(Wolfram Kaiser) Transnational European Union Tow (BookFi) PDF

Transnational European Union
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the European Union is an increasingly

dense transnational social and political space. More and more non-governmental
organizations are developing transnational links, which are usually more intensive
within the EU even if they often extend beyond its borders to the wider world.
This multi-disciplinary volume explores the importance of these structures,
actors and relations for EU and European governance in the context of the
theoretical debate about European integration in the social sciences. This book
includes:
● Theoretical chapters examining and discussing the main conceptual

perspectives to studying the transnational EU to provide a current overview.
● Empirical case studies of transnationalism in practice on transnational party,
trade union and police cooperation to transnational education policy-making
and transnational consensus-building in EMU governance.
This volume will be of great interest to students and researchers of

transnationalism and European Union studies within the social sciences,
contemporary history and law.
Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth

and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. His most recent books
include (ed. with J. Elvert) European Union Enlargement: A Comparative History (2004);
(ed. with M. Gehler) Christian Democracy in Europe since 1945 (2004); Using Europe,
Abusing the Europeans: Britain and European Integration 1945–1963 (1999). He is currently
writing a book on Transnational Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe.
Peter Starie is Principal Lecturer in Politics at the University of Portsmouth.

He has published numerous articles and chapters on policy networks and European
integration.
Transnationalism
Series Editor: Steven Vertovec
University of Oxford
‘Transnationalism’ broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people

or institutions across the borders of nation-states. Today myriad systems of rela-
tionship, exchange and mobility function intensively and in real time while being
spread across the world. New technologies, especially involving telecommunica-
tions, serve to connect such networks. Despite great distances and notwithstanding
the presence of international borders (and all the laws, regulations and national
narratives they represent), many forms of association have been globally intensi-
fied and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning yet common arena
of activity. In some instances, transnational forms and processes serve to speed-up
or exacerbate historical patterns of activity, in others, they represent arguably
new forms of human interaction. Transnational practices and their consequent
configurations of power are shaping the world of the twenty-first century.
This book forms part of a series of volumes concerned with describing and
analysing a range of phenomena surrounding this field. Serving to ground theory and
research on ‘globalization’, the Routledge book series on ‘Transnationalism’ offers the
latest empirical studies and ground-breaking theoretical works on contemporary
socio-economic, political and cultural processes which span international boundaries.
Contributions to the series are drawn from Sociology, Economics, Anthropology,
Politics, Geography, International Relations, Business Studies and Cultural Studies.
The ‘Transnationalism’ series grew out of the Transnational Communities
Research Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council (see http://
www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk). It is currently associated with the Research Council’s
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society located at the University of Oxford
(see http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk).
The series consists of two strands:
Transnationalism aims to address the needs of students and teachers and these
titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include:
Culture and Politics in the Information Age
A new politics?
Edited by Frank Webster
Transnational Democracy
Political spaces and border crossings
Edited by James Anderson
Routledge Research in Transnationalism is a forum for innovative new research
intended for a high-level specialist readership and the titles will be available in
hardback only. Titles include:
1 New Transnational Social Spaces

International migration and transnational companies
in the early 21st century
Edited by Ludger Pries
2 Transnational Muslim Politics*

Reimagining the Umma
Peter G. Mandaville
3 New Approaches to Migration?

Transnational communities and the transformation of home
Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser
4 Work and Migration

Life and livelihoods in a globalizing world
Edited by Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Karen Fog Olwig
5 Communities across Borders

New immigrants and transnational cultures
Edited by Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof
6 Transnational Spaces
Edited by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang and Claire Dwyer
7 The Media of Diaspora

Edited by Karim H. Karim
8 Transnational Politics
Turks and Kurds in Germany
Eva Østergaard-Nielsen
9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora

Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec
10 International Migration and the Globalization of

Domestic Politics
Edited by Rey Koslowski
* Also available in paperback.

11 Gender in Transnationalism
Home, longing and belonging among Moroccan migrant women
Ruba Salih
12 State/Nation/Transnation
Perspectives on transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific
Edited by Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Katie Willis
13 Transnational Activism in Asia

Problems of power and democracy
Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin
14 Diaspora, Identity and Religion

New directions in theory and research
Edited by Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Tölölyan and Carolin Alfonso
15 Cross-Border Governance in the European Union

Edited by Olivier Thomas Kramsch and Barbara Hooper
16 Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf

Edited by Madawi Al-Rasheed
17 Central Asia and the Caucasus

Transnationalism and diaspora
Edited by Touraj Atabaki and Sanjyot Mehendale
18 International Migration and Security

Opportunities and challenges
Edited by Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm
19 Transnational European Union

Towards a common political space
Edited by Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie
Transnational European
Union
Towards a common political space
Edited by
Wolfram Kaiser and
Peter Starie
First published 2005
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2005 Selection and editorial matter: Wolfram Kaiser and
Peter Starie; individual chapters the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Transnational European Union: towards a common political space /
edited by Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie.
p. cm. – (Transnationalism. Routledge research in
transnationalism; 19)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. European Union. 2. European cooperation. 3. Europe–Politics
and government–1945– I. Kaiser, Wolfram, 1966– II. Staire, Peter,
1962– III. Series.
JN30.T696 2005
341.242⬘2–dc22 2005001944
ISBN 0-203-01653-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–415–36512–0 (Print Edition)

Contents
List of illustrations ix
List of contributors x
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xii
The European Union as a transnational political

space: introduction 1
WO L F R AM K A ISER AND PET ER STARIE
PART I
Conceptual perspectives 15
1 Transnational Western Europe since 1945: integration

as political society formation 17
WO L F R AM K A ISER
2 Transnational networks: informal governance

in the European political space 36
K AR E N HE A R D -LAU RÉOT E
3 Transnational socialization: community-building

in an integrated Europe 61
FR AN K S C H I MMELFENNIG
4 Transnational business: power structures in

Europe’s political economy 83
BA S T I A AN VA N APELD O O RN
PART II
Transnationalism in practice 107
5 Trade unions as a transnational movement in the

European space 1955–65: falling short of ambitions? 109
PAT R I C K PA S T U RE
viii Contents
6 The alliance of European Christian Democracy and
Conservatism: convergence through networking 131
K A R L M AGN US JO HANSSO N
7 German political foundations: transnational party

go-betweens in the EU enlargement process 150
D O ROTA DAKOW SKA
8 Transnational actors in the European Higher

Education Area: European opportunities and
institutional embeddedness 170
E R I C BE E R K E N S
9 Copweb Europe: venues, virtues and vexations of

transnational policing 191
M O N I C A D E N BO ER
10 Transnational consensus building in EMU economic

governance: elite interaction and national
preference formation 210
DA N I E L A S C HWARZ ER
Index 228
Illustrations
Figure
10.1 National preference formation and transnational interaction 225
Tables
3.1 Mechanisms of socialization 64
3.2 Conditions of rule adoption 65
8.1 Performance, institutional fit and the correlation
between them 181
8.2 Institutional fit for the different institutional forms 182
Contributors
Eric Beerkens is Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Policy and Practice at the
University of Sydney, Australia.
Dorota Dakowska is Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris
10-Nanterre and about to finish her PhD on the German political foundations
at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris in France.
Monica den Boer is Professor of Comparative Public Administration at the
Free University of Amsterdam and Director of Research at the National Police
Academy in the Netherlands.
Karen Heard-Lauréote is a research student at the University of Portsmouth in
the United Kingdom and about to finish her PhD on functional representation
in European agricultural governance.
Karl Magnus Johansson is Associate Professor in Political Science at Södertörn
University College in Sweden.
Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth
in the United Kingdom and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in
Bruges, Belgium.
Patrick Pasture is Assistant Research Professor in the Department of History
at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.
Frank Schimmelfennig is Senior Research Fellow at the Mannheim Centre
for European Social Research in Germany.
Daniela Schwarzer is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for International
and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, Germany and a journalist with the
Financial Times Deutschland acting previously as France correspondent and
leader writer.
Peter Starie is Principal Lecturer in Politics at the University of Portsmouth in
the United Kingdom.
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to several institutions and colleagues who have helped us to bring
this project to fruition. In particular, we wish to thank the European Science
Foundation in Strasbourg for funding a workshop at the University of Portsmouth,
which allowed us to put together a very cohesive book, and for their financial
assistance towards the preparation of the manuscript; the Centre for European
and International Studies Research (CEISR) at the University of Portsmouth for
providing a stimulating intellectual environment and for supporting our research
over the years; Heidi Bagtazo, our Routledge editor, for her support, and Avril
Ehrlich for preparing the index.
We would like to dedicate this book to our parents, and especially in memory
of Joe Starie who sadly died during the course of the project.
Abbreviations
AA Foreign Ministry
ABVV/FGTB Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond/Fédération Générale du
Travail de Belgique (Belgium)
ACF Advocacy Coalition Framework
ACUE American Committee for a United Europe
AFL American Federation of Labor
AP Alianza Popular
BEPG Broad Economic Policy Guidelines
BEUC European Consumers’ Organization
BMZ Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit
und Entwicklung (German Federal Ministry for
Economic Cooperation and Development)
BNFF Bureau of Nordic Family Forestry
BOND British Overseas NGOs for Development
CAP Common Agricultural Policy
CCTV Circuit Camera Television
CDA Christen Democratisch Appèl
CDS Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (France)
CDS Partido do Centro Démocratico Social (Portugal)
CDU Christian Democratic Union (Germany)/
Christlich-Demokratische Union
CEEC Central and Eastern European Countries
CEMR Council of European Municipalities and Regions
CEPF Confederation of European Forest Owners
CEPOL European Police College
CEPR Centre for Economic Policy Research
CEPS Centre for European Policy Studies
CERC Confederation of EU Rector’s Conference
CFS Centre for Financial Studies
CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy
CGT Confédération Générale du Travail (France)
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CISC International Federation of Christian Trade Unions
Abbreviations xiii
CISL Confederazione italiana dei sindacati lavoratori (Italy)
CLAT Central Latinoamerico de Trabajodores
COCDYC Conservative and Christian Democrat Youth Community
COGECA General Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives in the
European Union
CONCORD Confederation for Cooperation of Relief and Development
COREPER Committee of Permanent Representatives
CPE European Farmers Coordination
CRD Conservative Research Department
CRE Association of European Universities
CSM Centre for International Relations
CSU Christian Social Union (Bavaria/Germany)
CSV Chrëschtlech Sozial Vollekspartei (Luxembourg)
CVP Christelijke Volkspartij (Flemish)
CVP Christliche Volkspartei (Switzerland)
DC Democrazia Cristiana
DEA Drug Enforcement Administration
DEMYC Democrat Youth Community of Europe
DGB Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Germany)
DR Democratic Rally
EC European Community
ECB European Central Bank
ECIU European Consortium of Innovative Universities
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
ECTS European Credit Transfer System
ED European Democrats
EDG European Democratic Group
EDP European Democrat Party
EDS European Democrat Students
EDU European Democrat Union
EEB European Environmental Bureau
EEC European Economic Community
EFC Economic and Financial Committee
EFDS European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity
EFR European Financial Services Roundtable
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EHEA European Higher Education Area
ELDR European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party
ELEC European League for Economic Cooperation
EMMI European Multi Media Information
EMSU European Medium and Small Business Union
EMU European Monetary Union
EP European Parliament
EPC European Political Cooperation
EPP European People’s Party
xiv Abbreviations
EPP-ED Group of the European People’s Party and
European Democrats
ERO European Regional Organization
ERP European Recovery Programme
ERT European Round Table of Industrialists
ETUC European Trade Union Confederation
ETUS European Trade Union Secretariat
EU European Union
EUCD European Union of Christian Democrats
Europol EU Police Office
EUW European Union of Women
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FDP Free Democratic Party (Germany)
FERN Forests and the European Union Resource Network
FES Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Germany)
FGTB Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique
FIDESZ Hungarian Alliance of Young Democrats
FNS Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (Germany)
FO Confédération Générale du Travail – Force Ouvrière (France)
FPÖ Freedom Party (Austria)
HBS Heinrich Böll Stiftung (Germany)
HSS Hanns Seidel Stiftung (Germany)
ICC Informatie en Coordinate Centrum
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPE International Political Economy
ITS International Trade Secretariats
JHA Justice and Home Affairs (EU)
KAS Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Germany)
LI Liberal International
ND Nea Demokratia
NEI Nouvelles Equipes Internationales
NGO Non-governmental Organization
ODCA Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development
OEEC Organization for European Economic Cooperation
OEEC-TUAC OEEC Trade Union Advisory Committee
OIPGs Operationeel Invalspunt Aan de grens
OLAF Office de la Lutte Anti-Fraude
ÖVP Österreichische Volkspartei
PES Party of European Socialists
PN Partit Nazzjonalista (Malta)
PODACS Police Data Computer System
Abbreviations xv
PP Partido Popular
PSC Walloon Parti Social Chrétien
PSD Partido Social Democrata (Portugal)
PSL Peasant Party (Poland)
PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español
RLS Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Germany)
RPR Rassemblement pour la République (France)
RS AWS Polish Social Movement Solidarity
SDK Slovak Democratic Coalition
SI Socialist International
SLD Democratic Left Alliance (Poland)
SPD Social Democratic Party (Germany)
SWP German Institute for International Security
TNC Transnational Corporation
TOBB Turkish Union of Chambers of Commerce, Industry,
Maritime Commerce and Commodity Exchanges
TUAC Trade Union Advisory Committee
TUC Trades Union Congress (Britain)
TUSIAD Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association
UCD Unión de Centro Democrático (Spain)
UDF Union pour la Démocratie Française
UIL Unione italiana del lavoro (Italy)
UMP Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (France)
UNICE Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations
of Europe
US Czech Union for Freedom
UW Union of Freedom
WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions
WWF Worldwide Fund for Nature
YEF Young European Federalists
YEPP Youth of EPP
ZEI Center for European Integration Studies
The European Union as
a transnational political space
Introduction
Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the European Union is an increasingly

dense transnational political space. Political parties are intensifying their trans-
national cooperation in policy-making at the European level. Foundations and
think tanks organize the exchange of ideas and the transfer of policy concepts
across borders. Business associations and trade unions work together and coordinate
their responses to comparable globalization pressures. Multinational companies
and individual business leaders forge contacts in order to influence the agenda at
all levels of governance. More and more non-governmental organizations develop
transnational links which are usually more intensive within the European Union,
even if they often extend beyond its borders to the wider world.
To a large extent, this process of transnationalization has been induced by
European constitutionalization, which not only results in new opportunities for
transnational actors to influence policy-making at the European level. It also
expands the scope for cross-border exchanges, transnational socialization and pol-
icy transfer below the EU level. Transnationalization does not only result from
further supranational integration, however. It also has roots in the longer term
historical, socio-economic and cultural similarities of European states and soci-
eties and transnational links. The process is further supported by transnationally
constituted social institutions like the Catholic Church. In an age of globalization,
it is also strengthened by comparable economic challenges and similar needs for
societal reforms. In view of these challenges, national societies need to be fully
integrated in transnational networks and socialization processes if they do not
want to be left behind.
Up to a point, this process of growing transnationalization remains elite driven.
For a number of reasons, the European Union and its institutions are still not par-
ticularly suitable or important sites of mass social action (Imig and Tarrow, 2001).
Indeed, in some ways global events like the summits of the G-8 appear to be more
attractive for transnational protest movements that wish to secure media attention
for their causes. In contrast, non-governmental organizations involved in lobbying
at the European level usually find it difficult to get their members more interested
and involved in EU politics, as they are often more focussed on global questions of
poverty or environmental pollution, for example (Greenwood, 2003: 269–70).
Nevertheless, transnationalization at the elite level appears to be embedded
2 Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie
in a more profound process of incipient European society formation which
increasingly engages more and more European citizens, and does so in a variety
of ways. These include, for example, expanding educational exchanges and mass
tourism. The formation of a European society is also reflected in increasing
numbers of inter-marriages and dual citizenship across member states.
Towards conceptualizing transnational

European Union
The process of European transnationalization in itself is an important contemporary
phenomenon. As such and not just because of its relevance for European-level
policy-making, it deserves greater attention from the social sciences and related
disciplines. So far, several questions remain unexplored. It would be important to
conceptualize and understand, for example, how the ‘Third Way’ ideology and
rhetoric – albeit adjusted to different national circumstances (Cuperus and
Duffek, 2001) – became a European strategy for the reinvention and reconstruc-
tion of Social Democracy. Such Europeanization of a national political strategy
and its implementation in regional and national political contexts can be explained
convincingly by the transmission function of transnational networks of political
parties, foundations and think tanks. These can play an important, pro-active
agenda-setting role. In contrast, state institutions such as national ministries, even
if they also have cross-border contacts partially induced by EU integration and
ultimately draft legislation, tend to be much more reactive and conservative in
protecting national traditions and existing legal and socio-economic structures.
Indirectly, the formation of an increasingly dense transnational political space
has important repercussions for the way in which we conceptualize European
integration and governance (Kohler-Koch and Eising, 1999; Rumford, 2002).
If, for example, this process of society-formation extending beyond small economic,
academic and political elites strengthens the European dimension of citizens’
identities and their allegiance to the European Union, this would have obvious
consequences for how we conceive the democratic legitimacy of policy-making at
the European level and for the criteria we wish to apply to its evaluation (Lord,
2003). At the same time, transnationalization and transnational politics matter
more directly for agenda setting and bargaining in the European Union, thus
influencing the outcomes of integration. Whereas the study of transnationaliza-
tion as such was neglected for a long time in the social sciences and related disci-
plines, the role of transnational actors in the integration process has traditionally
been an important feature of neo-functionalist accounts of the integration
process from Ernst B. Haas (1958) onwards. In his transactionalist approach
to community formation, moreover, Karl W. Deutsch (1957) already empha-
sized the importance of growing transnational contacts and communication for
identity convergence and learning processes. In the study of global politics, this
same trend to assess the transformative impact of transnationalization was
reflected in studies by authors such as Karl Kaiser (1969) and Robert Keohane
and Joseph Nye (1971).
Introduction 3
The early neo-functionalist accounts focussed almost exclusively on the role of
transnational business associations and trade unions in the integration process.
They tended to emphasize their close collaboration with supranational institu-
tions and technocratic elites in agenda-setting and advancing the integration
process in the context of sectoral economic or political ‘spill-over’. In this frame-
work, transnationalization often appeared to be conflated with supranationaliza-
tion. None of these basic assumptions are particularly relevant for the study of the
current European Union, however (Sandholtz and Stone Sweet, 1998). Thus, it is
widely acknowledged that transnational European-level associations are very
heterogeneous and usually formulate policy at the lowest common denominator
(Greenwood, 2003: 75–85). As was first shown by Wayne Sandholtz and
John Zysman (1989), it was the largely informal European Round Table of
Industrialists (ERT) and individual, transnationally connected business leaders
not business associations who successfully pushed for the Single Market
Programme. At the same time, transnational actors develop multiple links with
governmental actors at all levels in order to influence European policy-making.
This includes representatives of the member states in the Council of Ministers,
not just the European Commission and the European Parliament (EP). Finally,
the early assumptions about ‘spill-over’ were much too determinist. In fact,
transnationally networked business leaders may well favour negative market inte-
gration, but could be opposed to positive political integration for fear that this
might lead to more economic interventionism by central institutions in Brussels.
These inadequacies of early neo-functionalism, combined with the contempo-
rary experience of politically weak Commissions and underdeveloped pluralism
and interest group politics at the European level until the mid-1980s, brought
about a temporary upsurge in state-centred intergovernmentalist explanations of
European integration. Compared to earlier criticisms of neo-functionalism by
authors like Stanley Hoffmann (1966), Andrew Moravcsik (1993, 1998) has also
explained integration outcomes as the result of inter-state bargaining, but on the
basis of a more sophisticated understanding of national preference formation in
domestic political contexts. His liberal intergovernmentalism usefully reminded
students of the European Union of the resilience of the nation-states and
their institutions which were not of course becoming completely ineffective and
obsolete, as some of the more radical studies of incipient globalization would have
it at that time. On the other hand, intergovernmentalism proved to be a narrow
approach to studying European integration in several different ways. Thus,
the exclusive concentration on treaty-revising ‘grand bargains’ failed to explain
the arguably much more important political and legislative process of the
European Union and its outcomes within its respective constitutional setting.
Moreover, as a result of its fixation with state interaction, intergovernmentalist
accounts downplayed the role of the Commission as a mere ‘facilitator’ of bargains
and largely ignored the growing importance of the European Parliament or the
Court of Justice. More importantly, these studies explained preference formation
in a purely national context, insisting (without actually studying them) that transna-
tional actors were marginal to the integration process and had no significant
influence on integration outcomes. Even within the very narrow context of ‘grand
bargains’, however, other authors have in fact demonstrated the importance of
transnational actors for agenda setting, if not perhaps the detailed negotiation of
treaty clauses. Thus, Karl Magnus Johansson (2002) has shown, for example, that
the transnational coordination of Christian democratic leaders had a significant
influence on the Maastricht Treaty agenda. At the same time, the day-to-day
politics of the European Union is structurally very much more open towards
such influence of different transnational actors so that their effective exclusion
from intergovernmentalist accounts is unjustified.
In fact, intergovernmentalism is now quite marginal to the study of a European
Union that has acquired more competencies, with the increased involvement of
the EP in law-making. Whether one prefers to conceptualize the European Union
as a political system ‘sui generis’ or as one with more and more federal features,
albeit with a weak centre, it is obvious that it is no longer a traditional form of an
international organization, easily dominated by its constituent member states
and their institutions. This is also why scholars of comparative politics like Simon
Hix (1994) have argued that the international relations approaches to studying
the European Union are now obsolete. While some state-like features of the
European Union are increasingly difficult to dispute, however, comparative
politics approaches sometimes replace the ‘international’ state-centrism of inter-
governmentalism with their own ‘domestic’ state-centrism in which the European
Union almost appears like any other (federal) nation-state. Such an approach runs
the risk of focussing too exclusively on the interaction of ‘state’ institutions,
although from this perspective, they would include the supranational European-
level institutions and the sub-national level of regional government. Moreover,
when societal forces are seen as relevant for European politics, studies of compar-
ative politics tend to treat them as intra-EU social formations without much auton-
omy, locating their influence at one or more levels of the system of ‘multilevel
governance’, with an almost exclusive focus on EU-level policy-making. Crucially,
however, transnational actors cut across and also help to connect the different levels
of government and governance. Further, they cannot simply be equated with
national societal actors because they tend to be culturally more diverse and socio-
economically and politically more heterogeneous. In fact, the structural identities
and functional roles of transnational actors constitute a very important part of
the specificity of the European political space compared to more homogeneous
nation-states whether they are more centralized or federal. From this perspective,
the study of transnational structures and actors and their influence on European
policy-making across different levels seems of crucial importance for a durable
conceptualization of the European Union as a political system.
Against this background, Thomas Risse (1995) first demanded to ‘bring
transnational relations back in’. At the time, however, his proposal was mainly
directed at a re-conceptualization of the new emerging global politics which
increasingly appeared not only to be de-territorialized and massively influenced
by multinational businesses and their economic interests but also to be character-
ized by the growing presence of global non-governmental organizations. In the
Introduction 5
same book, however, David R. Cameron (1995) argued that transnational
relations had also been neglected in the study of the European Union. Since then,
research on the process of transnationalization has developed in various acade-
mic sub-disciplines. This research still focusses more on European-level structures
and the role of transnational actors in European policy-making. It can link up
very well with another recent trend in EU studies, namely Europeanization.
Cross-border convergence is often induced or at least channelled by transnational
actors as well as by European institutions and national governments, although
certainly not a necessary outcome of transnationalization. Not surprisingly, per-
haps, in the light of these conceptual connections, the role of transnational actors
in the Europeanization of newly acceded and future member states has been
a major point of focus of incipient research on European transnationalization
(e.g. Ortuño Anaya, 2002; Schimmelfennig, 2003a; Kaiser and Elvert, 2004).
In this and other contexts, most authors now prefer a more open definition
of what constitutes a transnational actor in the first place. Whereas the scholars
of international relations studying the role of non-governmental organizations in
global politics initially emphasized the structural identity of transnational actors
as bridging territorial boundaries and being partially detached from them and as
in no way institutionally linked to or dependent on states and their institutions,
recent studies of European transnationalization focus on the functional roles of
actors. In this perspective, political parties and party foundations are transna-
tional actors, for example, despite the fact that they are state-funded in many
European countries. However, even if they often closely interact with state
institutions, their functional role and actual political behaviour is almost entirely
independent of the state. With such a functional definition of transnational actor-
ness, it is even possible to analyse the interaction of ministers and civil servants
in non-institutionalized informal consultative settings such as economic policy
coordination in the Euro-12 group as transnational politics. In fact, it is exactly
these grey areas of overlap between inter-state and non-state transnational activ-
ities which appear to be most promising for future research. This holds true not
only for supranational EU politics, but also for what Helen Wallace (2000) –
adopting ideas in Anne-Marie Slaughter (1997) for Europe – has termed the
increasing ‘intensive transgovernmentalism’ below the EU level. This transgov-
ernmentalism often relies on the agenda-setting role of transnational actors and is
characterized by close interaction between state and non-state actors with sometimes
mixed functional identities.
Conceptual perspectives and empirical case studies

While it has already resulted in a variety of important findings in academic
sub-disciplines ranging from International Relations to sociologically informed
political science, (International) Political Economy, contemporary history and
social-science informed law, research on European transnationalization is still
highly fragmented. In order to systematically represent the state-of-the-art and
to take this innovative research agenda forward, this book provides the reader
with a systematically structured comprehensive introduction to European
transnationalization. It does so primarily through combining four conceptual
chapters in the first part of the book. These four chapters discuss the most impor-
tant theoretical-disciplinary approaches to studying the phenomenon of trans-
national European Union, including methodological issues, drawing upon recent
studies that illustrate the possibilities and possibly, limits of these approaches.
The second part combines six more empirical chapters that draw on these con-
ceptual approaches to study different cases of transnationalization ranging from
the contemporary history of the West European trade unions and their involve-
ment in early European integration in the first years of the European Economic
Community (EEC) to transnational consensus building in European economic
governance. These chapters illustrate the thematic range of the emerging research
on European transnationalization. They also allow some general concluding
observations on transnationalization in practice and illustrate similar method-
ological challenges.
In the first of four conceptual chapters, Wolfram Kaiser discusses the
contemporary historical dimension of European transnationalization since 1945.
He argues that the state-centred approach of much of the recent contemporary
historical literature on the evolution of the European Union reflects the tradi-
tionally dominant national focus of modern European history as well as method-
ological and practical research problems. Whether it explains ‘national interests’
and their inter-state bargaining in predominantly economic (Milward, 1992;
Milward et al., 1993), political or security terms (as most contributions in e.g. Loth
2001), the intergovernmental approach fails to understand the role of transna-
tional elite networks for integration in postwar western Europe and ignores
their importance for sub-EU cross-border exchanges of ideas and policy concepts.
The transnational approach is not only important for an improved understanding
of the growth of European societal structures and their importance for inte-
gration in a historical perspective but also for the analysis of contemporary
European politics. As Kaiser shows, contemporary historical research could
contribute to the empirical testing of theoretical hypotheses. Moreover, it could
help to explain change over time in the process of transnationalization and its
influence on actor socialization and policy-making – something for which social
science approaches are often ill-equipped (Marsh, 1998: 192; Schimmelfennig,
2003b: 421–2).
In her chapter, Karen Heard-Lauréote discusses one of the most important
approaches in political science for analysing the process of European transnation-
alization: the network concept, which is theoretically neutral and which is partially
replacing older pluralist and corporatist concepts for understanding governance
more generally. This concept was originally developed for re-conceptualizing
public policy-making in the national context at a time of the ‘hollowing-out’ of the
state. It has, however, been recently extended to studying the European political
space. Heard-Lauréote distinguishes between three main approaches under the
network label. The first is policy networks. In the context of European Union (as
well as national) policy-making, they are usually defined as sectorally specific and
Introduction 7
geared towards influencing the policy-making process in a limited field. The term
may also be used for larger, more open and less clearly functionally defined net-
works like Progressive Governance, however, a network of social democratic parties,
think tanks and foundations. The second approach is advocacy coalitions, which
span a number of different transnationally constituted societal actors and interact
with state institutions. The third is epistemic communities of actors like scientists
and bureaucrats with crucial, specialized scientific and other knowledge, that is
important for policy-making. As Heard-Lauréote shows, networks also differ in
terms of their predominant functional roles. Some are exclusively geared towards
influencing EU-level policy-making, while others have a much larger scope
and also facilitate the cross-border negotiation and exchange of ideas and policy
concepts below the EU level (see also Stone, 2004).
As Frank Schimmelfennig demonstrates in Chapter 3 the study of transna-
tional socialization (which is often mediated by transnational networks) is on the
rise again, after allegedly having become ‘obsolete’ (Haas, 1976) together with the
neo-functionalist theory of European integration in the mid-1970s. It still draws
on neo-functionalist propositions of political and economic spill-over but is also
theoretically informed by a variety of ‘institutionalisms’ in the social sciences. Up
to a point, the new approaches to transnational EU socialization link up with the
analysis of policy networks as discussed by Heard-Lauréote. While the latter tends
to be more preoccupied with the emergence of transnational structures of networks
and their external interaction, research on socialization and social learning
focusses more on the processes and their effects within these structural contexts.
In discussing different approaches to studying actor socialization and social learn-
ing within the European Union and extending to state and societal actors on the
EU periphery and to future member states, Schimmelfennig outlines ways in
which such processes and their impact on political behaviour and policy-making
can actually be traced and measured.
Finally, Bastiaan van Apeldoorn discusses different approaches in International
Political Economy to studying the transnational relations of often particularly
densely networked socio-economic actors, especially business actors. He argues
that the earlier neo-functionalism focussed too much on institutionalized interest
groups and their rational agency and was initially too deterministic about their
influence on the functionalist logic of spill-over in the integration process. Instead,
more informal transnational business structures appear to be increasingly impor-
tant in influencing the political agenda of the European Union and may be better
captured with a neo-Gramscian approach to understanding cross-border
business links as transnational capitalist class-formation which emphasizes the
importance of extremely disparate socio-economic resources and the resulting
political power for agenda-setting. Such an approach would also embed an
improved understanding of transnational business in Europe within the context
of globalization and transnationalization that extends beyond the dense transna-
tional political space of the European Union. While propagating such a neo-
Gramscian approach to studying transnational business based on a neo-Marxist
ontology, however, van Apeldoorn suggests that there may be other fruitful ways
of re-conceptualizing socio-economic transnationalization within pluralist
theoretical frameworks.
In the first of the empirical chapters, Patrick Pasture analyses – based on
archival sources – the transnational organization of West European trade unions
and their influence on European policy-making in the early years of the EEC.
European trade unions had formed transnational links in the nineteenth century
and institutionalized them in Europe between the world wars. After the
Second World War, they split into the pro-Western International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and its European Regional Organization (ERO)
on the one hand and the communist unions on the other. Whereas the ERO was
highly institutionalized, Pasture shows that their formally integrated structure did
not translate into coherent policy formulation because of internal lack of homo-
geneity among the member associations and national divergences of traditions
and policies. The existing differences were accentuated by the competitive consti-
tutionalization of different European integration concepts in the EEC and the
European Free Trade Association (EFTA), moreover, further limiting any influ-
ence that the trade unions might have exercised on the integration process. The
role of transnational trade unionism was largely restricted to agenda setting in the
form of proposals for a partial Europeanization of social policies. It remained
quite ineffective after the creation of the united, but even more internally
disparate, European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).
In his chapter, Karl Magnus Johansson traces the evolution of transnational
party cooperation between European Christian democrats and conservatives at
the European level. Having largely developed out of the tradition of political
Catholicism, continental Christian democrats were initially quite cohesive after
the Second World War and influential in the formation of the ‘core Europe’ of
the EEC (Gehler and Kaiser, 2004a,b; Kaiser, forthcoming). The Italian, Belgian,
Dutch and French parties saw themselves as centrist ones and initially disowned
the conservative parties of Britain and Scandinavia. In contrast, the German
Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) regarded themselves
as role models of a centre-right people’s party combining social Catholic, liberal
and conservative traditions. Not least to avoid the marginalization of Christian
democratic parties in the EP after the enlargement of the EC, they aimed at a
rapprochement with the British, Danish and other conservative parties, eventually
resulting in the creation of the European Democrat Union (EDU) in 1978. As
Johansson illustrates, their denser transnational networks have facilitated the
‘European’ socialization of the ‘newcomers’ and a degree of ideological conver-
gence. Their transnational links have also led to closer cooperation between
the two political groups in an EP that has recently become more politicized along
the traditional left–right divide.
Closely linked to parties and party networks are their associated think tanks and
foundations, which undertake extensive transnational activities. In her chapter,
Dorota Dakowska analyses the role of the German party foundations – especially
the Christian democratic Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the social democratic
Friedrich Ebert Foundation – for the inclusion of Polish elites into predominantly
Introduction 9
EU-based networks and for their socialization into Western European party
ideology, norms and values and EU policy-making. Using their ‘NGO image’, the
publicly funded, but functionally independent, foundations act as ‘go-betweens’
between state institutions and non-governmental organizations. In some cases, the
German party foundations have played an important role in reconstructing
national party systems as in the case of Konrad Adenauer Foundation support for
the reorganization of the anti-Meliar opposition in Slovakia, where it promoted
Mikulám Dzurinda as the leader of the movement, who in 1998 became Prime
Minister. In this way, although with mixed success, the party foundations have also
played an important role in facilitating the search of EU parties for suitable
partners in those states which acceeded to the European Union in 2004.
Whereas the German party foundations receive state funding, they nevertheless
largely act autonomously. In contrast, universities across Europe have traditionally
not only depended on state funding, but also enjoyed limited organizational
autonomy. Nevertheless, as Eric Beerkens illustrates in his discussion of European
discourses and policies on creating a common European space of higher education,
the increased cross-border movement of academics and students first induced by
the Erasmus exchange programme encouraged the formation of transnational asso-
ciations, networks, consortia and universities. Although the Sorbonne and Bologna
declarations about the European space of higher education are intergovernmental
agreements, Beerkens argues that a number of transnational actors have cooperated
closely with the European Commission to take the process forward. They have
not worked towards the supranational organization of education policy but have
aimed at enhancing their autonomy from national state administrations and
creating more space for greater transnational coordination without replacing
national state control with European control.
In structural terms, national police forces are even more clearly state actors
than the still largely state-funded, but increasingly autonomous universities. Yet,
as Monica den Boer demonstrates in her chapter on transnational policing, indi-
vidual liaison officers and sections of national police forces who deal with issues
of cross-border crime, terrorism and similar deterritorialized security challenges
have developed numerous networks and forms of cooperation. Functionally, these
cross-border cooperation patterns qualify up to a point, as a form of transnation-
alization, as they are often characterized by personal and group-led initiatives of
a highly informal character in fields that are not as yet legally well-structured,
rule-bound or institutionalized. Den Boer also points to another aspect of police
cooperation as transnationalization. More recently, many member states have
begun to privatize and outsource security functions to private security companies
that also execute tasks for private businesses. Increasingly, these private companies
are not only organized transnationally, as any other business interests, but they also
fulfil many of their functions in transnational contexts, which creates yet another
challenge to the traditional state monopoly of violence.
In a final example of state-actors who – in specific institutional and political
settings – perform functionally as transnational actors, Daniela Schwarzer analyses
the emerging transnational structures for European consensus-building in EMU
governance. Her research shows that the assets of informal policy coordination by
finance ministers in the so-called Eurogroup chiefly consist of the smallness of the
group, the collegial and confidential atmosphere, ample time for in-depth debate
and the perceived need to act together. Transnational policy coordination can
influence agenda setting and national preference formation at all levels. Its effects
can also be undermined by national actors like prime ministers, however, who are
more driven by purely domestic electoral and other political concerns. As
Schwarzer demonstrates, it is important in view of the various influences pulling
policy-makers in different directions that informal policy coordination is increas-
ingly embedded in an emerging transnationalized expert sphere of economic
policy researchers and analysts, which in turn is linked to national and European
public spheres through media reporting of economic policy-making.
Aspects of European transnationalization

