The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2008.00355.x

BJPIR: 2009 VOL 11, 2545

Transatlantic Institutions: Can Partnership be Engineered?

John Peterson and Rebecca Steffenson
The transatlantic alliance is widely viewed as being in a state of decline. Conict over the war in Iraq highlighted a growing divergence between the Bush administration and European Union governments in their attitudes towards multilateralism. The rift severely tested institutions created to manage bilateral EUUS relations in the aftermath of the cold war. This article examines how well this institutional architecture has held up. It scrutinises the limitations of networked governance in transatlantic relations and acknowledges the quandary of trying to manufacture partnership using imperfect institutions. The BrusselsWashington channel is only one among many through which transatlantic relations ow, but we argue that it continues to gain in importance. Despite the limits of institutional engineering, we conclude that the US and the EU remain each others most important ally.

Keywords: transatlantic alliance; network governance; new institutionalism; multilateralism

Even the most ardent devotee of the transatlantic alliance cannot now dismiss the vast number of recent commentaries predicting demise and doom.1 Their sheer volume suggests that something went seriously wrong during George W. Bushs time in ofce. Most such analyses focus on the transatlantic rift over the US-led military action in Iraq. Arguably, Iraq caused an even more politically damaging split within the European Union itself (see Peterson 2004), which the Bush administration did not seek to prevent and, at times, seemed actively to encourage. Precisely what went wrong? For some, the Iraq crisis was not really about Iraq. It was a political accident waiting to happen because the foundations of the transatlantic alliance had become so weak (see Serfaty 2005b). For others, the split reected competing and incompatible world-views. Robert Kagans (2003) famous soundbite, Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus, was a statement about both diverging values and policy preferences, as well as different approaches to the organisation of international relations (IR) more generally. The width of the transatlantic gap on matters of values and world-views remains debatable. What is not is that Iraq and everything after has severely tested a unique infrastructure designed after the cold war to buttress the NATO security alliance and manage an expanded policy agenda. The institutionalisation of EUUS relations across levels of government and civil society groups in the 1990s was extensive, ambitious and intended to provide a foundation for a political and economic partnership (Steffenson 2005a). It marked a shift away from a traditional focus on cold war security issues to a modern, co-operative agenda of democracy promotion,
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regulatory convergence and global governance. The Bush-era crisis raises questions about whether it is nave and misguided to think that a new and modernised transatlantic relationship could ever be institutionalised, or engineered, especially when the basic foundations of the relationship are badly shaken by a clash over security and geopolitics. We develop three main arguments. First, to a surprising extent, the US is a sort of regulator of European integration. It gives incentives to the EU to show unity both when it looks for a single Europe to share the burden of managing global issues as well as when it engages (as it sometimes does) in divide-and-rule tactics. Second, the Brussels/EU institutional channel is only one among many through which transatlantic relations ow, but it continues to gain in importance. The EU steadily advances as Americas main interlocutor because of the importance, from Washingtons point of view, of issues that lie squarely within the Unions policy remit: counter-terrorism, energy, economic regulation and (post-2008) climate change. Third, a surprisingly frequent feature of American foreign policy thinking is the assumption of Europe as an increasingly single player, with the EU as its institutional focus. We offer two more general, macro-political conclusions about (rst) institutions in international politics and (second) American hegemony. The rst ows from the limits to how much strong or productive transatlantic relations can be manufactured via engineering what is already a very imperfect system for EUUS exchanges. Institutions may matter less in transatlantic relations than the architects of todays so-called New Transatlantic Agenda (NTA, see below) framework assumed or hoped when it was created. Second, we argue that America under Barack Obamas administration is likely to embrace multilateralism more often than it eschews it. There may well be a difcult period of adjustment, when differing European and American views about precisely what multilateralism means in practice have to be reconciled (see Taft and Burwell 2007). But there is now widespread conviction in the American political class that the most dangerous threats of the 21st century demand multilateral solutions. That in itself bodes well for a transatlantic relationship of the quality required to advance multilateralism in the 2010s.

1. The New Institutionalism of Transatlantic Relations

In retrospect, the 1990s were a golden era in transatlantic institution building. New channels for USEU dialogue were established through a series of political agreements, including the Transatlantic Declaration (1990) and The New Transatlantic Agenda (1995). These agreements and the institutions they created might be seen as part of a new institutionalism that gained traction in international relations more generally after the cold war (see Keohane 1998). A diverse variety of new transatlantic institutions operating under the shorthand NTA framework fostered exchange and policy co-ordination across a range of issue areas, bringing governmental and non-governmental actors together at regular intervals as well as on an ad hoc basis. A series of agreed policy goals included the promotion of economic liberalisation and democracy (especially in central and eastern Europe), and
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responding to global challenges with an umbrella of soft security policy co-operation. Subsequent USEU agreements established still further institutional ties, albeit usually with pledges that they would complement but not replace US links to European states, both bilaterally and via NATO. Given this new, uncharted institutional territory, it was perhaps natural that a variety of evaluative studies of the NTA framework emerged over time. Nearly all offered proposals for reform, re-engineering and sometimes outright abandonment of the NTA framework. One set of reviews focused on security issues and weighed up the pros and cons of strategies designed to increase burden sharing, strike a new division of labour, or abandon Atlanticism entirely in favour of new coalitions or concerts.2 A second set of studies focused more specically on the institutional framework created by the NTA. Most reviewed options for encouraging policy convergence on issues of soft security and economic co-ordination through either institutional reform or the negotiation of a new transatlantic treaty.3 One study independent but conducted under EU auspiceswas explicit in specifying the strengths and weaknesses of the NTA framework, as well as the costs and benets of alternatives (see European Commission 2005).4 We offer a broad summary of options for reforming EUUS institutions, and their pros and cons, in Table 1. However it might be changed, the centrepiece of the existing NTA framework is the annual EUUS Summit between the US president and the presidents of both the European Commission and Council of Ministers. This dialogue is supported by a web of institutionalised exchanges between governmental actors across multiple layers of government, which meet biannually or quarterly. The NTA process also includes a transatlantic dialogue between the US Congress and members of the European Parliament, as well as interest groups on both sides of the Atlantic. The framework is constantly evolving, as new layers of dialogue are added to manage what has become, over time, a progressively broader and deeper policy agenda. Figure 1 shows the range of institutions incorporated under the NTA structure. This now not-so-new transatlantic foundation presents an opportunity to reect on the role and function of international institutions more generally. Numerous scholars have demonstrated a recent shift towards a more legalised system of IR (see Armstrong et al. 2007; OConnell 2008). Because transatlantic relations have resisted legalisation (see Section 3 below), it is easy to dismiss the possibility of rule-based outcomes. Yet, institutionalist theory helps us avoid the mistake of assuming that institutions backed by hard, binding rules have political effects, while those that are not do not. Regular interaction between actors who participate in NTA institutions constitutes the type of patterned behaviour viewed as signicant by scholars such as Stephen Krasner (1999).5 Likewise, it can be argued that these structures help transatlantic actors cope with the uncertainties of the post-cold war era by creating focal points, or issues on which competing actors can agree and build upon to strike wider collaborative agreements (Keohane 1998, 89). The transatlantic framework agreements arguably establish a common set of norms and rules that impose certain (limited) constraints on both parties. They create opportunities for information exchange, and thus raise expectations of policy convergence (Keohane and Martin 1995).
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Table 1: Pros and Cons of Different Institutional Tracks in USEU Relations

Track Maintain the status quo: Continue to rely on the NTA and NATO Pros No new negotiating costs Reduces future uncertainties Flexible process allows for future incremental integration Cons Process is overly bureaucratic and time consuming Weak evidence of real policy convergence Patchy implementation Agenda overrun by disputes Low political prole Lack of political support and need for ratication could lead to non-agreement, watered-down treaty or non-compliance Could increase global fears of a G-2

New treaty : Draft a new treaty on trade to create a more integrated transatlantic economy

Reform existing institutions: Proceed with existing institutional structure on issue-by-issue basis but reform process to increase legitimacy and effectiveness

Would increase obligation of transatlantic partners Would raise political prole of USEU institutions and give actors more legitimacy and bargaining power relative to their own bureaucracies Could be negotiated across issues areas and allow trade-offs Bottom-up process maintains exibility and conserves time of higher-level ofcials Top-down reform could increase the political drive for deliverables Strengthened social dimension could increase legitimacy Strengthened Parliamentary dialogue could offer early warning of legislative impact

Bottom-up strategy reduces capacity for package deals, and political pulses to drive bureaucracies Technocratic regulatory process raises accountability issues Strengthened social dimension increases range of policy preferences and uneven inuence of interest groups Transatlantic Legislative Dialogue risks hijack by members political agendas

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Figure 1: Mapping Transatlantic Institutions

POLITICAL Ministerial PDBTS Senior Level Group EU-US Summit ECONOMIC Transatlantic Economic Council Dialogue on Climate Change REGULATORY High-Level Regulatory Cooperation Forum
(includes EC- to FCC, OSHA, OMB, SEC, PTO; FDA to EMEA)

Troika Working Groups NTA Task Force

TEP Steering Committee

Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue Insurance Dialogue Task-Force on Biotechnology Research Innovation Exchange

Task Force Groups (communicable disease, human trafficking .etc.) ad hoc FBI-Europol dialogue PEOPLE to PEOPLE TEP Working Groups

Transatlantic Donors Dialogue -Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue- - Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue- Transatlantic Business Dialogue Transatlantic Labour Dialogue- Transatlantic Environmental Dialogue- Transatlantic Higher Education Dialogue

Key: PDBTS, Policy Dialogue on Border and Transport Security; EC, European Commission; FCC, Federal Communications Commission; OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; OMB, Ofce of Management and Budget; SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission; PTO, Patent and Trademark Ofce; FDA, Food and Drug Administration; EMEA, European Medicines Agency; TEP, Transatlantic Economic Partnership

