Australia's international cultural relations: Some domestic dimensions

Recent policy statements about and administrative innovations for Australia's international cultural relations activities (involving the country‐specific councils administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australia Abroad Council, the Australia Council and the Cultural Ministers’ Council) are examined in terms of the connections between foreign policy making and the domestic political sphere. The evidence demonstrates that while the developments were promoted in terms of supporting Australia's interests in the external world each is demonstrably serving the domestic political interests of the bureaucratic units involved.     

New Institutions for Transatlantic Trade?

In late 1994 and 1995, senior figures on both sides of the Atlantic advocated a transatlantic free trade area: in December 1995 the EU and the United States signed the New transatlantic agenda and the Joint EU–US action plan in Madrid; in March 1998, the European Commission proposed 'a new transatlantic marketplace', which was vetoed by France in the following month; and in September 1998 the Commission offered its latest plan–the Draft action plan for transatlantic economic partnership . This article examines the political and economic case for new institutions, drawing on the arguments the Commission used to support its proposal for a new transatlantic marketplace. These arguments are found to be unpersuasive. For an EU stance in trade policy matters to be improved by a French veto may be unprecedented. That is what has happened, however. The French veto actually led to the Draft action plan which provides transatlantic trade relations with a better framework than the proposal for a new transatlantic marketplace could possibly have done.     

Great expectations – the European Union and cultural policy: fact or fiction?

The European Union secured limited legal ‘competence’ to act in culture in 1992. This article examines the operational context and its complicated and countervailing tensions that make European cultural policy formulation and implementation difficult. Underlying problems originate in the failure properly to define what is meant by ‘culture’ in different contexts or to identify clear and pragmatic policy objectives, although legitimate ‘instrumental’ use of culture is common. The EU’s institutional structures (Council, Commission and Parliament) are often at cross‐purposes, while the national interests of member states can have a negative effect. The structure and internal politics of the Commission ensure that the Directorate responsible for ‘culture’ remains marginal, despite its growing ambition. An attempt to institute an ‘Agenda for Culture’ in 2007 has had some initial success, but given the definitional, legal, political and administrative problems, claims being made for significant progress seem somewhat premature.     

Overcoming legacies of foreign policy (dis)interests in the negotiation of the European Union–Australia free trade agreement*

ABSTRACT

Despite a troubled trade history dominated by disputes over agriculture, the negotiation of a European Union (EU)–Australia free trade agreement (FTA) was initiated in 2015. The initiation of these negotiations was made possible because of the shift in EU trade policy towards the negotiation of what the EU terms ‘new generation free trade agreements’. The EU has concluded FTA negotiations with South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and Canada, and is negotiating other FTAs— notably with Japan and the USA . The EU faces many commercial challenges to its FTA negotiations that go beyond tariff reduction, including the protection of its geographical indicators, public procurement and investor–state dispute settlement. These issues are likely to be substantial features of any EU FTA with Australia. In addition to these challenges, the promotion of sustainable development interests and human rights through FTA negotiations is an important component of the EU’s approach. The EU’s position on the trade-related aspects of sustainable development and the negotiation of human rights conditionality has presented significant challenges to the EU’s trade agenda, particularly in negotiations with Canada and Singapore. This article draws lessons from the EU’s new generation trade agreement negotiations to date. It compares these negotiations with Australia’s approach to FTA negotiations, and analyses potential stumbling blocks for an EU–Australia FTA in light of past tensions in the relationship. The article argues that shifts in both EU and Australian trade policies and positive developments in the relationship mitigate past obstacles to a negotiated agreement. However, EU– Australia relations still suffer from the tyranny of distance. The resulting deficit in foreign policy salience between the EU and Australia broadens the best alternatives to a negotiated agreement.     

The Water Framework Directive: A New Directive for a Changing Social,Political and Economic European Framework

This article examines the intricate process of developing the European Union's Water Framework Directive. It sees the Directive as a response to recent economic, political and social changes related to water management, including the shift from government to governance, the liberalization of water markets and the emergence of a new set of institutions, actors, etc. and their respective relations (i.e. social capital). The article focuses on the key points of disagreement between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament that threatened to prevent the Directive from being materialized and interprets this controversy as the culmination of conflicting interests between different actors at the local, national and European levels. Finally, it asserts the increasingly important role of the nation state in the decision-making and implementation of the Directive and sets this against recent arguments about the death of the State.     

