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1. Coordination of Social Security Schemes. The Case of SADC

Author:
Ockert Dupper
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
This paper will explore whether and to what extent the (legal) rules of coordination that originated and developed in the EU can be transposed to SADC – a region characterized by high levels of migration, weakly developed social security systems and the absence of suitable portability arrangements. The principle of coordination of social security is primarily aimed at eliminating restrictions that national social security schemes place upon the rights of migrant workers to such social security. One of the fundamental principles of social security coordination is that of portability, which is the ability to preserve, maintain, and transfer vested social security rights or rights in the process of being vested, independent of nationality and country of residence. The best practice around the world to ensure portability of social security entitlements consists of multilateral and bilateral social security agreements. These agreements originated and developed in the EU, and EU coordination arrangements arguably still represent the most sophisticated and developed system of its kind, and one that is worth emulating. In this paper, it is argued that any future attempts at coordinating social security schemes in SADC should start with employment injury schemes, which is the only social security scheme common to all SADC member states. The paper considers some of the issues that should be taken into account in designing social security agreements in SADC along the lines of the EU model.
Topic:
Economics, Human Rights, Human Welfare, Migration, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

2. International in Life, National in Death? Banking Nationalism on the Road to Banking Union

Author:
Martin Rhodes and Rachel A. Epstein
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
European states have a long history of banking sector nationalism. Control over credit allocation is believed to contribute to economic development and competitiveness goals, insulation from external economic shocks, and control over monetary policy. This paper explains the potentially dramatic loss in domestic control over banks created by the European Banking Union (EBU). First, we argue that ongoing liberalization in the global and European economies has made banking sector protectionism both more costly and conflictual. Second, we contend that because many of the biggest banks have internationalized their operations, they now prefer centralized European regulation and supervision. Third, supporting a modified neofunctionalist argument, we find that behind the sometimes frenetic intergovernmental bargaining in 2012-14, it is primarily the European Commission and the European Central Bank that have pushed Banking Union ahead. Supranational institutions have argued, with some success, that they have unique capacity to solve collective action and prisoners' dilemma problems. Contrary to accepted wisdom, Germany has not set or limited the Banking Union agenda to a great extent, in part because of its own internal divisions. Moreover, the Commission and the ECB have managed at critical junctures to isolate Germany to secure the country's assent to controversial measures.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Monetary Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

3. Templates for Trade: Change, Persistence and Path Dependence in U. S. and EU Preferential Trade Agreements

Author:
Ali Arbia
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
Over the last two decades, Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) proliferated through the international trading system. PTAs created a web of rules paralleling and extending the system of the World Trade Organization (WTO). PTAs are an increasingly dominant feature of the international trading system, adding to a steadily increasing complexity. Their content is rarely studied systematically across agreements, and the mechanisms leading to their genesis are little understood. It is typically assumed that actors like the European Union (EU) and the United States (U. S.) work off a template when negotiating PTAs. Some argue that this allows them, amongst others, to impose a regulatory regime. This working paper attempts to put this claim to the test. Using diffusion theory as framework, it analyzes PTAs signed by the EU, the U. S. and their regional trading partners. Understanding the use of templates will help negotiating parties to assess the margin of maneuver when negotiating PTAs with the EU and the U. S. as well as the rigidity of their mandate. The analysis is conducted on a regional and a domestic level using aggregated data on PTA content and a qualitative assessment of selected PTA provisions (anti-corruption, environment and cultural cooperation). The study finds that the flexibility of these mandates is considerable and that templates, if used at all, can change substantially over time.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

4. Regional Blocs, Transnational Actors and Interest Mediation: The Cases of Mexico and Turkey

Author:
Isik Özel
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
This working paper explores the processes in which accession to different regional blocs has affected the ways the state interacts with societal actors, along with the interest representation and mediation models in both member and accession countries. Focusing on Turkey and Mexico, two upper-middle-income countries situated on the fringes of major powers and integrated into the regional blocs led by those, the paper examines the differential impact of the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the organization and mediation of business interests; the ways in which these interests are incorporated into policy-making; and the processes of social dialogue. Taking into consideration the fundamental differences between these two regionalisms, it looks into both direct and indirect mechanisms with respect to the influence of regional-level actors on domestic actors and institutions. Maintaining that the impact of regional blocs cannot be easily isolated from that of international, transnational actors and processes, the paper scrutinizes the respective roles of international actors and transnational networks which, at times, have become more influential than the regional blocs in bringing about major institutional changes at the domestic level. Thus, it sheds light on processes of comparative regionalization and their varying influences on distinct polities, which is usually combined and even furthered or, rather, obstructed by the influences of transnational, international and global forces, along with domestic actors and institutions.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe, India, and Mexico