In conjunction with the conceptual chapters, these more empirical case studies of
European transnationalization illustrate a number of important points which are
relevant for future research. To begin with, research on transnationalization and
on the European Union in general needs to take full account of the formation of
cross-border networks and economic, social and political activities at all levels. So
far, research on the European Union has concentrated too much on European-
level institutionalization and policy-making. Much transnationalization certainly
aims at organizing social and political forces to influence EU-level policy-making.
However, this is only one very important focus. Many transnational activities
concentrate instead on transnational cooperation, communication, socialization
and policy transfer of functionally transnational actors below the EU level, as in
the case of left-wing think tanks and party foundations and their coordinated
debate about a ‘Third Way’ for a reconstructed European social democracy. True,
these transnational contacts often have repercussions for policy-making at the EU
level. This could be in the form of social democrat-led, national governments
beginning to favour less state interventionism in the economy as a result of their
cooperation, for example. Yet, any such indirect repercussions do not justify
analysing all forms of transnationalization from the supranational perspective, as
many EU scholars do, or, largely ignoring them, as do most scholars of national
political systems of member states.
Also, transnational relations can take many different institutional forms. Some
forms of institutionalization are highly developed with hierarchical structures and
rules for decision-making. However as studies of transnational business associa-
tions, trade unions and others show, their high degree of formal institutionaliza-
tion is not a reliable index of their importance for the effective socialization of
their members or for their influence on transgovernmental or EU-level policy-
making. Indeed, it seems that the converse is true: the more informal the network
structures and activities, the more influential they are. Informal mechanisms guar-
antee a high level of in-group cohesion, which often facilitates decision-making.
Moreover, the lack of public visibility of these forms of transnationalization
Introduction 11
means that they are politically not so contentious and do not provoke attempts by
member states and European institutions to regain control over transnational
structures and activities through institutionalization and rule definition that could
inhibit transnationalization. It is clear, for example, that the European network of
Christian democrats has been more effective in influencing European integration
when their leaders met informally to coordinate their views and positions, as in the
case of their meetings in the Geneva Circle during 1948–51 (Gehler and Kaiser,
2004b) and in the final stages of the Maastricht Treaty negotiations ( Johansson,
2002), than when their transnational party bodies hold conferences and pass
resolutions. Similarly, the ERT has obviously had a much greater influence on
economic policy-making at the EU level (mainly, but not exclusively in the con-
text of the Single Market Programme) than the various business associations
which are internally divided along national, sectoral and other faultlines (van
Apeldoorn, 2002).
It is also important to distinguish different functional roles of transnational
actors. One such functional role is the socialization of their new members – be
they a new generation of political leaders who are no longer influenced in their
European thinking by the experiences of the Second World War, for example, or
the emerging elites from accession states who might lack contacts and compatible
values. Importantly, to be successful, such socialization has to take place within
stable structures and with a long-term perspective, as other domestic and inter-
national influences and interests may pull the participants in such networks into
other directions. In addition, transnational actors can play a leading role in
agenda setting at all levels of domestic, transgovernmental and European politics
and policy-making. Indeed, state actors often rely on them for the ‘vision thing’
because transnational non-state actors, somewhat detached from the demands of
day-to-day politics, do not depend on electoral support, are not under constant
media scrutiny and can often invest more resources into thinking about the future.
Finally, transnational actors contribute to actual policy-making and up to a point,
policy implementation. On the balance of the available evidence, however, they
tend to play a greater role in the non-politicized contexts of detailed policy-
making, especially at the EU level, than in the final stages of the actual inter-state
negotiations of ‘grand bargains’.
The informality of transnational structures and actors and their activities poses
many methodological challenges for research in the social sciences and related
disciplines. Many of these challenges are raised and addressed in the four con-
ceptual and in the empirical chapters in this book. On the whole, the description
of the institutional structures and the analysis of the internal operating mecha-
nisms of transnational networks pose no insurmountable methodological prob-
lems. The main challenge appears to be to establish causal links between the
activities of transnational actors and national, transgovernmental and EU-level
policy outcomes and to make them plausible beyond reasonable doubt. In many
ways, the study of intergovernmental bargaining is in fact confronted with
very similar problems of establishing causal links between concrete domestic pres-
sures and the behaviour of governments as well as between intergovernmental
negotiations and policy outcomes. However, intergovernmental contacts and
negotiations are more institutionalized and also more visible in the media.
Structurally, moreover, the chapters in this book show just how suitable are
studies of transnationalization for bridging established rigid sub-disciplinary divi-
sions. Conceptually and methodologically, the study of transnationalization is
fully compatible with a number of different ontological approaches. Research on
transnational socialization, for example, might well emphasize the importance of
material incentives for rule adoption from a more rational-choice perspective or
social communication and norm internalization from an idealist constructivist
perspective (Checkel, 2001). Moreover, while they tend to be biased (in the
neo-functionalist tradition) towards agency, some studies of transnationalization –
especially those in the neo-Marxist tradition – have also focussed on (socio-
economic) structures (Bieler and Morton, 2001; Cafruny and Ryner, 2003). Thus,
research on the process of transnationalization could not only contribute to closer
inter-disciplinary collaboration in the study of the European Union and the wider
Europe, but also more generally, to more fruitful debates across several deep
ontological faultlines in the social sciences and related disciplines.
To conceptualize the European Union as a transnationally constituted political
space in the different perspectives discussed in this book is crucial for our under-
standing of what is specific about the European Union. The intergovernmental
approach to studying ‘grand bargains’ essentially continues to treat the European
Union as a traditional international organization dominated by member states
and governments. Yet, even the more recent comparative politics approaches to
studying integration fail to understand that European transnationalization as soci-
ety formation for the foreseeable future makes the European Union qualitatively
as different from (even de-centralized) national political systems as from inter-
national organizations. At the same time, neo-functionalism has traditionally
adopted a narrow notion of the transnational in relation to supranational institu-
tions and policy-making, which is also too state-focussed, albeit at EU level.
Therefore, the embeddedness of European integration and EU politics in a more
far-ranging process of transnational society formation remains to be explored
more exhaustively. States do not develop societies. Societies develop states.
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Part I
Conceptual perspectives
1 Transnational Western
Europe since 1945
Integration as political society
formation
Wolfram Kaiser
Modern European history has for a long time been treated as little more than the
collation of clearly delineated national histories. Although competing for hege-
mony within European historiography between the 1960s and the 1990s, both the
diplomatic history as well as the social history of Europe since the French
Revolution have been equally characterized by ‘fictions of [national] autonomy’
(Geyer, 1989: 317; Hobsbawm, 2002: 18). Diplomatic history is traditionally
based on implicit realist assumptions about the dominant role of states and polit-
ical and military power in international relations and their control by small and
largely self-contained foreign policy-making elites defining ‘national interests’. At
the same time, social history has mostly concentrated on micro social phenomena
as well as the evolution of national welfare state models since the mid-nineteenth
century and at best, their comparison. It has generally emphasized national speci-
ficities in the context of the thesis about a German ‘special path’. Neither
historiographical tradition has ever developed a convincing notion of the com-
mon European dimension of modern European history, or of its constitution
through multiple cross-border societal as well as governmental contacts. When
traditional ‘inter-national’ concepts such as ‘influence’ have been applied, it has
usually been in the context of state foreign policy, colonial history and the
‘Europeanization’ of the world (Olsen, 2002: 937–40), not European history itself.
Moreover, with its heavy emphasis on the formation of national (political) cultures
in the nineteenth century, cultural history has contributed very little to under-
mining the predominant nation-state perspective. While discarding this tradi-
tional framework, finally, micro-histories have withdrawn to the individual and
local and have also shown no significant interest in the transnational dimension of
modern Europe. Only economic history has been a partial exception to the
general rule, for example through its analysis of the growth of the European
dominated world economy in the second half of the nineteenth century, but it has
hardly affected the general historiography of modern Europe.
Several historians have recently criticized the nationally introspective approach
to understanding modern Europe which tends to ignore or play down its transna-
tional dimension and the resulting commonalities. Hans-Peter Schwarz (1986: 451)
and others (Kaiser, 1997) have demanded an improved understanding of the
role of domestic politics and transnational actors for European policy-making in
18 Wolfram Kaiser
pluralist democracies, and for the integration process after 1945. More generally,
historians of international relations have recently discovered and have begun to
explore the history of transnational European and global ‘civil society’ (Boli and
Thomas, 1999; Geyer and Paulmann, 2001; Gienow-Hecht and Schumacher,
2003). They have also shown a growing interest in the cross-border constitution
and transfer of policies and cultural practices (Muhs et al., 1998; Espagne, 1999).
At the same time, older forms of nationally focussed social history have been
heavily criticized for largely ignoring that ‘societal developments are never inter-
nal processes within one society, but derive from expansion and inter-societal links
through conquest, occupation, colonisation, unification, interweaving and other
forms of expansion’ (Tenbruck, 1989: 432). As Jürgen Osterhammel has insisted
(Osterhammel, 1996: 154), national societies or even larger civilizations are never
‘self-contained, “chemically pure” analytical categories’, always demanding the
integral analysis of cross-border links even for traditional nationally comparative
histories. Their importance is such that recent attempts to reconstruct comparative
European social history as ‘transnational history’ through the subordinate inclusion
of the inter-societal dimension (Kaelble and Schriewer, 2001) are neither termino-
logically nor substantially convincing or, indeed, compatible with social science
definitions and concepts. Overcoming the rather rigid national paradigm estab-
lished originally by nationalist historians in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury would also help the historiography of modern Europe to reconnect with that
of early modern, medieval and ancient Europe. These sub-disciplines have always
regarded the nation-state paradigm as very time-specific and have actually produced
a plethora of important historical research on cross-border (not, in their perspective,
trans-national ) phenomena like trade, migration and intercultural exchange.
In so far as the historiography of modern Europe is already responding to
demands to overcome the national paradigm, however, it has concentrated more
on cross-border societal phenomena with limited direct relevance for political insti-
tutions and processes. The extensive research on migration and transnational eth-
nic and social communities is the best example of this phenomenon. This trend
appears to reflect the widespread aversion to older forms of the history of ‘high
politics’ and the rather slow re-definition in recent historiography of what consti-
tutes politics and political processes. At the same time, it may also be due to the low
level of international and transnational institutionalization in Europe and the
world before 1945 and the relatively slow expansion of contemporary history into
postwar (West) European history in the last 20 years. Where the historiography of
modern Europe has begun to analyse transnational phenomena, moreover, it has
not always used concepts derived from the social sciences, thus complicating its
integration with recent trends in political science and sociology. ‘Acculturation’, for
example, is a frequently used term (Werner and Zimmermann, 2002: 613) reflect-
ing a much less ‘political’ concept than ‘socialization’ as it is currently applied
by political scientists (Schimmelfennig, 2003) to international democratization
processes or, indeed, the study of the European Union (EU).
Against this general background, this chapter discusses how contemporary
historical research on transnational (Western) Europe since 1945 could in future
Transnational Western Europe since 1945 19
contribute to a better understanding of the progressive emergence of a much
more than purely inter-governmental European polity with growing transnational
societal links, as well as to social science debates about European transnationali-
zation. It does so by first elaborating on the relationship between theory and
history and the relevance to contemporary history of different social science
approaches to studying transnationalism. It then proceeds to discuss the various
ways in which contemporary history may contribute to theory formation, theory
testing and the disclosure of empirical evidence of transnationalization processes
in Europe, especially since 1945. Furthermore, historical research on aspects of
transnational Western Europe since 1945 faces methodological challenges, some
of which are comparable to similar issues in the social sciences whereas others are
related to the source base and are more discipline-specific. These issues will also
be outlined. At the same time, however, like any other source-based history, the
more historically descriptive, inductive research on European transnationalism
cannot fulfil the requirements for theoretical sophistication and empirical ‘proof ’
of the social sciences with their orientation towards testable theories and models.
Theory and history

In an ambitious, programmatic statement in the first issue of the Journal of
European Integration History, Alan S. Milward predicted (Milward, 1995: 7) that inte-
gration history would in future develop ‘its own theories and a research agenda
which derives from them’, and that it would even reverse ‘the theoretical
flow . . . from historical research to the social sciences’. Nothing, however, could
be further from the reality of integration history research. Milward’s argument
about integration after 1945 as a state-controlled framework for the ‘rescue of the
European nation-state’ (Milward, 1992) although original in some ways, largely
agreed with the long-standing arguments of dissident realists like Stanley
Hoffman and liberal intergovernmentalists like Andrew Moravcsik about the
resilience of the nation-state and its controlling influence over the integration
process. At best, it is a highly generalizing history of early integration with a
major interpretative thesis, but it is by no means a ‘theory’ which can be tested by
the standards of the social sciences.
As a discipline, modern history (with the exception of orthodox historical
materialism) tends to favour an eclectic approach to theory, selecting and assimi-
lating available theoretical concepts and approaches, but without applying them
rigidly to sources. Despite attempts by some social historians during the 1960s
and 1970s to transform history into a ‘historical social science’, modern history
has stubbornly remained an essentially empirical discipline averse to theoretical
overgeneralizations that are often not supported by the wealth of diverse original
sources available to researchers, especially of post-war Europe. At the same time,
contemporary history has an inbuilt bias towards agency, as social scientists call it.
Although historians of contemporary Europe will not deny the relevance of
structural economic or institutional factors for long-term transformations (as
emphasized by Milward, for example), they tend as a general rule to be more
20 Wolfram Kaiser
interested in explaining the specificities of particular political, economic or
institutional developments in integration and of concrete decisions at given
points in time. There is no doubt, for example, that general economic trends and
pressures mitigated in favour of British membership of the European Economic
Community (EEC) from the mid-1950s onwards, but this alone does not explain
(Kaiser, 1999) why the British government first applied for full membership in
1961 and not in 1958 or 1970 or, indeed, why it did not seek free trade associa-
tion with the EC to safeguard its core economic interests in 1972, as Sweden and
Switzerland did. The same can be said of other ‘latecomers’ in the integration
process (Kaiser and Elvert, 2004).
With a few exceptions (Milward, 1992; Milward et al., 1993; Kaiser, 2001), most
contemporary historians of integration have not even made an effort to relate to
the theory debate in the social sciences in a systematic way, let alone develop
their own ‘theories’. On the whole, the research field is still characterized by the
dominance of traditional diplomatic history accounts alongside some economic
history, based almost exclusively on national governmental sources. More specifi-
cally, although the contemporary history of European integration has actually
produced a growing literature on transnational phenomena in the wider context
of the integration process, it has not so far responded to the related social science
agenda that originally started with neo-functionalism, or adopted any of its concepts
and approaches for its empirical research.
Of those concepts that are discussed in this volume, the political economy of
socio-economic (interest) groups is probably least useful for explaining early
European integration post-1945. This is especially true of the neo-Gramscian
notion of a ‘transnational capitalist class’ (van Apeldoorn, 2002) as the dominant
actor in the integration process as economic liberalization. At the time, European
integration was definitely an anti-communist project, but this does not automati-
cally make it a ‘capitalist’ project controlled by a relatively cohesive ‘transnational
capitalist class’. Historical research on the role of the coal and steel industry in
early European integration, while demonstrating its interest in ‘core Europe’ inte-
gration, has shown (Berger, 1997; Wilkens, 1998) its internal deep division
between private and public companies and between those in favour of more lib-
eral transatlantic trade and those opposed to it, as well as its complete failure to
impose its traditional preference for cartelization on the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) founded in 1951–2. Research on lobbying by individual
firms and their leading representatives, moreover, demonstrates its narrow limits
in postwar integration. The multinational firm Philips, for example, first consid-
ered opening a corporate office in Brussels in 1958, but only sent a lobbyist in
1966. He quickly became disillusioned and actually proposed closing the office
again just over a year later because he saw no real opportunities for influencing
European policy-making (Chanier, 1993: 107). Indeed, if any distinctive social
group managed to dominate the integration agenda in the first two decades after
the war, it was the farmers and their partially transnationally organized interest
groups with their close organic links with Christian democracy. They influenced
national agricultural subsidy policies to a great extent and later, the evolution of
the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the 1960s.
In contrast, transnational networks as cohesive policy communities and ‘sites
of strategic action’ (Marsh, 1998: 186), also discussed by Karen Heard-Lauréote’s
(Chapter 2, this volume), appears to be a more promising approach to studying
the role of transnationally organized non-governmental actors and their influence
on the integration process in the post-war period. Even within a pluralist frame-
work as opposed to the neo-Gramscian one, however, the prevalent bias towards
transnational private economic actors appears excessive in relation to early European
integration. Especially for the short period between the end of the war and ‘core
Europe’ institutionalization in the ECSC/EEC, other actors such as transnational
pro-integration popular and elite organizations as well as informal political net-
works often played a more important role than did industrialists (especially from
heavy industry), who were often politically discredited by their support for fascism
or their collaboration with the German occupier. At the same time, trade unions
were internally fragmented and also largely incapable of strategic action and of
exerting substantial influence on the integration process (Pasture, 1995; Guasconi,
1998), as Patrick Pasture shows in Chapter 5 (this volume). In contrast, Karl
Magnus Johansson’s study of the informal cooperation of Christian democratic
party leaders during the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty and their agenda
setting role especially in relation to economic and monetary union in the early
1990s ( Johansson, 2002) provides a fascinating parallel to recent historical research
on comparable ‘transnational coalition opportunities’ for the politically dominant
Christian democrats in the early stages of ‘core Europe’ integration (Gehler and
Kaiser, 2001, 2004).
Although recent diplomatic and economic history research on early integration
has exaggerated the resilience of the nation-state and governments as the only
significant actors in European policy-making after 1945, it remains true that
governments initially retained a relatively high degree of autonomy in policy-
making because of the more limited economic and institutional competition and
underdeveloped pluralism in Western Europe compared to the early twenty-first
century. As a result, historical research will find it easier to relate to more modest
concepts of networks as instrumental in the formation of transnational polit-
ical coalitions and as strategically supportive of governmental action, but only
capable in exceptional circumstances of completely bypassing intergovernmental
channels – rather than understanding networks as a new form of governance. At
the same time, the alleged dichotomy (Marsh and Smith, 2000) in social science
research on networks between structure and agency, network and context and
network and outcome appears of limited relevance to historical research which
has never experienced such a fragmentation of research perspectives.
Closely linked to the network approach although theoretically distinct, the
concept of advocacy coalitions could also prove useful for historical research. In
binding together networks and policy communities from different sectors of a
polity and in transnational contexts at the European level, such advocacy coali-
tions stand a much better chance of effectively influencing the policy-making
process in the institutionally complex system in the current European Union. The
close structural and personal links between Christian democratic parties and
the agricultural lobby and their policy coordination would be one such example
22 Wolfram Kaiser
of an effective advocacy coalition spanning different sectors of the EEC in the late
1950s and the 1960s. It has to be said, however, that the early ECSC and EEC
were much less complex institutions compared to the post-Maastricht European
Union. Not only was this still a community of only six member states, but the
European Parliament (EP) had limited influence until its direct election in 1979
and the introduction of the co-decision procedure in 1992–3. In such a relatively
less complex institutional environment, it is usually easier to construct transna-
tional political majorities.
The permissive consensus about integration in ‘core Europe’ was also much
more pronounced in the early post-war period, especially after the decline of
communism in Western Europe and the conversion of the ‘Euro-Communists’ to
European integration. The limited public scrutiny of policy-making compared to
current EU politics also opened up political opportunities for ‘epistemic commu-
nities’ as a particular structural form of policy network. According to Peter
M. Haas (Haas, 1992: 3), they are networks ‘of professionals with recognised
expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim
to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area’. Such political
opportunities existed, first of all, for civil servants with specialist expertise.
Contemporary historians have demonstrated, for example (Küsters, 1982;
Roussel, 1996), the extent to which the Spaak Report of April 1956, which
already outlined many of the solutions later agreed in the EEC Treaty, resulted
from the very close cooperation of a few highly committed ‘Europeanist’ civil ser-
vants – especially from France and West Germany – working under the direction
of the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, at a time when their govern-
ments were still far from having secured domestic majorities for any future
treaties.
Following on from this, networks of national civil servants specialized in
European affairs and how they interacted with officials in the newly constituted
European Commission in the 1960s would be a fascinating topic for future
research in this direction. Other types of epistemic communities appear to have
played a significant role in early integration, too. Frans van Waarden and
Michaela Drahos (2002: 928) have recently suggested that the convergence of
national competition policies in the European Union has largely resulted from the
emergence of an expert community in competition law including judges, lawyers
and officials, which acts as ‘a channel of information exchange, learning, imita-
tion, and for the explicit transfer of legal concepts and arguments’. While their
thesis is plausible, however, it is only weakly supported with empirical evidence.
Historical research could adopt the same approach for studies of the origins in
early integration of such cohesive expert groups with shared causal beliefs and
policy aims and at the same time help to generate more empirical evidence to
support arguments about their influence both on the emergence of community
policies, such as competition policy in the 1960s, and the convergence of national
policies and administrative practices.
Finally, the contemporary history of European integration could also profitably
engage with research on political ‘socialization’ (as also discussed by Frank
Schimmelfennig, Chapter 3, this volume) as ‘a social process through which agent
properties and preferences change as a result of interaction’ (Checkel, 2001a: 220) –
whether it is of the more rational choice variety emphasizing rhetorical action
and the manipulative use of socialization or of the constructivist ‘modernist’
variety emphasizing persuasion and argumentation and the resulting
internalization of norms. In fact, Alan S. Milward encouraged historians of the
integration process as early as 1995 (Milward, 1995: 11) to re-visit Karl Deutsch’s
theory of transactionalism (Deutsch, 1957) and to test his assumptions about a
sudden upward leap in transnational individual and collective social contacts and
any linked (partial) loyalty transfer from the national to the European level and
the European identity formation resulting from integration in this way. Unlike
contemporary theories of socialization, Deutsch had a historical approach and
actually developed it with a view to post-1945 European and Atlantic integration,
so that it might well be worthwhile re-considering his ideas and assumptions. At
the same time, however, it would be more fruitful for the contemporary history of
European integration to link up with the ongoing debate in the social sciences.
In fact, research on social interaction and its influence on norm transfer and
convergence has now reached a much more advanced stage including the con-
struction (Checkel, 2001b: 562–3) of empirical hypotheses which can be tested
about the conditions under which socialization is most effective.
History and theory