The institutional design of the NTA framework reects a wider trend in the 21st century: institutionalisation without supranational organisation, or networked governance (Rosenau 1995; Coleman and Perl 1999; Reinicke 19992000; Slaughter 2004; Jordan and Schout 2006). The multilayered transatlantic dialogue resembles Robert Keohanes (1998, 93) archetypal transgovernmental society in the form of networks amongst individuals and non-governmental organizations. In nearly every sense, the NTA was designed to manufacture a trans-governmental society in transatlantic form (Steffenson 2005a). The ultimate telos was to build a sort of network of networks, in particular anking ofcial exchanges with people-to-people links between representatives of civil society, as the basis for a transatlantic partnership. Anne-Marie Slaughter (2004; Slaughter and Zaring 2006) offers several rationales for networks. They are a fast, exible and cheap form of governance. They are particularly good at coping with change and fostering innovative, experimental policy co-ordination (Powell 1991; Raustiala 2002). Bringing domestic policymakers into transnational policy networks helps raise awareness of the international impact of decisions. It aids foreign policy-makers caught bargaining in multilevel games. Networks can provide a forum for regular dialogue and information exchange, which is particularly important in spurring co-operation in the very technical arena of international regulatory politics. The virtues of networked governance are clear to rationalists, who stress participants interest in employing networks to increase their access to information and broaden their policy reach. They are also clear to constructivists, who credit networks with facilitating socialisation that can lead to policy learning and convergence through the exchange of best practices. Both rationalists and constructivists accept that when they work, networks can remove uncertainties and build trust.
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For Slaughter (2004), networked governance reects the impact that globalisation has on IR, especially the growing need to deepen and broaden policy co-ordination to cope with cross-border challenges. The design of transatlantic institutions originally reected how central network governance was to the EU and the varying power and policy competencies of its different institutions (Peterson and Bomberg 1999). Over time, NTA institutions have morphed to compensate for multi-level governance structures in the US as well (Nicoladis and Howse 2001). For example, the push for deeper regulatory dialogues since 2007 has reected lessons learned from earlier, unsuccessful attempts in the 1990s to implement an EUUS Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA). The MRA initiative failed to achieve its goal of getting each side to respect the regulations of the other in specic sectors, mostly because sub-national regulatory agencies failed to buy into it (Nicoladis and Steffenson 2005; Steffenson 2005b). Some issues have been far more amenable to resolution than others. The NTA framework has facilitated dispute management of difcult issues, including extraterritorial legislation: for example, the Helms-Burton Act that sought to punish Europeans for investing in Cuba and Passenger Name Records (PNR), a dispute arising from US insistence on knowing personal details of passengers on transatlantic ights to the US (see European Commission 2005, 19). At the same time, transatlantic institutions have failed to contain trade disputes on bananas, beef and genetically modied crops. They have mostly failed to manage political disputes over climate change, the EUs lifting of its arms embargo on China and the creation of the International Criminal Court. Bilateral regulatory co-operationthe crux of transatlantic economic co-operationstalled under the weightless 2002 Positive Economic Agenda and the unambitious 2004 Regulatory Road Map, despite the creation of regulatory dialogues on nancial markets, accounting standards and insurance (European Commission 2005). The independent 2005 study identied numerous process issues that undermined the effectiveness of transatlantic institutions. First, it found low levels of awareness of the NTA dialogue in EU member state capitals and across US government branches and executive agencies. Second, the NTA process was found to lack political weight and to require stronger leadership and greater incentives for participation, such as earmarked resources for international travel. Third, the NTA process was overly bureaucratic. Oversized delegations and overcrowded policy agendas turned dialogues into information-sharing rather than problem-solving fora. Although numerous civil-society dialogues were established in the 1990s, only the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TCD) and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) remained operational. The Transatlantic Legislative Dialogue was viewed as urgently needing renewal (see Table 2). The new institutionalism in transatlantic relations continues to be an ongoing experiment, seeking deep integration through shallow institutions (Pollack 2005, 916). Much like the European Union itself, the NTA framework seems to foster frustration without disintegration (Peterson and Shackleton 2006, 1215). Neither side is ever quite willing to abandon the entire enterprise or to give up on making it work better. We seek to explain why in the sections that follow.
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Table 2: Recommendations for Institutional Innovation 2005

Clarify division of labour Focus on strategic discussion Manage agenda with better leadership (identify Group of 8-style sherpas) Improve co-ordination between institutions Appoint managers within senior-level group (highest level of exchange between ofcials) Establish more synergy between NTA and Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue
Source: European Commission (2005)