5. The Consolidation of the Anglo-Saxon/European Consensus on Price Stability. From International Coordination to a Rule-Based Monetary Regime

Author:
Arie Krampf
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
During the 1990s, a consensus consolidated among policy makers and economists worldwide regarding the desirability of very low inflation targeting. So far, this process has been explained on the basis of a domestic- functional thesis, according to which commitment to very low inflation provides local economic gains with no costs. In this paper, I present an alternative explanation, according to which the global norm of very low inflation targeting was consolidated as a political solution to the problem of exchange rate misalignment and volatility. I argue that policy makers in Germany and the US believed that convergence of monetary policies and inflation rates, in addition to liberalization of financial markets, will stabilize exchange rates without the need for direct coordination. The paper employs the theory of liberal intergovernmentalism as a benchmark to explain the choice of the European and the G-5/7 countries to establish a low-inflation rule-based international monetary regime. The paper concludes that the regime of very low inflation targeting was consolidated as a politically viable solution to a political problem rather than as an economic best practice. Furthermore, it concludes that the norm of very low inflation targeting was a “corer solution” that neglected the problem of exchange rate stability.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Political Economy, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

6. Transformations on Whose Terms? Understanding the New EU-ACP Trade Relations from the Outside In

Author:
Ulrike Lorenz
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
In the past ten years, the long-standing trade relations between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries have experienced radical transformations. The negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and seven regional groupings formed by the ACP countries have led to the EU being maneuvered into an unexpectedly weak position. For the first time, European negotiators had to substantially leave their pre-agreed negotiation path and positions due to the immense pressure from ACP countries, regional organizations, and non-state actors – and still have not been able to finalize negotiations that had initially been expected to only take five years until the end of 2007.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia/Pacific, and Caribbean

7. No settlement without a proactive policy: The European Union and the secessionist conflicts in the post-Soviet space

Author:
Barbara Gaweda and Marco Siddi
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
Twenty-one years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has not yet managed to solve the four separatist conflicts that broke out in the wake of the USSR's demise. With the help of their patron states (Russia and, in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia), the self-proclaimed Republics of Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh have become de facto states with separate political institutions and economic structures.
Topic:
Cold War, Economics, Ethnic Conflict, Political Economy, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Russia

8. Europeanization in Turkey. Stretching a Concept to its Limits?

Author:
Tanja A. Börzel and Digdem Soyaltin
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
Research on Europeanization and domestic change has moved south-eastwards and was provided with another real-world experiment when it has meet with Turkey. This paper explores to what extent Europeanization approaches travel to Turkey, which does have a membership perspective that looks, however, ever less credible. The first part outlines the main findings of research on 'External Europeanization' focusing on factors that have limited or at least qualified the domestic impact of the EU in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western Balkan (WB) accession countries. The paper, then, discusses to what extent Europeanization approaches need further qualification when applied to Turkey, which squares on democracy with the Western Balkans (with the exception of Croatia), but whose statehood is less limited. We argue that existing Europeanization approaches, largely, account for the overall moderate degree of Europeanization in Turkey. Yet, selective and differential domestic changes are mostly related to the extent to which EU conditionality helps domestic actors gain or hold political power and push their own political agenda. The paper concludes by summarizing the major implications Turkey's accession to the EU has for Europeanization approaches and discussing why Turkey is not a case sui generis.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and Balkans

9. Beyond Federalism: Estimating and Explaining the Territorial Structure of Government

Author:
Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
This paper suggests that the basic distinction between federal and unitary government has limited as well as served our understanding of government. The notion that variation in the structure of government is a difference of kind rather than degree has straight-jacketed attempts to estimate the authority of intermediate government. One result has been the claim that a country\'s footprint, not its population, is decisive for government. Analyzing data for 39 countries since 1950, and comparing our own findings with those of alternative measurements, we find evidence for the causal effect of population. This can be theorized in terms of a trade-off between responsiveness to soft information and per capita economies in public good provision.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
United States

10. Organizing Regulatory Convergence Outside the EU Setting Policy-Specific Conditionality and Building Domestic Capacities.

Author:
Julia Langbein
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
Why is regulatory convergence towards EU rules more successful in some policy fields than in others within one EU neighboring country? By comparing Ukraine\'s convergence towards EU rules in the field of shareholders\' rights and technical standards, I challenge prominent explanations for policy change outside the EU that empha¬size misfit and adaptational costs, the institutionalization of EU rules or policy-specific conditionality. In order to deal with the shortcomings of these explanations, it is necessary to disaggregate incentives and capacities of various domestic actors within the particular policy fields. I argue that regulatory convergence in EU neighboring countries is more likely if external actors combine the application of policy-specific conditionality, such as access to the European market, with multiplex capacity-building measures that diversify demand among domestic state regulators and firms and empower them to make their claims.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine