EU governance – RE-DESIGN

Is there an East-West divide in the European Union?

Published by demetriodor on March 31, 2017

From the way the media reports on European Union negotiations, it is easy to get the impression that there is a rift between East and West European member states, and that the enlargement of the EU has compromised the EU’s decision-making capacity. In a text published at the EUROPP blog, I argue that there is no systematic evidence to support such claims: “…in fact, against all odds, since 2004 the EU has managed to accommodate and integrate without much turbulence 13 new member states within its decision-making structures. This success is most remarkable and provides an important lesson for the future; a lesson that should not be overshadowed by the forthcoming exit of the United Kingdom from the EU.” Read the whole thing; it has pretty pictures, too.

The Commission’s plan for reforming EU asylum policy is very ambitious. But can it work?

Published by demetriodor on May 12, 2016

Note: A 3,000-word analysis of reform plans that are probably never gonna see the light of day anyways, based on simple arithmetics and not-so-simple simulations. Also, an excuse to do graphs. Re-posted from Eurosearch. The European Commission announced last Wednesday a new package of proposals designed to reform the EU asylum system. The proposals include compulsory redistribution of asylum applications among the EU member states. This is called ‘corrective allocation mechanism’ or ‘fairness mechanism’. Countries would be allocated ‘reference shares’ of asylum applications, and the moment a country’s reference share is exceeded by 50%, an automatic system will set it that will send the excess asylum applicants to countries that have not attained their reference shares yet. If member states do not cooperate, they will have to pay a ‘solidarity contribution’ of €250,000 for every asylum application they refuse to process. The proposal for compulsory redistribution backed by the threat of financial penalties (sorry, solidarity contributions) is very ambitious. But can it work? And I mean, can it work in a strictly technical sense, provided that the EU musters the political support to adopt the proposals[1], manages to make the member states comply with the rules, ensures that they don’t game the national asylum statistics, and so on – additional problems that are by no means trivial to solve. Let’s also leave aside for the moment the normative issue whether such a compulsory redistribution system is fair, to asylum seekers and to the EU member states. For now, the simpler question –…

5 simple things to know about asylum policy in the European Union

Published by demetriodor on September 16, 2015

Migration is quickly turning into the defining issue of our time. This might sound cliché, but is true. Not only does migration top the list of most important problems facing society, but it is also divisive in a way no other issue is. Unlike problems like inequality or the environment, immigration polarizes and divides opinions of ordinary people in a manner that cuts through social classes, education levels, age groups, and political affiliations. Divisions and bitter disagreements run even within families and close circles of friends. For no other issue do I see on my Facebook wall the full gamut of opinions ranging from strong rejection of migrants and refugees to their unconditional welcome and embrace. Most opinions of course fall somewhere in-between expressing, for example, support for `genuine’ refugees fleeing war but not for economic migrants, or for Christian but not for Muslim immigrants; yet, deep and important disagreements remain. The current crisis with the influx of hundreds-of-thousands asylum-seekers in Europe in the summer of 2015 is only but the current episode of the unfolding migration drama. The crisis and the political responses to it bring powerful emotions in people: fear and compassion, anger and humility, empathy and contempt. Together with polarization, emotions further cloud the discussion of asylum policies and the right thing for the European countries to do in this situation. In response, I want to share five simple things I happen to know about asylum policies in the EU. I am by no means a specialist on…

Immigration from Central and Eastern Europe fuels support for Eurosceptic parties in the UK

Published by demetriodor on May 4, 2015

Combining political, demographic and economic data for the local level in the UK, we find that the presence of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is related to higher voting shares cast for parties with Eurosceptic positions at the 2014 elections for the European Parliament. Evidence across Europe supports the connection between immigration from CEE and the electoral success of anti-Europe and anti-immigration political parties.

The evolution of EU legislation (graphed with ggplot2 and R)

Published by demetriodor on March 19, 2013

During the last half century the European Union has adopted more than 100 000 pieces of legislation. In this presentation I look into the patterns of legislative adoption over time. I tried to create clear and engaging graphs that provide some insight into the evolution of law-making activity: not an easy task given the byzantine nature of policy making in the EU and the complex nomenclature of types of legal acts possible. The main plot showing the number of adopted directives, regulations and decisions since 1967 is pasted below. There is much more in the presentation. The time series data is available here, as well as the R script used to generate the plots (using ggplot2). Some of the graphs are also available as interactive visualizations via ManyEyes here, here, and here (requires Java). Enjoy.

Interest groups and the making of legislation

Published by demetriodor on March 6, 2013

How are the activities of interest groups related to the making of legislation? Does mobilization of interest groups lead to more legislation in the future? Alternatively, does the adoption of new policies motivate interest groups to get active? Together with Dave Lowery, Brendan Carroll and Joost Berkhout, we tackle these questions in the case of the European Union. What we find is that there is no discernible signal in the data indicating that the mobilization of interest groups and the volume of legislative production over time are significantly related. Of course, absence of evidence is the same as the evidence of absence, so a link might still exist, as suggested by theory, common wisdom and existing studies of the US (e.g. here). But using quite a comprehensive set of model specifications we can’t find any link in our time-series sample. The abstract of the paper is below and as always you can find at my website the data, the analysis scripts, and the pre-print full text. One a side-note – I am very pleased that we managed to publish what is essentially a negative finding. As everyone seems to agree, discovering which phenomena are not related might be as important as discovering which phenomena are. Still, there are few journals that would apply this principle in their editorial policy. So cudos for the journal of Interest Groups and Advocacy. Abstract Different perspectives on the role of organized interests in democratic politics imply different temporal sequences in the relationship between legislative activity and the influence activities of…

Category: EU governance