Transatlantic relations and peace in Europe

In his recent novel Alain Crémieux imagines what might happen in Europe without NATO and US military forces and security commitments. Numerous border and minority conflicts break out, coalitions comparable to those in Europe's past begin to form, and the European Union is divided and ineffectual— until pro‐peace and pro‐EU forces rally. Most European countries then unite under a treaty providing for collective defence and security and a new central European government. The novel raises questions of international order: to what extent have the Europeans overcome their old ‘demons’ (distrust, power rivalry etc.), notably through the EU? While many theories purport to explain the peaceful relations among the EU member states, critical tests of the Union's political cohesion would come in circumstances without the US‐dominated external security framework, including US leadership in NATO. To what extent could the EU maintain cohesion and resist aggression or coercion by an external power against a member state, contain and resolve external conflicts affecting EU interests, and defend the Union's economic and security interests beyond Europe? To determine whether the US ‘pacifying’ and protective role has in fact become irrelevant, thanks in large part to the EU, would require a risky experiment—actually removing US military forces and commitments. The challenges and uncertainties that would face Europe without NATO argue that the Alliance remains an essential underpinning of political order in Europe. Moreover, the Alliance can serve as a key element in the campaigns against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. To revitalize the Alliance, it is imperative that the Europeans improve their military capabilities and acquire the means necessary for a more balanced transatlantic partnership in maintaining international security.     

The European policy of the Jospin government: A new twist to old French games

This article presents a constructivist-inspired analysis of the Jospin government's European policy, understanding most policy developments during this period as variations on well-established French preferences—rooted in a modified Gaullist paradigm—embedded in French state identity. The variations reflect external political and economic pressures. By June 1997, the potential contradiction between perceptions of European integration as an extension of French state identity and the actual constraints imposed by integration was never greater, due to the reinforced constraints imposed by the operation of the Single European Market (SEM) and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), in additional to the rise of German unilateralism and the need for European Union (EU) institutional and policy reforms made necessary by the approaching enlargement of the EU eastwards and the increased pressure on the Jospin government to reconceptualise an end-goal to European integration.     

The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This "harmonized" policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.     

Russia's European policy under Medvedev: how sustainable is a new compromise?

This article argues that Dmitry Medvedev's term in office, despite the continuity in Russia's foreign policy objectives, brought about a certain change in Russia's relations with the European Union and the countries of the Common Neighbourhood. The western perceptions of Russia as a resurgent power able to use energy as leverage vis‐à‐vis the EU were challenged by the global economic crisis, the emergence of a buyer's market in Europe's gas trade, Russia's inability to start internal reforms, and the growing gap in the development of Russia on the one hand and China on the other. As a result, the balance of self‐confidence shifted in the still essentially stagnant EU–Russian relationship. As before, Moscow is ready to use all available opportunities to tighten its grip on the post‐Soviet space, but it is less keen to go into an open conflict when important interests of EU member states may be affected. The realization is slowly emerging also inside Russia that it is less able either to intimidate or attract European actors, even though it can still appeal to their so‐called ‘pragmatic interests’, both transparent and non‐transparent. At the same time, whereas the new modus operandi may be suboptimal from the point of view of those in the country who would want Russia's policy to be aimed at the restoration of global power status, it is the one that the Kremlin can live with—also after the expected return of Vladimir Putin as Russia's president. Under the current scheme, the West—and the EU in particular—does little to challenge Russia's internal order and leaves it enough space to conduct its chosen course in the former Soviet Union.     

A trade balance: litigation and negotiation in the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement system

The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been widely accepted as representing the legalisation of world trading rules. However, it is important to reflect on the limits of this legalisation thesis in terms of the interface between international and domestic policy processes. By locating trading disputes in a political analysis of policy implementation, it is argued that it is difficult to establish conceptually how the WTO dispute settlement system could have authority separate from and above the conventional international politics of trade policy relations. Instead, the article argues that case outcomes should be expected to be largely the product of domestic political institutions and policy processes, and how these intersect with developments in the WTO dispute settlement system. Brief studies of the Australian government's dispute settlement strategy and two high-profile WTO disputes—the US upland cotton and European Union sugar cases—serve to suggest that the authority of international trade law is not as significant as assumed by the legalisation thesis. Rather, domestic politics and institutions have an important impact on the outcome of trade disputes.     