Against this background, the contemporary history of European integration
could contribute to the emerging transnational research agenda in a variety of
ways. Due to its more empirical character it is unlikely to ever make a major con-
tribution to theory formation. Contemporary historical research is quite capable,
however, of conceptualizing transnationalization and of possibly contributing
useful concepts and terminology to theoretical discourses in the social sciences,
especially in relation to agency in transnational communities. One such concept
is that of ‘conversion’ which tries to capture the conditions under which individuals
call into question their previously held deep core beliefs and adopt a different set
of beliefs and commitments. Historians could (re-)consider, for example, to what
extent the fundamental experience of totalitarian government, collaboration and
the Second World War facilitated the conversion of politicians in Western Europe
after 1945 to the European ‘idea’ and associated values and norms – or their
much more principled commitment to integration compared to interwar Europe
when many of those ideas already circulated, but were perhaps used in a more
rhetorical and manipulative way to advance nationalist claims.
The concept of conversion can usefully be applied to individuals within
transnational communities, too. It is clear, for example (Soutou, 1991; Gehler
and Kaiser, 2004), that the experience in the context of informal transnational
party contacts in the so-called Geneva Circle after 1947, of the convergence and
compatibility of French and West German Christian democratic interpretations
of the recent past and of their policy concepts induced the conversion of Georges
24 Wolfram Kaiser
Bidault during 1947–9 to the idea of an integrated ‘core Europe’ directed against
the Soviet Union and excluding Britain. In another example of conversion, Jean
Monnet and his Action Committee for a United States of Europe founded in
1955 played a key role in the transformation of the thinking and policies on ‘core
Europe’ of social democrat leaders in West Germany and France (Duchêne,
1994: 286–8), thus broadening significantly the political support for this concept
in these two countries and clearing the path to the Treaties of Rome signed in
1957. Following on from such individual and collective conversions, which can
be very important for the effective functioning of transnational elite networks,
contemporary history could also contribute to the better conceptualization of
identity change over time and the growth of what Milward (Milward, 1995)
has called (secondary) ‘allegiance’ to ‘Europe’ – with such allegiance resulting from
the growing transnational social contacts as well as the actual Community policies.
Regarding the internal operating mechanisms of transnational networks, the
concept of ‘trust’, which was initially developed by economic historians for under-
standing the conditions for economic transactions in insecure institutional envi-
ronments, could prove useful, too (Bluhm, 2003). Trust can only develop and
grow over longer periods of time and is thus difficult to adequately capture for
social science research which tends to take ‘snapshots’ of currently prevailing
conditions for the operation of a network, advocacy coalition or epistemic com-
munity. Within transnational contexts, trust can derive from stable and consis-
tently communicated beliefs and preferences and from political action that
conforms to those beliefs and preferences. It will be undermined, however, if the
communication of beliefs and preferences in transnational elite contexts on one
side and rhetorical strategies in domestic political contexts and actual policies in
intergovernmental relations on the other, diverge significantly. Once substantial
social capital has been accumulated within a transnational community, however,
it will decisively help to stabilize it and to guarantee its effective functioning
even in the face of externally induced crises and temporarily diverging beliefs and
preferences, as long as the behaviour of the relevant actors remains reliable.
Contemporary historical research can also generate empirical evidence
(Lipgens and Loth, 1991), which may not only be useful for the study of transna-
tionalization in Western Europe after 1945, but also for testing theoretical
hypotheses. Historians will be apprehensive, however, lest their empirical evidence
is only used selectively for the purpose of sustaining a particular theory and its
overgeneralizations. This is the case, for example, in Moravscik’s use (Moravscik,
1998) of historical examples from the 1960s for a defence of his thesis that inte-
gration has always been controlled by the member states whose ‘national interests’
in inter-state bargaining are largely derived from domestic economic interest
group pressures (Merkel, 1999: 313–15; Trachtenberg, 2000). Social scientists
should preferably formulate hypotheses but work with historians to empirically
test them in relation to historical events on the basis of the much wider range of
sources usually available to them. Checkel’s hypotheses (Checkel, 2001a: 222)
about the best conditions for what he calls ‘argumentative persuasion’, for exam-
ple, could well be tested for transnational networks in early European integration.
They certainly appear plausible on the basis of the currently available historical
research, for example, on the informal cooperation of Christian democratic party
leaders in the Geneva Circle (Gehler and Kaiser, 2001, 2004).
Historical research can also develop new aspects of transnationalism on the
basis of a wider range of sources and a different set of questions on the past
derived from the social sciences and contemporary experience, which were
not used by social scientists. Thus, recent research has established (Berghahn,
2001) how all pervasive the financial support of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and American philanthropic institutions like the Ford Foundation was post-
1945 for almost all non-communist ‘pro-European’ transnational organizations.
Anne-Myriam Dutrieue and Michel Dumoulin have demonstrated (Dutrieue,
1993: 217; Dumoulin and Dutrieue, 1993), for example, that the formation of the
European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC) was originally the idea of
Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the Ford Foundation, which also financed it in
the initial stages. In his study of transnational cooperation of cities in the context
of the Council of European Municipalities founded in January 1951, Oscar
Gaspari shows (Gaspari, 2002: 612) that the key actors like Adriano Olivetti had
close links with the first CIA Director, Allen Dulles, the American Committee for
a United Europe (ACUE) and the Ford Foundation, which provided crucial finan-
cial assistance. The ACUE also largely funded the European Youth Campaign
during 1951–8, which concentrated on the ‘core Europe’ states, with 1,900 work-
shops, congresses and other activities to win over the non-communist youth to the
idea of supranational integration (Palayret, 1995: 49).
It would be a mistake, however, to infer from the massive American support
behind the scenes for transnational organizations working for integration in
Western Europe that the ‘core Europe’ institutionalization was a US-driven
project. The Europeans and the Americans were in agreement on some basic
assumptions such as their anti-communism and their desire for meaningful polit-
ical integration to strengthen Western Europe in the Cold War. This did not
preclude transnational European networks from accepting the funding and
developing their own ideas for European integration embedded in European
traditions and values such as agricultural protection to support small-scale farm-
ing, the mixed economy and neo-corporatist forms of governance, even if this
led to friction with the USA, for example over agricultural trade in the 1960s
(Kaiser, 2003). Recent historical research has also demonstrated the limits to the
‘Americanization’ of Western Europe after 1945 as further supported by trans-
national links, especially in hegemonic contexts when the socialization effects
appear to have remained quite superficial or limited to everyday culture of
popular music and Coca Cola, without much influence on political attitudes and
preferences.
Archive-based evidence can also illustrate the way in which networks of
networks operated in Western Europe after 1945. At the elite level they were often
held together by a relatively small number of key actors who were involved in
different networks and who played an important role for the transmission of ideas
and policy concepts and for the formation of advocacy coalitions. To give but two
26 Wolfram Kaiser
examples, they included P.J.S. Serrarens, the long-standing Dutch Secretary
General of the Christian trade union movement, who also participated in
the Geneva Circle and in the formal organization for Christian democratic party
cooperation, the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales, as well as in other transnational
networks (Pasture, 1995; Gehler and Kaiser, 2004) and Hendrik Brugmans
who was President of the European federalist movement from 1947 and was
also Rector of the College of Europe in Bruges from 1952 to 1970 (Vermeulen,
2000). The postgraduate College of Europe developed into an informal
École Nationale d’Administration for ‘core Europe’, shaping the intellectual formation
of many young civil servants at the European and national levels and of acade-
mics specialized in European integration who in turn were to play an important
role in the ‘European’ education of students in different disciplines at national
universities.
Moreover, through the analysis of networks of networks, historical research
can also contribute to a better understanding of policy outcomes as a result
of compromises between different advocacy coalitions. Thus, by the early 1950s,
Christian democracy, heavy industry and some trade unions were united behind
the aim of ‘core Europe’ integration, but were not strong enough to impose their
vision for an integrated Europe. Neo-liberals like the West German Economics
Minister Ludwig Erhard, socialist parties and trade unions, who were sceptical
about a too economically protectionist and/or culturally Catholic-influenced
‘core Europe’ without the inclusion of Britain and Scandinavia, only supported
the ECSC on the condition that it would suppress cartels and have a relatively lib-
eral policy on external trade (Spierenburg and Poidevin, 1994; Kipping, 1996).
Such historical analysis must fully integrate the crucial role of transnational net-
works in making specific ideas and policy concepts hegemonic. It is inadequate to
explain preference formation in a purely national context, as in Parsons’ recent
ideational interpretation of the origins of the ECSC in France (Parsons, 2002,
2003). Many historians who tend to emphasize agency over structure will be able
to relate to his central thesis that, in a situation where supranational ‘core Europe’
integration was in fact hotly contested in France, its adoption for the ECSC was
only possible as a result of the ‘entrepreneurial leadership’ in the centrist parties
of committed advocates like Robert Schuman of the ‘new ideology of integra-
tion’ (Parsons, 2002: 48). Yet, his interpretation is only very partially based on the
recent archive-based historical literature and underestimates the extent to which,
especially, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire and its leaders like Schuman and
Bidault, were actually very united behind the ‘core Europe’ concept, although
they did not necessarily agree on its exact institutional design (Gillingham, 1991:
150; Soutou, 1991; Gehler and Kaiser, 2004). More importantly, it fails to realize
the extent to which their preference formation had taken place in the context of
transnational party cooperation and how they used their transnational contacts to
marginalize domestic opposition and to prevail in the struggle for the ‘core
Europe’ concept.
Finally, history as a discipline is mainly concerned with explaining change over
time. David Marsh (1998: 192) has criticized network analysis for being too static
and for not understanding long-term change well. Equally, Schimmelfennig
(2003: 421–2) has pointed to the weakness of the short time horizon of socializa-
tion research that fails to establish the durability of norm internalization. Against
this background, historical research can demonstrate, first of all, the extent to
which transnationalization preceded European institutionalization such as in the
context of the interwar cooperation of trade unions (Pasture, 2001) and of con-
servative intellectual elites, for example (Müller and Plichta, 1999; Keller, 2001;
Müller, 2001). In conjunction with incentives for transnationalization from the
process of internationalization and globalization, a more long-term historical
perspective therefore provides an explanatory corrective to ascribing too much
importance to the European Union as a highly institutionalized system of gover-
nance for inducing transnationalization. Moreover, it brings out long-term conti-
nuities even over major transformations such as the Second World War, for
example in the transnational network and its membership of steel producers in
Western Europe who even continued to have very close cooperation during the
war and again from quite shortly after the war onwards (Berger, 1997; Wilkens,
1998; Bührer, 1999).
The historical perspective is also important for conceptualizing more precisely
the ideal conditions and internal mechanisms for guaranteeing the structural and
interpersonal stability of networks, advocacy coalitions, and epistemic communi-
ties and their policies over time. Historians find that ideas, values and norms evolve
over long periods of time and are quite resilient. Their adoption, convergence and
internalization in transnational contexts need to be culturally embedded to be suc-
cessful and durable. Cultural institutions like the Catholic Church, for example,
can play a crucial role in this respect and can act as societal carriers of ‘suprana-
tional’ (or any other set of ) ideas, values and norms to which networks can relate
(Canavero and Durand, 1999). Although after 1945, the Pope and the Catholic
hierarchy refrained from direct intervention in the transnational cooperation of
Christian democrats and their European policies, which the parties rightly thought
would be counterproductive, it continued to provide value guidance on funda-
mental principles such as anti-communism, suspicion of the centralized nation-
state and preference for European federalism curtailed by subsidiarity – a political
principle derived from Catholic social thought (Chenaux, 1990).
Historical research also shows how transnational communities develop informal
mechanisms in order to exclude members of their own national parties, pressure
groups or other non-governmental organizations who do not respect the prevail-
ing equally informal in-group rules about acceptable ideas, values and behaviour.
One such example would be the way in which Konrad Adenauer, the then
Christian democratic party leader in the British zone of occupation, first mar-
ginalized and then completely excluded intra-party opponents like Jakob Kaiser
from transnational party cooperation (Gehler and Kaiser, 2004). This happened
with the full support of Adenauer’s French partners who of course preferred his
policy of almost unconditional Western integration to Kaiser’s preference for
German unification under democratic auspices. Similarly, transnational Christian
democracy made sure that neither the neo-liberals within their parties, who were
28 Wolfram Kaiser
sceptical about ‘core Europe’ integration, nor, later, the ‘Gaullists’, who supported
a much more independent policy from the USA, could play any significant role in
party cooperation. Their ability to influence policy in more than one country was
thus sharply reduced, and they were often compensated domestically with control
over other policies not immediately relevant to ‘Europe’. Transnational Christian
democracy also used its network and cooperation with other ‘pro-European’
actors not only to influence the shape of the new European institutions, but also
to guarantee that the key personnel had compatible ideas, values and policies.
This was true, for example, of the first Christian democratic members of the EEC
Commission like its President, Walter Hallstein. Similarly, the European
Parliament largely self-selected its mostly federalist-leaning members from the
European transnational networks of Christian democrats, social democrats and
liberals, so that it effectively acted for a very long time as a kind of transnational
federalist pressure group.
Finally, in the context of change over time, historical research could also prof-
itably analyse the significance of European institutionalization for the reorienta-
tion and possibly, reorganization of transnational communities and socialization
processes. Such research is best conducted in a comparative framework, for exam-
ple of the EEC and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in the late
1950s and throughout the 1960s. As Patrick Pasture shows in his contribution to
this book, the institutionalization in two different types of regional organizations
certainly contributed to the further fragmentation of European trade unionism.
It also induced much more intensive intra-EEC and intra-EFTA contacts of
political parties, which may have contributed to the (temporary) hardening of
diverging attitudes to the question of supranational governance versus inter-
governmental cooperation, as well as other related issues. Although almost all
archival sources for the 1960s are now accessible, such research into the relation-
ship between European institutionalization and transnationalization in historical
perspective is not even in its infancy.
Methodological challenges
Research into the growth of an increasingly transnationally constituted European
society within the ever more institutionalized EU faces a number of methodolog-
ical challenges, some of which are comparable to similar ones in the social sci-
ences, while others are related to the source base and are more discipline-specific.
First of all, there is a marked absence of quantitative mapping of transnational
networks to assess their internal constitution, their overlap with other networks,
which can facilitate the formation of advocacy coalitions, and the frequency
of transnational contacts and their relative importance in terms of invested
resources compared to national activities. Such research could help beyond the
identification of the role of particular individuals as information brokers and
mediators between different networks. It could also identify overlap between
transnational political activities and intergovernmental forums as well as inter-
action between them. Historians face the methodological problem, however, that
such quantitative research on transnational networks is even more difficult and
time-consuming for them than in the social sciences as the necessary information
on network membership and invested resources is often fragmented and scattered.
In the debate on networks, Keith Dowding (2001: 90) has, moreover, argued
that social scientists ‘should not disparage careful discriptive history’. However, he
has also insisted that such descriptive histories often fail to capture all relevant
causal factors that explain policy outcomes and certainly cannot establish ‘which
of the causal factors are most important’. According to Dowding, this requires
formal modelling to abstract important explanatory features which can then be
examined ‘more closely in reality’. It has to be said that in relation to transna-
tional networks in post-war Europe, it is certainly easier to capture the role of
transnational networks and epistemic communities in the cross-border transfer of
formal institutions, policies and norms and values below the supranational level,
as they often function as the only mediators in such transfer processes, than their
influence on intergovernmental and supranational policy-making in the EU context.
In order to also better specify their influence on EU policy-making, contemporary
historians could borrow some of Parsons’ ideas (Parsons, 2002: 48) for ‘isolating
ideas as causes’. In particular, they should concentrate on studying historical
decision-making situations in which ideas and material interests did not overlap in
the interest formation of (crucially) fragmented pressure groups, coalitions and
parties affording ‘entrepreneurial leaders’ the opportunity to set policy agendas
not least through their transnational coordination and to decisively influence the
outcome of parallel or subsequent formal intergovernmental negotiating
processes.
More than many social scientists, contemporary historians also tend to make
‘heuristic claims’ (Checkel, 2001b: 557) about socialization and compliance in
transnational cooperation which are ‘intuitively or empirically plausible but insuf-
ficiently elaborated to allow for empirical testing and generalising to other con-
texts’. To begin with, historical research often proceeds inductively and is not, as
a general rule, interested so much in the generalizing of its results to other forms
of transnationalism, time spans or institutional contexts. There is a temptation,
moreover, to infer from the study of transnational relations that policy changes
must be the outcome of effective socialization, whereas it is possible that they
could also reflect external pressures or domestic political incentives. It is clear, for
example, that the German Social Democrats’ policy change on ‘Europe’ in the
mid-1950s also resulted from the party’s desire to break free of the nationalist
legacy of Kurt Schumacher, its first post-war leader, in order to become more
electable, not just from the transnational contacts of its leaders in the Socialist
International and with the trade union network. In this context, contemporary
historians could profit from recent attempts by social scientists (Checkel, 2001a,b)
to delineate transnational socialization processes more clearly and to develop an
appropriate methodology to capture them. This would include systematic inter-
views with individuals asking them to reflect on and to characterize past social
processes of transnational socialization and norm internalization and habitualiza-
tion. Such research methods could help make arguments more plausible that the
30 Wolfram Kaiser
preferences and behaviour of political actors would have been different without
their inclusion in intensive transnationalism.
Other methodological challenges relate to the enlarged source base of contem-
porary history compared to social science research. Access to written sources that
are inaccessible to researchers for a period of up to 30 years (as in the case of most
government records) or even, in some cases, longer, is of course one of the main
advantages of historical research, and what also potentially makes its results espe-
cially relevant for social science research. However, the larger source base is a mixed
blessing. Most importantly, governmental sources are much more systematically
preserved than those of transnational actors because state institutions are legally
obliged to keep records and also have the financial resources to do so systematically
in their own archives. Such record keeping is not nearly as important for non-state
actors and their transnational networks, whose documents are often fragmented
and scattered, resulting in a source-related bias of contemporary historical research
towards the ‘safer’ study of state actors and intergovernmental relations – and
resulting in exaggerating their dominance. However, the ideas on customs union
integration of a minor civil servant in a trade ministry are not more important than
those of a transnationally networked leading banker and informal government
adviser, just because they are better documented in written form.
Related to the varying levels of preservation of written sources, transnational
phenomena were not insignificant simply because they are not comprehensively
documented in the preserved written sources. Many of the most important
transnational contacts within networks and between them and governmental
actors were (and still are) of a highly informal character, in the form of private
meetings and electronic communication, especially by telephone. The detailed
documentation in the form of word protocols of the informal Christian democratic
party cooperation in the Geneva Circle (Gehler and Kaiser, 2004) in itself is
exceptional for transnational networks in the early post-war period. Many more
informal contacts existed beyond the private meetings in Geneva, however,
including through intercultural ‘messengers’ like Victor Koutzine, the co-founder
and secretary of the Geneva Circle, who often commuted between Paris and
Bonn, as well as telephone conversations, for example, to coordinate the filling of
positions in the ECSC High Authority or the EEC Commission.
To compensate for the fragmented written documentation, contemporary his-
torians need to make greater use of interviews with key actors in a more system-
atic way than they did in the past. Thirty years after the studied events, many
actors may already have expired. If they are still alive, their memory would be
quite patchy and probably distorted by a growing desire to create a particular
image of one’s past political behaviour to sustain an important place in European
collective memory. Such problems could be partially overcome through the more
systematic interviewing of actors closer to the actual events, but at a point when
they are sufficiently disinterested in current politics to be able to talk freely. Such
interviewing would certainly benefit from greater interdisciplinary cooperation
between contemporary history and the social sciences. Even if this can be
achieved, however, interviews with actors about their activities in transnational
contexts and how they influenced their ideas, behaviour and policies have pitfalls.
In particular, many actors may tend to overemphasize the socialization effects
and the political influence of transnational contacts as they could reflect in an
advantageous way on their ‘European’ identities and political roles.
These and other methodological challenges to contemporary historical research
on transnationalization processes in the context of integration should be taken seri-
ously and addressed in an appropriate manner to achieve greater recognition for
this dimension of postwar European history by more traditional diplomatic and
economic historians as well as social scientists. Yet, many of these methodological
issues are equally relevant for rational choice analyses of ‘national’ preference for-
mation and intergovernmental bargaining, for example, and are certainly not a
compelling reason to call the importance of the transnational research dimension
as such into question.
Conclusion
As early as 1995, David R. Cameron (1995: 38) suggested in relation to the origins
of economic and monetary union that ‘transnational politics have been neglected
in relation to the study of the EC’. In fact, they had been neglected in relation
to European politics much more generally, at the sub-European level as well.
Whereas in the meantime, the social sciences have made some progress towards
remedying the situation, contemporary historical research on post-war (Western)
Europe has been even slower at analysing the growth of transnational societal
structures within the context of institutionalized integration and their influence
on European politics in the current European Union. Research on integration
history has been dominated by traditional realist diplomatic history and economic
history. Although they compete with each other and emphasize different political
or economic factors, both approaches are in fact very similar in their narrow focus
on national European policy-making by governments.
Transnationalization was an important phenomenon in its own right. It deserves
to be studied as such. It is however probably true that governments enjoyed a
greater autonomy in their European policy-making after 1945, as opposed to the
EU of the present time. It therefore requires further clarification to what extent it
also mattered for integration outcomes. The examples mentioned in this chapter
underline, however, that it would be very important to arrive at such a better
understanding of transnational factors in the integration process and for West
European history, in general. A more comprehensive societal perspective on post-
war Western Europe would also be more in line with the progressing re-conceptu-
alization of modern European history more broadly and its relativizing of the
narrow nation-state framework which has tended to emphasize conflict and differ-
ence over cross-border links and commonalities. Contemporary history could then
also make a major contribution to research on transnationalism in the European
Union and the resulting Europeanization effects. This is facilitated by four main
factors which have recently led to a renewed valuation of historical research as
having important explanatory value for contemporary phenomena: the bizarre
32 Wolfram Kaiser
character of exaggerated over-generalizations of some social science (and
integration) theories and models; the fundamental disillusionment with the predic-
tive value of social science theory during the breakdown of the Soviet bloc in
1989–91; the growth of theoretical approaches in the social sciences (also applied
to the European Union) such as historical institutionalism and constructivism,
which emphasize the path-dependency and cultural embeddedness (and there-
fore, historical depth) of preferences and policies; and lastly, the contemporary
experience of the force of ‘history’ in European and world politics.
In this increasingly auspicious climate for interdisciplinary cooperation,
contemporary history can contribute to the emerging research on transnational-
ism in the European Union in a number of important ways – through conceptu-
alizing transnational relations; generating empirical evidence on an enlarged
source base for testing theoretical hypotheses; identifying new aspects of transna-
tionalism previously unexplored by the social sciences in different contemporary
circumstances or because of a lack of access to sources; and most importantly
perhaps, through contributing to the better understanding of change over time in
transnational networks, cross-border socialization and the influence of transna-
tional factors on national and European policy-making. In this way, contemporary
history could help to understand European integration in a more comprehensive
way as the growth of a partially transnationally constituted European society and
polity, going beyond the narrower concentration on EU institutions, national
policy-making and inter-state bargaining. ‘Europe’ was neither made then nor is
now by governments alone.
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2 Transnational networks
Informal governance in the European
political space
Karen Heard-Lauréote
Transnational networks of public, quasi-public and private actors are increasingly

omnipresent both within the European Union and beyond. Examples of such
networks include the European Financial Services Roundtable (EFR), the
Network for Progressive Governance, the Council of European Municipalities
and Regions (CEMR) and the European Farmers Coordination (CPE).
Nevertheless, it is significant that although they may share the same generic label,
transnational networks are functionally varied. For example, the EFR, made up
of the heads of leading banks and insurers, exists to provide a strong industry
voice on European policy issues relating to financial services and to support the
completion of the single market in financial services. However, the Network for
Progressive Governance is in essence a social democratic network originating in
Europe (although it has some extensions beyond). It brings together current and
former heads of state and government, ‘progressive’ politicians, thinkers and
strategists from throughout Europe by providing a forum for strategic discussions.
This assists the exchange of concrete measures and methods applicable to daily
government so as to facilitate the shaping of the European Union, national and
regional politics as well as idea and policy transfer. Furthermore, while the
CEMR, comprised of national associations of towns, municipalities and regions
from 30 European countries, aims to promote the particular interests of local and
regional government, the CPE is a pan-European network comprised of and
defending the interests of almost 20 farming and rural organizations from
11 European countries.
Transnational networks are a product of a wider and growing movement of
‘transnationalism’, a term which broadly refers to the numerous and increasing ties
and connections that link people and/or institutions across borders, be they
national, regional or local. This dynamic movement responds to the basic
processes of globalization. These processes encapsulate the way in which people,
goods, money and ideas are transferred more rapidly and inexpensively today
around the world than ever before due to innovations in transport, communication
and technology. Globalization erodes (national) sovereign authority to the extent
that it encourages processes of deregulation, privatization, de-territorialization
(of people, employment and industry), a process of Europeanization upward,
devolution or regionalism downward and the creation of and increased reliance on
Transnational networks 37
supranational institutions such as the European Union. These various processes
facilitate the formation of transnational or even worldwide networks and these in
turn incite and necessitate the coordination of resources, information and tech-
nology across national borders. In recent years, increasing individual and financial
mobility and the development of communication have intensified such transborder
relations, leading to both social and political mobilization beyond boundaries:
transnational networks.
To understand why transnational networks are becoming increasingly active at
the European level requires an understanding that EU governance is fundamen-
tally different from nation-state governance. Unlike the latter, EU governance is
not based on hierarchical coordination by government-like structures or on a
strong authoritative basis. Rather, European governance takes place through a
process of negotiations in network settings that link public and private actors of
different levels (regional, national and European) and dimensions ( legislature,
judiciary and executive) of government. In such contexts, political power is
exercised by sharing and pooling resources through the establishment of net-
works. The value of transnational networks is their ability to make sense of
dynamic policy-making processes in both the wider European and the local con-
text as well as their contribution to political exchanges; policy-making and policy
transfer below the EU level. Although, such cross-border cooperation is also
partly induced and strengthened by supra-national integration, networks also
build on traditional societal links as well as shared socio-economic and political
attributes to further collaboration.
One of the most important approaches to analysing the process of European
transnationalization is the network concept. To explore the process and the concept,
this chapter is organized in the following way. First, it discusses how although the
network concept was originally developed as a means to re-conceptualize public
policy-making in the national context at a time of the ‘hollowing-out’ of the state,
the concept has recently been extended to studying the emerging European polity.
In this context, three main approaches under the network label are distinguished
and elaborated upon; policy networks, advocacy coalitions and epistemic commun-
ities. As a way of exploring some of the more general methodological issues
involved in studying transnational networks, the chapter then proceeds to outline
some of the major criticisms addressed at the networks approach. Following on
from this, some examples of transnational networks research in the European
Union are examined. The discussion closes upon some brief conclusions and ideas
on a future research agenda.
Theoretical perspectives
The empirical multiplication of networks signalled earlier has encouraged the
development of an abundant literature on the network approach. The latter was
originally developed as a means to re-conceptualize public policy within national
contexts. Subsequently, in political studies, the dominant variant of network analy-
sis that emerged in the 1990s became known as the ‘policy networks’ approach and
38 Karen Heard-Lauréote
provided a theoretical framework by which to analyse decision-making processes
in a centreless state involving a multitude of individual and collective and public
and private actors. However, although, this public policy approach was initially
limited to domestic settings, over the years it has broadened in its application to
networks in the European Union and has since been applied in general to
transnational politics.
The policy network idea initially developed as an approach to analyse state-
business interest relations in national contexts. Traditionally, two basic types of
relationship between interests and the state are deemed possible and these two
approaches are usually related to the concepts of pluralism and corporatism. In
the pluralist approach there is competition between interest groups to gain access
to the policy-making procedures of the state to influence political decisions.
Furthermore, a large number of interest groups are generally considered relevant
to the analysis. In the corporatist approach there is cooperation between interests
and between interests and the state while political influence is seen as restricted
to a limited number of privileged participants ( Jordan and Schubert, 1992: 7).
Although the types of advantaged interests varied according to different national
contexts and policy sectors, these generally tended to represent the peak associations
of business and trades unions.
Waarden amongst others has argued that the concept of policy network ‘seems
to have replaced corporatism [itself a critique of pluralism] as the fashionable
catch phrase in the study of interest group politics’ (1992: 30). Indeed, since the
1970s, when the corporatist approach was at its height, particularly in the study
of the Dutch, Swiss, Austrian, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish political systems,
recent decades have witnessed significant changes in the political reality. These
include the emergence of a society based on organized collectivities; a sectoriza-
tion trend in policy-making; an increased mobilization of competing interests
leading to over crowded policy-making; an increase in the scope and complexity
of state policy-making, which has led to an increasing reliance by the government
upon professional associations, pressure groups, think tanks and private sector
companies for the formulation and implementation of politics and the decentral-
ization or fragmentation of the state and the blurring of boundaries between
the public and private (Kenis and Schneider, 1991). The political science discip-
line accordingly responded to these modified policy-making arrangements by
developing the new terminology of ‘policy networks’.
The development of the policy network approach was not, however, a uniform
process. In fact, certain geographically distinct variations exist. The most striking
distinction is that between the British and American literature and that between
the German and Dutch literature. The former two schools have tended to have a
narrower focus than the latter two concentrating on the role that networks play in
the development and implementation of policy, especially analyses of intergov-
ernmental relations, interest group intermediations and sub-governments (Heclo
and Wildavsky, 1974; Richardson and Jordan, 1979; Grant et al., 1988; Rhodes,
1988; Marsh and Rhodes, 1992). The latter literature is considered to be more
ambitious (Marsh and Smith, 2000: 4) and some of its leading writers treat
networks as a new form of governance providing an alternative to markets and
hierarchies (e.g. Kenis and Schneider, 1991; Kooiman, 1993). Many such scholars
form part of what has been called the Max-Planck School and they stress policy
networks as a form of social organization in response to political problems of
coordination (Schneider, 1988; Knoke, 1990; Lehmbruch, 1991; Marin and
Mayntz, 1991; Mayntz, 1994; Sciarini, 1996; Börzel, 1997). The Dutch literature
also emphasizes the various mechanisms of managing networks for public policy
introducing the concept of network management (Kickert et al., 1999). A French
version of a policy network account has also emerged in recent years and resulted
in an edited book by Le Galès and Thatcher (1995). The main exponent and
investigator is, however, Pierre Muller who has espoused policy networks as a
form of social mediation ( Muller, 1984, 1989; Jobert and Muller, 1987). His
empirical findings confirm differences between policy sectors and relatively stable
closed policy communities originally the focus of much British literature.
Whichever school of thought network scholars adhere to, the concept of
governance is paramount in network analyses. Indeed, the ascendance of the
policy networks approach is intrinsically linked to the governance discourse. The
term governance has multiple facets and a variety of meanings. Bevir and Rhodes
even quote a colleague who described it as ‘a weasel word – slippery and elusive,
used to obscure not to shed light’ (2003: 41). Nonetheless, one of the five overlap-
ping usages detected by Hirst is the ‘practice of coordinating activities through
networks, partnerships and deliberative forums that have grown up on the ruins of
more centralized and hierarchical corporatist representation of the period up to
the 1970s’ (2000: 19). Thus, in this interpretation, governance stands for a change
in the meaning of government and reflects the movement from a unitary state
forming the kernel of state-centred government to the so-called centreless society
of today. Moreover, governance explores the changing boundaries between state
and civil society signalling how the informal authority of networks increasingly
supplements and even supplants the formal authority of nation-state institutions
resulting in governance in and by networks (Rhodes, 1997, 2000; Stoker, 1999,
2000; Bevir and Rhodes, 2003). In sum, policies and politics are increasingly
differentiated and fragmented across sectors and institutions rendering functional
and institutional specialization essential elements in order to deliver effective
government. This differentiated polity (Rhodes, 1997: 7) is partly explained by
the ‘hollowing-out of the state’, a phrase which refers to the loss of functions and
policy-making by the national government in three directions; upwards to the
European Union and beyond through processes of Europeanization and global-
ization, downwards to special-purpose bodies in the face of decentralization, and
outwards to agencies in the face of privatization (Rhodes, 1997: 17). To account
for and make sense of this changed governance context, ‘the “network paradigm”
in all its mysterious guises is reshaping the political, economic and social land-
scape of the advanced industrial societies’ (Hay, 1998: 33) to the extent that, if we
believe Castells (1996), today, we live in a ‘network society’.
De Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof have defined a policy network as ‘an entity
consisting of public, quasi-public, or private actors who are dependent on each
other and, as a consequence of this dependence, maintain relations with each other’
(1995: 163). In sum, three elements of the approach are intrinsic: (a) a set of inter-
dependent actors (b) who share a common broad interest and (c) operate within a
functionally defined policy area. However, despite this relatively simple definition,
over recent years the concept of networks has been used with different and more or
less complex meanings. Nonetheless, some common characteristics can be found
throughout the literature. The first is that interdependencies between actors are a
pre-condition for networks. This notion of interdependency is borrowed from the
power-dependence model of inter-organizational relations, which assumes that all
organizations are dependent on others for resources. Therefore, organizations need
to exchange resources, involving bargaining within and between themselves, in
order to achieve their individual goals (Rhodes, 1981: 97–133). Interdependence
facilitates the construction of policy networks, because actors within a policy sector
are dependent upon each other for resources and are thus connected together as a
network. The second common characteristic is an acceptance that policy-making is
not uniform across the government. Indeed, the British literature, in its attempt to
explain relations between the central and local (periphery) government (Rhodes,
1988) and between the government and pressure groups (Smith, 1993), stressed the
importance of disaggregating the policy-making process into discrete policy sectors
and network structures were shown to vary considerably between such sectors.
Third, networks consist of a variety of actors each with their own goals and rela-
tions of a more or less lasting nature between these actors. In fact, the number of
interested policy actors, their goals and resources and their consequent relations will
depend significantly upon the different traditions, routines and environments of
policy sectors as well as the salient issues within these.
Under the policy networks approach, based on different criteria such as the
level of institutionalization or integration, stability, the scope of the policy-making
arrangement (sectoral or trans-sectoral focus) and exclusiveness or the number of
participants, different competing models and typologies emerged and developed
throughout the 1990s. Rod Rhodes, one of the most influential British academics
on this subject, and later Marsh and Rhodes, developed an elaborate typology of
different kinds of policy networks along a continuum (Rhodes, 1988: 253–366;
Marsh and Rhodes, 1992). One extreme on this continuum is a policy community.
It is a tight, closed, consensual, highly integrated and highly institutionalized
network in which membership is very restricted and all members have significant
resources to exchange with a relative balance of power existing between actors.
Because radical change would threaten the consensus on which the community is
based, policy decisions taken in this type of network are marginal, incremental
adjustments that provoke only limited change. Non-public, routinized relations
between dominant interests and civil servants who share interests and a commit-
ment to the policy also characterize policy communities. There is substantial trust
between actors to observe the ‘rules of the game’. Authors also sometimes stress
that members of policy communities often share a policy paradigm, that is, a view
of the world which consists of the most urgent problems that need to be dealt
with, the actors who are part of the community, and the main instruments, which
can or need to be used to tackle the perceived problems. At the other extreme of
the Marsh/Rhodes continuum (1992) is an issue network in which access is rela-
tively wide and open and in which many loosely bound actors with unequal
resources participate. Here relations may be characterized as conflictual and there
is an unequal distribution of power between actors. Because the degrees of inte-
gration and institutionalization are low, the network is basically unstable.
Advocacy coalitions and epistemic communities represent alternative but
related concepts to network analysis. All recognize the complexity of public policy
and assume the involvement of public and private actors in network type struc-
tures. However, whereas policy networks stress the importance of resources in the
structuring of relationships between actors, advocacy coalitions and epistemic
communities represent an attempt to develop network analysis from metaphorical
and typological debates and disputes by introducing the notion of policy ‘ideas’,
their generation by technical experts and professionals and their importance in
structuring network relationships. Their essential difference is that while epistemic
communities of actors debate common sets of ideas, such as on the international
politics of the environment (Haas, 1992), advocacy coalitions of actors within the
same policy domain engage in policy-orientated learning ( Jenkins-Smith et al.,
1991; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993).
An epistemic community as defined by Peter Haas is ‘a professional group that
believes in the same cause and effect relationships, truth tests to assess them, and
shares common values’ (1990: 55) and later as ‘channels through which new ideas
circulate from societies to governments as well as from country to country’ (Haas,
1992: 27). In simpler terms, it is a network of experts who share a common
understanding of the scientific and political nature of a particular problem (Betsill
and Bulkerley, 2004: 4). These experts maintain contact with each other across
their various geographical locations and fields of interest. In this way they create
valuable channels for information flow, heighten the possibility of introducing
and discussing new perspectives and provide an informal basis from which to
make public pronouncements to the media for example, especially if the epi-
stemic community includes a few prominent and respected individuals. The fun-
damental idea behind the epistemic community notion is to regard international
agreements as the result of the emergence of common belief systems leading to
policy convergence rather than as the result of power bargaining games between
self-interested nation-states. The increasing influence wielded by such communities
within international regimes is by virtue of their authoritative knowledge claims
and their ability to create a scientific consensus on the issue at hand, to which
policymakers turn under conditions of uncertainty (Haas, 1990: 55; Paterson,
1996: 136–7). As a network, epistemic communities are thus seen as a group of
individuals who foster policy learning through the dissemination of factual,
consensual knowledge (Betsill and Bulkerley, 2004: 4).
Zito (2001: 589) argues that the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF)
provides a useful elaboration of the epistemic community concept. While both
focus on the role of knowledge in influencing policy change, the ACF is a broader
concept of groups driven by core beliefs. Indeed, advocacy coalitions as devel-
oped by Sabatier (1998) form on the basis of shared beliefs and values, the core
argument being that actors/institutions who share a similar perspective will forge
coalition type relationships with each other. They therefore consist of various
different actors, including government agencies, associations, civil society organi-
zations, think tanks, academics, media institutions and prominent individuals.
The ACF has four ‘basic premises’. First, an evaluation of the effects of policy (as
it completes a cycle) and policy change requires a time perspective of at least ten
years. Second, the focus should be on the interaction of actors from different insti-
tutions who follow and seek to influence, governmental decisions in a policy area.
Third, attention should be concentrated institutionally between central, regional
and local levels of government since actors from all these levels are involved.
Finally, public policies can be conceptualized as belief systems, which are con-
ceived of as ‘sets of value priorities and causal assumptions about how to realize
them’ ( Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier, 1994: 178). According to this framework,
there are competing advocacy coalitions within each policy domain and in
general one of these coalitions will be dominant and wield greater power over the
policy process than other coalitions. Recent years have seen the emergence of the
concept of ‘transnational advocacy networks’ based on this advocacy coalition
framework. According to Keck and Sikkink (1998: 2) this type of network ‘includes
those relevant actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound together
by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and
services’. These voluntary networks are said to comprise of both state and non-
state actors as well as organizations and individuals and operate simultaneously
both within domestic and international political arenas. However, they are most
frequently found in issues where there are easily identified principled positions
(Betsill and Bulkeley, 2004: 474). Transnational advocacy networks are forged in
a variety of contexts whereby domestic actors find their influence over nation-
states blocked and turn to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
or other nation-states for support; when policy entrepreneurs believe it to be in
the best interest of their organization; or through connections established within
the burgeoning number of international policy/activist arenas (Keck and Sikkink,
1998: 12–16). Moreover, their structure is maintained through the dissemination
of information and the production of shared values while their information, ideas
and strategies constitute the power they use to alter the information and value
contexts within which states make policies.
Equipped with this broad overview of the historical perspectives and the defining
characteristics of the political science approach of policy networks and the related
concepts of advocacy coalitions and epistemic communities, the added value of
the application of the network approach to the study of European policy-making
and governance may be assessed. If we accept that the varied and complex nature
of European policy-making processes cannot necessarily be explained by one
grand macro theory, the network approach’s ability to separate such processes
into its component parts; distinguish between policy sectors (some open, some
closed) and national contexts; allow for the incorporation of the constellation of
different actors involved in these processes (experts, professional associations,
pressure groups, think tanks, etc.); consider the ideas and resource dependencies
of these actors, undoubtedly render it a valuable and functional research device.
Furthermore, European governance arguably provides the best opportunity yet
for exploring the potential of the network approach to move beyond its reputa-
tion for being no more than an analytical toolbox and be accepted as a real
theoretical approach. Whereas state-centric theories defend a concept of gover-
nance based on a national or supranational authority for hierarchical coordina-
tion in public policy-making, the network approach is better equipped to
encapsulate the new and unique nature of the European Union as a system of
‘governance without government’. In fact, it is not through hierarchical coordination
by national governments joined in the Council of Ministers or by a supranational
actor like the Commission that European governance takes place. Rather, it is
through non-hierarchical bargaining and negotiations between public, quasi-
public and private actors from different levels of government and spheres of soci-
ety that coordinate interests and resources. Notwithstanding the added value of
the network approach to the study of European policy-making and governance
outlined hereto, over the years, the network approach has been subject to much
criticism. The following discussion seeks to address a selection of the major
methodological issues associated with the network approach.
Methodological issues
Since its inception, the networks approach has grown to become one of the
dominant approaches to understanding policy-making, governance and trans-
nationalism in advanced industrialized democracies. The approach’s usefulness
arguably resides in its ability to capture ideas of complexity, multiple public and
private actors and interdependence. Indeed, one of its central virtues is its ability
to map policy-making and provide a typology of the different relationships
between actors. However, although the approach is generally accepted as providing
useful insights into such areas, it has not escaped criticism amongst scholars. Its
most commonly cited faults are its metaphorical basis, which renders it too
descriptive and its failure to adequately explain social and political change.
One of the most common criticisms directed at the network approach is that
the model is better at describing than explaining. Indeed, the origins of the terms
‘policy community’ and ‘policy network’ are essentially metaphorical, used to
characterize relationships between groups and governments. Particularly in the
British literature, the concept of network has been predominantly employed in
the same style as Beck’s London Underground map, which represents a simpli-
fied, schematic version of reality (Parsons, 1995: 60). This is not to say however
that the network ‘map’ is not useful for policy analysis. Used as they have been in
this metaphorical sense, as a model, image or figurative diagram of reality (Hanf
and Scharpf, 1977; Heclo, 1978; Katzenstein, 1978), networks arguably help to
make sense of complex and chaotic modern political realities. Notwithstanding
these advantages, inescapably, the descriptive and metaphorical character of the
term policy network has invited various definitional disputes (Atkinson and
Coleman, 1992: 158). In fact, since the outset, new terminologies, exclusive defi-
nitions, network varieties and typologies have been regularly introduced, dis-
cussed and developed to the extent that networks have become a ubiquitous
concept (Rhodes, 1990: 293). This has led British pioneers of the approach such
as Jordan to clamour for semantic rigour and consistency in the terminology or
‘jargon’ used in the policy networks approach before the ‘debate degenerates as
contributors offer their arguments in a private code that cannot be refuted’
( Jordan, 1990: 319; Jordan and Schubert, 1992; Van Waarden, 1992). Arguably,
the lack of semantic clarity renders the definition and qualification of what
constitutes a policy network, problematic.
Despite the lack of semantic rigour engendered by the approach, its metaphori-
cal nature and ambiguities surrounding the use of terms, the perspective, nonethe-
less, provides a useful heuristic tool for students of policy-making. This has led
scholars like Dowding (1995) to argue that because such descriptive uses and
terminological debates will not yield advances in the approach’s explanatory power
or conceptual integration, the approach should move beyond metaphor, ‘thick
description’ and classification towards better empirical use.
Hay and Richards note that policy networks are often portrayed as ‘Static,
indeed torpid phenomena’ (2000: 2). This appraisal introduces a second funda-
mental criticism directed at the network approach – that is its perceived lack of
conceptual tools to sufficiently explain change over time. Although scholars note
that ‘(network) metaphors are heuristically useful’ (Dowding, 1995: 139) and their
study has ‘provided useful snapshots of the policy process at a particular point in
time’ (Atkinson and Coleman, 1992: 172), it is often argued that less attention has
been devoted to changes in policy processes and outcomes and that networks are
‘incapable of explaining transformation’ such as the phenomena of policy
community collapse or the forceful entry of other groups into an issue network or
indeed the overall dynamics of change (Dowding, 1995: 139). As Smith explains,
As a meso-level approach, it found itself in ‘no-man’s land’; it did not have

the conceptual tools to explain policy change and consequently failed to
understand how networks sponsor, resist and react to change by precisely
specifying ‘the mechanisms through which change occurs’.
(1993: 97)
In sum, although the network approach discusses patterns of interaction among

various actors, the content of these actions, the structures that channel commu-
nication and the policy outcomes generated by structural characteristics, it
is posited that the approach nevertheless fails to explain how networks change
and how the relationship between network change and policy change may be
determined.
Arguably, network approach proponents have nonetheless tried to address
the question of policy outcomes to a certain extent. Some have argued that the
existence of a network and its predominant endogenous characteristics that
is whether it is characterized better as a policy community or an issue network,
has a shaping effect on policy outcomes and may or may not constrain the
policy agenda. Although the shape of policy networks and policy outcomes may
change, the very existence of a policy network or community acts as a major
constraint upon the degree of policy change. On the one hand, certain policy
networks are very effective at resisting policy changes. Indeed, rigid closed policy
network structures such as policy communities are closely associated with
policy continuity – that is, stable, routine, policy-making in which outputs tend to
incrementally advance the particular interests of subsystem members. The
European Christian Democrat party network may be considered an illustrative
example of a structure stimulating such stability. Kaiser (forthcoming) argues that
this party network played a major role in establishing ‘core Europe’ in 1951–2 and
1957–8 and in stabilizing some of its key aspects such as its long-term federalist
goal across the various EU enlargements. Likewise, its influence has been felt on
the stabilization of the EU’s institutional structure and a number of its common
policies, notably the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Moreover, within the
same policy sector, the network of the Committee of Professional Agricultural
Organizations in the European Union and the General Confederation of
Agricultural Co-operatives in the European Union (COGECA) has demonstrably
influenced the evolution of the CAP. Indeed, it is arguable that the existence and
maintenance of a relatively closed policy network comprising COGECA and the
Commission’s Directorate General for Agriculture has been a key cause of policy
continuity since this policy’s inception in the early 1960s. On the other hand, the
issue network, a more flexible and less rigid type of structure is associated with a
different, more open policy process and a propensity for the adoption of more
innovative policies. Arguably, the European Commission’s Environment DG is an
example of such an issue network (Bomberg, 1998). Its boundaries and its culture
are more open to a wider and diverse set of actors, particularly when compared
to its agriculture counterpart. This is perhaps due to the DG’s relative immatu-
rity; EU environmental action only began in 1972 (and this despite its omission in
the 1957 Treaty of Rome). Whatever the reasons, DG Environment has earned
a reputation for almost systematically carrying out extensive preliminary consul-
tations with representatives of governments, green political parties, environmen-
tal NGOs, industry, special interest groups and where necessary, technical experts,
prior to issuing any draft legislation. It is certainly true that this sector has been
an extremely dynamic one and has led to the proliferation of environmental
legislation. Indeed, today there are over 700 individual pieces of legislation
constituting a comprehensive system of environmental control throughout the
Union.
Regarding this question of why and how networks may or may not change and
consequent policy adjustments several scholars have stressed either endogenous or
exogenous explanatory factors. For example, Dowding (1995) suggests that policy
changes result from a change in the pattern of resource dependencies within the
network. In contrast, Rhodes and Marsh (1992) argue that most network change
results from four major exogenous factors; economic, ideological, political and
knowledge-based. However, Marsh and Smith (2000: 4) contend that both these
approaches have limitations, the most important being that the distinction
between exogenous and endogenous is difficult to sustain. Indeed, they assert that
it is erroneous to focus upon the question of whether and to what extent, networks
affect policy outcomes since the relationship between networks and outcomes is
not a simple, unidimensional one. They suggest instead that to understand how
networks affect outcomes, it is necessary to recognize that policy outcomes also
directly affect the shape of the policy network as well as impacting upon the struc-
tural position of certain interests in civil society and the strategic learning of
actors in the networks (2000: 9). Marsh and Smith, broadly argue that there is a
dialectical relationship between the network and the broader context within
which it is located. To aid this understanding they develop a dialectical model of
the role that policy networks play in any explanation of policy outcomes. The
dialectical relationship refers to an interactive relationship between two variables
in which each affects the other in a continuing iterative process. They argue that
there are three interactive or dialectical relationships involved between: the struc-
ture of the network and the agents operating within them; the network and the
context within which it operates; and the network and the policy outcome. In sum
these authors claim that policy networks can and do affect policy outcomes and
that in order to understand how that happens, we need to appreciate the role
played by those three dialectical relationships.
A further underlying problem of early literature on the network approach accord-
ing to Watt (1997: 896–7) is that it assumes that such networks ‘exist’ and it fails thus
to substantially account for how and why such networks were originally established.
Advocacy coalitions have been particularly criticized for failing to include the study
of nascent or developing networks (Watt, 1997: 897). In response, Hay and Richards
have argued that the idea of a network ‘is neither a neutral nor an uncontested
concept’ and that ‘decisions to participate in networks are, in some sense, strategic’
(Hay and Richards, 2000: 12–13). Indeed, these scholars have posited the following
three strategic and contextual conditions for network formation to take place: first,
recognition of the potential mutual advantages to be gained through collective (as
opposed to individual) action is necessary. In this way it must entail a positive-sum
game for all those participating in a particular network form; second, there must be
recognition that the pooling of strategic resources will potentially enhance the strate-
gic capacities of participant organizations; finally, recognition of the importance
of and/or the establishment of the conditions of network feasibility is essential;
feasibility being itself dependent on a degree of geographical or communicative
proximity between potential network partners, a degree of shared cultural norms
and values and the availability and/or willingness of organizations to devote suf-
ficient time, capital and personnel resources to the network (2000: 17). Through
their analysis, these scholars have therefore sought to establish a theory of
network dynamism (2000: 25) to address such oversights in network formation.
Whereas network analyses may once have constituted a series of bland and
hollow metaphors, the contemporary network research related to change (Hay and
Richards, 2000; Marsh and Smith, 2000) demonstrates that today networks
embody a dynamic approach to understanding modern governance and constitute
a relatively robust and sophisticated model of policy-making. It is worth noting
nevertheless that as Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993, 1999) have argued, one of
the four ‘basic premises’ of their ACF is that a time perspective of at least a decade
is required to evaluate the effects of policy (as it completes a cycle). Therefore, a
long-term study is essential if one is to comprehensively account for policy change
using a network approach. In this way, as Kaiser demonstrates in his chapter of this
book, further advances in understanding change may well be facilitated by contri-
butions from contemporary historical research, which may make a useful input to
the better understanding of change over time in transnational networks, cross-
border socialization and the influence of transnational factors on national and
European policy-making.
A final methodological consideration concerns the application of what has
been until very recently a nationally developed network approach to the EU level
and the additional methodological problems that this presents. An obvious but
significant concern is the size, scope and cultural and political heterogeneity of
transnational European networks compared to their nationally delimited coun-
terparts. A transnational EU network may operate across a veritable plethora
of local, regional and national contexts, as many different cultural and political
traditions and with communication between actors involving 20 or more
languages. Practically therefore, the empirical study of such networks requires
larger research budgets to be able to meet the costs of longer-term projects, larger
research teams with appropriate linguistic skills and multi-site empirical data
collection. Similarly, transnational EU networks are in many cases newer, less
developed, more transient and more informal than national networks.
Undoubtedly, links between transnational actors are harder to cultivate and main-
tain than national ones due in part to the aforementioned heterogeneity of partic-
ipating actors, linguistic and cultural barriers as well as geographical distance
separating actors. Certainly, the heterogeneous and ephemeral nature of transna-
tional actor links and the related difficulty of assessing the concrete impact of
such networks on European policy-making processes may render them more dif-
ficult to empirically capture, unravel and analyse by researchers. However,
notwithstanding the various methodological challenges posed by its European
level application, today the network approach remains an accepted, dynamic and
vibrant tool available to research scholars studying European governance. To
illustrate its contemporary use, this discussion now considers a selection of exam-
ples of contemporary research employing the network approach.
Examples of research
Transnational networks differ from policy networks in that they are not confined
to any one national policy arena or sector. Whereas it has been noted that most
of the burgeoning policy network literature is predominantly focussed on such
national policy-making, as the following discussion seeks to demonstrate, over
recent years the network view has been increasingly applied to the European and
transnational level as well. Transnational European networks are functionally
varied. With this in mind, so as to provide a flavour of the different roles networks
fulfil at this level and the research surrounding them, this final section is structured
according to four of their major functional roles. Initially, networks that exist to
influence European policy-making in general or European policy sectors in partic-
ular are examined. Thereafter, networks that aid European society formation
through the transfer of ideas and knowledge are observed. The third functional role
analysed is socialization while finally, the discussion turns to networks’ role as a
potential means by which to alleviate European governance accountability deficits.
Arguably, the most common functional role occupied by European transna-
tional networks is to influence European policy-making in general or in a particular
policy sector. Peterson posits that, ‘the EU is a “hothouse” for different types of
policy network’ (1995: 69). For an idea of the multitude of networks that exist to
fulfil this role, the ‘Euractive’ policy portal boasts ‘10,000 EU actors’ including
institutions (national and regional representations), industry federations, direct
company representations, trades unions, NGOs, public affairs consultants,
lawyers firms, lobbying bodies, public relations firms and think tanks. As was orig-
inally the case in early nationally set network literature, an initial wave of research
scholars has examined such transnational networks that exist to influence
European governance. From this perspective, the network approach is either
employed (a) as a heuristic tool to simplify complex EU processes and governance
arrangements (multi-actor, multi-venue, multi-level), (b) to explain the effect of
transnational networks on European policy-making in general or in a particular
policy sector or (c) to analyse the contribution of such networks to EU level policy
change and/or major reform.
With regard to the simplification of complex governance processes, Peterson
(1995) has argued that the fluidity and complexity of the EU institutional archi-
tecture has occasioned the emergence of network research. The aim of such
research is to clarify based on the understanding that policy networks may help
make sense of complex policy-making situations that feature multiple actors.
Pappi and Henning’s (1999) study constitutes an illustrative example. So as to
simplify and describe the density of access routes open to national agriculture
interest groups to the EU’s governance system, notably through national agri-
culture ministries and the Council of Ministers or through the European peak
organization COGECA, these authors use a network approach to examine the
organization of influence on the CAP.
A further example of transnational networks evolving at the EU level to
influence policy decisions is networks of NGOs or federations. The European
Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Worldwide Fund for Nature ( WWF ), the
European Consumers’ Organization (BEUC) and COGECA are examples of
these. Each network has offices in Brussels whose primary aim is to exercise
an influence over particular policy sectors at the different EU institutional venues.
Multiple examples of research focussing on these transnational networks exist.
For example, drawing on the advocacy coalition framework, Weber and
Christophersen (2002) examine the political influence of a selection of transna-
tional networks. In particular, they look at the impact on the EU habitats directive
92/43/EEC and the creation of the ‘Natura 2000’ network of the forest owner asso-
ciations and the environmental NGOs. The former comprise the Confederation of
European Forest Owners (CEPF) and the Bureau of Nordic Family Forestry
(BNFF) while the latter comprise the WWF European Policy Office and the
Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN). The authors
describe a strategic alliance between DG Environment and the WWF who share
the common goal of successfully establishing Natura 2000. However, this project
was opposed by a less firmly established and less influential coalition of land users
and DG Agriculture. Similarly, based on the advocacy coalition approach,
Warleigh (2000) examines the lobbying undertaken by NGOs and their effect on
European policy-making outcomes in three different areas of legislation: the
Drinking Water, Auto Oil and Unit Pricing Directives. He argues that networks of
NGOs can influence the shape of EU legislation. However, success is dependent
upon (a) ensuring membership of the relevant policy coalition composed of
unstable, ad hoc alliances; (b) using information supply (by closing an information
gap and/or providing a different perspective from established interest groups)
in order to shape contributions to legislation and (c) adopting an effective coalition-
building strategy. This leads Warleigh to conclude that the principal dynamic of
European level interest group representation is issue-specific coalition formation.
Notwithstanding these examples, it is important to note that the study of trans-
national networks in the European Union need not be restricted to such transna-
tional networks of interest groups and in fact includes other types of transnational
actors. Essentially, the actors involved vary according to the functional role of
the networks.
As well as simplifying complex processes and influencing European policy-
making, the network approach has equally been employed to analyse policy
change and/or major policy reform in European policy-making. At a basic level,
Daugbjerg (1997) develops a theoretical network model to compare and explain
reform outcomes in the national Swedish and European agricultural policy in
1992 arguing that reform success is dependent on the type of network existing
in a given sector. Whereas highly cohesive networks resist change and defend estab-
lished policy, less cohesive structures have a reduced amount of power to oppose
reform. Parrish (2003) adopts a more sophisticated advocacy coalition approach
as a means to explain the process through which the Single Market advocacy
coalition, which once dominated European level sports policy, was later chal-
lenged by other socio-cultural actors. He demonstrates how, in order to penetrate
the insulated Single Market coalition and confront the established legal/
regulatory definition of sport, the socio-cultural actors have venue-shopped at dif-
ferent available institutional access routes in the EU’s multi-level governance sys-
tem in order to effect a redefinition of sports policy objectives and subsequently
change the direction of sports policy. Furthermore, using three case studies,
Radaelli (1999) employs an epistemic community approach to examine the role of
expertise in the negotiation of economic and monetary union (EMU, following
the work done by Verdun, 1999) direct tax policy and media ownership regulation.
He explains how epistemic communities were influential in the design of the
single currency and particularly highlights the role of the Delors Committee,
which, he explains, was responsible for the single currency blueprint. He argues
that although there was an epistemic logic at work in the Delors Committee,
because the charismatic leader of the Commission, Jacques Delors who provided
the momentum to keep the EMU process moving forward, chaired it, this com-
mittee was far more than a network of bankers with a common policy goal.
Empirical studies have equally identified transnational networks as important
players in the overall course of Europeanization because some networks fulfil a
role of advocating and facilitating European integration. An example of such
a network whose rationale is to encourage and smooth the progress of policy con-
vergence across EU member countries in particular is the European Financial
Services Round Table. This network, made up of chairmen and chief executives
from many of Europe’s leading banks and insurers, has commissioned and funded
extensive research over recent years as a means to inject dynamism into the
process of completion of the Single Market in financial services.
Although so far relatively absent, in the future, quantitative transnational
network studies may develop and thus provide a means to help further current
understanding of policy change and/or major policy reform in European policy-
making. Quantitative network studies or network analysis measures the occurrence
or frequency of relationships between network members by drawing on the
‘graph theory’ branch of mathematics to analyse network properties and struc-
ture. The research implications are that network structure – whether determined
from within or from without networks – counts as it affects the information flows
and thus the distribution of power across social organizations ( John, 2004). A rich
vein of quantitative network literature is currently developing in European and
trans-Atlantic domestic settings (for a brief review see John, 2004). Indeed, in
1998, a collection of papers was brought together in a special edition of the
Journal of Theoretical Politics called ‘Modeling Policy Networks’. It remains to be
seen whether quantitative accounts of transnational networks will follow suit.
Moreover, the value of the contribution offered by such quantitative network
studies has not yet been clearly established. John (2004) highlights three limita-
tions of the research tool and its application. First, it is far from clear what the
network measures; a simple counting of contacts is descriptive and offers little
causal analysis or possibility to measure policy influence. Second, network bound-
aries are notoriously unclear. Thus the precise measures used in network analysis
impose an arbitrary simplicity onto a complex context. Finally, network analysis
is usually cross-sectional providing a simple snapshot of fluid relationships.
However, if networks change rapidly, it is hard to generalize precisely about what
relationships the network measures capture. How far such limitations may be
overcome in the future is as yet uncertain.
Just as the primary role of some transnational European networks is to influence
European policy-making, others participate in a wider phenomenon of European
society formation. Although the EU policy-making system is structurally and
institutionally complicated, it is also a culturally complex entity. Today, the
European Union stretches from the Atlantic to the Baltic and from the Arctic
Ocean to the Mediterranean and is characterized by linguistic and religious
density with 20 official languages and 5 significant religious currents (Roman
Catholicism, Protestantism, Greek Orthodoxy as well as Russian Orthodox and
Muslim minorities).
Equally, the European Union is home to contrasting historical and political
experiences and varying government systems. Whereas Spain’s past is character-
ized by conservative authoritarianism, Italy and Germany have experienced
Fascism and Nazism respectively. Furthermore, the Central and Eastern
European Countries (CEECs) have a predominantly communist past whereas
Greece once had a military regime, and the United Kingdom has a tradition of
liberal parliamentary democracy. In such a linguistically, culturally and historically
complex context, scholars have used the network approach to describe how net-
work structures serve a role of political society formation by translating policy con-
cepts and ideas within the European Union, from one specific national and
cultural context into another. This process does not simply occur from one state
context to another, but also for example from one tradition of socialism to another.
Certain transnational networks fulfil a role of society formation by transferring
ideas between elites based on specific political schools of thought such as social
democracy or Christian democracy. Indeed, two recent initiatives in the creation
of such transnational networks are soon likely to generate new research in this
area. The first of these is the Network for Progressive Governance. This network
was created in 2000 by Policy Network, an international think tank launched in
December 2000 with the support of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Giuliano
Amato and Göran Persson following three Progressive Governance Summits in
New York, Florence and Berlin. This think tank also organized the London
Progressive Governance Conference in July 2003, which brought together think
tanks, politicians and academics as well as world leaders, former heads of state
and government, and progressive politicians. The stated rationale behind the
network’s creation is that ‘Progressive governments and parties in Europe
are increasingly facing similar problems and looking for modern social democratic
responses’ (Progressive Governance Network, 2000). In such a context, the
network is intended to facilitate the exchange of ‘practical experiences from daily
governance’ and to develop the transfer of ‘progressive’ ideas, values and policies
(Progressive Governance Network, 2000).
Similarly, the European Ideas Network is another example of a transnational
network initiative set up in August 2002 to facilitate idea transfer. This is a
centre-right network of pan-European think tanks sponsored by the Christian
democratic European People’s Party (EPP) and European Democrats (ED) Group
in the European Parliament (EP). Its working group structure is designed to evolve
new strategies and exchange ideas and thinking on the key challenges facing EU
countries and it brings together politicians, businessmen, academics, journalists
and party activists sharing a common Europe-wide outlook, as well as outside
experts interested in the public policy issues being addressed. These examples
emphasize the transfer of political ideas and concepts via transnational networks.
However, the latter may also be the conduits of theological information. Indeed,
the Conference of European Churches is a Christian network composed of 127
Anglican, Old Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches across the European
continent and focusses on the exchange of theological and socio-ethical issues.
Although, this network was particularly active throughout the drafting of the
European Constitution in 2003, advocating an explicit reference to the Christian
roots of European culture in the new EU constitution, its more general role is as
a vehicle for the promotion of Churches as value-based communities that may
support the European integration process in general.
Transnational networks are not only active in the transfer of political and
theological ideas across boundaries; be they local, regional or national. Such
networks also serve a role of information and knowledge transfer. Using the epi-
stemic community approach, Van Waarden and Drahos (2002) study the conver-
gence of competition policies in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. They
highlight the importance of transnational expert communities of competition
lawyers for channelling the exchange of information, learning and imitation as
well as for the explicit transfer of legal concepts, ideas, solutions and arguments
between the different national systems and levels of law. It is in this way that the
transnational network contributes to the convergence of competition policy across
national boundaries.
Transnational networks may also fulfil a function of socialization. This is an
important notion since it arguably has the potential to help further our under-
standing of network stability. In Chapter 3 in this book Frank Schimmelfennig
demonstrates how the socialization of the CEECs to the European Union has
helped to stabilize policy through the socialization of these new participants into
an existing consensus. Transnational socialization in the European Union is
defined by Schimmelfennig as ‘the process of inducting nationally constituted
societal and governmental actors into adapting the constitutive schemata and
rules of the EU community’. In a study of the expansion of foreign and security,
policy cooperation in the European Union and how this has increasingly pene-
trated into member states domestic politics, Michael Smith (2000) examines the
transgovernmental aspects of political cooperation, which lead to the gradual
internalization of cooperative habits and common views within the structures of
member states. He argues that foreign and security problem-solving fundament-
ally depends on the extent to which relevant decision makers are socialized into
the system. His empirical findings, drawn from memoirs and interviews with
European Political Cooperation and Common Foreign and Security Policy
(EPC/CFSP) insiders, consistently reveal the importance of elite socialization and
demonstrate that ‘Most of this socialization takes place in and is encouraged by
an increasingly dense, institutionalized, transgovernmental communications
network’ (ibid.: 618). He adds that ‘it is even possible that such intensive deliber-
ation within the EPC/CFSP working groups encourages the formation of nascent
“epistemic communities” of technical experts devoted to solving particular
problems’ (ibid.). Charles de Gaulle apparently referred to such friendly, ‘old-boy’
networks among transnational/EU experts concerning specific policy problems
as a process of ‘copinage technocratique’ and considered them a threat to the
sovereignity of the EU member states. In a similar socialization vein, Pilar
Ortuño Anaya (2002) has recently examined the international dimensions of the
Spanish transition to democracy. She has argued that specific individuals and
organizations made a significant contribution to the Spanish democratization
process in the first half of the 1970s. In her analysis of the importance of party
cooperation and political foundation work, she examines in particular, the social-
ization role played by European socialist and trade union organizations and polit-
ical parties such as the German Social Democratic Party and its affiliated unions,
the Labour movements in the United Kingdom and the French Socialists. This
socialization took the form of encouragement by other European nations of the
democratization process within the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). As
opposed to its former traditional left-wing party current, under the leadership of
Filipe Gonzales, at that time – a young lawyer and subsequently Spanish prime
minister – a new democratic party trend emerged which eventually led to the
party’s adoption of an increasingly pro-EC and even, a pro-NATO policy stance.
Furthermore, Dorota Dakowska’s chapter (Chapter 7, this volume) examines the
important socialization role played by German political foundations in facilitating
party cooperation in countries in transition and more recently in the context of
the transformation of CEECs. This research suggests that the socialization capacity
of transnational networks is arguably one of the most propitious avenues for
further research. Indeed, Kubiceck (2004) has recently explored an exciting
avenue of new research for the socialization effects of networks in Turkey. The
importance of domestic networks such as the Turkish Industrialists and
Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) and its links to the transnational network,
Eurochambers are recognized. With the support of the Turkish Union of
Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Maritime Commerce and Commodity
Exchanges (TOBB) and the EC Delegation in Ankara, Eurochambers coordinates
the Turkish Chamber Development Programme that has been developed under
the EU’s ‘Civil Society Development Programme’. Its broad objective is to rein-
force civil society in Turkey with a view to propel the Turkish reform process
towards European integration.
Because the network concept discusses the distribution of power, the exclusion of
weak groups from public decision-making arenas and the power that such hidden
networks of actors wield in certain policy areas, it is also a useful tool to highlight
one of the central problems encountered by liberal democracies; the tension that
exists between the public aim of public accountability and the public’s inaccessibility
to the policy-making process ( John, 2004). However, beyond simply highlighting
the problem, a so far underdeveloped functional role of transnational European
networks is their contribution to alleviating such accountability deficits particularly
within European governance. A comprehensive reform of the latter was launched
by the European Commission as a strategic objective in 2000 and subsequently
set out in a White Paper (European Commission, 2001). This acknowledged the
‘disenchantment’ and alienation that citizens feel from the European Union and the
‘widening gulf between the EU and the people it serves’ (European Commission,
2001: 7). As part of the remedy, the White Paper recognizes the multiplication of
networks occurring as a result of the combined factors of European integration,
new technologies, cultural changes and global interdependence (European
Commission, 2001: 18). Regarding their role, it is noted that the Union’s legitimacy
‘depends on involvement and participation’ in which ideas and networks are para-
mount. Indeed, the White Paper advocates more effective communication between
the Commission, stakeholders and their political representatives in order to initiate
a so-called ‘virtuous’ circle based on feedback, networks and involvement from
policy creation to implementation at all levels’ (European Commission, 2001: 11).
An important body of research is subsequently emerging to take account of net-
works’ contribution to the legitimization process. Indeed, scholars are investigating
the participation of collective actors in decision-making, in institutionalized and
informal networks in the European decision-making process and suggesting that this
may constitute a potential source of additional legitimacy for the European polity,
the European Commission and for specific policy sectors (Hirst, 1990, 1994;
Andersen and Burns, 1996: 227; Heritier, 1999; Wessels, 1999: 64; Smismans, 2003;
Heard-Lauréote, 2005). For example, Heard-Lauréote (2005) examines how insti-
tutionalized networks of collective actors in the agricultural advisory committees
may constitute a potential, additional source of legitimacy for the European
Commission’s activities in the European agricultural policy sector.
Many of the transnational networks and associated research examples consid-
ered in this chapter may appear at first sight to be EU-centred. However, many
of them actually have a regional and global reach beyond the European Union.
For example, the European Farmers Coordination network is plugged into a
larger global network entitled Via Compesina. This is a worldwide peasant organi-
zation movement comprising small-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural
women and indigenous communities from Asia, America and Europe. All are
joined in defending economic and social justice, land preservation, food sovereignty
and sustainable agricultural production. Another fertile area for European Union
focussed transnational networks with a global outreach is European development
policy. Here a variety of European networks comprising parties, think tanks, foun-
dations, charities and NGOs work closely with member state or EU institutions
like the Commission, to fulfil a democratization role whereby democratic ideas
and concepts associated with the European Union as a civil power are exported
to the rest of the world. The Foreign Policy Centre is a European think tank,
which operates according to such a global perspective. One of its current pro-
grams of research; ‘Civility’ aims to promote communications and cooperation
between Western and Middle Eastern Civil Society to encourage reform in the
Greater Middle East. Moreover, Richard Youngs, the ‘Civility’ program coordi-
nator, has particularly focussed a recent publication on the role of Western
governments, international NGOs and multinational companies and how they
have sought to influence democratic trends in developing countries (see also
Youngs, 2001; Gillespie and Youngs, 2002). The British Overseas NGOs for
Development (BOND) constitutes a further example of a transnational network
promoting democratization and development. Its structure also vividly portrays
the intertwinement of national, European and global networks. A member state
based network, it is itself a member of an EU-wide network (the Confederation
for Co-operation of Relief and Development NGOs – CONCORD) of over
1,000 international development NGOs, which is in turn a member of a global
network of over 650 organizations and networks entitled CIVICUS, the World
Alliance for Citizen Participation. Clearly, the far reaching nature of these intri-
cately entangled web-like networks across multiple governance layers underlines
the important links existing between European and global transnationalization.
Conclusion
Since its inception, the network approach has endured much. Researchers have
regularly refuted the usefulness of the various models and typologies it has
generated, but phoenix-like it regularly re-appears in a new form and succeeds in
re-igniting debates and begetting new research. Arguably, something can be
learnt from its longevity and its ability to sustain debate. These are signs that its
proponents must be on to something, or it would not have survived its many refu-
tations. Indeed, the research examples cited in this chapter signal that from a
number of perspectives, the network approach, in all its various guises of policy
networks, advocacy coalitions or epistemic communities etc. remains a valuable
concept for studying the European political space. From a methodological per-
spective, the approach’s functionality is manifest in its cross-disciplinary nature. Its
applicability in political science, policy science, social sciences, interorganizational
relations, international relations, governance and public management research,
to name but a few, is proof enough of its flexibility. Not only does it cut across
various disciplines, it also effectively transpierces the major ontological fault lines
to the extent that adherents of the various classic macro-level theories concerning
the distribution of power within contemporary society, be they pluralists,
Marxists, constructivists or rationalists or other, may all find metaphorical shelter
under this approach. Its agility may be reinforced by a final methodological
remark. Whereas in its simplest form, the approach may be employed figuratively
to decipher complex governance arrangements or disentangle multiple actors, it
may equally serve as a theoretical framework to explain change and policy
outcomes.
Notwithstanding the above, the methodological perspective certainly does not
have the monopoly over explicating the approach’s usefulness. Similarly, from an
empirical perspective, its value is evident. This is especially the case with regard
to policy-making at EU level. Broadly, the network approach provides a more
complete and realistic account of interest group intermediation than the two pre-
viously dominant models – pluralism and corporatism. Arguably, neither of these
provided a realistic picture of interest intermediation relations to the extent that
the model they offered was too general and it did not take into account variations
between policy sectors. Indeed, the strengths of the network approach are that it
emphasizes the need to disaggregate policy analysis and stresses the importance
of the sectorization of policy. Moreover, it recognizes that in many policy areas a
limited number of actors are involved in the policy-making process, that policy-
making often takes place in continuous, closed communities of actors that are
impenetrable by unrecognized groups and the general public.
The European Union is a multi-level, differentiated polity, akin to an institu-
tional and cultural maze. The network approach is a useful tool to understand this
rabbit warren of political reality and the way in which individuals connect with
each other within it. The approach is not merely a response to EU complexity but
to contemporary public policy processes in general. We live in an increasingly
decentralized and fragmentized society based on organized collectivities; policy-
making continues to follow a trend of sectorization; for countless reasons
competing groups of interests are mobilized to influence policy-making, which in
turn leads to overcrowding; the boundaries between the public and private are
becoming increasingly blurred as closed communities of actors formulate policy
in isolation and in the face of decreasing electoral turnout, political representa-
tives must promise more and intervene within an ever increasing scope. Certainly,
the network approach has a role to play in making sense of today’s complex and
intricate political realities especially at the level of EU governance.
However, networks serve other functional roles apart from describing, simplifying
and explaining EU policy processes. Network formation and social communica-
tion is encouraged in reaction to the economic and social regulatory pressures
imposed on its member states by the European Union’s institutional framework,
whereby there is an increasingly informal and formal homogenization of policy
responses fostered by a transnational transfer of ideas and policy concepts.
Networks serve a functional role of channelling such ideas. However, while struc-
tures like the Progressive Governance Network and the European Ideas Network
are increasingly frequent; as yet, their research potential has hardly been
exploited and thus offer promising future avenues.
In addition to conveying ideas within and between member states, the network
approach may also serve a functional role in explaining how policy ideas and
concepts are exported beyond the current, recently expanded EU borders. Indeed,
by way of a spillover type effect, parties, think tanks, foundations and charities
contribute to a kind of political socialization in new and future member states and
associated countries, even to the rest of the world. Whereas, in some cases this
socialization takes place in part collaboration with the European Union and mem-
ber state institutions, in others very different agendas may be being followed.
At once, useful for understanding and capturing the European Union and under-
standing its role as a civil power in globalization and world politics, the network
approach is alive and well enjoying the prospect of a bright research future.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Wolfram Kaiser, Lucy Makins, Peter Starie and Bastiaan van
Apeldoorn for their extensive and useful comments on the earlier drafts of this
chapter.
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3 Transnational socialization
Community-building in an
integrated Europe
Frank Schimmelfennig
In the early days of regional integration theory, ‘transnational socialization’ was

