Month: April 2017

Amid growing pressures of Europeanization, many scholars have cast doubt on the state prevailing as a dominant marker of territory. Identifying a process of de-territorialization of economic and social systems, however, would be at odds with what we can actually observe in the European polity, says Michael Keating. Instead, we have witnessed a re-territorialization of such systems, as functions, political articulation and competition have relocated to new levels above, below and across states. How do we make sense of such an increasingly complex polity? In his article “Europe as a multilevel federation” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Michael argues that a federalist perspective allows us to analyse and appraise the EU as an order characterised by an emerging regional level below and across states, if federalism is considered “a general principle of order, combining unity with diversity.”

The EU treaties contain various mechanisms allowing national parliaments to collectively make their voices heard in EU policy-making. But, should we expect national parliaments to gang up to strengthen their role in the EU’s multilevel polity? Drawing lessons from patterns of inter-parliamentary activism in Canada, Switzerland and the United States, Nicole Bolleyer concludes that national parliaments in EU member states are unlikely to jointly become a politically active player. In her article “Executive-legislative relations and inter-parliamentary cooperation in federal systems – lessons for the European Union” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Nicole argues that strong national parties bridging the divide between legislative and executive branches leave parliamentary majorities less willing to defend their interests independently from their executives. Her findings suggest that “the strength of national parties decreases the likelihood of national parliaments’ active collective involvement in EU-decision-making, possibly undermining what some consider as an alternative pathway to close the EU’s democratic deficit.”