft papers by the end of February 2017. The project will cover participants’ cost of accommodation in a Cambridge college and travel within the UK (standard class rail or airfare in accordance with University of Cambridge guidelines). For further information on the workshop, please email Alicia Hinarejos at ah428{at}cam{dot}ac{dot}uk.

Dan Kelemen in Foreign Affairs on Brexit: London Falling

Network member Dan Kelemen (Rutgers) has a great piece out in Foreign Affairs on the impact and causes of Brexit: the UK's "historic act of self-harm."  Entitled London Falling, it is available in full here (free registration required).  The first two paragraphs follow.

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In a historic act of self-harm, the British electorate has chosen to leave the European Union. Brexit—as it is called—will do severe damage to the United Kingdom’s economy and its strategic interests. Brexit will also deal a heavy blow to the project of European integration. The EU will survive, but it will never be the same. Leaders of far-right parties across Europe cheered the referendum result, as did Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s allies shuddered, and financial markets in the country and across the world plummeted.

With negotiations beginning over the terms of the United Kingdom’s departure, much is uncertain. But one thing is clear already: the Leave campaign’s claim that the EU had robbed the United Kingdom of its sovereignty was false. If nothing else, the vote shows that the country was sovereign all along and that it was free to make disastrous decisions.

The piece continues here.

Europe's Justice Deficit? (Debate at LSE, June 4, 2015)

Network member Gráinne de Búrca (NYU) has sent us the following account, which also appears on EUtopia here, of a debate on Thursday June 4, 2015 at the London School of Economics, between Justice Giuliano Amato of the Constitutional Court of Italy (former Italian Prime Minister) and Professor Christian Joerges (Hertie School of Governance).  The debate marked the publication by Hart Publishing of a new collection of essays on “Europe's Justice Deficit?" (available here), edited by Dimitry Kochenov, Gráinne de Búrca and Andrew Williams.  

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Christian Joerges launched the debate by reflecting on the EU’s origins, and on the strong influence of German ordo-liberal economic theory in the creation and design of the European Economic Community.  He described an ordo-liberal legal framework as one which “privileges and constitutionalizes a private-law society”; and which treats as “just” whatever a system of undistorted competition delivers.  He asked the audience whether the EU’s institutional design and its ordoliberalism-inspired “integration through law” agenda has been an obstacle to the pursuit of justice instead of a means of fostering it.  Citing the various challenges which have been made to this ordo-liberal vision by writers such as Fritz Scharpf, Jürgen Habermas and Wolfgang Streeck, he emphasized the democratic and social embeddedness of markets and their dependence on other institutions for their capacity to deliver justice, and doubted whether the EU in its current form has that capacity.  Moving on to the writings of John Rawls and Thomas Nagel on the scope of justice, and on the difficult question of whether “justice between states,” and particularly any form of redistributive justice, is really possible, he posed the question: “what are the Greeks entitled to expect from the Germans?”  The EU is better understood, he suggested, in terms of “inter-democracy” (to use a term derived from Daniel Innerarity’s work, here) rather than being thought of as itself a democratic system.

On the current crisis, with its politics of austerity and governance-by-troika, Joerges argued that the kind of interventionist European economic and financial management we have seen in recent years is actually far removed from the ordo-liberal vision, in its reliance on discretionary power rather than justiciable rules.  Finishing on an understandably gloomy note, he suggested that while the EU’s crisis management may well destroy southern European economic cultures, the social and institutional resistance of these cultures means that it will nevertheless be unable to replace them with some other top-down model of economic governance.

Book Announcement: Michelle Egan, "Single Markets: Economic Integration in Europe and the United States"

Network member Michelle Egan (American University) has alerted us that her new book, Single Markets: Economic Integration in Europe and the United States, is now available from the Oxford University Press.  The publisher's blurb is below, and more information is available from the OUP site here.

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This timely book provides in-depth analytical comparison of the nineteenth century evolution of the American single market with corresponding political, economic, and social developments in post-WWII European efforts to create a single European market. Building the regulatory framework needed for successful adoption of an integrated single market across diverse political units represents one of the most important issues in comparative political economy. What accounts for the political success or failure in creating integrated markets in their respective territories? When social discontent threatens market integration with populist backlash, what must be done to create political support and greater legitimacy?

Single Markets focuses on the creation of integrated economies, in which the United States and European Union experienced sharply contested ideas about the operation of their respective markets, conflict over the allocation of institutional authority, and pressure from competing political, economic, and social forces over the role and consequences of increased competition. Drawing upon four case studies, the book highlights the contestation surrounding the US and EU's efforts to create common currencies, expand their borders and territories, and deal with the pressures of populist parties, regional interests and varied fiscal and economic challenges. Theoretically, the book draws on work in European integration and American Political Development (APD) to illustrate that the consolidation of markets in the US and EU took place in conjunction with the expansion of state regulatory power and pressure for democratic reform.

Single Markets situates the consolidation of single markets in the US and EU in a broader comparative context that draws on research in economics, public administration, political science, law, and history.