a major subject of interest and inquiry in both neo-functionalism and Karl
Deutsch’s transactionalist theory. Ernst Haas defined political integration as ‘the
process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded
to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new centre’
(1968: 16), yielding ‘a new national consciousness of the new political community’
(1968: 14). Haas conceived this process as a predominantly transnational process of
‘political spill-over’ (1968: 283–317; cf. Tranholm-Mikkelsen, 1991: 13–15). To
the extent that it helps them realize their political goals better, nationally consti-
tuted political elites (in interest groups, parties and bureaucracies) orient their
expectations and activities toward the integrated level of decision-making, build
transnational coalitions (with the support of the supranational organizations) and
develop supranational perspectives on their political problems and their solutions.
Karl Deutsch defined integration as the ‘attainment, within a territory, of a
“sense of community” ’ – understood as the ‘belief on the part of individuals in
a group that they have come to agreement on at least this one point: that common
social problems must and can be resolved by processes of “peaceful change” ’
(Deutsch et al., 1957: 5). Such a group then qualifies as a ‘security community’.
Whether a security community exists among formally sovereign states (pluralistic
security community) or has some kind of common government (amalgamated
community) was of secondary importance for Deutsch. Instead, he focussed on the
quantity of transnational exchanges and communications (as triggers of social
learning processes and evidence of mutual relevance) as well as their quality in
terms of the compatibility of major values and mutual responsiveness (Deutsch,
1964: 67–9).
In its later development, the focus of regional integration theory has shifted
away from the cognitive, intersubjective dimension of integration toward its insti-
tutional dimension. Deutsch’s transactionalism has fallen into disuse. Second-
generation neo-functionalists deleted the building of new identities and the shift
of loyalties from the definitions of integration and focussed instead on the study
of collective decisions and the scope and level of the supranational institutions
that result from them (Schmitter, 1969: 162): ‘Changes in either systemic or iden-
titive support . . . will be treated as a factor that may cause or help to explain growth
62 Frank Schimmelfennig
or integration . . . not as a part of the definition itself ’ (Lindberg and Scheingold,
1970: 99; see also Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1997: 300). Whereas Lindberg and
Scheingold still postulated ‘actor socialization’ as one of the fundamental mecha-
nisms of growth in ‘Europe’s would-be polity’ (1970: 119), empirical tests of this
expectation – mainly published in the 1970s – proved disappointing (Riggs, 1977;
cf. Peck, 1979; Pollack, 1998). Whereas empirical studies generally found evi-
dence of cognitive change – individuals involved in integrated decision-making
processes became more interested in and knowledgeable about international
organizations – they detected little in the way of positive affective change, especially
if factors like self-selection, national and party affiliation had been controlled
(cf. e.g. Kerr, 1973). Thus, when the main protagonist of neo-functionalism
declared regional integration theory ‘obsolete’ in the mid-1970s (Haas, 1976), this
also applied to the study of ‘socialization’ in particular.
The new theoretical debate in regional integration theory developed at the end
of the 1980s between two theories based on rationalist theories of international
institutions. Both theorize integration as the product of exogenous state or soci-
etal preferences. Whereas intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik, 1998) claims that
societal demands for integration are channelled through state preferences and
intergovernmental bargaining processes and that the integration process remains
firmly under state control, supranationalism (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1997)
argues that integration triggers both transnational lobbying in the supranational
arena and institutional dynamics beyond the control of governments. These
dynamics, however, are attributed to ‘path-dependencies’ rather than socialization.
Societal actors do not change their identities and interests but react to, and further
elaborate, changed institutional opportunities and constraints (Stone Sweet and
Sandholtz, 1997: 310–11). Governments face unanticipated and unintended con-
sequences of integration, which they cannot and do not want to redress because
of institutional ‘lock-in’ (Pierson, 1996).
In International Relations in general, renewed interest in socialization
processes has mainly been the result of the ‘constructivist turn’ in the discipline
(Checkel, 1998). Summarized, social constructivism postulates that the identities
and interests of international actors are endogenous, that is, constructed through
international social interaction and involvement in international institutions. In
such a perspective on international politics, international socialization is a key,
indeed, the most integral process. Correspondingly, it has again become an
important subject of general International Relations theory and research (see e.g.
Finnemore, 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Risse and Sikkink, 1999;
Schimmelfennig, 2000; Checkel, 2001; Johnston, 2001). By contrast, in an intro-
duction to a set of articles originally published as a special issue of the Journal of
European Public Policy in 1999, Christiansen et al. (2001: 11) were surprised to find
that, in EU studies, ‘a research programme similar to that of constructivism in
International Relations has not been developed, even though both the rationale for,
and the building blocks of, such a programme are clearly there’.
In this chapter, I will provide a conceptual and theoretical foundation for the
study of transnational socialization in the European Union. I define socialization,
Transnational socialization 63
distinguish causal mechanisms of socialization, present conditions under which
these mechanisms are likely to operate and be successful and discuss prerequisites
of transnational socialization in particular. Finally, I will present examples of recent
research from the study of transnational socialization in the European Union.
I propose to define international socialization as the process of inducting actors
into adopting the constitutive schemata and rules of an international community
(cf. Risse and Sikkink, 1999: 11; Schimmelfennig, 2000: 111–12, 2003a). This
definition has some important conceptual, methodological and theoretical impli-
cations. First, if socialization is defined as a process, it remains open, in principle,
whether and to what extent actors indeed adopt the constitutive schemata and
rules of the international community. Thus defined, socialization processes may
fail or succeed to varying degrees and it is the task of theories and empirical
research to establish under which conditions one or the other is the case. Second,
the concepts of inducting and adopting are sufficiently open to cover different
theoretical mechanisms of socialization. Despite its close affinity with the
constructivist turn in International Relations, studies of socialization are not con-
fined to processes of persuasion and internalization but include more ‘rationalist’
mechanisms such as bargaining and reinforcement.
Third, the outcome of the socialization process is some degree of rule
adoption. Adoption refers to the extent to which mechanisms internal to the actor
ensure compliance with the community rules. Fully socialized community mem-
bers regard the community rules as their own rules and comply with them with-
out the threat or use of external sanctions. Fourth, socialization refers to the
constitutive schemata and rules of a community, that is, those schemata and rules
that define the collective identity of the community – ‘who we are’ and ‘how we
see and do things’ – and distinguish community members from outsiders (for the
conceptual link between membership and socialization, see Schimmelfennig,
1994: 335–7; Risse and Sikkink, 1999: 11; Johnston, 2001: 494).
For the purpose of this book, the relevant international community is the com-
munity of EU member states and societies. Its identity or constitutive schemata
and rules can be inferred from legal texts such as the preambles and general arti-
cles of the Treaties and the membership criteria of the European, or official
discourse about, for example, the distinctive features of EU member states, the
social purpose of the European Union and its distinctive way of policy-making.
Although the constitutive rules and schemata are always subject to change and
interpretation, the most fundamental and durable elements of the EU identity are
the EU’s commitment to liberal norms such as human rights, democracy, the rule
of law and the market economy, to the peaceful, multilateral and negotiated
settlement of interstate conflict, to the pooling and delegation of sovereignty and
to a consensus-oriented style of decision-making (Schimmelfennig, 2003b: 77–85).
Finally, how should we distinguish ‘transnational socialization’ from other
processes of socialization? First, there are two types of actors, the socialization
agencies and the target actors, that can qualify as transnational. A restrictive
definition would then require both the socialization agencies and the target actors
to be transnational organizations and networks. More loosely defined, socialization
activities pursued by member state governments or intergovernmental organi-
zations would still qualify as ‘transnational socialization’ provided that they directly
target domestic or transnational actors rather than governments. Second, defini-
tions of ‘transnational actors’ may be restricted to societal actors such as interest
groups and parties. However, the standard definitions of transnational relations in
International Relations also include ‘transgovernmental relations’, that is,
autonomous interactions of individual ministries or state agencies such as central
banks across borders. In sum, in line with the idea of transnational socialization in
neo-functionalist regional integration theory, I will define transnational socialization
in the European Union as the process of inducting nationally constituted societal
and governmental actors into adopting the constitutive schemata and rules of the
EU community. These actors may be located inside or outside the European Union.
On the basis of this definition, what are the causal mechanisms of inducting
national actors into adopting international schemata and rules proposed in the
literature? I propose to base the typology of socialization mechanisms on March
and Olsen’s distinction of two fundamental logics of social action: the logic of
consequentiality and the logic of appropriateness (1989: 160–1). According to the
logic of consequentiality, actors act instrumentally. Among different behavioural
options, they choose the one that helps them attain their goals most effectively,
efficiently and maximizes their utility. Appropriate action, however, ‘involves
determining what the situation is, what role is being fulfilled, and what the oblig-
ations of that role in that situation are’ (March and Olsen, 1989: 160). Actors do
not judge alternative courses of action by the consequences for their own utility
but by their conformity to institutional rules or social identities. Two different
socialization mechanisms can be subsumed under each logic: imitation and social
learning under the logic of appropriateness and social influence and bargaining
under the logic of consequentiality (Table 3.1).
Imitation According to the mechanism of imitation, the community rules are

templates that help actors understand and interpret social situations and provide
scripts for the roles that the ‘socializees’ are supposed to play in the international
Table 3.1 Mechanisms of socialization
Logic of appropriateness Logic of consequentiality

Imitation Social learning Social influence Bargaining
Rules Templates, Validity claims Conditions of rewards and punishments

scripts
Instruments Role models, Arguing Social incentives Material incentives
role-playing and disincentives and disincentives
Adoption Habitualization Internalization Adaptation
community. The socialization agency provides a role model and demonstrates
appropriate ways of behaviour, which the socializees learn through dense contacts
and role-playing. Typically, the ‘socializees’ adopt international rules as a result of
unreflective processes of habitualization.
Social learning In social learning, the community rules are validity claims
argumentatively justified by the socialization agencies in international discourses.
Thanks to the ‘power of the better argument’, ‘socializees’ are persuaded by the
legitimacy of the validity claims and change their identity and interests accord-
ingly (Risse, 2000; Checkel, 2001). Thus, social learning implies a reflective
process of normative internalization.
Social influence Social influence is based on the use of social incentives and
disincentives such as image or status ( Johnston, 2001). Social rewards such as
popularity, respect, and a positive image require the adoption of the community
norms. Otherwise, socializees are threatened with social punishments such as
shaming and shunning.
Bargaining By contrast, according to the bargaining mechanism, the incentives
and disincentives are of a material nature. ‘Socializees’ are promised material
rewards (such as financial aid or military protection) if they adopt the community
rules (Ikenberry and Kupchan, 1990). In both consequentialist processes, social-
ization does not aim at the transformation of actor identities or interests. Rather,
rule-conforming behaviour is reinforced over time as a result of stable social or
material incentives and disincentives, until it becomes habitual. Then, the actor is
successfully socialized.
The literature further distinguishes system-structural, process and domestic-

structural conditions under which these mechanisms should operate successfully.
Table 3.2 summarizes the most important conditions.
For the mechanism of social learning or persuasion, Checkel (2001: 562–3) and
Johnston (2001: 498–9) have defined a fairly congruent catalogue of conditions
(cf. also Risse, 2000: 19). According to this catalogue, social learning is most likely to
Table 3.2 Conditions of rule adoption
Logic of appropriateness Logic of consequentiality
Imitation Social learning Social influence Bargaining
System structure Authority (agency), legitimacy (rules), Power (agency)

identification noviceness (target actors) determinacy
(rules)
Process Duration and intensity of Credibility of threats and
contact, deliberation and promises publicity/
non-public setting information symmetry
(social learning)
Domestic structure Resonance Adoption costs,
veto players
lead to rule adoption (a) if the socializee ‘is in a novel and uncertain environment’
(Checkel, 2001: 562), the socialization agency ‘is an authoritative member of the
in-group to which the persuadee belongs or wants to belong’ (authority and iden-
tification; Checkel, 2001: 563), and the rules are legitimate (see Franck, 1990: 38) –
these are the systemic-structural conditions;1 (b) if the process of arguing and
persuasion comes close to a Habermasian ‘ideal speech situation’, that is, follows
principles of deliberation and takes place in a non-coercive, preferably also non-
politicized, private setting, or if the socializee is confronted, over a long period
of time, with new and consistent international information that contradicts its
prior beliefs – these are the process conditions; (c) if the socializee ‘has few prior,
ingrained beliefs that are inconsistent with the persuader’s message’ (Checkel,
2001: 563) or, put positively, the rules of the community resonate well with extant
domestic political culture, rules and traditions (Checkel, 1999: 86–7; Cortell and
Davis, 2000) – these are the domestic-structural conditions.
On closer inspection, however, most of these conditions do not apply exclu-
sively to the social learning mechanism of socialization – and not even to those
mechanisms following a logic of appropriateness. Noviceness and uncertainty, the
duration and intensity of role-playing, the authority of the socialization agency,
the legitimacy of schemata and rules, the absence of ingrained domestic schemata
and rules – all of that is also conducive to effective imitation (cf. DiMaggio and
Powell, 1991: 69–70).
The mechanism of social influence requires similar conditions ( Johnston, 2001:
499; Schimmelfennig, 2003b: 214–15): social rewards and punishments fail to
elicit rule-conforming behaviour, if the ‘socializee’ does not identify itself with the
community of the socialization agency. Highly legitimate and resonant schemata
enhance the shaming effect if violated. Novices in an uncertain social environ-
ment pay particularly great attention to indications of approval and disapproval
from their aspiration group. Social influence, moreover, increases if the signals of
this aspiration group are internally consistent and are sent quickly and frequently
as a result of durable and intense contact between socialization agency and
‘socializee’. In contrast with the social learning mechanism, however, publicity
facilitates social influence because the image gains of public recognition and the
pain of public shaming and shunning exceed that of private social influence and
because publicity strengthens the binding force of rhetorical actor commitments to
the community schemata and rules. Moreover, the threat of social punishments
and the promise of social rewards need to be credible.
The bargaining mechanism, however, generally requires alternative conditions
of rule adoption:2 not the authority of the socialization agency but its bargaining
power; not the legitimacy of schemata and rules but their determinacy as condi-
tions of rewards; not identification with the international community but its mate-
rial attractiveness; not the deliberative quality of the socialization process but the
credibility of the socialization agency’s threats and promises and the information
necessary to monitor the target countries’ compliance with the community rules;
not the domestic resonance of community schemata and rules but the size of the
adoption costs and the number of domestic veto players (Schimmelfennig and
Sedelmeier, 2005: 1–28).
The mechanisms and conditions outlined above generally also apply to
processes of transnational socialization, in which the target actors are societal
groups and organizations and individual bureaucracies and bureaucrats.
According to the ‘social’ mechanisms of socialization, socialization agencies, be
they transnational or intergovernmental, need to have authority, promote legiti-
mate rules, engage in intense, preferably deliberative, contact, send consistent
messages and must be regarded as representatives of an ‘aspiration group’, with
which the socializees identify. With regard to the socializees in transnational
processes, rule adoption will be facilitated if the target actors are ‘novices’ in the
EU environment and if their own ‘cognitive priors’ do not contradict but rather
resonate with the community rules. The consequentialist mechanisms require that
transnational socialization agencies have the resources and bargaining power to
provide sufficiently strong social or material incentives and disincentives for the
societal actors to change their ways of behaviour.
In addition, however, an account of transnational socialization needs to show
why and how, in the setting of the European Union, transnational rather than
international or national socialization should take place. The first question is why
the potential socialization agencies should enter into transnational relations rather
than focus on the states or governments as actors to be socialized? Second, why
should societal actors orient themselves toward the transnational sphere rather
than toward member governments? Third, why should governments permit, and
why are they not able to prevent, the transnational socialization of societal and
individual bureaucratic actors? None of these questions is trivial, since member
state governments are the most powerful actors in EU politics and the nation-state
is the traditional site of political socialization. Thus, successful transnational
socialization not only requires that the general conditions of successful socializa-
tion hold but also that these conditions are particularly favourable at the trans-
national level. The transnational or supranational level does not only have to be
more attractive than the national level for domestic actors but these domestic
actors must also be more attractive, accessible or pliable socializees than gov-
ernments. Finally, governments must either have an interest in transnational
socialization or lack the capability to fully control transnational processes. In the
following, I present some conjectures that can be derived from the general condi-
tions of socialization and/or from the literature on European integration.
Authority and legitimacy Transnational socialization is more likely if domestic