The European Impact on State–Religion Relations in Turkey: Political Islam,Alevis and Non-Muslim Minorities

Since Turkey's application for membership of the European Union (EU) in 1987, the EU has itself been a structural component of Turkey's political transformation. The European impact intensified after Turkey was granted the status of an official candidate at the EU's Helsinki Summit in 1999. Since then, Turkey has issued a series of reform packages with the aim of starting accession negotiations, which began in October 2005. These reforms have initiated a democratic regime that is structurally different from its predecessors in terms of its definition of political community, national identity and the territorial structure of the state. Among many other aspects of the current political transformation such as the resolution of the Kurdish problem and administrative reform, this article concentrates on how the European impact, which I label Europeanisation, has influenced state–religion relations in Turkey. Europeanisation has three major mechanisms that influence actors, institutions, ideas and interests in varying ways: institutional compliance, changing opportunity structures, and the framing of domestic beliefs and expectations. The article concentrates on how these mechanisms operate in the creation of a new regulatory framework of religion in Turkey.     

Rethinking American Public Policy: The Environment, Federalism, States, and Supranational Influences

The politics of American public policy recently have transformed in response to changing power relationships between levels of government in the United States. Certain policy choices now are made in different arenas–for example, state and local government institutions often make policy decisions that previously had been within the jurisdiction of America's national government. At the same time, new policy relationships between states also are altering previous political patterns. This article highlights and explains this phenomenon, and focuses particularly on the changing power relationships between levels of government in the United States–national, state, and local–and the resulting policies and politics. More specifically, it closely examines two 20th century innovations in government and public policymaking within the context of a discrete case study. One of these innovations is institutional–the rise of public authorities or public corporations as highly insulated, governmental entities. The other is procedural–the environmental impact statement process. Together, these innovations, in concert with broader international and global trends, have played a large role in the shifting power structure and politics underlying American public policymaking activities.     

From Ostpolitik to ‘frostpolitik’? Merkel,Putin and German foreign policy towards Russia

Germany's relationship with Russia has historically been one of the most crucial in shaping Europe's fate. Despite radical transformation in the nature of European Great Power politics, it continues to be pertinent from the perspective of today's world. Germany's willingness to establish good relations with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s—its emphasis on economic relations and cooperation instead of political disagreements—prepared the ground for the end of the Cold War and German unification twenty years later. Germany's basic policy towards Russia remained broadly unchanged despite German unification and changes in the domestic political coalitions and leadership, sometimes against political expectations. In the European context, Germany's attitude towards Russia created the backbone of EU–Russia relations. During 2012–13, however, the continuity in Germany's policy towards Russia was seen as having come to an end. Political twists came to the fore and the atmosphere was loaded with tensions, made worse by the Ukrainian crisis. This article reviews the recent, alleged changes in Germany's policy towards Russia during the Merkel era. It asks two basic questions: first, whether Germany's policy really has changed and if it has, what are the theoretical tools that give us the best potential understanding of these changes? The article argues that the policy has changed, but not as dramatically as made out by some headlines. Moreover, the article suggests that a key element in analysing the degree of change in Germany's policy towards Russia is neither the external power relations nor domestic politics and related changes in the prevailing interpretation of national interest, though these are important too, but the interaction between the leaders and foreign policy elites.     

Amsterdam in the Red Queen's Country: Interorganizational coordination and EU‐local interaction in spatial planning and policy

This study tests alternative models of EU policy evolution, using the municipality of Amsterdam's interaction with the EU as a pilot case. Amsterdam's activities in European resource acquisition and developing EU policy are reviewed, and the coordination structures concerting these activities are analysed and evaluated. Conclusions are: Local‐EU interaction is mainly sectoral, undertaken at local line agencies’ initiative, with little intersectoral coordination; networking is the universal medium of local — EU interaction, dismissing the intergovernmental model in favour of a modified communautarianism; interorganizational networks linking EU institutions to their environments imply a growing supranationalism with significant implications for European integration.     

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy‐makers as their agents, and policy‐makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms.     

Japan's Political Leadership Deficit

Analysts have long pondered the question: 'Who rules in Japan?'. Prime Ministers who have exercised strong leadership have been the exception rather than the rule. Despite the widespread acknowledgment that Japan's political leadership deficit undermines the ability of the government to act swiftly in a crisis and to exercise international leadership in trade and foreign policy, a systematic explanation for Japan's weak political executive is yet to be advanced. While historical and cultural factors cannot be ignored, more relevant in a contemporary context are institutional factors that restrict the power of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. A parliamentary Cabinet system is not incompatible with strong leadership but, in Japan's case, the inability of the political executive to exercise indisputable authority, or indeed, merely to exercise the legitimate prerogatives of Prime Ministerial and Cabinet Office, is directly attributable to the constraints imposed by a collection of informal power structures within the ruling conservative party and by an autonomous central bureaucracy, all of which have held power away from the political executive. Various institutional remedies are currently being pursued to enhance the leadership of the executive branch. They are part of a deliberately engineered shift in power from non-elected bureaucrats to elected politicians. The reforms will also help to diminish the influence of ruling party factions over personnel selections to executive office and the ascendancy of internal policy cliques within party policymaking.     

