Category: Journal News

Throughout 2018, we ask JEPP authors and members from JEPP’s editorial board to share with us their stories as to how the research published in JEPP over the past 25 years influenced their own thinking and research about Europe, the EU, and public policy. This is what they are saying.

Daniel Naurin, University of Oslo, Norway

Kelemen, R. Daniel & Susanne K. Schmidt (Eds.). Perpetual Momentum? Reconsidering the power of the European Court of Justice. Journal of European Public Policy 19(1), 2012.

Over the years, I have found highly inspiring articles in JEPP within most of my fields of interest, including interest group politics, EU legislative politics, deliberation and intergovernmental negotiations. In the last years, a particularly motivating special issue has been “Perpetual momentum? Reconsidering the power of the European Court of Justice”, edited by R. Daniel Kelemen and Susanne K. Schmidt in 2012. The special issue was published at a time when European judicial politics was at cross-roads. Established truths based largely on intelligent speculation was increasingly being questioned by systematic empirical research, raising heated debates about the judicialization of European politics, and the possibility of democratic control over unelected judges. These scholars, however, managed to keep their cool, and provide a nuanced set of articles demonstrating both the opportunities and limitations of judicial discretion set by the EU political system. Furthermore, they pointed at several puzzles and gaps in the literature that I have grappled with in my research ever since, including in particular the sources of judicial preferences, the political appointments of judges, and the politics of organization within the ECJ.

Dimiter Toshkov, Leiden University, Netherlands

Schimmelfennig, Frank & Ulrich Sedelmeier. Governance by conditionality: EU rule transfer to the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of European Public Policy 11(4), 2004, pp. 661-679.

JEPP published this article in 2004, just as the first wave of post-communist countries was officially entering the European Union. Amidst all the fanfare celebrating the success of the ‘big-bang’ enlargement of the EU to the East, Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier presented an insightful and clear-headed analysis of the power of the EU to export its rules outside its borders. The article outlined a comprehensive theoretical framework of rule transfer and offered a perceptive interpretation of the Eastern enlargement process in light of this framework. But the major feat of Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier was probably to demystify the sources and mechanisms of EU influence, and in the process, hint to its limits. This opened a new research agenda that continues to this day to explore the varying success of the EU in exporting its rules and institutions to candidates for membership, to the countries in the EU’s neighbourhood, and beyond.

Refereeing is the lifeblood of our profession, at least in this day and age. As authors and editors, we have to take it for granted that our colleagues invest time and effort into assessing the quality of our work. We as editors, of JEPP never cease to be grateful that (until now!) we always find dedicated colleagues who take on this important task for every single paper that we send out for review (and there are luckily many papers making their way to JEPP). We owe our reviewers an immense amount of recognition and gratitude. To emphasize the importance of reviewing, we have decided to award an annual reviewer prize, following the admirable step that some other journals in our discipline have already taken. With this prize we want to recognize the exceptional commitment of our reviewers as well as their selfless investment in helping to improve the work of colleagues.

This year, we are happy to award the first two reviewer prizes to honour these qualities to:

Frank Baumgartner (UNC Chapel Hill)

Eva Thomann (University of Exeter)

Congratulations to our prize winners!

We are happy to announce the winner of the JEPP’s Best Paper Prize for 2017. Two members of JEPP’s editorial board, Will Jennings (University of Southampton) and Arndt Wonka (University of Bremen) selected among all original articles published in JEPP in 2017 (excluding Special Issues) their favorite piece:

Eva Heims (2017) ‘Regulatory co-ordination in the EU: a cross-sector comparison’, Journal of European Public Policy 24(8), 116-1134.

Statement: “The article ‘Regulatory co-ordination in the EU: a cross-sector comparison’ by Eva Heims of the University of York is an important study that shows that national regulators’ attitudes towards co-ordination by the EU are driven by the aim to protect their turf. The author specifies arguments that lead us to expect national regulatory agencies to engage in or refrain from horizontal cooperation between agencies in the EU regulatory system. The paper thus makes an important contribution to a better understanding of the conditions for successful administrative cooperation and implementation in EU regulatory politics. The research design has been carefully crafted to obtain data that can meaningfully inform the theoretical arguments. To provide original insights into regulatory coordination, the author draws on comparative case studies of food control and maritime safety in Germany and the UK. That data was obtained from policy documents and through semi-structured interviews with officials.

The article provides insights both in its theoretical arguments and empirical evidence. It argues for a new understanding of how national regulators use EU coordination to maintain their bureaucratic turf and should thus be of interest to students of public administration, regulatory policy-making and EU politics more generally.”

The prize-winning article will be freely available online until the end of 2018. JEPP’s editorial team congratulates Eva on winning the JEPP Best Paper Prize for 2017!

Throughout 2018, we ask JEPP authors and members from JEPP’s editorial board to share with us their stories as to how the research published in JEPP over the past 25 years influenced their own thinking and research about Europe, the EU, and public policy. This is what they are saying.

Jale Tosun, Heidelberg University, Germany

Kelemen, R. Daniel. Globalizing European Union Environmental Policy. Journal of European Public Policy 17(3), 2010, pp. 335-349.

Together with the JEPP article by Robert Falkner on the “political economy of ‘normative power’ Europe” (volume 14, issue 4), this contribution by Daniel Kelemen offers a thought-provoking and compelling discussion of the rational foundations of the EU’s efforts to spread its environmental standards globally. By adopting this perspective, Kelemen challenges the scholarship that describes the EU a ‘normative’ power. Elegantly written and logically consistent, this piece demonstrates that two-level games also apply to complex and multi-levelled organizations such as the EU. On the one hand, the EU is constrained by demands for ambitious environmental policies by its member states and the European Parliament (internal dimension). On the other hand, the EU itself strives to constrain the policy choices of non-EU states by promoting international agreements that ‘export’ its most preferred policy positions internationally (external dimension). This strategic lens on the EU’s behavior helped in developing an exciting body of literature that combines public policy research with scholarship in international political economy.

Jan Beyers, University of Antwerp, Belgium

During the past 25 years, the Journal of European Public Policy, in particular its founding editor Jeremy Richardson, played a key role in developing the research field on interest representation, lobbying and advocacy. In my role as editor of Interest Groups & Advocacy I am always struck by how influential work published in JEPP is for our field; almost every paper we review has at least one reference to an article or a special issue JEPP published. My own research on political representation, but also my work on Europeanization and regional politics, has been heavily inspired by JEPP. For instance, my Endnote database contains no less than 83 papers which I have regularly cited over the years. Hence, it is extremely difficult to point at one single paper that has influenced my work. I would like to highlight some older papers that were extremely inspirational. Interesting about these papers is that they connect the issue of interest representation to broader political science puzzles about institutional development, political legitimacy, responsiveness and accountability. So, there are many good reasons to re-read these three papers:

Grande, Edgar. The state and interest groups in the framework of multi-level decision-making: the case of the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 3(3), 1996, pp. 318-338.

Coen, David. The evolution of the large firm as a political actor in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 4(1), 1997, pp. 91-108.

Pollack, Mark A. Representing diffuse interests in EC policy-making. Journal of European Public Policy 4(4), 1997, pp. 572-590.

Christine Reh, University College London, United Kingdom

Simon Hix. The study of the European Union II: the ‘new governance’ agenda and its rival. Journal of European Public Policy 5(1), 1998, pp. 38-65.

Published two decades ago, Simon Hix’s piece postulated—possibly overstated—a “new duality” in the study of the European Union: between the new governance agenda and its, then emerging, comparative rival. The article propagates a more extensive and more systematic use of the established theories and “toolkits” of Comparative Politics to analyse and evaluate the EU’s key political and democratic challenges at the turn of the millennium; this argument is based on a methodological (calling for comparison), theoretical (calling for rationalist actor-centred analysis) and normative (calling for a focus on input legitimacy) critique of the sui generis approach. Over the next decades, both the agenda and its rival went on to become the coherent bodies of scholarship Hix called for in the piece; both produced innovative work on the EU’s government, governance and policy-choices, ranging from deliberative democracy to bargaining models; and both continue to speak to EU scholars from across the methodological and theoretical spectrum. For me, it is therefore less the start of a successful journey from comparative rival to comparative turn that makes this article one of JEPP’s seminal contributions; it is the prescient identification of the EU’s current challenges—in particular, the constraints on domestic welfare choices, the tension between non-majoritarian and competitive elements of legitimation, the need for versus risk of politicising integration—, combined with the passionate plea for a coherent research agenda to address these challenges, that offers us a powerful link between the study of the European Union in the 1990s and the study of the more troubled but also more exciting European Union of today.

Happy JEPP@25: here is to more agendas and rivals over the next quarter of a century!

Throughout 2018, we ask JEPP authors and members from JEPP’s editorial board to share with us their stories as to how the research published in JEPP over the past 25 years influenced their own thinking and research about Europe, the EU, and public policy. This is what they are saying.

Sara Hobolt, London School of Economics, United Kingdom

Mair, Peter, and Jacques Thomassen. Political representation and government in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 17(1), 2010, pp. 20-35.

“Mair and Thomassen’s 2010 article presents an insightful and refreshingly provocative assessment of representation in the European Union.  Going against the grain of much EU scholarship, Mair and Thomassen on the one hand warn against the move towards parliamentary government at the EU level. On the other hand, they argue that despite the deficiencies of European Parliament elections, representation at the European level works better than often assumed because national parties effectively represent their constituents’ interests in the EU. This article thus provides two important lessons to those of us studying democracy in the EU: first, the importance of examining the interconnected pathways of representation at both the national and the EU-level and secondly, the vital role of political parties in shaping and re-shaping European democracy.”

Christoph Knill, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany

Scharpf, Fritz W. Introduction: the problem-solving capacity of multi-level governance. Journal of European Public Policy 4(4), 1997, pp. 520-538.

“Looking back at 25 years of JEPP, there are definitely many articles and special issues that have been highly inspiring and relevant for my work. Yet, probably the most influential pieces date back to my early postdoc years, because they have been particularly formative for my own analytical thinking. In this regard, the special issue on “the problem-solving capacity of multilevel governance” edited by Fitz W. Scharpf in 1997 (JEPP vol. 4, no. 4) certainly played an outstanding role. The collection of pieces contained highly inspiring papers, grounded in neo-institutional and game-theoretical analyses of dynamics and patterns of EU policy-making that in many ways still constitutes the today’s benchmark for research in these areas.”

Frank Schimmelfennig, Swiss Institute of Technology/ETH, Switzerland

Grabbe, Heather. How does Europeanization affect CEE governance? Conditionality, diffusion, and diversity. Journal of European Public Policy 8(6), 2001, pp. 1013-1031.

“Papers on Europeanization account for a large part of what JEPP has published over the past 25 years. Heather Grabbe’s paper on how Europeanization affects governments and governance in Central and Eastern Europe was one of the first studies to apply this perspective to EU enlargement and the candidate countries – and to point out the important role of conditionality in this process. Heather’s paper was also influential in distinguishing various mechanisms of Europeanization and their interaction with domestic and international processes of change and influence in the region. From a present-day perspective, it is worth rereading the article’s conclusions on the “executive bias” of Europeanization in the region: “the EU’s efforts to promote democratic development are at odds with the incentives created by the accession process, where the EU gives priority to efficiency over legitimacy” (p. 1029).”