2. Why Brussels Advances

The ubiquitous Robert Cooper (2003, 2004a, 2004b and 2005), the EUs top foreign policy ofcial after Javier Solana,6 has characterised the EU as a system that reies the interference of member states in each others affairs. In certain respects, the NTA system performs the same purpose for transatlantic relations. Its limitations are considerable: when big political issues heat up and threaten to explode into crisis, they invariably escape from the control of those involved on the front line of (mostly technocratic) NTA exchanges. Still, the annual USEU summits provide a platform for each side to consolidate and redeliver political signals that each side has made to the other over the course of the year through multiple, other channels. A good example is Guantnamo Bay. It dominated both Angela Merkels rst state visit to Washington as German chancellor in 2006 and then the Vienna USEU summit ve months later. In the interim, a United Nations panel urged that Guantnamo be shut down, prompting public expressions of support for such a move by staunch Bush allies including Tony Blair and the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. A subsequent warning by the European Commission president, Jos Manuel Barroso, that the west risked los[ing] our soul if human rights were neglected in the war on terrorism thus had added resonance.7 The interference is truly mutual and extends far beyond the NTA or even USEU relations. Witness Senator John McCains expression of concernlong before he seemed likely to become the 2008 Republican presidential candidatethat the UK generally and its Conservative party specically risked marginalisation in Europe after David Camerons decision to pull Tory MEPs out of the European Parliaments largest political group.8 Tory Eurosceptics found it difcult to swallow such a rmly voiced view by a major American political gure about what was in their party and countrys best interests. But such interference is routine in transatlantic relations. Even the mostly technocratic policy agenda of USEU relations can have political impact and provoke mutual interference. The force of (say) American agricultural lobbies or European consumer movements is powerful in transatlantic disputes
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over beef, poultry and genetically modied organisms. US domestic legislation such as the US 1974 Trade Act (section 301), the Carousel Retaliation Act and the Helms-Burton Act, all of which incited disputes over extraterritorial and unilateral sanctions, have also incited EU economic interests to become players in domestic US trade politics (see Steffenson 2005a). It might be argued that there is usually little domestic political cost when a US administration neglects or antagonises even Americas most loyal and like-minded allies, such as those that are members of the EU. Certainly nothing about the transatlantic dialogue precludes resort to the American strategy of divide and rule when it serves a specic policy objective. There is little to suggest that this strategy was favoured more often within the Bush administration than in the past (Thornton 2008). Still, numerous recent cases demonstrate American willingness to exploit special relationships with certain member states and use bargaining chips such as NATO membership to split its European allies when the strategy serves US interests. For example, even though the US refused to participate in negotiations on the banning of cluster bombs, the American government was accused of seeking to water down the treaty by exerting pressure on the UK, which signed the agreements along with its European partners.9 Moreover, Washington frequently intervenes in Brussels institutional politics. Witness the Bush administrations attempt to bypass the European Commission by negotiating bilateral visa waiver agreements with several of the EUs newer member states. The Commission argued that these agreements potentially violated EU data privacy laws, and threatened legal action against EU states that signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) promising to provide Washington with additional security data in exchange for visa waivers.10 The content of several of the bilateral deals implicated the EUUS PNR data agreement, which itself had very publicly exposed the messy world of EU institutional politics. After the European Parliament challenged the agreement in a European Court of Justice case, the court ruled that PNR was not covered by laws governing the internal market and thus fell outside the competency of the Commission. Perhaps ironically, one effect of these cases was to help the Commission, which had lobbied hard for exclusive competency in these areas, initiate a new EU policy discourse. Its 2003 communication on the development of an EU-wide comprehensive PNR collection system11 eventually resulted in the approval of a mandate for the Commission to begin negotiating an EU-wide US Visa Waiver Programme. Such cases demonstrate to EU member states that despite the cost paid in terms of time and process, the Union is far better able to defend its interests vis--vis the US when it speaks and acts as one.12 The same demonstration effect occurs when the EU manages a united front when pushed to do so by Washington, as (say) on questions linked to energy dependence on Russia or nuclear diplomacy with Iran. A wider effect is that the EU channel continues to gain in primacy in transatlantic relations. One reason is that the EUs rising defence policy activity and ambitions remain intimately linked to the continued adaptation of NATO (see Parmentier 2000; Howorth 2007). Another, of course, is that NATO is often hamstrung by its own, toxic, internal disputes, such as over Afghanistan. But a fundamental reason remains the EUs exclusive economic policy competence. Any US administration
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must focus on Brussels if they want to respond to the diverse and powerful cohort of American economic actors that have an interest in regulatory convergence with the big foreign market which is most like Americas own. Washingtons role as a sort of regulator of European integration becomes clearer as transatlantic market integration touches on an increasingly wider range of policy issues. Frequently, the Commission uses transatlantic dialogue to leverage its own position within the EU, as it has on patent law. More broadly, the EU continues to make gains over other channels for transatlantic relations because of its demonstrated relevance and competence on current (counter-terrorism) and future (climate change and energy dependency) issues at the top of the US foreign policy agenda (Rees 2006; Talbott 2008). Thinking ahead about the Obama administration, it is instructive to consider the EUs leading, global role on climate change alongside James Steinbergs (2003, 135) insistence that the objective realities of environmental risk inevitably will force the United States and Europe to work more closely togetherthe main question is whether this will be sooner rather than later. Of course, the emergence of a much-enlarged EU (even though most of its newer member states are staunchly pro-American) and the stalling of its institutional reform, following the 2008 Irish no vote on the Lisbon Treaty, has cast fresh doubt on whether the EU is internally capable of anything like partnership with the US. In fact, USEU policy co-operation is actually blocked by disunity on the American side far more than might be expected. As Brussels gains importance in transatlantic relations, USEU dialogue increasingly highlights conicts of competency in the US and exposes capabilities gaps in the structure of American federalism. Regulatory co-operation makes clear the fragmented nature of US decision-making authority not only between different branches of the federal government, but also between it and individual US states. The EUs desire to agree MRAs in service sectors such as engineering and insurance, which are regulated at the sub-national level in the US, has led the Commission to contemplate negotiating agreements with individual states. A growing number of sub-national actors are now involved in transatlantic exchange, including state and regional foreign trade ofces and governors and mayors who undertake diplomatic missions. Political divisions between Washington and Brussels on climate change actually have boosted policy co-ordination with individual US states and cities that develop their own plans to ght global warming, and increased the number of US regions seeking environmental MoUs with their counterparts in Europe (see Knigge 2005). As such, the transatlantic relationship becomes an ever more tangled web. Nonetheless, it retains a strong and growing element of bilateralism between Brussels and Washington. An important reason why is that the US is an often underappreciated regulator of European integration (a point only rarely or reluctantly conceded by EU policy-makers; see Peterson and Pollack (2003)). The most dramatic, recent, illustrative policy area is homeland security. American pressure applied through new transatlantic mechanisms, as well as what EU insiders described as Washingtons post-9/11 obsession with security, has pushed the European Union to embrace far closer and deeper policy co-operation than it had managed previously (see European Commission 2005, 4651).
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Of course, what appear to be shrewd efforts by Washington to engineer a European policy consensus can have institutional effects that are more accidental than intended. One Commission ofcial on the front line of the NTA admitted: the level of ignorance is asymmetric: the US still doesnt understand the EU.13 Several EU ofcials reported that George W. Bushs top economic adviser, Allan Hubbard, appeared to enjoy showing how ignorant he was of Europe and the EU. Even Clinton administration ofcials with direct experience of NTA exchanges often reveal themselves to be NATO-rsters who vigorously defend the sanctity of a core role for NATO (Steinberg 2003, 126; see also Asmus 2003). Yet, we take such evidence as proof of our point: it is easy to miss how often US behaviour pushes Europe to embrace collective action (or provokes it with divideand-rule tactics), or to conclude that Brussels must have declining relevance as a political capital in the eyes of Washington. The EU may be losing power in international relations relative to other players with rates of economic and population growth that far outstrip its own, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. Still, there is much to suggestparticularly given the shared agenda on regulatory convergence, counter-terrorism, climate change, and so onthat USEU policy co-operation is durable. There are reasons to think, precisely because power is shifting in IR, that incentives for closer transatlantic co-operation are growing stronger because the clock is ticking on the time left for the west to shape the wider international order (see Garton Ash 2004; Stephens 2008). The general view that Europe and America are drifting apart is fed by wild claims that the role of the American neo-conservatives in the [2008 Irish] referendum was very important or that US foreign policy has traditionally been opposed to EU integration.14 Such claims seem a product of a specic erathe Bush era. The more general view seems somewhere between arguable and entirely wrong.