actors regard the European Union as a higher or more legitimate authority than
the national government. This may be the result of, for example, major state fail-
ure, governmental crises or the delegitimatization of authoritarian states, or the
consequence of the supranational organizations’ progressive acquisition of polit-
ical competences. The same may be said about the legitimacy of specific EU rules
in comparison with national rules. Moreover, one would expect the European
Union to bypass the government and seek direct contact with societal actors if the
European Union regards a state as lacking authority and legitimacy.
Identification Transnational socialization is more likely if domestic actors
identify more strongly with the European Union than with their nation-state.
First, it may be the case that, for example, national minorities identify themselves
more strongly with the European Union (or some EU member state where they
are the majority nation) than with the state they live in. Second, identification with
the European Union may be significantly stronger among the society than in the
government of a state. That would explain why the EU privileges transnational
relations and is more successful at transnational socialization.
Deliberation and setting Transnational socialization is more likely to provide a
deliberative and in camera setting. The theory of social learning postulates that
socialization is more successful if the process is non-public and deliberative. To
the extent that transnational relations are less politicized and publicized than
intergovernmental relations, that would explain why supranational socialization
agencies may privilege transnational socialization and why the socialization of
domestic actors acting transnationally may be more successful than the socializa-
tion of governments.
Domestic resonance Transnational socialization is more likely if resonance is
higher within society than at the state level. In this case, the socialization agency
seeks contact with societal actors – and vice versa – to overcome the ‘learning
blockade’ of governmental actors and to bring their influence to bear both ‘from
above’ and ‘from below’.
Structural compatibility and opportunities Transnational socialization is more likely if
the supranational and domestic structures are conducive to transnational relations
and influences. This applies, first, to the socialization agency and the community
to which the socializees are to be socialized. Here, indeed, one could argue that
governance in the European Union is characterized by sectoral network gover-
nance, which empowers and privileges transnational networks of experts and
interest groups (see e.g. Kohler-Koch and Eising, 1999). This mode of governance
should, then, also privilege transnational socialization. At the same time, it should
be attractive for domestic actors to the extent that it gives them a more powerful
role than national modes of governance, allows them to bypass their own gov-
ernments, increases their autonomy in policy-making processes and decreases the
information asymmetry between governments and societal actors. Second, it
applies to the domestic structure of the target countries. Here, it is argued that
society-dominated, pluralist domestic structures are most accessible to trans-
national influences (see e.g. Risse-Kappen, 1995: 25–8). Third, societal actors are
more or less capable of benefiting from political opportunities at the EU level
(Marks and McAdam, 1996). This concerns their resources as well as dominant
group ideologies.
Transaction costs Transnational socialization is more likely if the transaction
costs of transnational coordination are low. The higher the transaction costs
(caused by language barriers, lack of mutual awareness and information, lack of
resources for travel, etc.), the lower the incentives and capacities for domestic
actors or supranational agencies to bypass the government and enter into direct and
sustained contact (cf. Imig and Tarrow, 2001: 17).
Adoption costs Transnational socialization is more likely if societal costs of rule
adoption are lower than governmental costs of rule adoption. According to the
bargaining mechanism, international socialization will not be effective if, for the
government, the costs of rule adoption exceed the benefits. If, however, the cost-
benefit calculation is different for powerful societal actors, that is, the costs of
adoption are lower and/or the opportunity costs of non-adoption are higher, both
supranational agencies and societal actors have an incentive to collaborate to
increase the pressure on the government to adopt the rules. This is close to the
neo-functionalist idea of political spill-over: societal interest groups interested in
the expansion of transnational transactions and in the replacement of national
rules by supranational ones cooperate among each other and with supranational
organizations to increase the scope and level of integration against the interest of
governments to preserve their autonomy.
The preceding definition of socialization, discussion of mechanisms and conditions
and distinction of transnational socialization processes implies four sets of method-
ological issues.
First, how do we know that a given process of social interaction is a socializa-
tion process? How do we distinguish transnational socialization processes from
other transnational processes? Second, what counts as ‘adoption’? Third, how do
we know that a given belief or behaviour results from transnational socialization –
rather than intergovernmental socialization or some other interaction process?
Finally, how can we distinguish different mechanisms of socialization empirically?
First, on the issue of process identification, we have to be careful not to infer
the existence of a socialization process from its successful outcome (adoption of
rules and schemata). Otherwise, we are unable to recognize ‘failed socialization’
and to study the conditions under which socialization leads to rule adoption.
Thus, every effort, whether ultimately successful or not, to induct actors into the
constitutive rules and schemata of the community qualifies as ‘socialization’.
On the other hand, we have to be careful not to limit socialization processes to
the intended and purposive acts by socialization agencies. Rule adoption may be
the unintended, spontaneous outcome of an interaction in which neither side
planned to teach or learn the community rules. In such interaction processes,
however, it is nearly impossible to identify a socialization process independently of
its outcome. Rather, ‘failed socialization’ only reveals itself by comparison – if we
study two similar processes of interaction, one results in the adoption of schemata
and rules and the other does not.
Second, how do we determine whether an actor has adopted the constitutive
schemata and rules of the EU community? The literature generally distinguishes
three conceptions of normative impact: the formal, the behavioural and the
communicative (or cognitive) conception (cf. Hasenclever et al., 1997: 14–21;
Raymond, 1997: 217–18; Cortell and Davis, 2000: 70–1). According to the
formal conception, adoption will be seen in the transfer of community schemata
and rules to national constitutions and laws or in the establishment of formal domes-
tic organizations and procedures that correspond to and help to enforce them.
According to the behavioural conception, the socialization effects are measured
by the extent to which the relevant behaviour of the targeted actors corresponds
to the behaviour stipulated by the community schemata and rules. By contrast,
according to the communicative conception of norms, socialization will primar-
ily affect the communication or discourse among domestic actors. In this case,
socialization will have been successful if actors regularly refer to the community
schemata and rules when they justify their political positions and proposals.
Third, on the issue of causal relevance, a double counterfactual needs to be
considered. To show that a given behaviour or belief is the effect of EU social-
ization, researchers not only have to make a plausible case that, in the absence of
EU socialization, the behaviour or belief would most likely have been different,
but they also have to demonstrate that compliance with EU schemata and rules
was subsequently generated as a result of adoption, that is, by mechanisms
internal to the actor and not externally induced. The study of transnational
socialization requires one extra step. It must focus on the origins and effects of the
beliefs and practices of societal and individual governmental actors.
Finally, to establish the mechanism of socialization, we need to go beyond the
analysis of mere correlations between EU rules and actor behaviour and engage
in theoretically informed process-tracing analysis. We need to specify, for
each mechanism, which features of the socialization process it entails and then
check the evidence on the process for features typically associated with a specific
socialization mechanism.
In the following brief survey, I will sort the literature by the three relevant target
groups of European transnational socialization: publics, elites and non-member
societies. The neo-functionalist ‘politicization’ hypothesis of integration
(Schmitter, 1969: 165–6) claimed that ‘national actors find themselves gradually
embroiled in ever more salient or controversial areas of policy-making’, as the
scope and level of integration increases. ‘Politicization . . . refers initially to a
process whereby the controversiality of joint decision-making goes up. This in turn
is likely to lead to a widening of the audience or clientele interested and active in inte-
gration. Somewhere along the line a manifest redefinition of mutual objectives will prob-
ably occur’, eventually resulting in ‘a shift in actor expectations and loyalty toward the
new regional center’ (Schmitter, 1969: 166). However, neo-functionalism con-
ceived European integration mainly as an elite process involving interest groups
and bureaucrats rather than the larger public. Socialization was thought to
change the political attitudes and habits of those directly involved in and affected
by, the integration process (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970: 119). Beyond the
elites, integration appeared to require and elicit a mere ‘permissive consensus’:
the general acceptance of the European Union as ‘part of the political landscape’
and the absence of strong antipathies to the Community and its organizations –
not a positive transfer of loyalty, a change in identity or the adoption of pro-
integration beliefs and practices (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970: 41, 62).
In addition, neo-functionalists expected transnational socialization to occur not
only as a result of ‘political spill-over’ from below but also of ‘cultivated spill-over’
from above. The supranational organizations of the European Union were
expected to build and support transnational coordination and cooperation in
order to mobilize support for further integration against reluctant member states.
The survey is not intended as a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art.
Rather, I present the major fields of recent research and some exemplary findings
and controversies and seek to detect, to the extent possible, general patterns and
results.
Regarding publics, the weakness of political community and the absence of
a European demos are widely accepted fundamental facts about European inte-
gration in the normative debate about the democratic deficit of the European
Union. Rather, the issues are whether these facts undermine the legitimacy of the
Union and its further development and whether or how the European Union
could be democratized in the absence of a strong collective identity (for an
overview of the debate see Schimmelfennig, 1996; Wolf, 2000: 153–211). For the
study of transnational socialization, then, the challenge is to find out whether and
under what circumstances, these assumed fundamentals are likely to change.
Recent research has focused on three sets of questions: first, do we have evidence
of a growing European identity in member societies – and, if so, how do
we explain growth? Second, do we have evidence of an emerging European
public sphere – a less demanding form of integration and community at the
societal level? Finally, are political protest activities shifting from the national to
the European level?
In two recent summaries of ‘what we know’ about European identity, Risse
(2003, 2004) claims that it is now generally accepted that individuals hold multiple
social identities. A strong identification with the nation-state does not necessarily
exclude identification with Europe. First, however, among those individuals who
identify with Europe, national identity is generally stronger than European iden-
tity. Second, people attach different meanings to the ‘Europe’ with which they
identify. And third, it is not at all clear that identification with Europe is an effect
of transnational socialization. Rather, the meaning that people attach to ‘Europe’
appears to follow entrenched schemata of national political culture and the vari-
ation in identification with Europe across the member states, that is, between
more Euro-sceptic and more Euro-friendly publics, reflects an enduring pattern
with little change over time.3
As for change, Risse (2004) reports that during the 1990s, ‘the number of those
who felt only attachment to their nation-state declined by almost twenty percent
across the EU 15, while the percentage of those who perceived some sense
of belonging to their nation-state and to Europe increased by about the same
number’. To explain this development, Risse refers to the socio-psychological
concept of ‘entitativity’. The more an organization or community is perceived to
be ‘real’ and tangible, the more directly it affects the daily lives of people and the
more it represents common values and a common destiny, the more likely a sense
of belonging to this entity will develop.4 Arguably, the entitativity of the European
Union has increased and continues to increase with the introduction of the single
market, Schengen, and the Euro.
A second strand of research studies the emergence of a European public
sphere, understood as the sphere in which EU issues and institutions are debated.
In contrast to the public opinion surveys used in the study of citizens’ identifica-
tion with Europe, research on a European public sphere typically analyzes media
reporting (see Risse and Van de Steeg, 2003). Studies both measure the relative
attention national media pays to European issues in comparison with domestic
issues and the degree of similarity in media reporting with regard to timing, inten-
sity and meaning structures across member state countries. The findings partly
mirror those on identity: while domestic issues clearly dominate media reporting,
the relative frequency of reporting on ‘Europe’ is on the rise. Moreover, the
dominant European themes and their framing are rather similar across countries.
Klaus Eder and Hans Jörg Trenz characterize the European public sphere
as dominated by short-lived and partial publics constituted by specific political
issues and events (see e.g. Trenz, 2002; Eder, 2003). Moreover, they see these
publics as orchestrated ‘top-down’ to generate support for European organiza-
tions rather than as an autonomous sphere of reflection and criticism of these
organizations. In its ‘routine mode’, EU network governance relies on relatively
closed sectoral elite publics largely detached from mass media reporting and
scrutiny (Trenz, 2002: 34–41). However, European organizations, in particular
the Commission, are increasingly in need of creating symbolic integration and
legitimacy beyond technocratic efficiency and issue-specific networks because of
their growing competencies and the waning permissive consensus (Trenz, 2002:
182; Eder, 2003: 95–6, 99). But in the absence of a European demos with real
collective power, the ‘European public’ has to be mobilized ad hoc by scandalizing
individual political issues and cannot be sustained beyond the life cycle of the
scandal or campaign (Trenz, 2002: 182; Eder, 2003: 104–8).
Finally, the limits of a European public sphere can also be seen in the elections
to the European Parliament (EP). They lack truly European issues, debates and
candidates. Voters not only orient their voting behaviour towards domestic issues
and conflicts but also abstain in greater numbers than in national elections or use
their vote as a cheap protest vote. Thus, the characterization of EP elections as
secondary national by-elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980) still holds.
In their edited volume on ‘Contentious Europeans’, Doug Imig and Sidney
Tarrow (2001) start from the basically neo-functionalist proposition that ‘if
Europe is becoming a polity . . . sooner or later ordinary citizens will turn their
claims and their forms of contentious politics beyond their borders and towards
this new level of governance’ (2001: 7). As the focus of policy-making moves from
national to supranational institutions, this will lead societal actors to ‘shift their
claims from the national to the European level’, ‘model their repertoires of action
around the forms of collective action that work best at that level’ and form
transnational networks and common identities across national boundaries.
The general finding of the Imig and Tarrow volume is, however, that
whereas ‘Europeans are increasingly protesting against EU policies’, they do
so ‘on domestic soil and not directly against the institutions that produce them’
(2001: 3). The general pattern is one of what they call ‘domestication’. ‘Domestic
groups target national or subnational agents in response to their claims against the
European Union’ (2001: 18). The explanation they advance for this pattern is based
on a rationalist, transaction-cost argument. For societal actors – and this is especially
true for grass-roots social movements – targeting the European Union involves sub-
stantial transaction costs. They are unfamiliar with the EU’s institutional structure
and workings; they do not know who is responsible for their grievances; Brussels
is distant and they might not know the language. Instead, ‘claims are more likely
to be directed to where people possess dense social networks, organizational
resources and visible political opportunities’ (2001: 17; cf. Tarrow, 2001: 237).
If low entitativity and high transaction costs are central factors in the explanation
of the low (if rising) degree of European identity and European activities of ordi-
nary citizens and social movements, one would expect the orientation towards
Europe to be significantly stronger among the social and political elites who
possess not only the knowledge and the other organizational resources to act suc-
cessfully at the European level but also are more directly affected by EU policy-
making and legislation than ordinary citizens. Indeed, identification with Europe
is considerably stronger among elites than general publics (Risse, 2004). Interest
group representation and activities have strongly grown at the EU level in
response to the increasing importance of EU policy-making and the high accessi-
bility of EU institutions to interest group lobbying and the protest activities
against the European Union by farmers and other professional interest groups
affected by EU subsidies (or EU prohibition of subsidies) exceed those of the new
social movements by far (Imig and Tarrow, 2003: 141). As in the case of the
European public sphere, interest group activity at the EU level is also assumed to
be the result of ‘cultivated spill-over’. It has been in the interest of the European
Commission to cultivate interest group representation and involvement at the EU
level to obtain information, to increase pressure on the member governments and
support its legitimacy in the EU system and vis-à-vis the European citizens (see
Mazey and Richardson, 2001). The Commission has supported the creation of
EU-wide federations of interest groups and has been extremely accessible to
them. Imig and Tarrow add that the activities and influence of lobbyists at the EU
level do not derive from their backing by social movements but from the resources
of the Commission and its interest in creating legitimacy for its role and policies
(Imig and Tarrow, 2003: 143). Thus, in contrast to social movements and grass-
roots contention, ‘domestication’ is not the dominant pattern in the sphere of
interest group politics. But what evidence is there of transnational socialization, the
change of interest group schemata and practices not only at the European level
but also in domestic politics?
Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson point out that the European Union is a
‘multi-venue system’ providing interest groups with high incentives to go ‘venue-
shopping’ implying that they will try to influence EU policy-making wherever
they have the opportunity and consider it instrumental to do so – and that it will
be difficult for the Commission and other supranational organizations to turn
them into reliable pro-integration agents (2001: 72–3). However, they also note
some indications of transnational socialization. First, they point to some general
rules of the game, which have developed from successful tactics and have become
embedded as norms to which interest groups adhere in EU lobbying. Among
these are the need to develop a European rather than national problem-solving
perspective, to view European policy as an opportunity, rather than a threat, to
seek consensus and present technical arguments based on reliable data (2001: 83).
Second, they suggest that the process of consultation leads to mutual preference
changes and the building of trust among the participants (2001: 91).
Researchers are generally more sceptical about the eventual impact of these
processes on EU policy outcomes and their feedback into domestic beliefs and
practices. Justin Greenwood (2003) emphasizes the substantial variation of interest
group influence on EU integration and policy integration – depending, for
instance, on the technicality of the issue or the concentration of expertise with
interest groups. However, he argues that the weak authority of the EU system itself,
its fragmentation and dispersal of power, on the one hand and the weak autonomy
of EU interest organizations, on the other, limit the power of interest groups in the
European Union in general. What is more, they have failed to an even greater
extent to provide a link between supranational organizations and individual citi-
zens, to socialize them and strengthen their ‘European’ loyalties (see also Warleigh,
2001). Finally, Rainer Eising and Beate Kohler-Koch point out that even in policy
fields with strong Community competence, public–private interaction at the
national level has not decreased but conversely become more intense (2003).
Many studies concur in the finding that national political elites acting at the
European level develop multiple-role identities (see Risse 2004 for an overview).
Morten Egeberg (1999, 2002) and Jarle Trondal (2002) argue that national
bureaucrats involved in Commission and Council committees develop new role
conceptions – but their primary allegiance remains with their state. Jeffrey Lewis
describes how officials at the Coreper (the Committee of Permanent Representatives)
are socialized into integrative habits and develop a ‘janus-faced’ role identity as
both national representatives and European problem-solvers (2002). The social-
ization mechanism in these studies is much less clear. The evidence may be read
as enduring identity change but also as strategic adaptation of elites to new
contexts of interaction in order to increase their autonomy and pursue their
objectives efficiently.
Traditionally, research on transnational socialization in the context of
European integration has focused on groups and elites in the member states.
However, the European Union also disseminates its constitutive schemata and
rules beyond its legal borders. This is most obviously the case with candidate
states or with non-member countries that are planning to become candidates for
membership. As a fundamental precondition, the European Union requires
European non-member states to adopt the constitutive liberal-democratic norms
on which its identity is based. Only after states have institutionalized these norms
does the European Union enter into accession negotiations with candidate countries,
during which the focus is on the transposition of the more specific EU rules of the
acquis communautaire. In recent years, a growing body of literature on the
international socialization of the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs)
to the European Union has emerged (see e.g. Schimmelfennig, 2000; Pridham, 2001;
Vachudova, 2001; Zielonka and Pravda, 2001; Kelley, 2002; Linden, 2002;
Schimmelfennig et al., 2003). What are the relevant mechanisms and conditions of
socialization in this context? And how important is transnational socialization?
Studies of the EU impact on the CEECs generally agree that the dominant
socialization strategy of the European Union is ‘democratic conditionality’. It
offers technical and financial assistance and expanding institutional ties to the
CEECs – on the condition that they fulfil the liberal-democratic standards set by
the European Union. Democratic conditionality thus works through an incentive-
based bargaining mechanism of socialization. These studies also confirm many
of the conditions under which the bargaining mechanism is assumed to lead to
rule adoption. First, the systemic-structural conditions for the bargaining mecha-
nism to work are fulfilled in principle because of the strong asymmetry in inter-
dependence and power between the European Union and the CEECs (see
Schimmelfennig, 2000: 124–5; Moravcsik and Vachudova, 2003). A second
prerequisite of successful democratic conditionality is the credibility of the EU
threats (to withhold or withdraw assistance and block the way to membership)
and promises (of assistance or membership). The importance of this condition
was demonstrated in the cases of Slovakia (where the refusal of the European
Union to open accession negotiations with the authoritarian Mečiar government
helped to bring about a change in government) and Turkey (where the European
Union’s credible offer of a membership perspective in 1999 spurred unprece-
dented democratic and human rights reforms; see Schimmelfennig et al., 2003).
However, even high asymmetry and credibility did not bring about domestic
change if domestic adoption costs exceeded the benefits of membership for the
CEE governments – especially for the authoritarian, nationalist, and/or rent-
seeking elites, which have come to power in several CEECs after the downfall of
communism (Vachudova, 2001; Kelley, 2002; Schimmelfennig et al., 2003).
To what extent has this process been a process of transnational socialization
and how much did transnational socialization matter for the adoption of EU rules
in the candidate countries? This is still a controversial issue which calls for further
research paying close attention to the methodological problems of establish-
ing transnational socialization effects. There is no question that transnational
socialization processes have been going on since the onset of the democratic
transitions – and even before (Thomas, 1999). International organizations and
non-governmental consultancies and foundations (such as the German party
foundations and the Soros Foundation) have been actively involved in the liberal-
democratic consolidation of the CEECs ‘from below’; and, as Dorota Dakowska
also shows in Chapter 7 of this volume, the European party federations have
established links with the newly founded political parties in the CEECs. Rather
the question is whether EU ties to, and influence on, societal actors have been a
necessary and sufficient condition of the socialization of these countries to the
Western community of states.
One group of countries engaged in ‘anticipatory socialization’ early on
(cf. Haggard et al., 1993). For instance, in the Central European countries of the
Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, new elites committed to liberal democ-
racy supported by societies with a strong desire to ‘return to Europe’ introduced
basic liberal democratic norms immediately after the fall of the communist
regimes and it is plausible to assume that they would have stayed course even
without explicit socialization efforts by the European Union. What about the
more problematic countries in which reform-adverse, authoritarian, and/or
nationalist forces remained in, or came to, power in the aftermath of regime
change? Milada Vachudova (2001: 28–9) argues that the European Union played
a pivotal role in the replacement of reform-adverse governments by supporting
oppositions and influencing the electorate. By contrast, in the analysis of
Schimmelfennig et al. (2003: 499), electorates in the CEECs have been more
concerned with personal security and welfare than with their government’s
compliance with EU norms. Changes in government have been caused by
societal dissatisfaction with the hardships of economic change, economic mis-
management by incumbent governments and corruption scandals, and this
dissatisfaction has turned against reform-adverse and reform-friendly govern-
ments alike. Rather than being the effect of transnational socialization, the
election of reform-friendly parties has provided an opening for improved com-
pliance which, in turn, led to higher financial assistance and stronger institu-
tional ties with the European Union. These benefits and ties created ‘lock-in’
effects, which persisted even when, as in Romania or Croatia, the old, previously
reform-adverse parties returned to power. Finally, in his case study of trans-
national party linkages in Slovakia, Geoffrey Pridham comes to the conclusion
that ‘the domestic impact of transnational linkages is normally marginal as those
tend to enjoy little public resonance’ (1999: 1236). This finding also applies to
the later process of Eastern enlargement: societal actors have played a marginal
role – both on the part of the European Union (Sedelmeier and Wallace, 2000)
and in the CEECs. EU rule transfer has been organized as a ‘top-down’ inter-
governmental process between the European Commission and the candidate
state governments. Domestic actors in the CEECs as well as EU-CEE trans-
national networks have been weak and largely irrelevant in the accession process
(cf. e.g. Dimitrova, 2002; Sissenich, 2002).
Conclusion
The study of transnational socialization in Europe is clearly on the rise again,
after having become ‘obsolete’ together with the neo-functionalist theory of
European integration in the mid-1970s. It still draws on neo-functionalist proposi-
tions of political and cultivated spill over but is also theoretically informed by the
variety of ‘institutionalisms’ in International Relations and Comparative Politics.
In this chapter, I have discussed conceptual and methodological issues in the
study of socialization and summarized the major theoretical mechanisms and
conditions of socialization in the literature.
Whereas we possess a fairly well developed theoretical toolbox for the study of
transnational socialization in Europe, empirical research using it has only recently
taken off. As all those contributing to the research in this field repeatedly empha-
size, it is still in its infancy, producing sketchy and tentative findings (see e.g. Imig
and Tarrow, 2003: 144; Risse and Van de Steeg, 2003; Risse, 2004). Most studies
focus on finding descriptive evidence on whether, or to what extent, there is adop-
tion of European identities, values and norms among member and candidate
societies. This is no minor feat given the methodological problems of ascertaining
socialization effects and the fact that identity and normative change is not an
‘either/or’ phenomenon. It also presents us with interesting patterns and puzzles
in need of explanation. From the descriptive evidence gathered in recent studies,
the general pattern seems to consist in four major facts and tendencies.
First, the national context is still the site of primary political socialization. In
general, EU citizens, political activists, interest group representatives and bureau-
crats first go through processes of national political socialization by national
schools, mass media, social organizations and bureaucracies. Second, European
transnational socialization adds a further layer to, rather than replace, beliefs and
practices learned in the domestic context. As the examples of current research
have shown, European identities develop alongside national identities; a
European public sphere emerges in the context of national media; protest activi-
ties triggered by EU policies are predominantly targeted at national governments;
interest group activities at the European level increase together with domestic
activities; government officials involved in European activities develop supple-
mentary allegiances to European organizations alongside their loyalties to national
governments; transition to democracy and market economies in the candidate
countries goes hand in hand with ‘Europeanization’.
Third, however, national socialization still matters most overall. National
identities are stronger than European identities; the meanings of Europe are
shaped by national political culture; domestic issues dominate the public spheres;
interest group and social movement activities are predominantly targeted at
domestic actors; the primary allegiances of national bureaucrats involved in EU
policy-making is to the nation-state and national government; the success of the
European socialization of candidate countries depends most strongly on domestic
adoption costs and resonance. Finally, whereas this is true overall, there is a marked
difference between the elites and the ordinary citizens. Elites have a stronger
European identity, have oriented their perceptions and activities more strongly
beyond national borders, and are, on an average, more integration-friendly.
When it comes to explaining these patterns as well as the specific socialization
processes, the literature is even less homogeneous and developed (cf. Risse, 2004).
The main agreement appears to be that the effects of European transnational
socialization are likely to increase with the ‘entitativity’ of the European Union,
that is, the more it becomes a tangible and persisting ‘reality’ with immediate and
direct relevance for, and impact on, the daily lives and activities of individuals
and organizations. This, however, mainly seems to be a necessary condition of
effective transnational socialization. The same degree of relevance and impact
may still trigger divergent reactions ranging from adoption to rejection.5
Moreover, it is not clear what the dominant logic or mechanism of socialization
is – once the European Union has become relevant. Many studies do not explic-
itly address or answer this question (see e.g. Egeberg, 2002 and Trondal, 2002 on
the socialization of bureaucrats). Sometimes the evidence can be read both ways
(see Zürn, 2003). For instance, is the adoption of ‘integrative habits’ by govern-
ment officials in the Coreper (Lewis, 2002) evidence of an imitation or persuasion
process or is it the effect of group pressure or ‘simple learning’: that one has to
adapt to the rules of the game in order to act successfully in the EU context?
Then again, the mechanisms seem to differ by context or target group. Whereas
political conditionality vis-à-vis the candidate states and the cultivation of
transnational activities by the Commission follow a logic of consequentiality, the
instrumental dimension of socialization becomes less clear the more we get down
to the attitudes of ordinary citizens at the grass roots.
Thus, besides improving and refining the descriptive evidence on transnational
socialization in the European Union, future research needs to pay particular
attention to the analysis of causal mechanisms and conditions. It has been the
purpose of this chapter to provide conceptual, theoretical and methodological
foundations for this research and to point out the major empirical issues to which
this research could be applied.
Notes
1 Note, however, that the condition of ‘identification’ is only useful if ‘identity’ is not
also the dependent variable of international socialization. Otherwise, it will lead to
tautological reasoning.
2 However, Moravcsik points out that Checkel’s conditions of social learning correspond
to rationalist theories of Bayesian learning and signalling (Checkel and Moravcsik, 2001:
232–4).
3 Jachtenfuchs et al. (1998) as well as Marcussen et al. (1999) show that meanings of Europe
both vary significantly across countries and have not changed significantly over time.
According to Risse (2004), the findings of the entire research volume on EU-induced
identity change are not conclusive.
4 This concept is similar to the condition of ‘duration and intensity of contact’ in
Table 3.2.
5 For a scrutiny of the contact hypothesis and an argument that the duration and intensity
of contact alone do not explain socialization, see Beyers (2002).
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4 Transnational business
Power structures in Europe’s
political economy
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn
Transnationalization can be seen as an important aspect of the European

integration process, with the evolving European Union polity being supported by
a particularly dense network of transnational social relations, that is, by a transna-
tional civil society. Arguably, within this society, transnational business is amongst
the most prominent of transnational actors. Within political science debates, the
focus on the role of transnational society is associated with a long theoretical
tradition going back to neo-functionalism, whereas, on the opposite end of the
‘classical debate’ on European integration, intergovernmentalists have been much
more sceptical and have disputed the role of transnational actors regarding the
dynamics of European integration. In fact, the dispute has focussed in particular
on the alleged role of transnational business when at the end of the 1980s,
explanations were sought for the unexpected revival of the integration process
with the single market programme (cf. Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989; Moravcsik,
1991, 1998). With the focus of contemporary studies of the European Union
(EU) having largely shifted to the analysis of policy-making and governance, the
question about the role of such actors has not lost its pertinence. Indeed, in
analysing socio-economic policy-making in particular, much research has been
conducted regarding the role of lobbying, EU-level interest intermediation, policy
networks, etc., that is, on the role of private (non-state) actors in EU governance.
Amongst these actors, the focus is more often than not on business groups. Within
the domain of socio-economic actors, organized labour is generally acknowl-
edged to be rather weak at the European level and certainly no match for the
economic, organizational and political power of transnational business, as Patrick
Pasture also shows in his chapter in this book.
How, then, to conceptualize this apparently key transnational actor? In fact,
how to conceptualize both its transnationality and its actorness and with regard
to the latter, how to understand its possible role in the politics of European
integration and of EU policy-making? And how can we actually study these
phenomena empirically? And in what ways can such a study of transnational
business contribute to our understanding of transnationalism in the emerging
European political space? It is these questions that will concern us in this chapter,
which is organized into three sections. The first and central one, critically reviews
84 Bastiaan van Apeldoorn
the major theoretical perspectives on the role of transnational business in general,
and in relation to European integration in particular, as they have developed
within political science, especially in the fields of International Relations and
International Political Economy (IPE). The next section then discusses some of
the meta-theoretical and methodological issues involved in doing research on
European transnational business, while the third section examines some examples
of research in this area. The chapter ends with some brief conclusions and a
research agenda.
The central question of this chapter is how to conceptualize the phenomenon of
transnational business as an actor in European integration and EU politics
and how different conceptualizations may or may not contribute to our general
understanding of transnationalism in the European Union. Here my review of
contending theoretical perspectives will be particularly informed by the following
four considerations. First, if a theoretical approach is to meet the goal of con-
tributing to an understanding of European transnationalism in general, it should
at least have some theorization of ‘the transnational’, that is, it should inform us
what it consists of and how we can go about understanding and/or explaining it.
What are transnational relations and how do they relate to the more familiar
international relations? What is specific about ‘the transnational’, how might we
account for its emergence and how can we understand its implications for study-
ing diverse social and political phenomena?
Second, and in relation to the first point, no matter how we define ‘the transna-
tional’, it should not be conceived in terms of a level, that is, as somehow a level
in addition to, for example, the national, European or global levels, or in fact be
seen as synonymous with either of the latter two. Rather, I would suggest that the
whole language of levels (common in International Relations discourse) is missing
the fundamental point about transnationalism, which is that it precisely refers to
social phenomena that link different levels. Transnationalism is hence by defini-
tion a multi-level phenomenon, linking actors and processes across territorial
boundaries and at the same time possibly also becoming somewhat detached
from those territories (see also Anderson, 2002: 16; van Apeldoorn, 2004a).
Transnationalism might be confined to a particular region (e.g. Europe) or it
might be global in scope. It is important that transnational relations should not be
seen as replacing international relations but rather existing alongside it and as a
matter of fact necessarily so as the latter is by definition a precondition for the
former. Moreover, historically the two have evolved together especially since the
modern state system became embedded within a world market constituting
transnational economic as well as political, cultural, links.
Third, as transnational business is conceived as an actor, the question is raised
how this particular actor might relate to any particular structures. The relation-
ship between agency and structure is one of the key debates in social theory.
Suffice to say here that all theories take at least an implicit position with regard to
Transnational business 85
this meta-theoretical question. I will note that in fact quite a few theoretical
approaches to transnational relations, including those focusing on transnational
socio-economic actors such as business, are rather actor-centred, often to the
extent of ignoring structures – or viewing them as mere constraints on the ratio-
nal behaviour of otherwise autonomous actors. The problem with talking about
actors without referring to any structures, however, is that the actors themselves –
their emergence, their identities and interests – are left unexplained (cf. Wendt,
1987: 343). In the case of transnational business as an actor this means that we
have no theoretical understanding of what accounts for the rise of this actor and
for what, according to some, must be seen as its growing political power. Nor will
we find it easy to account for any process of structural change in which, for
instance, the agency of transnational business itself might be involved. We cannot
grasp either how actors are constituted by structures nor how they, at the same
time through their agency, reproduce or transform those structures (on the latter
notion see Bhaskar, 1979; see also Wendt, 1987).
Fourth, and finally, as our focus is on transnationalism in the European Union,
we need to answer the question as to what is specific about transnational relations
in an EU context, and, conversely, to which extent we should relate processes of
European transnationalization to wider, global processes rather than view it as a
sui generis phenomenon. In fact, I will argue later, that many approaches to the
study of transnational business, or rather of transnational private interests in the
European Union in general, seem to imply that processes of transnationalization
stop at the borders of the European Union, from both sides, and that transna-
tional actors can be fully understood within the context of the European polity,
which is hence taken in isolation from the rest of the world. Although there might
very well be transnational phenomena and actors that are restricted to a specific
region such as Europe, or even just the European Union, those associated with
transnational business definitely are not. We might thus miss how transnational
business, as an actor, is inextricably bound up with global structures and related
processes. This kind of EU-centrism, moreover, may also end up in reproducing
at the European/EU level the state-centrism that transnationalist approaches are
supposed to transcend.
With these four points in mind, let us now review some major theoretical
perspectives as relevant for the study of the role transnational business in
European integration. I will start by looking at general approaches within main-
stream International Relations/IPE to the phenomenon of transnational rela-
tions and then move on to examine the much more specific established theories
of European integration and what could be called theories of European gover-
nance and European public policy. All of these theoretical perspectives in fact
share more or less the same liberal/pluralist premises in their view of ‘transna-
tional’ society. I argue that this pluralist approach can be criticized for failing to
understand the underlying social structures that generate structural inequalities of
power between different groups – a point that is particularly relevant when study-
ing the power of transnational business. For the purposes of this chapter, however,
the most serious limitation of much of the established conceptualizations of the
role of transnational business (and transnational actors generally) within the
European Union is the tendency toward EU-centrism, earlier noted. This section
will therefore be concluded by considering an alternative approach to transna-
tional relations – one deriving from a historical materialist perspective within IPE,
that in principle, might be seen as seeking to transcend some of these limits. This
approach, here labelled neo-Gramscian transnationalism, however, in turn may
be criticized for not taking the European Union seriously enough or at the least
needing to further theorize the effects of EU governance structures and processes
on European transnational actors.
Transnational relations and transnational business

in International Relations discourse
In mainstream International Relations discourse transnational relations were first
‘discovered’ in the 1970s, with Transnational Corporations (TNCs) inter alia being
seen as important non-state actors in what became an emergent ‘pluralist’ con-
ception of world politics (Keohane and Nye, 1972). However, before this new per-
spective could be further developed and to bear more fruit empirically, the
state-centric orthodoxy was firmly re-established within the American
International Relations community as it turned to neo-realism (Waltz, 1979) and
an almost equally state-centric neo-liberalism (Keohane, 1984). The study of
TNCs was subsequently relegated to IPE – seen by the dominant neo-realists as
a somewhat separate sub-discipline of International Relations – but without
much being done in terms of theory development. Within the mainstream IPE,
moreover, the attempt to ‘bring the firm back in’ (Eden, 1991; see also Stopford
and Strange, 1991; Strange, 1991, 1996) has often tended to take transnational
actors such as TNCs as external to national societies rather than as part of a
transnationalization of formerly national state–society relations, hence, in my
view, missing the essence of ‘transnationality’. Focusing on ‘the tension between
states and multinationals’ (Eden, 1991: 197, my emphasis), or their opposing inter-
ests in a globally competitive environment (Stopford and Strange, 1991), such a
framework tends to see the TNC more as an ‘appropriate counterpoint’ (Eden,
1991: 197) to the state, influencing it from the ‘outside’. This way one misses how,
as a transnational actor, TNCs influence states from the ‘inside’ as well.1
Within mainstream International Relations theory, meanwhile, it was only in
1995 (Risse-Kappen, 1995) that an attempt was made to ‘bring transnational rela-
tions back in’. Not unlike the earlier but less refined conceptualization of
Keohane and Nye, the proposed framework of Risse-Kappen is in fact more a
theory about transnational actors than about transnational relations in the sense
of the structures by virtue of which these actors may be said to exist. This actor-
centredness (see also Risse, 2002) may be seen to reveal a rather individualist
conception of transnational relations, in which transnational actors are taken
as autonomous entities rather than as embedded in, and indeed constituted by,
transnational structures (even concurrently also constitutive of those structures).
Thus, whereas for instance Risse-Kappen et al. (Risse-Kappen, 1995a) very usefully
focus on domestic structures as ‘intervening variables’ constraining and enabling
the agency of transnational actors, and determining their success in influencing
state policies (see the editor’s introduction, Risse-Kappen, 1995b), their concep-
tion of structures beyond national state-society complexes remains limited to a
focus on international institutions (such as international organizations, interna-
tional regimes, etc.). There is thus no conceptualization of for instance global and
transnational (economic) structures engendering particular forms of transnational
agency. In this liberal perspective, the rising significance of transnational relations
within contemporary world politics remains unexplained, as are the interests of
transnational actors.
Maybe in line with its neglect of global (economic) structures, most of the empir-
ical work that has come out of this agenda has, moreover, focussed on the role of
so-called ‘principled’ NGOs rather than on socio-economic actors such as transna-
tional business (see e.g. Risse et al., 1999). In fact, this particular transnationalist
agenda has merged with, or one might say, been overtaken by, the emerging liberal
constructivist research agenda within the International Relations, with a concern
with ‘constructivist issues’ dominating the search for an understanding of the
transnational. In sum, in mainstream International Relations, then, and in spite of
all the globalization literature, the concept of transnationalism remains theoretically
underdeveloped. The contribution to understanding the role of transnational busi-
ness in European integration from this perspective is thus limited. Let us therefore
now turn to some theoretical perspectives more explicitly oriented toward the
European Union.
‘Classical’ integration theory: the

neo-functionalist legacy
Although in part deriving its concepts from general International Relations
theory, the first and most classical integration theory has rather developed outside
the mainstream of the International Relations discipline, and, moreover, has
implicitly come to view, as Andrew Moravcsik has observed (1993: 474), the
development of the later European Union as a sui generis phenomenon to which
apparently, general theories of international politics, could not be applied. Rather
than being rooted in an International Relations discourse, maintaining a strict
separation between domestic and international (or rather, interstate) politics,
neo-functionalism was heavily steeped in pluralist political science, giving, in the
words of one of the theory’s leading proponents, a ‘central place to phenomena
of group conflict, to the beliefs, attitudes, and ideologies of groups participating
in the process of policy formation’ (Lindberg, 1963: 9).
In contrast, to realist International Relations which saw the state as the
container of national society, as well as autonomous from that society in exercising
its external sovereignty, neo-functionalism was a society-centred approach that cru-
cially, saw society – and thus group conflict – as potentially overflowing national
borders and thus establishing transnational linkages embedding states and inter-
state relations. It was for Western Europe that this process was seen as concomitant
to a gradual formation of a new supranational political community superseding
the nation-state (see Haas, 1958). A precondition for such a political community,
Ernst Haas stressed, was the development of a ‘transnational ideology’ (Haas: 5,
passim) which would hold interest groups together at the new supranational level in
spite of their otherwise opposing ideologies. Interest groups were at the same time
also – together with political parties – the actors through which this transnational
ideology would come about as, via the process of integration, their loyalties would
shift to the new European central political institutions (Haas, 1958; see also the
Chapter 3 by Frank Schimmelfennig, this volume). Thus, what was called political
spill-over, that is, the process whereby private mostly socio-economic actors would
come to support the integration process by organizing their interests at the new
supranational level, was seen as a critical element of the self-expanding logic of
European integration. As Haas put it: ‘group pressure will spill over into the federal
sphere and thereby add to the integrative impulse’ (Haas, 1968: xxxiii).
In that sense, neo-functionalism does provide us with some kind of theory of
European transnational relations but in my view, not a very satisfactory one.
Viewing European transnationalism as a sui generis phenomenon, the rise of
European transnational actors is fully explained in terms of the integration
process itself, thus presenting the European Union as a self-contained entity, act-
ing as a container of self-engendered transnational social forces and a priori
excluding the possibility of these in fact being embedded within wider, global
structures of transnationalization. Neo-functionalism in the end tends to equate
transnationalism with European supranationalism, that is, with the new emerging
central or federal level (Haas used the terms supranational, central and federal
interchangeably, see Haas, 1958: 9). Stressing the dynamics of integration as
leading gradually towards a new supranational state, neo-functionalism inasmuch
as being concerned with transnational relations, viewed them as eventually
replacing rather than existing alongside and critically shaping international rela-
tions. Rather than implying a shift from a focus on what happens inside to what
happens across national borders, the latter is only seen as a temporary pheno-
menon leading up to the point where integration all but ends the significance of
old national boundaries as in fact a new European nation-state is created. This
becomes apparent when Haas’s ‘transnational ideology’ (see earlier) turns out
to be not so transnational after all as he writes that his definition of political
integration ‘assumes that [it] will yield a new national consciousness of the new
political community’, in other words, Haas continues, ‘the advent of a new
nationalism [implying] a proportional diminution of loyalty to and expectations
from the former separate national governments’ (1958: 14).
Neo-functionalism did not focus on business in terms of a privileged socio-
economic actor but rather devoted equal attention to both ‘trade associations’ and
‘trade unions’ (Haas, 1958) as a result of its adherence to a pluralist theory
holding that the rise of one particular socio-economic interest would ‘lead toward
the formation of countervailing aggregates of economic interests’ (1958: 359).
As a matter of fact, interestingly, Haas here spoke of business as the countervail-
ing force as he saw labour – due to its ‘supranational ideology’ – as more
advanced in terms of transnational organization (ibid.). Given its firm pluralist
commitments, there is thus no appreciation of possible structural inequalities
of power between social groups. As such, as James Caporaso (1998: 9) notes,
‘neo-functionalism had no explanation for which groups should succeed, form
coalitions, mobilize interests, have access to policy-makers and affect policy’.
It also has to be noted that neo-functionalism at the time did not focus on trans-
national business as such, which in Europe at the time was also rather
underdeveloped, as Wolfram Kaiser also shows in his chapter in this book, but
rather on the transnational organization of national business interests, which in
fact something fundamentally different.
Transnational business, and in particular an elite associated with Europe’s rising
transnational corporations, was given a prominent place in the supranationalist
perspective that emerged in the revived integration debate of the end of 1980s
onwards and that formed the counter-point to the liberal intergovernmentalist
approach that denied any substantial weight to this, or for that matter to any other
transnational actor (Moravcsik, 1991, 1998). Thus, in particular, Sandholtz and
Zysman’s 1989 account of the single market programme Europe 1992 as an elite
bargain in response to structural changes in the world economy and struck by the
Commission on the one hand, and a rising transnational business elite, on the
other, was the first to bring the latter to the theoretical limelight although earlier
scholarly accounts had also drawn attention to the role of transnational business,
in particular the European Round Table of Industrialists (see especially van Tulder
and Junne, 1988). Supranationalism, however, does reveal a neo-functionalist bias
as regards its treatment of transnational socio-economic actors as being instru-
mental to an expansionary integration logic. Although distancing themselves from
neo-functionalism, Sandholtz and Zysman’s analysis, as Moravcsik (1991: 77) also
noted, in fact fits well into that theoretical tradition. Thus the role of transnational
business is seen not only in response to a changing global environment, but also to
the institutional changes (i.e. the Single European Act) that were already taking
place and were perceived as ‘irreversible’ (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989: 116). In
the end, the coalition of big business and the Commission is really seen as domi-
nated by the latter. It was the Commission’s role as ‘policy entrepreneur’ that
brought the internal market back on the agenda, while business played a critical
role in supporting these political initiatives (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989: 117). In
this way, then, big business is not seen as an autonomous transnational social force,
but rather as a ‘political interest group [constituted] by Community action’ (ibid.).
In contrast to the more ad hoc (though inspired by neo-functionalist) explana-
tion of Europe’s relaunching offered by Sandholtz and Zysman, the edited
volume by Sandholtz and Stone Sweet (1998) seeks to offer a more systematic
theoretical grounding of supranationalism. In fact, their theory of ‘supranational
governance’ presents an even more direct return to the neo-functionalist legacy of
Haas (as well as the transactions-based theory of Karl Deutsch). In this theory,
integration is seen as driven by the rise of cross-border transactions which will
‘increase the perceived need for European-level rules, coordination and regula-
tion’ (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1998: 11), a need to which transnational
private interests will respond by organizing themselves supranationally, demand-
ing more supranational rule-making, and so on. As with neo-functionalism, then,
transnational actors by now primarily transnational business, are regarded
as playing a critical role, but first and foremost as agents bound up with the
‘inherently expansionary process’ (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1998: 25) of
European integration. What they call ‘transnational society’ (ibid.: 9f f.) is thus
seen as one of the key constituent elements of the latter process, but beyond its role
in the integrative logic though, this theory does not offer much of an under-
standing of this transnational society in terms of the social structures it is made
up of. In fact, its transaction-based approach makes for a sociologically rather thin
conception of society, focusing on the quantitative phenomenon of cross-border
movements and conceptualizing transnational actors as ‘transactors’, that is ratio-
nal, economic agents engaging in cross-border transactions. These actors are,
moreover, seen as operating only within the confines of the European Union, as
non-governmental actors engaging in ‘intra-EC exchanges’ (Stone Sweet and
Sandholtz, 1998: 9). The possible links of these intra-European transactions and
‘transactors’ with a set of transnational economic relations extending beyond the
boundaries of the European Union is thus ignored here.
To sum up, the contribution of integration theory to our understanding of
transnational business within the European Union and the larger European polit-
ical space is to a large degree shaped by a neo-functionalist legacy, the limits of
which lie mainly in its restricted view of ‘the transnational’ as a wholly sui generis
phenomenon. Of course, the great merit of the neo-functionalist and suprana-
tionalist perspectives is that they acknowledge what is obvious to most contempo-
rary observers of EU politics, namely the significance of transnational relations
in the first place, in contrast to the rival theory of intergovernmentalism. In this
respect, it remains puzzling that Andrew Moravcsik (1993, 1998) in his liberal
intergovernmentalism seeks to break open the black box of the national state to
look for what is inside, but fails to find any transnationalized social or political
actors. Meanwhile, the neo-functionalist legacy, as will be observed below, con-
tinues to leave its mark on the studies of those many EU scholars for whom the
significance of transnational (socio-economic) actors within EU politics is indeed
self-evident, namely those studying the European Union as representing its own
unique system of governance, whose public policies we can analyse with ordinary
tools of political science, such as interest group analysis.
European governance and public policy:

interest group pluralism
Moving from the process of European integration to the analysis of European
governance (Hix, 1998), scholars in recent years have sought to abandon the old
dichotomy between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism. The so called
multi-level governance approach (see especially Marks et al., 1996; Hooghe and
Marks, 2001), explicitly does not seek to explain the process of European inte-
gration but rather to interpret the polity – describing ‘the nature of the beast’
(Risse-Kappen, 1996) – that the European Union has already turned into. The
added value of this approach from our perspective is that it, on the one hand,
does away with the fiction that the nation-state is about to disappear altogether
(states in fact, continue to take a very prominent role in European politics), but on
the other hand, also stresses that these continuing international relations within
the European Union are increasingly embedded within and shaped by transna-
tional relations. The multi-level governance perspective emphasizes that private
actors do not just operate in discrete national arenas but also in the supranational
arena: ‘States no longer serve as the exclusive nexus between domestic and inter-
national relations’ (Marks et al., 1996: 372). As transnational actors also constitute
the nexus between the ‘domestic’ and the ‘international’, the dichotomy between
the latter levels that has been the hallmark of much of International Relations
discourse is transcended. In this conceptualization then, transnational actors can
indeed be seen as linking the different levels of Europe’s multi-level polity.
From the perspective of understanding the role of transnational socio-
economic actors in the European integration process, the multi-level governance
approach – precisely because it is a descriptive and not an explanatory theory –
is less helpful when it comes to explaining the rise of transnational actors in EU
politics, or to understanding how, and to what effect they shape the process of
European integration. Thus, although stressing that EU politics is about political
struggles not just on the classical axis of intergovernmentalism versus suprana-
tionalism, but also along the (horizontal) left–right axis, Hooghe and Marks (1999)
in their analysis of rival projects for European integration can neither explain the
origins of these different projects nor why eventually in their confrontation,
one triumphed over the other.
Reflecting the shift from the process to the analysis of governance, and in more
than one way also reflecting the earlier concerns of neo-functionalism, public pol-
icy analysts have also increasingly turned their attention to the European Union
and sparked different literature such as those on policy networks (see Chapter 2
by Karen Heard-Lauréote, this volume) and on interest groups (see e.g. cf. Streeck
and Schmitter, 1991; Greenwood et al., 1992; Mazey and Richardson, 1993a;
Kohler-Koch, 1997; for recent overviews, see Cowles, 2002; Greenwood, 2003;
Hosli et al., 2004). Focusing here on the latter, the growing literature on European
interest representation and European lobbying was, on the one hand, a response
to the increasing number and apparently growing importance of so called Euro-
groups after the Single European Act (as it elevated the status of Brussels as
a supranational centre of policy-making, see Mazey and Richardson, 1993b: 6),
and, on the other hand, a continuation of the neo-functionalist legacy to the
extent that much of this literature shares the assumption that the European
Union, although not a state, can be seen as having ‘state-like properties’ and in
this sense can be analysed as one would the nation-state in its interaction with
interest groups (Greenwood et al., 1992: 17–20).
It has been public policy studies focusing on European interest representation
that in particular, in addition to the earlier discussed supranationalist perspective,
have drawn our attention to the role of transnational business as a pre-eminent
actor within EU politics. Indeed, and in response to the actual rise of European
TNCs that could be witnessed from the 1960s onwards, it has been within
this context that transnational business as such, rather than transnational
organizations of business, has really come to the limelight. Moving beyond
neo-functionalism, then, recent studies often have recognized that whereas the
former was often rather exclusively focussed on formal interest associations,
much of the action actually might be going on elsewhere. Thus whilst neo-
functionalism saw the formation of European interests groups in the form of
supranational trade associations (sectoral and peak) as well as supranational trade
unions as the inevitable corollary of the creation of a new political community,
McLaughlin et al. (1993: 192) observe that in the 1980s it turned out that
‘Euro-groups, far from being dynamic agents of integration, have tended to
be rather ineffective bodies unable to engage in a constructive dialogue with the
Commission’. It has been in this context that the focus has also shifted to the indi-
vidual firm as an actor (Grant et al., 1989; McLaughlin et al., 1993; Coen, 1997;
see also Junne, 1994).
The literature on European interest representation is wide and diverse and it is
difficult to bring it under one common theoretical denominator. In fact, if one
thing can be observed as regards much of these public policy studies, it is its
empiricist character and lack of theoretical grounding. Nevertheless, inasmuch as,
theoretical commitments can be traced, often more implicitly the limits of this
literature in terms of our understanding of transnational business as indeed
a transnational phenomenon also become apparent. Even if also looking at
transnational firms as individual actors, the focus often tends to be at the
European, supranational level at which either the (individual) lobbying activities
or the more quasi-corporatist formal forms of interests representation are seen to
take place. There is hence less theoretical understanding of the underlying
transnational social forces – linking different levels – that may or may not mani-
fest their agency through either individual or collective actors in Brussels. To the
extent that the latter in fact as opposed to many of the interest groups studied by
neo-functionalism represent transnational, rather than an aggregation of national
interests, the significance of this transnationalization in terms of underlying struc-
tures is not acknowledged. Thus the structural power that transnational capital
may be argued to derive precisely from its transnationality (see p. 94) is left out of
the analysis.
Indeed, as was the case with neo-functionalism, much of the interest group
literature is implicitly grounded in a pluralist conception of society in which inter-
ests tend to be viewed as being in some kind of competitive equilibrium. Whether
or not one tends to share this kind of pluralism, the fact is that most of these stud-
ies are more interested in studying individual cases of interest representation and
less in analysing the larger picture in which for instance some interests rather than
some particular interest organizations might be seen as more powerful than
others. What all of this boils down to is a rather strong bias towards agency
to the neglect of structures. The actors are taken for granted, their interests,
identities, their ‘transnationality’ or otherwise does not need to be explained.
Focussing on the supranational level of interest group politics within the
European Union rather than on underlying social forces that may or may not also
extend beyond the boundaries of the European polity, the interest group litera-
ture finally also tends to be rather completely EU-centric in its conceptualization
of transnational interests. Indeed, the latter are hardly recognized (let alone
theorized) as transnational at all, even within the confines of the European Union.
On the one hand, transnational relations within the European Union seem to be
so self-evident for these public policy analysts as not to need any conceptualization.
For instance, Greenwood’s lengthy and authoritative (2003) study does not discuss
or even mention the concept. On the other hand, which is more damaging from
our perspective, the transnational in fact tends to be equated with the suprana-
tional level. Theoretically, this position is best represented by Hix (1994, 1999) who
claims that the European Union can just be studied like any national polity, thus
missing its multi-level and transnational character. Though the latter is acknowl-
edged by the multi-level governance approach, the latter perspective, as argued
above, lacks a firm theoretical grounding providing us with the conceptual tools to
make sense of this transnational polity and of the transnational actors operating
within it. Below, I review a perspective which arguably does offer such a theo-
retical grounding, via a radical non-state centric ontology embedded within a
historical materialist framework. Rather than as an interest group, possibly seen
as engendered by the integration process itself, transnational business is here
interpreted in terms of a transnational capitalist class operating within but also
beyond the European arena.
Neo-Gramscian transnationalism: transnational

business as a class actor
What is denoted here as neo-Gramscian transnationalism (see van Apeldoorn,
2002) must be located within the broad array of neo-Gramscian perspectives
(Morton, 2001) as have been developed within IPE over the past two decades, and
which increasingly have also found their application to the critical study of
European integration (Holman, 1992, 1996; Bieler, 2000, 2002; Bieling and
Steinhilber, 2000; van Apeldoorn, 2000, 2002; Bieler and Morton, 2001; Cafruny
and Ryner, 2003). The approach as outlined here, in particular, builds upon the
work of the so-called Amsterdam IPE project (see van der Pijl, 1984, 1989a, 1998;
Overbeek, 1993, 2004; van Apeldoorn, 2004b), and has also been labelled
transnational historical materialism.2 In fact, it takes ‘as its point of departure the
proposition that international politics as we know it is historically embedded in, and
internally related to, capitalist social relations’ (Rupert, 1993: 84, his emphasis), and
would add to this the claim that these social relations have increasingly become
transnationalized. International relations are thus shaped by transnational
relations, engendered by the transnational structures of global capitalism. The
transnationalization of capitalist production and finance is also seen as generating
a transnationalization of social forces, in particular a process of transnational
class formation. It is thus that unlike the (pluralist) approaches discussed so far,
this particular perspective would define transnational business as a class actor,
rather than, for example, an ‘interest group’, thus making specific claims about
the social nature of its actorness in terms of underlying social structures and
concomitant power relations thus linking structure and agency.
Neo-Gramscian transnationalism thus offers a theory of the role of transna-
tional relations in world politics that forms a radical departure from the liberal
transnationalist paradigm discussed earlier. This perspective also moves us beyond
established approaches to European integration inasmuch as it views European
transnationalism as inextricably bound up with global or at least larger-than-
regional processes of transnationalization rather than as a sui generis phenomenon
contained within the boundaries of the European Union. The ‘transnational’ is
not a level but a set of relations spanning different levels within and beyond
the European arena. Transnational capital, in particular does not operate only
within the European but also within the global political economy (see van
Apeldoorn, 2002).
As indicated, the transnational is in this perspective argued to be constituted in
the first instance by a transnationalization of capital, tendentially engendering a
transnational capitalist class, which consists of those people that own and/or con-
trol sections of transnational capital that form links across national boundaries
(van Apeldoorn, 2002; Holman and van der Pijl, 2003). Moving away from any
structuralist Marxism, it is emphasized that this process is always a political one
of the formation collective consciousness, taking place through such organiza-
tional channels as corporate interlocking connections, but also through elite
socialization in all kinds of transnational forums or what van der Pijl (1998)
identifies as ‘planning groups’ in which top executives of TNCs and those who
have substantial property interests in transnational capital, as well as sometimes
key political and opinion leaders (or globalizing political elites that transnational
capital seeks to coopt), meet to exchange ideas and if possible forge a common
outlook and strategy. However, to avoid a common misunderstanding, the
transnational capitalist class is according to this approach not by definition a uni-
tary actor. Rather, unity is something that different groups within the capitalist
class may strive for but can only be achieved temporarily – as the outcome of
political and ideological struggles within the bourgeoisie, with one particular
‘fraction’ taking the lead over the others (see van der Pijl, 1989b: 11). The process
of transnational capitalist class formation is thus argued to be partially frag-
mented along both functional as well as geographical lines. With regard to the
latter, it must be emphasized that the process of transnational class formation
always takes place within certain historical and institutional settings that may be
more or less encompassing in terms of geographical scope (even if always tran-
scending single states). In particular, we may identify, at least in the case of
Europe, certain macro-regional patterns of transnational class formation within
an overall global pattern of capitalist integration.
From this perspective we may conceptualize the European Union as a
political arena in which an emergent transnational capitalist class – consisting
of those controlling and/or owning large sections of European transnational
capital – takes the European region as its primary frame of reference and
organizes itself to influence the (socio-economic) governance of that region
(cf. Holman and van der Pijl, 2003). As indicated, moving beyond an EU-centric
analysis, this conceptualization of transnational business in fact emphasizes its
global context, arguing (van Apeldoorn, 2002) that transnational capital and the
associated class agency constitute a mediating force between ‘the global’ and ‘the
European’. The world of those top executives that make up the core of Europe’s
transnational capitalist class can be argued to be, on the one hand, the world of the
global and globalizing market place, and it is this world that to a large extent shapes
their identity and interests. On the other hand, as their companies are headquar-
tered in Western Europe mainly the European Union, which is often also still their
largest market, their daily world as heads of these companies is thus also one shaped
by the economic, social and political institutions, as well as the prevalent govern-
ment policies and regulations within this region of the global economy. It is because
of the latter that they have an interest in influencing the institutions and policies that
make up what we could call the EU’s socio-economic governance regime.
The role of transnational business thus conceived has been central in various
studies within this perspective, in particular those on the transnational class agency
of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) (see Holman, 1992;
van Apeldoorn, 2000, 2002; Holman and van der Pijl, 2003). In contrast to
neo-functionalist explanations, the approach here emphasizes the pro-active and
initiating role of transnational business as a political actor. Unlike interest group
approaches, neo-Gramscian transnationalism locates the agency of transnational
business not so much at the level of the actual (interest) organizations but at the level
of underlying transnational social (class) forces which may or may not operate
through specific (informal or formal) groups. Also, unlike most public policy analysis
of transnational interests, this perspective focuses less on the role of business groups
with regard to particular policy areas or, even more narrowly, issues within those
domains, but rather on what it claims to be the more general role of a transnational
business elite vis-à-vis European governance and European integration as a whole.
This role, then, is conceptualized as taking place at the level of ideas and ideology
rather than at the level of lobbying for more narrowly conceived corporate interests.
In my view, then, in light of the four considerations that this theoretical explo-
ration started out with, this approach transcends a number of the limits inherent
in the liberal-pluralist mainstream perspectives on the role of transnational busi-
ness as an actor. Nevertheless, and, apart from any fundamental objections that
others may have to its underlying historical materialist ontology of social life, it
may, as indicated, be pointed out that whereas the global context is justifiably
emphasized, the European or even European Union specificity that transnational
social forces operating within the European arena may nevertheless be argued to
possess, is as yet less well theorized, even if in principle acknowledged. Although
I have referred to European executives moving in two worlds, and a European
transnational capitalist class adopting a regional frame of reference (see also
Holman and van der Pijl, 2003), these arguments so far have not been very well
elaborated theoretically. Whereas the neo-Gramscian transnational approach
emphasizes the primacy of societal forces, as relating to the social relations of pro-
duction, in explaining the European integration process, this should not a priori
exclude the possibility that the institutional structures – and the dynamics going
along with it – that are set up as a consequence of that process, may in their turn
also have an effect on, for instance, the process of transnational class formation.
This is not about falling back to the reductionism of the neo-functionalist claim
of the primacy of ‘Community action’ in constituting ‘transnational interest
groups’, but rather about taking the notion of state-society complexes as a rela-
tional whole (see Cox, 1986) even more seriously, and rethinking this at the level
of the European Union as a transnational and multi-level state-society complex.
Creating a bridge between a critical review of theoretical perspectives to an
examination of some pertinent empirical research in the next section, let us dis-
cuss some methodological challenges that arise in doing research on the power of
transnational business, whether conceived as class actor or in more traditional
pluralist terms as one interest group amongst others. A first remark that needs to
be made is that methodology cannot be entirely be separated from meta-theory.
For instance, how one views the relationship between structure and agency has
clear implications for the kind of research one does, the kind of questions one
poses, and the kind of methods one would use to answer them. For instance, if
one is interested in explaining structural change, this already implies that one has
a certain conception of structure, but also of agency, because without it, struc-
tures cannot be changed. Thus from this perspective, which views structure and
agency as presupposing each other (Bhaskar, 1979) and as mutually constitutive
(Wendt, 1987), one would be interested in actors but at the same time also in the
structures that make these actors what they are. Thus one would be sceptical, for
instance, about an analysis which focussed on the behaviour of interest groups
and then leave it at that without probing to which extent and how the interests
these groups represent are structured in a certain way.
Moving from meta-theory to doing actual research, again we first need to
define the question. With regard to transnational business, I think the relevant
question is to what extent, how and why the agency of that actor is significant
in terms of either the overall course of the integration process (of course within
a particular time frame) or, more restrictedly, for the content of (certain
aspects/areas of ) European (socio-economic) governance. This still leaves open
the possibility of rival theoretical perspectives with regard to the question of how
to conceptualize European business. I would define here significance in terms of
the counter-factual argument that without this actor the outcome would have
been different. We are thus interested in the political power or influence of
transnational business (however defined). In my view this leads to the following
two main methodological challenges. First, we should know where to look when
speaking about the power, or the significant agency of transnational business:
where and how might such power be exercised? Second, how do we know that
the observed outcome can actually be attributed (largely) to the agency of
transnational business rather then to other actors or processes?
With regard to the first question it is quite useful to distinguish between differ-
ent forms or levels of significant agency (somewhat comparable to what in other
literatures is referred to as different forms or faces of power). Here I propose that
we may analytically distinguish three levels of significant agency that may or may
not be exercised by particular concrete groups/organizations. The first level is the
least strategic one and concerns what normally is labelled lobbying, and focuses
on specific issues, such as concrete pieces of proposed legislation that the lobby-
ing group seeks to promote/stop/modify depending on their particular perceived
narrow interests. This kind of agency is therefore primarily reactive. The second
level I distinguish, following Maria Cowles (1994, 1995), is that of agenda setting.
This agency is more proactive and involves the politics of putting an issue on the
agenda where otherwise it would not have. A third level, related to but at the same
time transcending the agenda-setting level as understood here, may be best
described as the level of discourse production, or the level of ideological power.
It is important here to note that the term discourse production does not mean that
a discourse is constructed de novo, rather existing (ideological) discourses are trans-
formed through the re-articulation of their elements, changing the meaning of
those elements. Of course, the distinction between these three (inter-related) levels
is an analytical one and empirically the lines between them will be blurred.
Nevertheless, the distinction is useful precisely because the last two levels of
agenda setting and discourse production are often missed in pluralist interest
group analysis which usually tends to focus on reactive lobbying or interest repre-
sentation only, and, at most, considers agenda-setting with regard to a single
theme or issue. Indeed, the analysis of the ideological power of transnational
business is beyond the scope of these approaches as the very concept of ideolog-
ical power implies a certain notion of structures that these approaches lack. Thus,
the kind of power we are interested in, shapes where we look for evidence. In
addition, whereas some groups representing transnational business are mainly
formal interest groups that specialize in exercising agency at the first level, the
agency of other groups, often more informal, transcends that level by engaging in
agenda setting, and above, all in shaping the discourse in which policy-making is
embedded.
The second question then can be reformulated as how we can actually go about
assessing whether ‘significant agency’ at these three different levels has been exer-
cised. We should engage here above all in careful historical reconstruction and
process-tracing, within which a variety of more specific research methods may be
employed. A first step in the analysis would be to simply compare the outcome with
the (perceived) interests or ideas of the actor concerned. This is easiest at the level
of lobbying, but can also be done at the discursive level as long as there are actually
discourses to be compared, for instance in the published documents of a transna-
tional business forum on the one hand, and those of a particular policy-making insti-
tution, for example, the Commission, on the other. This first step thus entails the
analysis of policy documents and other texts, which may or may not involve rather
sophisticated methods of discourse analysis. Of course, discursive correspondence
between texts does not imply any causality, so one has to move beyond this point.
A second step, then, is determining timing. To give an example, there is
evidence (see van Apeldoorn, 2002: 175–6) that in the case of the important
(permeating all of current EU policy discourse) concept of ‘benchmarking’, the
ERT used and promoted this concept before the Commission did so. Of course,
a concept often has different sources, and as such this does not provide any
evidence of a causal link. Nevertheless, the issue of timing does add to the
plausibility of a claim of influence or power.
One may further add to that plausibility by showing that a particular actor has
in fact access to relevant policy channels. In the case of lobbying, direct access is
indeed crucial whereas in the case of agenda setting or discursive power, access
may be more indirect as, for instance, one helps to shape policy-making through
critically influencing the public debate. In any case, there need to be certain trans-
mission mechanisms available to the actor through which it can effectively prop-
agate its ideas and interests. A key research method to determine access is that of
elite interviewing. In addition, more quantitative social network analysis may also
be helpful and so far has been done very little, actually, only within transnational
business itself (that is through research on interlocking directorates). If a certain
actor can be shown to possess a high degree of (elite) access, this is itself often an
indication of the (structural) power of this particular actor. Indeed, by analysing
the structural sources of the power of transnational business, one can explain why
this actor may have more privileged access than other actors and why policy
actors would have good reasons to listen to transnational business. As Wolfgang
Streeck (1993) once remarked, it makes a difference when the CEO of Philips
makes a call to the President of the Commission rather than the average shop
floor worker of that corporation (if indeed, he, or she would actually get through).
The analysis of access then, together with the structural power behind it, again
adds to the plausibility.
I would suggest that combining these elements together, carefully checking and
comparing different sources, can already provide one with strong circumstantial
evidence. Sometimes that is all that can be hoped for, but in other cases more
direct evidence is available again through elite interviews, correspondence
between relevant actors, documents that are normally not within the public
domain but that one can get access to through elite contacts (for an excellent
example of such a study making use such methods, see Cowles, 1994). What all
of this boils down to is that (elite) access is also very important for the researcher
in question.
This section will not so much give an overview of all the empirical work that has
been done from within all the different theoretical perspectives that we have
discussed above, as much as focus on research done on the role of transnational
business as such within European integration and European governance, and in
particular from the perspective that emphasizes the class dimension of that
agency. In light of the centrality of transnational business in certain theoretical
disputes, it is surprising how little actual systematic research has been done on
the political role of transnational business, above all beyond narrow interest
representation or the level of lobbying. Nevertheless, a number of interesting
findings with regard to the rise of a transnational business elite as an important
constituent element of the evolving transnational society of the European Union
may be noted.
The first important study to point to the significance of business in this context
focussed mainly on the process of transatlantic class formation. At the time,
European business as such was hardly transnationalized but rather still contained
both economically and politically by the national state. But, as Kees van der Pijl
has shown in his detailed empirical study (1984), elements of these national
bourgeoisies were, gradually incorporated into an emergent Atlantic ruling class.
This incorporation followed the expansion of US capital to Western Europe on
the basis of the successful US-sponsored European Coal and Steel Community
that helped to introduce a Fordist accumulation regime in Europe. This analysis
thus provides an important contribution to the explanation of the origins and
early evolution of the then European Community (EC) on the basis of an argu-
ment about the US hegemony as seen in terms of a transnationalization of the
dominant section of its capitalist class. This project of American hegemony
entered into its first crisis in the 1970s and it was at that time that we also observe
the first signs of an emancipation of an emergent European capitalist class
vis-à-vis American capital.
The expansion of the world economy under the Bretton Woods system as well
as the Common Market led to the rise of a whole class of European TNCs,
which, if not directly challenging the hegemony of US capital, at least intensified
the competition. In this context, the relaunching of Europe in the 1980s coin-
cided with the development of a self-confident European transnational capitalist
class that specifically adopted a European frame of reference, and initially even
tended to define its interests, in opposition to, American capital elsewhere (see
van Apeldoorn, 2002). In the context of a global restructuring process that engen-
dered a further deepening of the transnationalization of capital, we can also
observe a deepening transnationalization of Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, that
is, the further growth of a transnational society with a European transnational
capitalist class at its apex.
It is therefore no coincidence that others, not employing a class-theoretical
framework, have in this period also started to recognize the growing role of
transnational business as an actor in the European integration process. I have
already discussed the supranationalist thesis about the role of transnational busi-
ness in the coalition that supported the revitalization of the European project
through the internal market. Those that proposed this thesis did not substantiate
it empirically, however. This empirical gap has been most convincingly filled by
Maria Cowles’s (1994, 1995) study on the politics of big business, however, with-
out offering a theoretical framework to interpret those politics. Nevertheless, her
work – and especially her study of the ERT – has been very important for our
empirical understanding of the rise of European transnational capitalist elite
within the European arena. Others (Fielder, 1997, 2000; Nollert and Fielder,
2000) – have later followed up on this.
As I have argued at length, elsewhere (van Apeldoorn, 2002), and building
upon earlier work by Holman (1992), this new role of big business, and not just
with regard to Europe 1992, can also be interpreted in terms of a process of
transnational class formation. Organization is a key variable in this process.
Through more informal (elite) organizations, the transnational capitalist class is
constituted as a social and political actor consciously pursuing a certain collective
strategy. A key organization here is the aforementioned ERT, which can be argued
to be neither a lobby group nor an association but rather a private forum of this
emergent class (van Apeldoorn, 2000, 2002). Indeed, my empirical study of the
ERT sought to show that this club can be interpreted as both a manifestation of
the process of transnational class formation and at the same time an organization
through which that process takes place, as well as demonstrating a critical role in
shaping some of the EU’s dominant socio-economic discourse in the 1990s, thus
arguing for the importance of analysing the role of transnational class strategy in
European governance.
The rise of a new European transnational business class cannot just be observed
with the role played by the ERT as this capitalist class elite has in fact come to
dominate also the whole landscape of European business interest representation,
reflecting a new logic of collective action that has to be explained by referring to the
structural power of transnationally mobile capital itself. Thus, also in traditional
interest groups such as the Union of Industrial and Employer’s Confederations of
Europe (UNICE), the interests of TNCs have come to dominate, whereas groups
such as the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (Cowles, 2001) and the recently formed
European Roundtable of Financial Services (see Financial Times, 2 March 2001)
show that the model of the ERT – of less formal business groups with the CEOs
themselves being involved and exercising leadership on the basis of their prestige
gained as members of a global power elite – is in fact proving a success. The
proliferation of such groups, as well as the increasingly central role played by TNCs
and their CEOs in more formal business groups, clearly reflects the rise of a
transnational business elite as a political actor within EU politics and shows the
continuing relevance of research focusing on this particular transnational actor
within the European Union.
Conclusion
In conclusion I wish to return to the four considerations with which I started my
theoretical discussion by suggesting how in the light of my critical review of
existing perspectives and research, our understanding of transnational business as
an actor in the European Union may yet be better adapted to our need to under-
stand the phenomenon of transnationalism in the European Union in general
and to pursue fruitful empirical research in this area.
With regard to the first consideration I have noted the need for theory in
understanding transnational business as a transnational actor. Though the pres-
ence of transnational actors in EU politics may be obvious to many contempo-
rary analysts, there is still a need for a theoretical framework that can answer
questions like what in fact makes these actors transnational; how can we account
for the rise of such transnational actors and their power? In fact, it is the trans-
nationality of business that explains part of its power. This, then, would be missed
in approaches that do not make a clear analytical distinction between national
and transnational actors, indeed do not have a clear conceptualization of the
transnational. This is especially the case for pluralist interest group analysis as well
as for more broadly, many European governance and public policy studies. In
order for those approaches to advance our understanding of transnationalism in
the European Union, one should seek to articulate their empirical focus on inter-
est group politics with more theoretical concerns on the transnational nature of
the arena in which this politics takes place. Here, one could draw on the multi-
level governance approach, but this in itself, as I have argued, does not provide us
with any explanatory theory with regard to the role of transnational socio-
economic actors in the European integration process. For this one would also
need a more explicit theoretical account of power (structures) which, in much
pluralist interest group analysis, is rather noticeably absent.
What is not helpful in order to understand the nature of European trans-
nationalism, as studies of European interest groups in fact often tend to do, is to
conflate ‘the transnational’ with ‘the supranational’, and thus to identify the
former with the emerging European ‘level’ of governance. So, on the basis of the
second consideration, that the transnational by definition cuts across different
levels, it was argued that much of the current literature on non-state actors,
including transnational business, in the European Union, is inadequate inasmuch
as it reflects this legacy of neo-functionalism.
With regard to the third consideration, both contemporary interest group
(governance) studies as well as more theoretically grounded approaches to
transnational relations within mainstream International Relations, were argued to
be rather actor-centred to the neglect of structures. Again, the structural power
of an actor like transnational business is thus ignored, nor can we in general make
sense of this or other transnational actors in terms of what brought them into
existence, what accounts for their identities and their interests. In terms of the
relation between structure and agency, the original neo-functionalism, on the
other hand, is somewhat of a mixed bag, a mix that combines the reductionism of
both individualism and holism. On the one hand, neo-functionalism stresses in a
pluralist fashion the rational agency of interest groups, on the other hand, in a
determinist fashion, its stresses the inexorable functionalist logic of the integration
which somehow appears to operate regardless of any particular agency. Even
without needing to be committed to one particular meta-theory in this respect, it
would be fruitful for any research on EU transnationalism to distinguish between
both transnational structures and transnational actors, as well as to the processes
that connect those two. Neo-Gramscian transnationalism offers one particular
way of doing so. To be sure, the particular historical materialist ontology that this
perspective is based upon does not exhaust the possibilities here.
As a fourth point, the claim was made that we should not conceive of the
European Union as a self-contained entity and therefore also not as the supra-
national container of transnational social forces that are thus conceived as being
confined to the boundaries of the European Union. On the contrary, in order to
make sense of European transnationalism, it is critical that we examine how
this phenomenon is linked to wider, global, processes of transnationalization. This
becomes particularly important when we study transnational business which in
fact constitutes a mediating force between the global and the European. We can-
not understand transnational business, its rise, its power, its interests, if we do not
place it in a global structural context. This global context is in fact often never
taken into account by both early and contemporary approaches to European inte-
gration which all – again reflecting the legacy of neo-functionalism – tend to
(often implicitly) view the transnationalism in the European Union as a com-
pletely sui generis phenomenon. This EU-centrism when combined with a focus on
the supranational level might even end up in recreating a kind of state-centrism
at the EU level. Again what we need here is more theoretical reflection on the
concept of transnationalism. It is in fact remarkable that many approaches to so
called non-state actors in the European Union hardly draw upon available theo-
rizations of transnational relations within International Relations, even if it has to
be said that many of those are also not very much interested in global structures
and processes, and focus instead on actors.
I have made the case that neo-Gramscian transnationalism (offering a histori-
cally grounded political economy explanation of the rising transnationalization of
Europe) offers an alternative that might prove worthwhile inasmuch as it is able
to transcend many of these observed limits of the other perspectives. With its
class-theoretical interpretation it, moreover, offers a framework that stresses the
social power underpinning the evolving European order, in particular, the power
of a transnational capitalist class to shape European socio-economic governance.
However, also within this research programme, as in others, more theoretical and
empirical work needs to be done on the nature of transnationalism in the
European Union in order to advance this important ongoing research agenda.
Notes
1 Although it has to be pointed out that, for instance, Stopford and Strange’s (1991: 37)
concept of a ‘privileged transnational business civilisation’ does emphasize this transna-
tional dimension. However, this concept has not really been elaborated by them either
theoretically or empirically.
2 This approach is also inspired by the work of Robert Cox (1986, 1987) and Stephen Gill
(1990), two authors who from a neo-Gramscian perspective have drawn our attention to
the transnationalization of the capitalist class. However, as this latter thesis has been
elaborated more by the Amsterdam group, and as the author happens to be part of that
group, it is on this particular version of this broadly shared transnationalist perspective
that I will focus here.
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Part II
Transnationalism in
practice
5 Trade unions as a
transnational movement in
the European space 1955–65
Falling short of ambitions?
Patrick Pasture
If there is one actor that comes to mind when one looks for transnationalism in the
early European Union, it is the trade unions. In the first place, the trade unions
have a long tradition of ‘internationalism’, expressed in transnational associations
of labour organizations going back into the nineteenth century. Moreover, they
were associated early on with European institutions. Indeed, the unions that sup-
ported the Marshall Plan were granted an important consultative position in the
Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). Their role was also
institutionally established in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).
Does that make unions transnational movements? In the 1990s, historians have
deconstructed the inter- and transnational image of the unions (Strikwerda, 1997;
Berger and Smith, 1998; Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998). In this chapter though,
I will rather emphasize those elements in trade union politics where the unions, at
least to some extent, transcended national boundaries and acted as a transnational
actor in the European space. Based on new archival research, the focus is on the
formative decade from the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC)
to the so-called ‘empty chair’ crisis of 1965, when the French for months – from
June 1965 to January 1966 – boycotted the European institutions. However, it is
inevitable to situate this period in a larger chronological framework (earlier periods
are discussed in Pasture, 2000, 2001a, 2002).
Original European involvement