Frank Baumgartner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

“I keep a running bibliography of articles and books I use in my work; the current version runs about 230 pages. In that list, I count 38 articles published in JEPP. Discounting those that I have published myself (often with different collaborators), those published in a special issue I co-edited from September 2006 (issue 13, number 7), as well as 15 additional articles published by my collaborators from the Comparative Agendas Project (e.g., works by authors including Breunig, Princen, Soroka, Walgrave, Green-Pedersen, Bevan, John, and others), this leaves another 15 JEPP pieces. As an empiricist, I have to say then that these are the JEPP pieces that have affected my thinking; they are the ones I cite and use in my own work. The interesting element about JEPP and me is that the influence starts with Volume 1, Issue 1, where Guy Peter’s “Agenda‐setting in the European Community” (1993) has place of honor, the first substantive article in the first issue of the journal. This was quickly followed by Dudley and Richardson’s 1996 “Why Does Policy Change over Time?”; Coen’s 1997 “The Evolution of the Large Firm as a Political Actor in the European Union”; Mazey’s 1998 “The European Union and Women’s Rights”; and so on. My list includes articles on such a broad range of substantive issues that I feel that I have learned considerably about what the EU and its member governments actually do (one the reasons I enjoy studying public policy); institutions of EU governance; venue-shopping; framing; multiple-streams applications, not to mention lobbying and policy process issues more generally. Of course I cannot even say how many of these articles I have reviewed for the journal, or ones not published from which I have also learned so much. I attach below the articles drawn from my bibliography, excluding those in which I participated. My involvement with JEPP has been from the beginning, and I’m sure I have learned more than I have contributed. Thanks to the many authors for teaching me so much.”

A Baumgartner JEPP bibliography:

Articles by scholars unconnected to me by co-authorship.

1. Peters, B. Guy. Agenda‐setting in the European Community. Journal of European Public Policy 1(1), 1993, pp. 9–26.
2. Dudley, Geoffrey, and Jeremy Richardson. Why Does Policy Change over Time? Adversarial Policy Communities, Alternative Policy Arenas, and British Trunk Roads Policy 1945–95. Journal of European Public Policy 3(1), 1996, pp. 63–83.
3. Coen, David. The Evolution of the Large Firm as a Political Actor in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 4(1), 1997, pp. 91–108.
4. Mazey, Sonia. The European Union and Women’s Rights: From the Europeanization of National Agendas to the Nationalization of a European Agenda? Journal of European Public Policy 5(1), 1998, pp. 131–152.
5. Pijnenburg, Bert. EU Lobbying by ad hoc Coalitions: an Exploratory Case Study. Journal of European Public Policy. 5(2), 1998, pp. 303–321.
6. Meijerink, Sander. Understanding policy stability and change. The interplay of advocacy coalitions and epistemic communities, windows of opportunity, and Dutch coastal flooding policy 1945–2003. Journal of European Public Policy 12(6), 2005, pp. 1060–1077.
7. Pralle, Sarah B. Timing and sequence in agenda-setting and policy change: a comparative study of lawn care pesticide politics in Canada and the US. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), pp. 987–1005.
8. Daviter, Falk. Policy Framing in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy. 14(4), 2007, pp. 654–66.
9. Zahariadis, Nikolaos. Ambiguity and choice in European public policy. Journal of European Public Policy 15(4), 2008, pp. 514–530.
10. Boin, Arjen, Paul t’Hart, and Allan McConnell. Crisis exploitation: Political and policy impacts of framing contests. Journal of European Public Policy 16(1), 2009, pp. 81–106.
11. Ackrill, Robert, and Adrian Kay. Multiple streams in EU policymaking: The case of the 2005 sugar reform. Journal of European Public Policy 18(1), 2011, pp. 72–89.
12. Bach, Ian. Measuring quality of life for public policy: an idea whose time has come? Agenda-setting dynamics in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 20(1), 2013, pp. 21–38.
13. Ackrill, Robert, Adrian Kay, and Nikolaos Zahariadis. Ambiguity, multiple streams, and EU policy Journal of European Public Policy 20(6), 2013, pp. 871–887.
14. Duer, Andreas, and Gemma Mateo. Public Opinion and Interest Group Influence: How Citizen Groups Derailed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Journal of European Public Policy 21(8), 2014, pp. 1199–1217.
15. Beyers, Jan, Tom Donas, and Bert Faussen. No Place Like Home? Explaining Venue Selection of Regional Offices in Brussels. Journal of European Public Policy 22(5), 2015, pp. 589–608.

By my students or collaborators from the agendas project:

1. Timmermans, Arco, and Peter Scholten. The political flow of wisdom: Science institutions as policy venues in the Netherlands. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1104–1118.
2. Princen, Sebastiaan, and Mark Rhinard. Crashing and Creeping: Agenda-setting Dynamics in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1119–1132.
3. Breunig, Christian. The more things change, the more things stay the same: A comparative analysis of budget punctuations. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1069–1085.
4. Walgrave, Stefaan, Frédéric Varone, and Patrick Dumont. Policy With or Without Parties? A Comparative Analysis of Policy Priorities and Policy Change in Belgium (1991–2000). Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1021–38.
5. John, Peter. Explaining policy change: the impact of the media, public opinion and political violence on urban budgets in England. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1053–1068.
6. John, Peter. The policy agendas project: a review. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 975–986.
7. Penner, Erin, Kelly Blidook, and Stuart N. Soroka. Legislative priorities and public opinion: representation of partisan agendas in the Canadian House of Commons. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1006–1020.
8. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer, and John Wilkerson. How agenda-setting attributes shape politics: Basic dilemmas, problem attention and health politics developments in Denmark and the US. Journal of European Public Policy 13(7), 2006, pp. 1039–1052.
9. Princen, Sebastiaan. Agenda-setting in the European Union: A Theoretical Exploration and Agenda for Research. Journal of European Public Policy 14(1), 2007, pp. 21–38.
10. Mahoney, Christine. Networking versus Allying: The Decision of Interest Groups to Join Coalitions in the US and the EU. Journal of European Public Policy, 14(3), 2007, pp. 366–383.
11. Walgrave, Stefaan, and Rens Vliegenthart. Why are policy agendas punctuated? Friction and cascading in parliament and mass media in Belgium. Journal of European Public Policy 17(8), 2010, pp. 1147–1170.
12. John, Peter, Shaun Bevan and Will Jennings. The Policy-Opinion Link and Institutional Change: the Policy Agenda of the United Kingdom and Scottish Parliaments, 1977–2008. Journal of European Public Policy 18(7), 2011, pp. 1052–1068.
13. Princen, Sebastiaan. Agenda-setting Strategies in EU Policy Processes. Journal of European Public Policy 18(7), 2011, pp. 927–943.
14. Princen, Sebastiaan. Punctuated equilibrium theory and the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 20(6), 2013, pp. 854–870.
15. Citi, Manuele. EU budgetary dynamics: incremental or punctuated equilibrium? Journal of European Public Policy 20(8), 2013, pp. 1157–1173.

Dear friends of JEPP:

2017 was another eventful year for JEPP. We reached new heights, since you decided to feed us with close to 400 submissions, which kept us busy 24-7 (thanks to the time difference between Munich and Christchurch, we are open to business all day). We also received a record number of submissions for our latest special issue call (20!). While we are grateful for having the luxury to pick from such a large number of proposals, it’s not at all fun for us as editors having to turn down so many good proposals. Our biggest wish for 2018 is that you continue to send us your work: original papers, proposals for special issues, research agenda pieces and debate sections. As always, we are committed to processing your work swiftly, professionally, and fairly. And once it is published, we do our best to make sure your work is widely publicized. Looking ahead, 2018 marks JEPP’s 25^th anniversary. Maybe Jeremy will share a short story or two on what his expectations were back at the time. Plus, we also promise some interesting features throughout the year, celebrating some of the best contributions to JEPP throughout the past two and a half decades. So, all you need to do is to stay tuned: follow us on Twitter (@jepp_journal), read and subscribe to our newsletter.

Seasons’ greetings and all good wishes,

Your JEPP team

PS: Over the holidays, the JEPP team takes a little break. Here is what we are up to.

Jeremy: As usual I will be spending Christmas at our holiday house in Akaroa, with Sonia, Tessa, Molly, and our 14-year old dog Harvey. He doesn’t swim but likes to paddle and, like a small child, never wants to stop. Thus, when it is time to come home he digs both paws in the sand and we have to drag him up the beach, all four legs at 45 degrees! The attempt at paddle boarding last Christmas (my idea of a family treat!) was a total disaster as I fell off three times and had to be towed back to the beach, to the great amusement of our neighbours. I think Harvey has the right policy towards water sports but I am determined to take the Kayaks out in the bay. So, if this proves to be as bad a mistake as last year, you will all know where the JEPP co-editor met his end! As you can see from the photo of Akaroa, it is as good a place as any to meet one’s end! For our summer holiday in late January, we all head to Golden Bay for another holiday on the beach. Thus, we have adapted to the Kiwi lifestyle.

Berthold opts for the same procedure as every year and spends the holiday season in Florida with Jessica and his in-laws. He will, first things first, visit his favourite singing Christmas tree in Palm Beach, before immersing himself in the eccentricity of Floridian life (which involves surviving road-trips on the I-95, yoga on the beach, avoiding the area around Mar-a-Lago, and being ripped off in a bar in Miami Beach). Before too long, he will miss his home (and gingery cat) in the country-side in upper Bavaria.

Michael is looking forward to many interesting debate and research agenda proposals in 2018 in order to stay up to date about cutting edge research. Apart from research, he has his own new “agenda”: Kolja, 3 months. This year’s Christmas readings will include “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Baby Massage for Dummies”…

As usual, Philipp will escape London’s hustle and bustle and swap meat pies and stale ale with Mum’s Christmas cookies and Glühwein. There will be lots of time over the holidays to reflect on a great year, and most memorably yet another trip across the globe to visit the rainforests in Brunei.

Every once in a while JEPP’s editorial team asks our colleagues, who are involved in the journal’s production process, to give our readers a glimpse behind the scenes. This time around, Thandi Meets, JEPP’s Production Editor, provides you with some insights into her work and the steps a manuscript takes from acceptance to publication in the journal.

By Thandi Meets

I’m the Production Editor working on JEPP.

Basically this means that while an article is in our hands and is being processed for publication, I am the main contact for authors and the editors to ask any questions, clarify anything that is unclear or fix something that has gone wrong.

Articles normally follow the process below:

Receipt of files
We receive your manuscript and source files from the journal’s editorial office.

Copyediting
Your manuscript is edited for journal style, consistency and grammatical errors. The copyeditor will list any questions at this stage for the author to resolve while you review your proofs.

Typesetting
Your copyedited paper is sent to the typesetters to be encoded as an XML file – which will generate the online html version and the pdf version (for the printed version) of your article. The content is composed into properly formatted pages, and any figures are converted for print and online reproduction. Metadata is added to the online file to make your article more visible to search engines and to give the correct information to indexing services.

Proofing
The proofs of your paper are sent to you by email alert (and also to the editors).

Publication
Your corrections will be collated and checked and your article will be published.

It will be published online ahead of being allocated to a print issue. You will receive an automated email alert once your article is online.

In a nutshell, that’s what I do – making sure articles go through the process in a timely fashion and making the process as easy and problem-free as possible.

Thomson & Reuters has released the new Journal Citation Report (JCR), which include the impact factor scores for 2016. JEPP is listed in two sections: Political Science and Public Administration.

JEPP has achieved its biggest ever annual increase in its two-year impact factor score from 1.964 (2015) to 2.982 (2016). This the highest score JEPP has ever received in its history (as the Journal approaches its 25th birthday). This brings the journal into the top 10 in both categories: rank 9/165 on the Political Science list and 4/47 in the Public Administration list. These results could not have been achieved without the hard work of JEPP’s family of authors and referees, to whom the Editors are greatly indebted.

A few months ago, Scopus has introduced a new journal metric, CiteScore, which is calculated on the basis of a three-year citation window (instead of two years covered by the standard impact factor measure in the JCR). JEPP is listed in the Sociology and Political Science category, comprising 973 journals. CiteScore for 2016 ranks JEPP at position 31 of 973 (putting JEPP in the 96^th percentile), with a score of 3.10.

JEPP is also among the top twenty political science journals listed in the 2016 release of Google Scholar journal metrics in the Political Science category (in 6^th place, with an h5-index of 39).

Dear Jeremy,

Instead of a famous “Festschrift” to honour your academic achievements, we – your academic colleagues, former supervisees, and friends – have chosen a different format. We believe that your impressive academic credentials need not be restated here. They speak for themselves. What needs to be said is that not only did your ideas transform the way we think about public policy and the EU, but that you have had a transformative impact on all of us and our lives. And, mind you, the good news is: it was for the better!

We are, of course, only a small subset of your colleagues and friends, wishing you the best for your big day and the many years that are still to come. What unites all of us (and the many more who know you) is that we did not only have the fortune to work with you, but that we have also come to share remarkably similar experiences in that process – whether it is your enduring support for each of us, or your preaching of the virtue that 7 a.m. is the new 9 a.m.

Have a jolly good day.

And cheers!

Michael Blauberger, Professor of European Politics and Political Theory, University of Salzburg

“Congratulations to the nicest, most professional, most humorous, most encouraging person … that I have never met in person. Jeremy, I wish you all the best for your 75^th birthday and I hope to meet you before you turn 100.

Cheers,

Michi”

Nigel Bowles, Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford

“Of the many reasons I have to be grateful to Jeremy, one of the most powerful is the influence that he has had upon my supervising of PhD students. I recall in particular his wise advice to his own doctoral students that they should always keep in mind the need to have (and frequently to refine) a disciplined 500-word statement of the theoretical contribution that their research is making, and to show why that contribution matters for political science. He elaborated that imperative brilliantly but succinctly, and I have never forgotten it. So – thank you, Jeremy, and very many happy returns on the occasion of your 75^th!”

Hans Bressers, Professor of Policy Studies and Environmental Policy, University of Twente

“Dear Jeremy,

My warm congratulations for you at this terrific age mark! That time flies becomes extra clear when I looked up how long ago it must have been that Larry and I were visiting you in Warwick to work on the Environmental Politics special issue on water networks. That must have been at least 23 years ago! Not only I remember the exorbitant great breakfasts in the B&B that you had recommended to us, especially for that reason. I also remember you looking very sad towards an impressive pile of student work that you had to read and mark. Hopefully your advanced age has freed you from that!

All the best,

Hans”

Thomas Christiansen, Chair in European Institutional Politics, Maastricht University

“Dear Jeremy,

It is a great pleasure to congratulate you whole-heartedly on your 75^th birthday, and to take the opportunity to thank you for all the support I received from you, especially in the early stages of my career. The chance of doing a post-doc under your supervision in Essex was already a great opportunity, but what ultimately mattered much more was the encouragement and the guidance you gave me during those two years. Seeing from close quarters how you build up JEPP from scratch to become very quickly the leading journal in our field, or how you brought together senior and junior scholars to create a new kind of textbook on EU-policymaking – these were all master classes in academic publishing, and I feel fortunate and grateful for having had the chance not only to observe your work and learn from you, but also for your invitation to contribute to these projects. You have been a great mentor for me and many others in our profession, and reflecting on the importance you have had for my professional development makes me regret that we haven’t seen much of each other in recent years. Well, I guess we have to blame the early Jeremexit from Europe for that….

I wish you all the best on your special day – good health, happiness and many happy returns – while also hoping that you will continue making your unique contribution to our profession.

Thomas”

David Coen, Professor of Public Policy, University College London

“Dear Jeremy,

Happy birthday! I can’t believe it’s your 75^th birthday, but as we have known each other for 25 years, I guess it makes sense. I wanted to thank you for all the support and advice you have given me over the years as an editor, co-author, and friend. You published my first ever paper in JEPP which helped start me on my career and I always enjoy your kind e-mails and updates when you now ask me to review for you. Enjoy the Rugby Lions tour.

Best wishes,

David”

Laura Cram, Professor of European Politics, University of Edinburgh

“My overwhelming sense of Jeremy is that of a force of nature – his energy is irrepressible. My recollection of arriving to work for Jeremy, in my very first job as a research assistant, typically involved finding a fax that had arrived at 6 am, an answer-machine message that had arrived at 5am and a handwritten note on my key-board, left the night before… thankfully it was not yet the age of Email. EPPI, at Warwick University, was where Jeremy set up JEPP and where he created the most amazing environment for young researchers to thrive and flourish. If we were willing to work hard, he would back us all the way – even push us forward when we hesitated to push ourselves. So many of us – Dan Wincott, Claudio Radaelli, Amy Verdun, Gerda Falkner, Danica Fink Haffner, to name a few – passed through EPPI, and still value the friendships forged and talk about the privileged environment that we worked in and that allowed us to grow.  I can’t tell you how often I repeat lessons learned from Jeremy – as a teacher, as a research mentor and as a manager – to my students and to my colleagues. Power, Jeremy would remind us, like beauty, is not evenly distributed – but there is a great beauty in exercising power well and in helping to distribute the joy of teamwork, learning and pushing the boundaries. For all that and more – thanks Jeremy – lang may yer lum reek!”

Keith Dowding, Professor of Political Science, Australian National University

“Congratulations! 75 eh. That means you were twice my age when we first met at Keele 39 years ago. You pretended to have lost my essay marks so you could give me a bollocking for being too quiet and too arrogant in your tutorials. You’ve still got more energy than I’ve ever had, and I hope all goes well in your new career as Christchurch’s premier builder.”

Geoff Dudley, Research Associate, University of Oxford

“To Jeremy:

Many congratulations on your special birthday. Great thanks for giving me a life, and for all your outstanding help and unfailing support. Have a wonderful day!

All the best

Geoff Dudley”

Gerda Falkner, Professor of Political Science, University of Vienna & Michael Nentwich, Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

“Dear Jeremy, warm congratulations from Vienna, Austria! It seems like yesterday (but is an incredibly long time ago) that the two of us have joined your research group in the UK to study the EU’s policy process. And it is not only via your great success journal JEPP that we have stayed in contact. We always appreciate to receive your news from “down under” and to see how you keep going so strong! At this point we loudly lobby for your continued best health and high spirits, with all lobbying addressees you may want to suggest. “Power and Policy-Making” is, in these matters, probably located elsewhere than in Brussels (if anywhere) and we fear that democratic legitimacy is quite short in supply… BUT we have no doubt that, as a “Godfather” of lobbying studies, you will certainly receive extraordinary treatment. Hence we trust that your continued well-being for many decades to come is assured! With all our very best wishes, and we hope to meet up soon in Europe or ‘down under’!

Gerda + Michael”

Wyn Grant, Professor of Politics, University of Warwick

“I originally knew of Jeremy through his work on pressure groups, but he wisely decided to move on from that area of work and develop his expertise on the European Union. This led to the inspired decision to set up the Journal of European Public Policy. This filled a real gap in the market and it quickly became established as a leading journal in the field thanks to Jeremy’s understanding of where the discipline was going and the care he took with articles. It’s been a long journey intellectually and also geographically from Shropshire to New Zealand. Very best wishes on your 75th birthday.”

Alison Harcourt, Professor of Politics, University of Exeter

“Best wishes to you and family on your birthday. I’d like to thank you for encouraging me in the early years of my career – without you I would not have commenced on an academic path. Indeed, I’ll never forget when you called me up at home (which was then in Germany) and asked (without introduction or salutation) “so do you want to work for me or do I have to advertise?” and I went to work as your research assistant on an ESRC project. From that point onwards, I was an academic…”

Brian W. Hogwood, Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde 

“Jeremy was largely responsible for encouraging me while I was an undergraduate to consider staying on to do postgraduate research. He became my supervisor for my PhD. Even when I had started a job in academic publishing while finishing off my PhD part-time, he encouraged me to apply for lecturing jobs. He stressed the importance of submitting an article drawn from my PhD research to a journal even before I had submitted my PhD. The article which I submitted to Public Administration played an important role in my obtaining a lecturing job at the University of Strathclyde. A few years later a new Professor and Head of Department was appointed at Strathclyde, one Jeremy Richardson. Ten years later, when Jeremy moved on, I ended up with the impossible task of replacing him as head of department. Naturally, when he became editor of the Journal of European Public Policy, he pressured to me to submit an article to it, and I had an article accepted in first volume.”

Grant Jordan, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Aberdeen

“Berthold tells me Jeremy is nearly 75. I would need confirmation: seems unlikely! … I met Jeremy in 1973/4  in Keele as an RA. Where is Stuart Brookes who was also on the project? (My goodness: we over produced!) I was in a little cupboard room but with Jack Hayward as a slightly intimidating neighbour. (I was easily intimidated: Jack was never less than encouraging.)

This was pre-computer age. My handwriting was/is terrible and cutting and pasting meant cutting the pencilled pages and cellotaping! How did the office cope?

I would say Jeremy’s main contribution to the profession has been to support, sponsor and inspire the next 2 or 3 generation(s). He has resisted fashion in shirts and academia and yet collected admirers in both… This might be an occasion to flatter his professional reputation. I prefer to thank the mate.”

David Judge, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde

“Some people change your life. Jeremy changed mine when he offered me a job at Strathclyde in 1988. So, somewhat belatedly, I’d like to take the occasion of his 75^th birthday to thank him publicly for the positive impact he has had upon my career. I missed the opportunity to record my appreciation when he left Strathclyde 25 years ago, as my only statement to him at the time was: ‘I hope you aren’t taking the fridge with you’. (As Head of Department he had invested in a new refrigerator for the Department shortly before his departure). Fortunately, he has outlived the fridge he left behind, and many more fridges since.

May he have many more ‘fridge lives’ ahead of him. Happy birthday.”

David Levi-Faur, Professor of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“Jeremy,

You were the one who opened Nuffield College doors for me and thus to one of the most productive and happy periods in my life.  Working in Oxford at the Centre of European Studies and with you was fun and rewarding. Your mentorship allowed me to develop and extend my skill and your career advice was always generous and to the point. I was so sorry that you opted out of Oxford and England but was happy to see you building your new life with Sonia and the girls in New Zealand despite the earthquake that gave us some worries more than once. I will be always grateful and am sending you my best wishes for your 75^th birthday. Missing you,

David”

Johannes Lindner, EU Institutions & Fora Division, European Central Bank

“Dear Jeremy,

Happy birthday! I hope you enjoy this special day and I wish you happiness, health and many more good things. Your 60^th birthday – which I remember well – seems like yesterday and you have not changed much. However, the world around us has changed quite a bit. I find these are challenging times today: who would have thought fifteen years ago that many of us are now in one way or another working on the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union – trying to understand/analyse the causes and consequences of it. Despite all this, I thought you might still find it somewhat uplifting that there is a new dimension of Anglophilia in my family: my two sons are enthusiastic rugby players (despite it being a niche sports in Germany and their father never having followed it much). On the picture, you see the three of us at the birthplace of rugby where William Webb Ellis’ unorthodox move created the game in 1823. The whole family (so also my two daughters and Lucia) is sending you our very best wishes.