Peter Lindseth: Equilibrium, Demoi-cracy and Delegation in the Crisis of European Integration (Corrected Version)

Network member Peter Lindseth (UConn Law School) has a new article out in the German Law Journal entitled "Equilibrium, Demoi-cracy and Delegation in the Crisis of European Integration".  The abstract is below.  A corrected version has been posted to fix errors inadvertently introduced by the editors without the author's approval.  The corrected version can be downloaded on SSRN here or the GLJ site here.

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As my work has argued previously, European integration enjoys an “administrative, not constitutional” legitimacy. This view is in obvious tension with the deeply-rooted conceptual framework—what we might call the “constitutional, not international” perspective—that has dominated the public-law scholarship of European integration over many decades. Although the alternative presented in my work breaks from that traditional perspective, we should not view it as an all-or-nothing rejection of everything that has come before it. The administrative alternative can be seen, rather, as providing legal-historical micro-foundations for certain theories that also emerged out of the traditional perspective even as they too are in tension with it. I am referring in particular to Joseph Weiler’s classic notion of European “equilibrium”—now updated as “constitutional tolerance”—as well as Kalypso Nicolaïdis’s more recently developed theory of European “demoi-cracy” on which this article focuses in particular. The central idea behind the “administrative, not constitutional” interpretation—the historical-constructivist principal-agent framework rooted in delegation, as well as the balance demanded between supranational regulatory power and national democratic and constitutional legitimacy—directly complements both theories. The administrative alternative suggests how the relationship between national principals and supranational agents is one of “mediated legitimacy” rather than direct control. It has its origins in the evolution of administrative governance in relation to representative government over the course of the twentieth century (indeed before). By drawing on the normative lessons of that history—notably the need for some form of national oversight as well as enforcement of outer constraints on supranational delegation in order to preserve national democratic and constitutional legitimacy in a recognizable sense—this article serves an additional purpose. It suggests how theories of European equilibrium and demoi-cracy might be translated into concrete legal proposals for a more sustainable form of integration over time—a pressing challenge in the context of the continuing crisis of European integration.

Pragmatism, Idealism and European Demoicracy (Kalypso Nicolaïdis)

Network member Kalypso Nicolaïdis (Oxford), who just completed a year at NYU as a Joint Straus / Senior Emile Noël Fellow, has posted a comment on Social Europe Journal entitled "Pragmatism, Idealism, and European Demoicracy."  A taste is below and you can read the remainder at SEJ.

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Europe has never been so crowded with Cassandras than in the last three years since the Eurocrisis began – pundits and politicians predicting that the Euro or even the European Union would collapse if we did not at last achieve ‘unity’ while claiming that they themselves were cursed with public disbelief in their predictions – predictions echoed on the other side of the ideological divide by those heralding the end of national democracy as we know it unless we got rid of the Euro.

Yet, neither the EU nor the Eurozone have disintegrated. Instead the muddlers through have, well, muddled through, causing much damage to Europe’s social fabric in the process, but nevertheless keeping the show on the road. [Continue reading at Social Europe Journal]

"What is Political Union?" (Alexander Somek) in the German Law Journal Special Issue: Regeneration Europe

The German Law Journal, edited by network members Russell Miller (W&L) and Peer Zumbansen (Osgoode), has put out a special issue on the topic "Regeneration Europe."  It includes a contribution by network member Alexander Somek (Iowa) entitled "What is Political Union?"  The abstract is below and the full article can be downloaded here.

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Recent proposals to fix Europe’s ailing monetary union have led some to endorse a stronger fiscal union. Such a fiscal union, which would supposedly comprise stronger budgetary supervision as well as a modicum of revenue collection by the Union itself, is taken to mark the step towards “political” union. The article explores the question of what, if anything, is understood by “political” in this context. After distinguishing three possible meanings of political union, the article argues that a true union of this kind would rest its focus on the form of life that can be sustained among Europeans. Surprisingly perhaps, the article concludes that less centralization and unwinding monetary union in its current form may well be more congenial to a political union than hectic bids for fiscal centralization.

CONREASON Survey on Judicial Attitudes towards European Law and European Integration

Arthur Dyevre, Senior Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, has forwarded the request below, asking readers to participate in an expert survey on judicial attitudes towards European law and European integration.  This survey is part of the CONREASON Project on ‘Constitutional Reasoning in Comparative Perspective’, of which Arthur is the co-investigator (more details can be found on the project website here).

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TAKE THE EU LEGAL INTEGRATION SURVEY!

As part of the Schumpeter CONREASON Project, we are conducting an online expert survey on judicial attitudes towards European law and European integration in the European Union. The survey focuses on supreme and constitutional courts and their doctrinal response to the legal integration process. The survey targets all those who are potential experts in the EU legal integration process: academics, judges, law students, etc.

The online questionnaire takes only a few minutes to complete. You can choose on which court you wish to report and even take several surveys in case you want to report on more than one court.

To take the survey just click on the link below, which will take you to the survey page of the CONREASON Project Website:

http://www.conreasonproject.com/expert-survey.html

Please feel free to contact us (conreason@mpil.de) for questions and remarks regarding the questionnaire. Feedback is welcome.