Australia and the European Union in the World Trade Organisation: partners or adversaries?

Shared interests between Australia and the European Union (EU) in multilateral trade negotiations are increasing. However, the relationship in the WTO continues to be defined by conflicts over agriculture. This article examines the case for closer Australia-EU co-operation on shared interests in WTO negotiations while continuing to press for more rapid reform of EU agriculture policies. It traces the major changes in the interface between Australia and the EU in the WTO, including the re-structuring of the Australian economy over the past two decades and the more recent efforts by the EU to modify the trade impact of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) on world agriculture trade. The article concludes that closer co-operation between Australia and the EU in the WTO on shared interests would enhance Australia's influence in the multilateral trade system.     

Italy as a negotiator in the EU equal opportunities policy process

The creation of both a Ministry and a Department for equal opportunities has been Italy's main institutional response to EU pressures in the field of equal opportunities policy. Nevertheless, the impact of Italian negotiators in the EU depends not only on the institutional resources available to them, but also on the political credibility acquired by presenting well‐defined and clear preferences during the bargaining process in the Council. This article considers how the Italian position was presented, and how successful it was, in two recently approved Directives, one decided by qualified majority vote, the other on a basis of unanimity. The aim of the analysis is to assess Italy's capacity to influence EU social affairs. Information was gathered by conducting qualitative interviews with the main political actors involved in the decision‐making process at the national and European levels.     

Economic Policy and Decision Making at the Intersection of Domestic and International Politics: The Advocacy Coalition Framework and the National Economic Council

This article advances a theoretical model of the National Economic Council (NEC) based on a policy network approach and group decision-making theory to explain why the U.S. president's NEC represents a significant development in the rise of the intermestic policymaking and decision-making processes. It develops theoretical conceptions of interests and manipulation based on a Policy Network Approach and the Advocacy Coalition Framework in policy studies research to illustrate the complexity of NEC group dynamics. Hopefully, such a contribution can further existing theoretical frameworks in the field of policy studies and analysis and can add to assessments of the NEC in policymaking and decision-making. Unlike much of the prevailing research, this article perceives the NEC as a political instrument used by policymakers and decision makers to protect their policy interests and engage in forms of political manipulation to increase their power over economic policy.     

The effectiveness of UN and EU sanctions: lessons for the twenty‐first century

A fractious UN Security Council has contributed to the decline in effectiveness of a number of UN sanctions adopted in recent years. Yet they remain a tool of the Council, for example with regard to Libya in 2011. The challenge is to understand how UN, country (US) and regional sanctions (EU, AU, Arab League) can be meaningful in such a climate. The four books reviewed make various suggestions, from clarity of mandate to better evaluating impact. Mikael Eriksson's Targeting peace seeks to evaluate the complexity of the sanctions policy process. He argues that effectiveness comes partly from understanding politics (episodes of sanctions), but also from institutional reform—‘black box’ processes, as he calls them. Sanctions are more successful as part of a wider package. Clara Portela in European Union sanctions and foreign policy examines the use of sanctions as a political tool, including the suspension of development aid and the withdrawal of trade privileges. She shows how the EU plays an important role in signalling and constraining when UN sanctions are weak. For example, informal measures like the 2003 EU decision to invite only dissidents to national day receptions in Havanna resulted in the release of detainees that it had aimed for. The high rate of success of development aid cut‐off stands in sharp contrast with EU Common Foreign and Security Policy sanctions. The unintended consequence of good intentions is also highlighted by both Portela and Eriksson—Zimbabwe in particular but also Côte d'Ivoire and Iran pose similar challenges. The imposition of EU or UN sanctions is easier than reaching consensus to lift them, although events in Burma (Myanmar) in 2012 have resulted in smooth suspensions of most US and EU sanctions. All four books show that targeted sanctions cannot be seen as stand‐alone measures, nor assessed in isolation. Sanctions are multi‐faceted and require detailed assessment of political context, episode and institutional process.