Johannes”

Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, Professor of Political Science, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

“My warmest birthday wishes to Jeremy! 75 and an inspiring author, editor, emeritus professor, and speaker – let us wish that academia does this to all of us!”

William Maloney, Professor of Politics, Newcastle University

“Jeremy,

Congratulations on your 75^th birthday – you look many years younger. Has Berthold got his number correct? I hope you have a great time celebrating with your family and friends in NZ. I was inspired to become an academic and an interest group scholar because of you. In the very first lecture I attended as an undergraduate at Strathclyde you were so passionate and enthusiastic about the centrality of interest groups to the policy-making process and the quality of democratic politics that I was immediately hooked and I am still studying these important political actors 30 years later. You also gave me my first academic job as your Research Assistant on the Anglo-German water project and were the absolute very best early career mentor. I feel very fortunate and privileged to know you as my Professor, colleague, collaborator and friend. Have a fantastic time!

All the best,

William”

William Paterson, Honorary Professor of German and European Politics, Aston University

“Shrewd and Practical.

I started to know Jeremy when he succeeded me in the Chair of Politics at Warwick and we then met on selection panels. The first thing that I noticed about Jeremy is his shrewdness. This is not a quality that one associates with scholars in the United Kingdom where to describe a proposal as too academic is to damn it completely. Nowhere was this shrewdness and vision shown as strikingly as in the foundation of JEPP. Although I have been involved with the Journal of Common Market Studies I admired JEPP greatly from its inception. I was struck by the quality and range of the articles it published but also by Jeremy’s capacities as a talent spotter. Under his editorship the journal encouraged a new generation of scholars who in the course of time have become the established scholars .The Journal has shown a marked capacity for renewal and has always been prepared to embrace new approaches.

Jeremy unlike me is also intensely practical. When he came around to our home for a barbecue little progress had been made with the preparations due to intermittent rain. Jeremy immediately took over and in a very short space of time he had the barbecue going and earned my wife’s undying admiration.

No sketch of Jeremy would be complete without mentioning that he is enormous fun. We are all greatly in his debt.

William Paterson”

Claudio M. Radaelli, Professor of Political Science, University of Exeter

“I met with Jeremy for the first time at the University of Warwick, in 1993 – he became my mentor during my staying at Warwick. At that time Jeremy was commuting from Cambridge, getting to the office at 7 am. One of my first days at the European Public Policy Institute (EPPI, which we often pronounced ‘HAPPY’) I tried to get to the office early, at 8:20. Jeremy saw me getting into the building and said ‘why so late, today? I have been here since 7!’ After having seen my jaw dropping, he burst out laughing.

Jeremy has a unique sense of self-deprecating humour that manages to deliver important messages. If we mentioned a new book to him, he would answer back ‘I do not read books, I write books’ – meaning that we should get on and write up our own research. He was also fond of saying ‘I do not need to be intelligent, I need to recognize intelligence in bright young people’ – making all of us feel privileged to be at EPPI and very… HAPPY! There are so many people who benefited from Jeremy’s scholarship, wisdom, intuitions and good humour that I cannot think of a size of the room – perhaps a large auditorium would do! In the photo I cooked something for Jeremy – actually that’s just the starter, hope we get to eat something more substantial in person next time we meet. May Jeremy hear all of us cheering and wishing him a wonderful 75^th birthday today, and many more happy returns.”

Berthold Rittberger, Professor of International Politics, University of Munich

“Dear Jeremy,

When I arrived at Oxford to interview for a PhD position, you dismantled my stereotypes of the Oxford don from minute one: My future supervisor was actually unpretentious, approachable, amicable, and no friend of the art sugar-coating (“your thesis topic is boring”). I changed my topic, and found a mentor who would support me through personal lows (“you really should buy your girlfriend some flowers”), frequent professional doubts (“whatever others have written, you can do better”) and difficult career choices when contemplating to take a job in (less glamorous) Kaiserslautern rather than continuing my stint in Oxford (“as long as you can publish there, go”). Thanks for your unfailing support in all these years, your continuing counsel (“take it, it’s for free”) and for trusting me to co-pilot your journal. Happy birthday and thanks for everything – live long, stay healthy and happy and keep filling up my Email inbox every day the future brings.

Cheers,

Berthold”

Wolfgang Rüdig, Reader in Politics, University of Strathclyde

“Dear Jeremy,

Greetings from a dark and rainy Glasgow on election day. British humour in the shape of “dogs at polling stations” provides some welcome respite. I hope you have a wonderful birthday and many happy returns,

Wolfgang”

Philipp Schroeder, JEPP’s Social Media Editor, University College London

Dear Jeremy,

Robert Thomson, Professor of Political Science, University of Strathclyde (actually on the jump to Monash University)

“Happy Birthday Jeremy! You’ve been and continue to be a great inspiration to us all. You should be proud of your outstanding work on comparative public policy and European Union politics, which is marked by rigour, relevance and timelessness. In your down-to-earth style, you’ve developed new ways of thinking while reminding us that newfangled theories and methods often rediscover what was said long ago, usually far more eloquently.

You’ve also had a big and positive impact on the generations of students you’ve taught including me. I don’t remember much from the first-year lectures at Strathclyde in 1989, but we both know that my current perch in the crow’s nest and immanent flight South have a great deal to do with your mentoring and support for which I’m grateful.

I wish you and Sonia many more happy years and hope to visit you again in the not too distant future.”