3. The Limits of Institutional Engineering

If the US and Europe have lived through the Bush era and managed to retain their alliance, how much of this result should we attribute to institutions? We try to answer this question by developing three points. First, there are stark limits to the capacity of institutionalised dialogue to surmount barriers to policy convergence. Second, a primary problem for transatlantic relations is that there are so many different institutional channels, all of which have problems of their own. Third, none of the above seems to deter fresh attempts to engineer existing or create new institutions, as the case of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) shows. If the NTA fails to deliver, it may be because it is more consistent than it may appear with an international world in which traditional power politics remains undiminished. The NTA lacks any legalised institutional framework, and was clearly not intended to impose binding constraints on either side. The transatlantic agreements signed in the 1990s lack the precision of legal treaties. As non-binding agreements, they bring with them very low levels of obligation. The NTAs institutional framework does not include any delegation to an independent secretariat or a neutral dispute settlement body. The capacities of NTA institutions are, by structural design, determined by the political will of elites on both sides to reconcile (what are often) divergent policy preferences and values.
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The NTA process generally and EUUS MRAs specically highlight problems endemic to transgovernmental institutions and networked governance. Implementation failures in several goods sectors covered under the 1997 framework MRA, as well as a separate Veterinary Equivalency Agreement (on animal standards), demonstrate the veracity of Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabels (2006) contention that the right actors have to be at the table. That is, successful regulatory co-operation requires that those best equipped to understand what problem they are trying to solve come together before they can learn how to solve it. The trade-driven NTA process failed initially to consider the friction that would ensue from not bringing independent US regulatory agencies to the table from the outset (Steffenson 2005b). More generally, substantive policy convergence is by no means the norm or a natural consequence of regulatory processes on both sides. As such, many of the so-called deliverables produced by the NTA are merely joint statements or minimalist acts of co-ordination, such as parallel EUUS information campaigns targeting trafcking in persons. The 2005 review of the NTA framework (European Commission 2005) tried to determine how much actual policy convergence had been achieved. Using both archive and interview material, it concluded that goals had been met on around 45 per cent of all issues outlined in the NTAs original (1995) Joint Action Plan. Some progress had been made on another 33 per cent of such issues (European Commission 2005, 19). In particular, competition policy co-operation was hailed as a success (see also Kovacic 2005; Whytock 2005). The high-level Political Dialogue on Border and Transportation Security (PDBTS) created after 9/11 was highlighted as an institutional rather than strictly policy success, since it created a more technical and specialised structure for information exchange on homeland security issues than previously existed. Yet, numerous areas of policy successincluding traditional matters of foreign policy such as the western Balkans and Afghanistan as well as competition policy existed essentially outside the NTA dialogue. In some ways, the NTA itself had helped foster such success by broadening in scope and extending dialogue on issues (such as Afghanistan) not prominent or even mentioned in its founding agreements. But even if the focus was narrowly on EUUS relations, with all other channels of exchange such as NATO, the United Nations Security Council or the Group of 8 (G-8) left aside, the NTA still only represented the tip of an iceberg (European Commission 2005). There is no transatlantic channel that does not have institutional problems of its own (see Luck 2006; Dobson 2007; Lindley-French 2007). Divisions within NATO over enlargement and Afghanistan, the UN Security Council over Georgia or Iran and the G-8 over Russias membership are not just political ones. They also reect institutional shortcomings, such as NATOs cold war-era command structures (see Parmentier 2000). Arguably, little progress has actually been made towards realising the early post-cold war vision of interlocking institutions, according to which political impulses could be directed towards a menu of international organisations between which a pragmatic division of labour would be agreed and established. The 2007 G-8 summit could be viewed as setting in motion a process for doing so, with its agreed actions on climate change, aid to Africa and the launch of the
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Heiligendamm process to allocate specic tasks and negotiations to different institutions and fora. Yet the architect of the processAngela Merkelwhile claiming we are building a global house, also urged patience and warned of a lot of tough negotiating ahead.15 A cynic might consider the decision of the Bush administration, for the rst time, to agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at Heiligendamm to be a cheap political gesture given the G-8s notorious implementation gap, which makes those that plague USEU institutions seem positively mild. Still, implementation gaps continue to motivate fresh attempts to engineer the NTA dialogue. The creation of the Transatlantic Economic Council proves the point. It emerged from a renewed commitment to economic policy co-operation in 200507, which itself aimed to advance progress on reducing regulatory barriers to trade. The status of the TEC co-chairsthe EU Commissioner for Enterprise and a US cabinetlevel ofcial in the Executive Ofce of the Presidentreected a determination to put political weight behind the transatlantic regulatory agenda and raise awareness of it across government agencies. The TEC established a focal point for regulatory co-operation across sectors. Existing regulatory dialogues were brought together under the umbrella of a High-Level Regulatory Forum, and a new dialogue was created between the US Ofce of Management and Budget and the European Commission. Other informal dialogues charged with discussing issues of economic competitiveness, such as educational standards, barriers to investment regulations and mismatched legal structures for issues such as patents, were also brought under the supervision of the TEC. The result was a new top-down management structure, with the TEC charged with overseeing and monitoring regulatory co-operation across sectors. The creation of specialised dialogues to feed into the process from the bottom up was intended to recreate the success of dialogue on homeland security issues, which was widely viewed as getting the right people with the right expertise to the table (Pawlak 2007). The appointment of the transatlantic legislators, consumer and business dialogues as advisory stakeholders to the TEC reected determination to balance increased trans-governmentalism with access and accountability. The TEC could be seen as breathing new life into regulatory policy co-operation. It has focused in particular on overcoming constraints on effective information sharing for product safety, including the exchange of condential information. Since its creation, the TEC has delivered an EUUS joint statement on removing barriers to transatlantic investment and dialogue on steps being taken in the EU to achieve the mutual recognition of US accounting standards. Its most substantial progress has probably been on customs policy, focusing on attempts to reinforce the protection of intellectual property and negotiations towards an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. But the TEC also illustrates the limits to institutional engineering. EU ofcials complain that their Bush administration counterparts have used the Council almost exclusively to pressure the EU on the vexed issue of chlorine-washed US poultry (a process that kills pathogens), which was banned from the EU in 1997. In 2008, a decision of the European Food Safety Authority concluded that there was no scientic evidence of safety problems arising from chlorine treatment, thus leaving the Commission in the politically unenviable position of having to decide itself to
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lift the ban. Here, we nd a case where NTA institutionsspecically, the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogueseized an opportunity to agitate for their own political agenda, arguing vociferously that the ban had to remain in place.16 The TEC is not immune to the general problem of transatlantic institutions that are easily overshadowed by ongoing trade disputes, as the TEC has been over poultry, and others have been over cosmetics (arising from the EUs REACH Directive on chemicals) and container security in shipping. Each of these disputes was rooted in domestic legislation, and all were discussed within the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue (TLD). But the TLD clearly lacked the political weight to resolve them. For example, at a TLD meeting before the June 2008 USEU summit in Washington, the European delegation explicitly supported the Commissions proposal to overturn the chlorine-washed poultry ban. Shortly afterwards, however, in a landslide vote (526 to 27) the EP voted in favour of a resolution calling upon the EU Council of Ministers to reject the Commissions proposal. No members of the TLD were present for the EP plenary debate on the proposal. In fact, none of the European delegates to the TLD were members of the EPs Agriculture Committee (AGRI), which continued strongly to advocate the chlorine ban. This case demonstrates the shortcomings of yet another NTA institution. First, the TLD frequently fails to get the right actors to the table. The US delegation has always contained few high-ranking members of the House, and the TLD still excludes the Senate. Mechanisms do not exist on either side of the Atlantic for ltering the results of the TLD dialogue back to wider legislative constituencies. The TLD dialogue suffers from co-ordination issues that plague other transatlantic institutions. There are simply too many issues on the agenda and too little time to discuss them in depth, thus rendering the TLD a forum for exchanges of views rather than any convergence of preferences. The NTA system more generally facilitates mostly apolitical, technocratic exchanges about policy problems and possible co-operation. There has probably been no case where any senior ofcial on either side has said to his or her colleagues: this is difcult, and represents a major concession on our part. But we must do this for the NTA. There is plenty to sustain the view that those who believe that transatlantic partnership can be engineered via institutions are dreamers. On the other hand, there is also enough productive transatlantic policy co-operation, and interest in improving and extending it, to keep institutional engineers busy with new ideas and schemes.

4. After George W: Back to the Future?

No student of transatlantic relations can avoid wondering what, if anything, about US foreign policy changed permanently during the George W. Bush administration. In considering this question, we shift our focus in this section away from transatlantic institutions to much broader questions of international order. We consider whether the new institutionalism in transatlantic relations is one element of a wider turn towards a more institutionalised, rules-based system of IR, and what the contribution of Europe and America might be in the post-Bush era.
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One thesis, associated above all with G. John Ikenberry (2005, 2006 and 2008) views Bush era unilateralism as the product of a new and more demanding brand of multilateralisma sort of international new institutionalismas opposed to any fundamental change of American outlook. The rise of the World Trade Organisation, International Criminal Court and other sources of binding international obligations has been championed by Europe. These and other new institutions generally lack provisions for weighted majority voting, opt-outs or escape clauses: devices that made the old multilateralism easier for the Americans to stomach. The new multilateralism seeks more binding rules in more areas of international politics, especially trade and human rights. The upshot is that the US has more opportunities to look unilateral today than in the past (Ikenberry 2006, 254). By this view, we are witnessing a secular, historically durable shift towards a more multilateral system of IR. It demands more from states that take part in it. In this context, unilateralism has become costly strategically because it leads to a loss of legitimacy. Zbigniew Brzezinski, formerly Jimmy Carters National Security Adviser and more recently an adviser to Barack Obama, has insisted that any post-2008 US administration will have to show an instinctive grasp of the spirit of the times in a world that is motivated by a vague but pervasive sense of prevailing injustice in the human condition (Brzezinski 2007, 134). For him, a global political awakening is unfolding: historically anti-imperial, politically anti-Western, and emotionally increasingly anti-American (Brzezinski 2007, 138). Against this backdrop, according to Jonathan Freedland (2007, 1), the Bush administration has accomplished what none of its predecessors could: it has forged a new consensus that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft. It extended to agreement that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, [and] that the presidency of George W. Bush ha[d] reduced Americas standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated (Freedland 2007, 1). What of Americas European friends? Brzezinski (2007, 24) claims that todays Europe is more extensive in scope, yet more distant from America while still impotent globally. Only the rst of these assertions is uncontentious: the enlarged EU now includes central and eastern European states that consider themselves to have special relationships with the US. But it is interesting that Brzezinski, along with other US foreign policy thinkers (Hachigian and Sutphen 2008; Talbott 2008), presents Europe as a single unit about which it is appropriate to generalise. More generally, the US foreign policy class increasingly seems to take a common view of the implications for Europe of the recent emergence of a more assertive America in an (allegedly) more demanding multilateral order. That order features an EU that is progressively more ambitious as an international actor, as its attempts at nuclear diplomacy with Iran and a strong stance on human rights in the war on terrorism reveal. But it is also widely viewed as losing power relative to others including China, India and Russia. The view from Washington seems increasingly to assume that the European Union will be forced, in these circumstances, to become a more singular political unit and foreign policy actor. Furthermore, the end of the Bush era seems likely to increase global demand for multilateralism. It seemed John McCains (2008) answer to most of Americas
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foreign policy problems as Republican presidential candidate, and his preferred antidote to the disease of declining American power as a consequence of its diminished legitimacy. McCains repeated advocacy of deeper alliances and the need to listen suggested that even his would have been a very different foreign policy from that of the Bush administration.17 Demand for multilateralism could be viewed as rising for a variety of reasons, most having to do with globalisation. The 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS)the closest thing the EU has ever had to a foreign policy doctrineexplicitly set out reasons why multilateralism needed to be strengthened in a world of global threats, global markets and global media (Dannreuther and Peterson 2006, 234). But the most important reason might be the perceived need to restore American credibility. At least two questions arise. First, can the EU itself help supply keep pace with increasing demand? Second, precisely what constitutes what the ESS famously refers to as effective multilateralism, beyond its platitudinous call for a stronger international society, well functioning international institutions and a rule-based international order (Dannreuther and Peterson 2006, 234)? There are doubts about whether the EUlet alone both transatlantic partnerscan even agree on what effective means. But there seems little doubt that there will be future opportunities to supply new or enhanced multilateral agreements. Martin Ortegas (2007) crystal ball gazing leads him to foresee a global constitutional moment arriving in the late 2010s when a range of issues are likely to come to a head. They include UN Security Council reform, institution building in the Middle East, fossilfuel depletion and climate change. The EU might be well placed to broker new multilateral agreements when that moment arrives (see Smith 2008). On the other hand, the EU has multiple strategies, which are not clearly compatible with one another. It seeks strategic partnerships with emerging powers such as China and Russia. Meanwhile, it is ostensibly committed to regionalism and exporting itselfits institutions and habits of co-operationto other regions of the world. There is recent evidence to suggest that the EU is defending its own interests in trade diplomacy more aggressively than in the past. It is entirely unclear how all these various strategic goals are compatible with an overarching commitment to multilateralism. Moreover, Zaki Ladi (2008) has recently and perceptively argued that the EU lacks a global perspective: that is, a comprehensive perspective on the world that reects its own vision of its security. It will not extend its global power until it does. Of course, the EU has only very limited hard power. Yet, in Ladis view, the problems that beset Bushs America in seeking to dominate global politics by force shows that military strength offers no (or at least few) answers to the problems of the new security agenda. The Bush era has shown that power and force are not the same things, and are perhaps more different things than ever before (Jones 2008). In this context, what Europe needs is less military might than a global perspective shared by its members (Ladi 2008, vii). That global perspective needs to include a more or less common view on Europes relationship with America, and, logically, the will to engage in co-operative transatlantic acts that help construct or strengthen multilateralism. The more general point is that European faith in institutions, including its own and those that link Europe to the US, cannot by themselves make the EU an effective global actor or partner to the US.
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Should we expect the next US administration to embrace both transatlanticism and multilateralism? One view might assume that Americas loss of global credibility under the Bush administration, along with the desire of many European governments to draw a line under the Bush era, might yield fresh commitmenton both sides, but with Washington in the leadto both transatlantic solidarity and strengthened multilateralism (Rubin 2008). Another view, aired by one of McCains foreign policy advisers, warned against any expectation of a more pliable, chastened, and multilateralist administration under either Obama or McCain (Schake 2007, 1). Our own view lies somewhere in between: we foresee no (quick) return to the heady days of the mid-1990s when a progressively more united Europe was viewed as an emerging potential partner to the point where Washington saw t to engage in a urry of transatlantic institution building. But we see better days ahead for transatlantic relations.