Amy Verdun, Professor of Political Science, University of Victoria

“Dear Jeremy,

Congratulations on your 75^th birthday. Time flies. I can hardly imagine how fast the time goes. When we first met, it was in Florence, in 1994, when you came to recruit potential postdocs for your European Union Human Capital Mobility Fellowship project. We did not realise that you were recruiting; just that our President, Yves Mény, was pressing final-years’ political science students to meet with you after the lecture in your office, which was located five flights of stairs up from the seminar room (i.e. on the top floor of the EUI).

I took Professor Mény up on his offer and went into your office to talk a bit (even though I was not sure about what). I remember your first, blunt, question: whether I had lived in the UK before? My answer ‘no’. Your answer ‘good’. (The reason of course was that you needed to recruit candidates who had not lived in the UK in the past few years in order to qualify for the EU mobility grant). Anyway, we started talking and the rest is history.

Then we all went to Essex: Gerda Falkner, Michael Nentwich, Thomas Christiansen, Thomas Lawton, Annemarie Sprokkereef and myself. It was a really excellent group of people that you had recruited; we still stay in touch.  One of the pieces of advice that you gave me at some point was, when I was contemplating whether to do some work as a consultant (which would have paid very well) was whether I was a ‘serious scholar or not’. If serious, then forfeit the big bucks and concentrate on publications. But you did not expect us to stay poor for ever: another piece of advice you gave me, at the end of my postdoc, was that I should leave the UK after my postdoc was over, because it is impossible to make a living on an academic starting salary in the UK (seen that I had daycare costs to take care of)!

Not only did you give us good advice; I also appreciated that you invited us all to comment on the development of your, at the time, new journal, the Journal of European Public Policy. You wanted to know was it theoretical enough, did the right people publish in it, how to balance theoretical and empirical contributions in the journal. You took all our views seriously and made actual changes to the journal.

It was sad for us when you moved to New Zealand; it was more difficult to keep in touch. Lucky for us that you kept doing the journal so that we would always, one way or another, stay connected through the work you do with the journal. I was also pleased that you were able to support me in the years when I was first hired in Canada on a tenure-track position.

Thanks, Jeremy, for a friendship that has now lasted more than two decades. It was great we have been able to stay in touch, even whilst continents apart. If you are ever out west, please come look me up.

Amy Verdun”

Chris Wlezien, Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

“Dear Jeremy,

I was wondering where the study of European public policy would be without you. To get some sense, I looked at where things stood when you began and where we are now, and what you did in between. You have left quite a mark changing both our research approaches and our understanding of how the world works. Thank you for this and your leadership of the journal, and cheers to you on this special birthday!”

For a journal covering European politics, 2016 was an eventful, if not turbulent year indeed. For us as editors, business as usual now also means to think about ways to cover some of the more momentous events and developments without too much delay, while keeping academic standards high. With the introduction of the Debate Section, we were able to test a new format of shorter articles, which engage a topic from different viewpoints, and which demand from authors as well as reviewers to work even more than their usual extra hours. JEPP’s very first Debate Section on the British Exit from the EU – Legal and Political Implications, edited by Graham Butler, Mads Dagnis Jensen and Holly Snaith received ample attention by our readers as well as in the social media.

Unmatched in this regard was Sara Hobolt’s excellent in-depth analysis of the Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent, which went online in September and received over 7000 views by December 2016 – a JEPP record, which will be hard to beat unless other EU member states decide to follow suit (fingers crossed that this will not happen so soon). Other developments, which have caught the public eye in 2016, have also received ample coverage in JEPP via our Debate Section format: The gradual erosion of liberal democracy and the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, and what the EU can do about it, has been covered in a highly publicized debate edited by Dan Kelemen and Michael Blauberger.

2016 also kept us busy doing JEPP’s core tasks: publishing some of the best work in European politics and public policy. By the end of 2016, we will – for the first time – hit the 400-submission ceiling. While this means more work for us, we are also happy because this probably means that our readers (you!) seem to like the journal. As JEPP continues to grow, we have decided to move from 10 to 11 issues in 2017. And to better communicate JEPP to the world of academia and beyond, our JEPP Online Blog and Twitter account have been well received and we also hope to keep you well-informed in 2017.

While we agree that bibliometric data should be approached cautiously, we are obviously happy to see that the journal is doing very well across the board of different indicators (such as the Journal Citation Report by Thomson Reuters or Google Scholar). The best way for us to keep our standards high and publish exciting work is for you, our authors, reviewers, and readers, to continue to feed us with your great ideas, thorough analyses and commitment to excellence. Our pledge is to offer you what we hope is an efficient and fair review and publishing process, a journal that you not only like to read, but that also has a human face (as probably most editors, we also make mistakes, but we tend to learn from them as well).

In the meantime, the JEPP-team will take a short break over the holidays, and be back in action in 2017. Jeremy will be spending a typical Kiwi Christmas with Sonia, the girls, and Harvey, namely going to the Akaroa beach and having lot of BBQs, washed down with fine NZ wines. As an add-on he is having a paddle boarding lesson, aiming, at 74, to be the oldest paddle boarder in Akaroa. Berthold has agreed to write a nice Obituary in JEPP should this (foolish?) venture end in disaster!

Berthold will, as usual, spend the holiday break with Jessica and his in-laws in Florida, watching out for sharks and Trump motorcades on and off the beaches in Palm Beach County. If things get too hectic, he will have a drink or two on Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman (no, JEPP does not run an offshore business).

Michael will continue with his (pleasant) Sisyphean task from last year – trying to reduce the regrowing pile of books that he can reach from his couch. To prevent things from getting too comfortable, however, he registered for a winter half-marathon after the holiday break.

Philipp will escape the big smoke of London and spend his Christmas break with friends and family in Munich. No winter half-marathon, (hopefully) no Trump motorcades, just a blanket, a hot drink and plenty of time to catch up on some of the sleep that was lost throughout the past few months.

We wish all of you a happy holiday and relaxing season. See you next year!

Berthold, Jeremy, Michael, Philipp