Conclusion
Transatlantic relations are played out through many channels. The USEU channel is probably less important or productive than the architects of the New Transatlantic Agenda hoped or thought it would be by now. One Commission ofcial at the front line of the dialogue admitted that the institutions, put simply, dont work very well.18 One of the Clinton administrations top foreign policy ofcials ascribes to the NTA an ameliorative effect but also notes a lack of high-level commitment to policy co-ordination and a continuing need for a more institutionalised, enduring effort that depends less on personalities (Steinberg 2003, 134). Yet, even here we nd a call for more institutionalisation. Whatever their limits, we would argue that the NTA institutions help get each side closer than any other major global players to the holy grails of rational choice theory: perfect information and perfect attention (Peterson and Ward 1995). They routinely produce new attempts to deepen and broaden co-operation and consistently justify their own existence. The NTA system is an integral part of a wider dialogue that keeps both sides focused on a pragmatic agenda of policy co-operation. Warts and all, they offer a platform for a renewal of the transatlantic alliance post-Bush. To be clear, the US and EU remain far from an institutionalised partnership. The long list of post-1995 transatlantic rows, including (of course) over Iraq, shows that transatlantic relations are determined primarily by events and currents at the level of high politics that can easily overwhelm or marginalise ongoing efforts at policy co-operation. If we were to compile a list of factors that matter more than institutions, we would probably start with personalities, at multiple levels. James Rubin (2008, 101) attributes warmer transatlantic relations post-Iraq to the electoral victories of Merkel and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, both of whose commitment to reviving relations with the US contrasted sharply with their predecessors. Similarly, EU ofcials complained of poor chemistry with Nicholas Burns, the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Bush administration, who participated in NTA exchanges, as well as lack of interest on the part of Dan Fried, the top National Security Council ofcial for Europe, in the EU itself. Perhaps it might matter eventually that Barack Obama had chaired the Senates
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sub-committee on European affairs and (for example) presided over the conrmation hearing of Kurt Volker, who previously served as the lead American ofcial in NTA exchanges, when he was named US ambassador to NATO.19 A second factor that trumps institutions is the so-called values gap between Europe and America. Europeans might be encouraged by Condoleezza Rices (2008, 7) insistence that the US does have permanent allies: the nations with whom we share common values. An important question is whether European condence in US leadership has collapsed, particularly on issues such as the treatment of suspected terrorists as prisoners, climate change and Iran, thus demonstrating a breakdown of shared values that have underpinned the transatlantic relationship (see Rubin 2008, 99).20 If so, pragmatic policy co-operation on theseas well as many otherissues would be difcult or impossible. However, the values gap does not appear equally wide between America and all EU member states, or to diminish enthusiasm among Europeans and Americans for transatlantic renewal. These points were reinforced by a 2008 British Council survey which found that (on average) 62 per cent of Europeans favoured closer EuropeanAmerican relations (compared with 91 per cent of Americans), and suggested that the Poles (77 per cent), and not the British (51 per cent), were the strongest supporters of partnership with the US.21 A nal factor is conicting notions of sovereignty (Keohane 2003). Characterisations of a unilateral America that clashes with a multilateral Europe are usually gross simplications (see Pollack 2003). Amid speculation about American foreign policy post-Bush, there are reasons to believe that any successor administration would (in Obamas words) make a virtue of working through multilateral institutions.22 Still, perceptions about the use of force or rule of law as tools of global governance remain different on either side of the Atlantic (Rubenfeld 2004). Closing the gap between them may take generations, if it happens at all. The new institutionalism that sprouted in the mid-1990s has, in important respects, changed the nature of the transatlantic relationship. It is now more Brussels and EU focused, and becoming more so. As a case study, USEU relations offer no real evidence to suggest that partnership between major powers can be institutionalised or even that bilateral institutions can prevent strategic divorce (see Herd and Forsberg 2008). But the post-1995 record of the NTA stands as a new chapter in the now lengthy history of transatlantic co-operation. That historical record, as well as a lack of alternative partners and very real and shared external threats, may make Europe and America the worst of allies, except for all the others (Sarotte 2008). The various transatlantic gaps that we have described make the negotiation of more ambitious treaties or institutions with more political weight seem unlikely in the near future. One upshot is to enhance the importance of existing institutions, which have helped keep both sides focused on a pragmatic, co-operative policy agenda regardless of political noise over Iraq, human rights, climate change, and so on. As imperfect as they are, transatlantic institutions matter. They may well matter more in the Obama era. About the Authors
John Peterson, Politics and International Relations, 3.10 Chrystal Macmillan Building, University of Edinburgh, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK, email: john.peterson@ed.ac.uk
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Rebecca Steffenson, Department of Political Science, Zulauf Hall 113, Northern Illinois University, 1425 W. Lincoln Highway, DeKalb, IL 60115-2885, USA, email: rsteffenson@niu.edu

Notes
For help and advice on this article, we are grateful to Fran Burwell, Louise Maythorne, two anonymous referees, the editors, and participants at the workshop on The Transatlantic Relationship after Bush held at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire on 1011 April 2008. 1. For a sample of the diversity of works that conclude that the US and Europe are at war, under stress, etc., see citations in Peterson and Young (2007, 283). For treatments by an ardent devotee who also sees the alliance at a critical crossroads, see Serfaty (2005a and 2005b). More recent examples include Clark (2008); Kanet (2008); Layne (2008); and Thornton (2008). 2. See for example Archick (2005) and Makins (2003). 3. See the BP Transatlantic Chairs 2002 report The Political Economy of the Transatlantic Partnership, Prepared For Her Majestys Treasury (United Kingdom) Ministry of Finance, Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (European University Institute); see also Meyer (2008). 4. One of us (John Peterson) was the lead author of this study, which was conducted by a research team that included Fran Burwell, Richard Doherty, Rachel Epstein, Mark Pollack, Joseph Quinlan, Michal van Cutsem, Helen Wallace and Alasdair Young. Other evaluative studies include Steffenson (2005a) and Pollack (2005). 5. Interestingly, Krasner served as a senior ofcial for planning in the State Department in the Bush administration (see http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/42274.htm). 6. Solana is the EUs High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Cooper is Director of Politico-Military Affairs in the EU Council General Secretariat. 7. Jos Manuel Barroso, speech at Berlin conference on A Soul for Europe, 1719 November 2006, available from: http://www.asoulforeurope.eu/uploads/media/Speech_Barroso_061117_04.pdf 8. George Parker, US Senator attacks Conservative move to quit EPP, Financial Times, 1 May 2006, available from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afd43330-d8ae-11da-9715-0000779e2340.html?nclick_ check=1 9. In particular, a key clause that would have prohibited European signatories from mounting joint NATO operations, given the continued use of cluster bombs by the US military, had to be redrafted. 10. At the time of publication, the US had agreed MoUs with Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Hungary and Lithuania. The US bilateral approach was driven, to a considerable extent, by conditions stipulated by the American Congress, which did not recognise the equivalence of security screening regulations across the EU or the Schengen zone. 11. The communication is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/adequacy/ apis-communication/apis_en.pdf. 12. See American visas: Stand in line, The Economist, 8 March 2008, 52. 13. Interview, member of cabinet of EU Commission President Jos Manuel Barroso, 25 April 2008. 14. Here we quote, respectively, the French Minister for Europe, Jean-Pierre Jouyet and Irish parliamentarian Lucinda Creighton. See Frances minister sees neocon plot, Economist.com, available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2008/06/frances_minister_sees_a_ neocon.cfm 15. See http://www.g-8.de/nn_92160/Content/EN/Artikel/2008/07/2008-07-09-abschluss-g8__en.html 16. See Jim Murray (President of the TACD), The EU should uphold ban on US poultry, European Voice, 39 April 2008, 15. 17. See http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/Speeches/872473dd-9ccb-4ab4-9d0d-ec54f0e7a4 97.htm. Of course, forward thinking about some of the pathologies of multilateralism was evident in McCains (2007) rewarming of Madeleine Albrights idea of a new League of Democracies, which would presumably be a sort of alternative United Nations restricted to democratic states. 18. Interview, Brussels, 25 April 2008. 19. For a sceptical view of Obamas engagement in this role, see Jeff Zeleny, The caucus: A rare day in the spotlight, New York Times, 9 April 2008, available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ fullpage.html?res=990DE5DF1E30F93AA35757C0A96E9C8B63.
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20. For an analysis of the values gap, see Peterson (2008), which is also available as a podcast at: http://www.podcasts.ed.ac.uk/politics/2006/peterson_inaugural/peterson_inaug_html.mov 21. Transatlantic Trends 2020, The British Council, January 2008, http://www.britishcouncil.org/tn2020research-ndings-authors.htm?mtlink=tn2020-homepage-research-ndings-authors-mt-link 22. Brieng: Barack Obama. Explaining the riddle, The Economist, 23 August 2008, 21.

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2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Political Studies Association BJPIR, 2009, 11(1)