After the Second World War, trade unionists were convinced Europeans. Rather
than a concrete form of an internationalist working-class ideology, this
Europeanism was essentially rooted in the experiences after the First World War,
when the drive for autarchy and economic nationalism had all but ruined the
continent. In contrast, European trade unions had developed a firm belief in
the importance of free trade, controlled by international institutions to avoid the
formation of monopolies and cartels. If there was some sort of ‘collective con-
version’ to Europe, it was then rather than in 1945. The 1930s added the concept
of international economic planning to this essentially liberal framework.
However, in practice, planning was conceived very much in a national perspective
(Pasture, 2001b). Notwithstanding the divisions created by the war, the Second
110 Patrick Pasture
World War strengthened the idea of a collective European responsibility, even
destiny. It contributed to a sense of unity – a sense of unity though that quickly
evaporated (Pasture, 2004).
The desire for labour unity materialized in the formation of unitary unions in
the former Axis countries and of the World Federation of Trade Unions
(WFTU), which was established in 1945, uniting socialist and communist unions
from the whole world (Carew, 2000a; see also Antonioli et al., 1999). However, the
(relative) unity did not last long. In the wake of the Marshall Plan the unitary con-
federations in Italy and France broke up. Furthermore, the non-communist
unions separated from the WFTU and in 1949, together with the American
Federation of Labor (AFL), joined a new International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions (ICFTU). The so-called ‘Christian’ trade unions, however – still
significant in France, Switzerland and the Benelux countries – remained inde-
pendent (Pasture, 1999; Carew, 2000b; Ciampani, 2000). Support for the
Marshall Plan and hence also for a US-inspired project of European integration
was the ‘crowbar’ for the split of the WFTU; it remained the basis of cooperation,
identification and unity of all involved, also at the domestic level. This was
particularly the case for the French Confédération Générale du Travail – Force
Ouvrière (FO) (Pernot, 2001; Régin, 2003; Roussel, 2003) and the
Confederazione italiana dei sindacati lavoratori (CISL) in Italy (Formigoni,
1995). Since 1947, the communist trade unions considered European integration
as a capitalist and American-imperialist strategy, and objected to it, an apprecia-
tion and strategy that would only slowly start to change in the 1960s (Maggiorani,
1998; Pernot, 2001; Verbist, 2001).
Already in the late 1940s, two different views on a European organization can
be discerned. On the one hand, some continental unions strove for real economic
integration, as in the customs union between Belgium, the Netherlands and
Luxembourg. In contrast, the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), originally
in part motivated by its desire to save the WFTU, was less than lukewarm
about European integration (Newman, 1993; Ciampani, 1995; Guasconi, 1995).
Nevertheless, at the founding conference of the ICFTU in London the unions
approved the Marshall Plan or European Recovery Programme (ERP), and
acknowledged ‘the urgency of the unification of Europe’, even if not all – in partic-
ular the TUC and the Scandinavian unions – were enthusiastic about that decision
(Carew, 2000b; Ciampani, 2000). The unions that opposed the decision believed that
their main objective – full employment – could only be realized through a nationally
planned economy as the cornerstone of the national welfare state.
International trade union organization: cradle

of European transnationalism?
After the Second World War, the international organization of the trade unions
was an important international issue that largely extended the trade union world.
In 1950 three important international confederations existed: the International
Trade unions as a transnational movement 111
Federation of Christian Trade Unions (CISC), by far the smallest; the WFTU,
which after the split was left with the unions that remained obedient to Moscow;
and the ICFTU, the haven of the non-communist (and in practice non-Christian),
free and democratic trade unions, whose formation directly followed from the
Marshall Plan. It is important to note that these international organizations
united the trade union confederations and not the industrial unions. This is
important because in many countries the confederations were and still are rather
weak bodies, competent mainly for political representation and coordination, but
as a rule not for collective bargaining and calling strikes, arguably the core of
trade unionism (van der Linden, 2000). Neither the TUC nor the West German
confederation, the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), for instance, are com-
petent to conclude collective agreements. For the confederations and their lead-
ers, transnational representation was one way to enhance their authority (Pasture,
2000; Pernot, 2001: 35–7), but one should not overestimate their importance.
The industrial unions, on whose shoulders real trade union power in reality
rests, are also organized at the transnational level. The relationship between these
bodies and the international confederations was always difficult (see especially
McShane, 1992; van der Linden, 2000). The International Trade Secretariats
(ITS) in 1951 concluded an agreement with the ICFTU which gave the confe-
deration authority over the general political orientation of the transnational free
trade union movement, but they were never formally affiliated to it. International
action was defined mainly as political, which from the outset was in the compe-
tence of the (con-) federations. This also explains the relative absence of the
industrial trade union bodies at European level, since European integration was
perceived as primarily a political issue.
In the ECSC, however, the industrial unions of miners and metalworkers
managed to obtain a decisive influence in the so-called ‘Committee of the 21’,
which was composed of metalworkers’ and miners’ unions as well as the confe-
derations of the countries involved (for the following see in greater detail Pasture,
2001a). Hence, they bypassed the ICFTU European Regional Organization (ERO),
which concentrated on particular problems such as housing and vocational training,
and focused on the OEEC. Obviously, there was considerable competition and
resentment between the ERO and the Committee of the 21. The members of the
OEEC Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) also acted more or less inde-
pendent from the ERO. The ERO claimed to be competent for the economic inte-
gration of Europe and its social aspects, in particular the activities of the Economic
Committee for Europe in the UN, the Green Pool, the Council of Europe, the
unification of European transport and migration and European issues at
the International Labour Organization (ILO). In reality, though, partly because the
AFL distrusted the ERO’s Secretary-General Walter Schevenels for his initial
involvement with the WFTU, the ICFTU Executive Board undermined the ERO’s
authority, even with regard to the OEEC. The world federation indeed usurped all
matters concerning ‘war and peace’ (especially regarding NATO and the European
Defence Community, even concerning their social and economic effects in Europe,
112 Patrick Pasture
and regarding the rearmament of Germany), arguing that these had repercussions
far beyond the old continent. Hence a Joint ICFTU-ERO Committee on European
Social Integration was established, which focused mainly on the ILO, the Council
of Europe and the OEEC. Continental Western European unions, moreover, con-
sidered the ERO a dependency of the TUC. There was some ground for that pre-
sumption, with Charles J. Geddes, Secretary-General of the Union of Post Office
Workers, affiliated to the TUC, being the President of the ERO and the anglophile
Schevenels its Secretary-General (Guasconi, 1998: 363–4).
Obviously, the European free trade union movement was deeply divided and
weak. Competences were fragmented and the unions remained strongly attached to
national and industrial allegiances. A proposition in September 1954 by André
Renard, Vice-President of the ECSC Consultative Committee, to transform the
Committee of the 21 from a loose coordinating body into a real supranational
organization failed, for example, because of the opposition of the other unions, par-
ticularly the French. But the internal structures of the Committee were somewhat
strengthened. Nevertheless, unanimity was still needed for giving binding directions
to the trade union representatives in the ECSC Consultative Committee. But as
Ernst Haas concluded in 1958, ‘on most crucial ECSC issues, no unanimity could
ever be obtained’ (Haas, 1958: 370). As was the case in the OEEC TUAC, these
representatives acted fairly autonomously, and arguably also more from a national
perspective than as representatives of a transnational movement (Haas, 1958:
369–70; Meynaud and Sidjanski, 1969: 247). Furthermore, after the association
of the United Kingdom with the ECSC in 1954, the Committee of the 21 in
1955 admitted representatives of the British miners’ and metalworkers’ unions as
observers, something it had always refused to do before. Its relations with the
ICFTU and the ERO deteriorated below freezing point, and the ICFTU refused
to subsidize the Committee any further.
The ERO underwent some minor changes in 1955. However, the organization
did not anticipate properly the new impetus given to European integration with
the conference of Messina in June 1955 which laid the the basis for the creation
of the EEC and Euratom, although the organization did organize an important
conference on the relaunch of European integration on 25–27 August 1955. The
ICFTU rather than the ERO tried to determine the main political line of con-
duct, although neither of them was able to impose a common policy. Obviously,
the unions of the European countries not directly involved in the negotiations
would have liked the ERO to become the central axis of the new structure. The
confederations of what became known as ‘little Europe’, however, argued for a
special body, separate from the ERO, for their action towards the EEC and
Euratom. On the initiative of the Dutch and Belgian confederations, they con-
vened informally in Paris, and hence were called ‘le bureau de Paris’, the Paris
Bureau (Gobin, 1996: 201). The Committee of the 21, on the other hand, in
which the industrial perspectives of miners and metalworkers dominated,
believed national industrial unions should constitute the nucleus of the new orga-
nization. The miners’ and metalworkers’ ITSs supported this view, for they too
were quite suspicious about the priority the confederations gave to the political
ideal of a unified Europe above more concrete further progress in the social and
economic field in the ECSC (Beever, 1960: 59–60). The problem became even
more difficult when the British proposed to create a free trade area, which drove
a deep wedge between the unions of the ‘little Europe’ – the six EEC countries –
and the unions from the ‘outer seven’ European countries that did not join the
new organization.
However, the confederations of the ‘little Europe’ managed to push their views
through. In December 1957, a European Trade Union Secretariat (ETUS) was
established for the coordination of trade union action in the three communities.
The Committee of the 21 reluctantly confined itself to the ECSC and transformed
itself into the Metalworkers’ and Miners’ Inter-Trade Committee (ICFTU-ECSC)
(see also in detail Gobin, 1996: 200–13). The ETUS served as the main trade union
body for the EEC as well as Euratom. Furthermore, several industrial committees
for the different industrial sectors in the EEC (transport, agriculture, chemicals,
textiles, etc.) were created. The relations between the ETUS and the industrial
committees were never clearly outlined, however, and were a source of continuous
friction (Gobin, 1996: 319, 351). In practice, several industrial committees worked
on a national level, and directly contacted the EEC institutions.
The ETUS consisted of representatives of the confederations of ‘little Europe’
and delegates of the ERO and the new Metalworkers’ and Miners’ Inter-Trade
Committee. It also included observers from the ITSs. The national industrial
unions were also represented through extra large national delegations in the
ETUS General Assembly and through collaboration in the industrial committees.
The Dutchman Harm G. Buiter, until then the Secretary of the Committee of
the 21, became the Secretary-General of the new ETUS and he would turn it,
although officially nothing more than a ‘simple organism created following the
opportunity of the moment’ whose function ‘should not go beyond that frame-
work’,1 into something as a European trade union pressure group. The ETUS
entertained contacts with the socialist members of the European General Assembly
as well as with the Commission directorates, particularly with the Directorate
General for Social Affairs.
The ERO continued to organize the larger European trade union movement,
but did not grant the ETUS direct representation in its governing bodies. It
constituted an Economic Committee, which was entrusted with the responsibility
of ‘discussing and reaching agreement on common trade union policies to be
urged on the Governments in regard to detailed conditions of the Treaty [on the
creation of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – P.P.] and their future
implementation’.2 By its very existence, the ERO prevented an even deeper split
between the unions of the ‘little Europe’ and the ‘outer seven’. However, espe-
cially the Scandinavian confederations expressed doubts about the viability and
activities of the ERO. At the end of 1959, they demanded a serious downsizing
of it, even its abolishment.3 The unions of the EFTA countries effectively created
their own EFTA trade union committee.4 However, the ERO remained in place,
and a special committee was created to maintain contacts between the unions of
the ‘little Europe’ and of the ‘outer seven’.
114 Patrick Pasture
In 1968, the unions of the EFTA established a little secretariat, which sealed
the fate of the ERO. It was finally dissolved in 1969. In the same year, the ETUS
transformed itself into the European Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the
EC. Only with the creation of the European Trade Union Confederation
(ETUC) in 1973, the split between the unions of the ‘two Europes’ was finally
healed. Unlike the ERO or the ETUS, the ETUC is an autonomous transnational
trade union confederation, and not part of the ICFTU. This allowed its extension
towards Christian and even communist unions (see inter alia Barnouin, 1986;
Gobin, 1996; Pernot, 2001). But the organizational unity of the ETUC did not
immediately lead to more cohesion, rather on the contrary, and did not
entail greater strength, since the ETUC suffers from many of the institutional
and political weaknesses of the European trade union organization of the
post-war era.
Resuming European integration

By 1955, the trade unions in the ECSC in principle favoured further integration,
although their concrete stance towards the ECSC was ambiguous. On the
one hand, some unionists tried to push for more social competences, but became
frustrated. This was surely the case with the vice-president of the Consultative
Committee (from 1955 onwards the president), the Belgian trade union leader
André Renard. As we have seen, his proposals to make the Committee of the 21
more effective, were dwarfed. His plan to enhance the competence of the ECSC,
in particular in the field of investment policy, price and wage setting, living
standards and social harmonization in general, also came to nothing, as did his
suggestion, following a demand of the Belgian socialist metalworkers’ union, to
introduce collective bargaining at the level of the ECSC as a means to realize
social harmonization in the community. These failures were not only due to
external resistance of the employers, but also have to be ascribed to the opposition
of the other (national) trade unions. Notwithstanding their pleas for supra-
national European institutions, they were not willing to transfer part of their
competences to a supranational authority (Mechi, 1995, 2000b; Gobin, 1996: 175;
Pasture, 2001a).
On the other hand, the ECSC and the Consultative Committee did develop
a proper social policy (Mechi, 2000a). Moreover, thanks to a concerted transna-
tional action, through their contacts with the administration and via diplomatic
channels, the trade unions obtained that the High Authority established a special
labour division with the purpose of supporting the trade union delegates in the
Consultative Committee (Haas, 1958: 366–7). In the consultative committee,
intense contacts were established between trade union leaders through concrete
dossiers rather than general policy meetings. In practice, the unions set up quite
friendly working relations with the ECSC High Authority and also with the
Christian trade unions with whom the ‘free’ unions otherwise entertained a rather
conflictual relationship (Pasture, 1999). The ECSC often turned out a more
reliable and effective source of information for labour than employers and
national public authorities. This was an important argument for the West
German DGB to continue to support European integration, and a major incen-
tive for the West German Social Democratic Party to abandon its anti-European
stance and to opt for integration, too (Duchêne, 1994: 286). Nevertheless, in 1955
the unions considered the record of the actual achievements of the ECSC in the
social field quite disappointing (Pasture, 2001a), even if later they would look back
to these years with nostalgia (Pernot, 2001: 427).
In fact, according to François Duchêne, precisely because of their disappoint-
ment with the ECSC, the West German trade unions in January 1955 appealed
to Jean Monnet for a new initiative to further European integration. It crystallized
in the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, the so-called ‘Monnet
Committee’. This interest was mutual, since Monnet considered labour unions as
genuine transnational actors, capable – in contrast to employers, which he ignored –
of acting in the general interest (Duchêne, 1994: 284–87; Varsori, 1995). Although
there was some distrust as well,5 many leading trade unionists of the ‘little
Europe’ responded enthusiastically to Monnet’s proposals – of the 35 founding
members of the Monnet Committee, 14 were trade unionists, among whom were
the main leaders of all major confederations. They probably not only joined since
they basically shared his views on the future of Europe, but also because they
hoped it would be an important pressure group so that they could influence the
European construction (Guichaoua, 1994; Pasture, 1995, 2001a; Bossuat, 2003).
This surely was the case for FO Secretary-General Robert Bothereau, his organi-
zation always being reluctant about European federalism (Pernot, 2001: 428–30).
However, for reasons of political independence – an independence that was
cherished in principle, but never prevented the unions from entertaining close
relations with political parties and movements, also at European level – European
trade union organizations – in contrast to political parties – could not affiliate
directly to the Monnet Committee. This is also why the ERO turned down a
proposal of the Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe – in which
also numerous trade unionists were involved (Bossuat, 2003) – to jointly organize
a major conference in favour of European integration.6
The unions of the ‘little Europe’ moved towards more intense collaboration and
European unity – although more on paper than in practice, as Renard’s shattered
dream about European collective bargaining illustrates. At the same time, within
the ERO, several unions, and especially Schevenels, continued to aspire for a
greater Europe on the basis of the OEEC (Pasture, 2001a: 87). Even after the
Messina conference the ICFTU/ERO continued to focus on the ILO and the
Council of Europe. According to the Joint ICFTU-ERO Committee on European
Social Integration in April 1956, the Council of Europe was ‘the appropriate
institution for setting up a European Social and Economic Council’ in close colla-
boration with the ILO, the OEEC and the ECSC, and for a European Social
Charter.7 The ICFTU/ERO deeply regretted the economic division of Western
Europe and thus followed the policy of the lowest common denominator – the
views of the British TUC – and hence ignored the actual developments and in
particular the creation of the EEC in 1957–8 and EFTA in 1959–60. It was largely
116 Patrick Pasture
in vain though. The quest for a European Social Charter resembled a wild-goose
chase and epitomized the incapacity of European labour to realize tangible social
progress in Europe (Pasture, 1999: 276–7, 2001a). As a consequence, the West
German confederation DGB soon withdrew its support for a European Social
and Economic Council as ‘yet another international institution’. Particularly, the
ERO’s passive role and political choices with regard to the European integration
process raised its anger.8
As regards the EEC, the unions demanded that in the new treaty, concrete and
precise objectives would be formulated: particular measures should be aimed at
raising the living standards and the well-being of the Europeans, and upward
social harmonization should be pursued actively.9 The Treaty poorly responded
to their demands, though it did provide for the establishment of an Economic
and Social Committee along the lines of the unions’ demands – that was enough
to support it. It changed the role of the Council of Europe, the OEEC and the
ILO with regard to the European continent though.10
In the following years, partly in response of the coal crisis of the late 1950s but
also because they considered the start of the EEC hardly satisfactory, the trade
unions of the ‘little Europe’ argued for a democratic form of European social
and economic integration. This implied the creation of a truly supranational
authority, in which the unions should be represented. The unions also demanded
a European Parliament (EP) elected by universal suffrage, a closer association of
the unions with the activities of the European commissions, and one single seat
for the three Communities. From the start they supported the idea of a merger of
the executives and the creation of a single executive – which would have to count
at least one representative of the unions, ‘capable of negotiating on equal footing
with national governments’, as was the case in the ECSC High Authority.11 In
contrast to the unions of the ‘outer seven’, the ETUS considered full economic
integration far more than the creation of a customs union only.12 Hence, they also
opposed the French President Charles De Gaulle’s view of Europe as a Europe of
the Fatherlands.13 In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the ETUS
supported the Hallstein Plan, which aimed at reinforcing the supranational
character of the EEC and particularly of the European Commission. It consid-
ered such a strengthening of the Commission as necessary for the pursuit of an
active economic policy of full employment, economic planning targeting under-
developed regions, and hence as a precondition for social progress and harmo-
nization at the highest level.14 In the first place, however, the European trade
unions devoted their attention and energy to guaranteeing effective trade union
representation in the European institutions (Pasture, 2000, 2001a).
Nevertheless, the interest of the unions in Europe had broadened, as did, it
must be emphasized, the interest of the EEC Commission itself in social policy.
Indeed, the Commission was determined to exploit its social competences and to
develop a social policy that focused on social harmonization. It found a close ally
in the ETUS. Already in March–July 1960, the Directorate General of Social
Affairs organized several round tables with the ETUS to discuss social problems
in the EEC. Particularly during the first months of 1962, a relatively intense
collaboration started which involved both the ETUS and the national unions
in investigating the social conditions in the different European countries.15 In
response, the ETUS tried to draw up a strong socio-economic programme –
a difficult endeavour though, since trade union opinions and practices within
the EEC diverged widely.16 The programme focused on economic planning and
suggested the creation of an office for European planning, a regional expansion
policy, greater opportunities for vocational training and free movement of labour.
Concrete social demands included the introduction of the five days working week,
the prolongation of annual holidays and guaranteed income in case of illness,
involuntary absence and work accident. An international conference, involving
trade unionists, employers, European civil servants and social scientists, was
organized in December 1962 to study the possibilities for harmonizing social
security systems.17
The harmonization of social security was indeed an extremely complex issue,
given the huge differences between national welfare and social security regimes.
Even within countries, different systems existed for different areas of welfare and
kinds of workers. However, what mattered most was that through initiatives like
this, the trade unions forced the employers together with the administration and
national civil servants to think and discuss jointly.18
EFTA – an alternative to the European

Communities?
In the meantime, the countries that did not join the EEC created EFTA (Kaiser,
1997) in 1959–60. The unions in these countries hesitatingly supported this ini-
tiative, apparently ‘in the hope that the six will become more amenable to resume
negotiations for a large economic association in Europe’. Indeed, they considered
the free trade area ‘not . . . as an end in itself, but as a step to the main objective,
full European cooperation in all fields’.19 The whole free trade union movement
feared a possible division and even ‘economic war’ between both areas, and they
decided to exert pressure upon their respective governments as well as the EEC
and the EFTA negotiators to avoid such a split.20
Remarkably, the demands of the trade unions from the ‘outer seven’ for EFTA
to some extent paralleled the union demands in the EEC. They shared the idea
that a unified market was necessary for industrial specialization, higher produc-
tivity, and thus higher and more equal living conditions. The belief in the link
between productivity and social progress was reinforced through the intense
contacts and exchange programmes with the USA in the framework of the
European Productivity Agency (Carew, 1987; Boel, 1998). However, they
accepted the principle that countries could impose quotas in case of balance of
payments difficulties, and that they had the right to be selective in the removal of
quotas. Furthermore, they insisted not only on the formulation of social objec-
tives, in particular full employment, but also that the ways and methods were
specified how these objectives could be realized by the different industries and
countries.21 In an unpublished document, the ERO even agreed upon a series of
118 Patrick Pasture
demands on the economic and social provisions in the EFTA, including the
creation of an investment bank, an employment service, and a social fund similar
to the one in the EEC.22 They insisted that they were in favour of ‘harmonization
of social conditions in Europe towards the highest level’, although they stressed
the difficulties of achieving that with an increasing number of countries. Hence,
they refrained from demanding concrete measures.23
The reality of the EFTA would, however, prove to be far removed from all this.
The Stockholm Convention did contain a reference to full employment as a gen-
eral objective, but no concrete obligations for the member states. Hence, the trade
unions insisted to be associated in some way with EFTA via a Joint Advisory
Committee in order to be able to discuss policies and to influence the decisions.24
Notwithstanding some parallels between the interests of the unions of the
‘little’ and the ‘outer Europe’, meetings between unions of both areas in the
late 1950s and early 1960s only confirmed the gap between them. This came
clearly to the fore with regard to the Hallstein Plan to reinforce the European
Commission. The EFTA unions hoped that the creation of EFTA would offer the
basis for a closer multinational cooperation in the larger Europe; indeed, that it
would enhance talks about a greater EFTA-like association which would include
and supplant the European Communities. The implementation of the Hallstein
Plan on the contrary would only reinforce the differences. The support of the
unions of the ‘little Europe’ for the Plan astonished the EFTA unions, who con-
sidered it a deadly blow to European trade union cooperation.25 The TUC
alongside the Swiss and Norwegian unions argued for strengthening the OEEC
as a basis of European economic cooperation, to realize not only a general
reduction of trade barriers but also greater cooperation, in particular as regards
the means to increase productivity and to enhance social harmonization.26
Despite these differences, parallel to the negotiations between the EFTA and
the EEC, working relations between the unions of both organizations improved.
In early 1960, it was decided to form a joint committee in which the secretary-
generals and representatives of each national confederation would meet on a
regular basis. However, the initiative did not really take off because of the
obstruction of the Danish confederation.27 Moreover, while the ERO tried to
bridge the gap between the European Communities and the EFTA, the ETUS
demanded further measures for the economic and social integration in the
European Communities.
In May 1961, Ludwig Rosenberg, the main architect of the West German con-
federation’s international policy (Braun, 1995: 74) and the director of its Economic
Department – and in November 1962 to become DGB President (1962–9) –
expressed concerns that the economic progress of the EEC would hinder the affi-
liation of the United Kingdom.28 To be sure, the TUC, which always had been in
favour of a cautious and pragmatic stance towards Europe (Kaiser, 1999: 146,
173), was impressed by the unexpectedly successful start of the EEC, and more
and more British unions seriously considered supporting British affiliation with
it (Lieber, 1970: 106–7; Kaiser, 1999: 172). Relations with the Commonwealth,
the ‘unsatisfactory’ provisions in the Rome Treaty to realize full employment,
and the strong supranational competences of the European institutions were
deemed to be the main impediments. Though it was recognized that in practice
employment in the EEC (except in Southern Italy) reached similar levels as in
the United Kingdom, the TUC insisted upon the inclusion of an additional article
in the Rome Treaty with a general obligation for each member state to pursue
a policy of full employment. The TUC also demanded a considerable extension
of the authority of the Economic and Social Committee, among which the right
‘to enable it to convene its own meetings and to issue opinions on all Community
matters’. Significantly, the TUC argued that Commonwealth citizens would enjoy
priority access to the UK labour market over EEC workers.29 Similar concerns
about the protection of the national labour markets and industrial interests were
expressed by the Scandinavian – particularly the Danish – unions, united in the
Nordens Faglige Samorganisasjon.30 However, while the TUC emphasized the
parallels between the EEC and EFTA, the TUC memorandum on ‘full employ-
ment and the provisions of the Rome Treaty’ submitted to the EEC trade union
national centres on 30 November 1961 in fact all too clearly demonstrated the
fundamental difference in perspective: the text mainly consists of references to the
obligations of ‘each member state’, but says nothing about common European
policies.31
The British demand to revise the Rome Treaty in order to reinforce the social
and trade union provisions, raised concerns among the unions of the ‘little
Europe’ that the outcome of a renegotiation would be a reduced level of inte-
gration. While they hoped for the full adhesion of Britain to the European
Communities, they did not want a dilution into an extended customs union.
Bothereau – no doubt speaking as a Frenchman rather than as the President of
the ETUS – moreover feared a British ‘invasion’ in union matters.32 This reaction
may be surprising, since FO is supposed to have been strongly in favour of the
British entry in the EEC (Pernot, 2001: 424–35). However, although there was
agreement to consider full employment the prime goal of European policy, the
unions of the ‘little Europe’ regarded the British views as ineffective and even
dangerous, because they located the responsibility for realizing full employment
with the national governments and not at European level.33 The main difficulties
though concerned the question of free circulation of labour and the relations with
the Commonwealth on the one hand and the European (French) Overseas
Territories on the other.
Trade unions in the ‘two Europes’

Notwithstanding their differences, the unions of both the ‘little Europe’ and the
‘outer seven’ regretted the failure of the British accession negotiations in January
1963. Especially the West German DGB was a fervent supporter of Britain’s
accession – much more so than the West German Christian democrat-led
government. The ETUS considered De Gaulle to be an authoritarian leader.
Moreover, the French President’s veto appeared as a rejection of the transatlantic
solidarity that the unions unanimously cherished. They saw an integrated Europe
120 Patrick Pasture
as a prerequisite for establishing an equal partnership with the USA as a long-
term objective, which included the membership of the United Kingdom. This
is also the reason why they vehemently rejected the Franco-German Treaty of
Friendship of January 1963, calling it – at least in private – an ‘institutional attack
on the Rome Treaties’ (Harm Buiter), a model of an authoritarian, closed Europe
dominated by France and Germany – but as usual using much more diplomatic
language in public.34 On 6 July 1963, the ETUS organized a manifestation in
Dortmund – Rosenberg would later call it ‘a meeting in a fancy environment’
rather than a mass rally – where the trade unions of the ‘little Europe’ pleaded
for the constitution of the democratic United States of Europe, with the inclusion
of Britain, instead of alliances of nation-states as the French propagated, for
example in the Fouchet Plan of November 1961 for foreign policy cooperation.35
FO, however, and in particular its Secretary-General Bothereau, who was also
President of the ETUC, showed sympathy for De Gaulle’s standpoint.36 The
French position was motivated by domestic concerns as well as their dissatisfac-
tion with the international politics of the ICFTU in general, and of the TUC in
particular. This concerned especially their anti-colonial stance – FO supported
the French colonial policy in Algeria – and the contacts of the TUC and other
ICFTU unions with the communist trade unions behind the Iron Curtain (Pernot,
2001: 436–50).
At the same time, the EEC unions experienced more difficulties, as the
Commission relied more on experts instead of social organizations, and the
Council of Ministers in turn curtailed the autonomy of the Commission.37 In any
case, relations between the ETUS and the European Communities only had an
informal and occasional, not institutional and permanent character, because of
the opposition of some countries.38 For example, the unions were not associated
with the EEC’s administrative commission on the social security of migrant work-
ers. To remedy this situation, they attempted a concerted action via the national
unions – which was hardly implemented and remained unsuccessful.39 Even the
activities concerning social harmonization, which signified the start of improved
relations with the Commission, came to nothing, while the governments took the
initiative.40
Even among the unions of the ‘little Europe’, however, fundamental diver-
gences appeared. Under the impulse of the Benelux and West German unions,
the ETUS advocated the merger of the three executives and insisted that the
trade unions be associated with economic planning in the EEC. However, in
1964, the French and Italian unions started to explicitly distance themselves from
that strategy, arguing that the unions should not become too much integrated
within the system and should avoid being made responsible for European policy.41
In particular, the French and West German governments opposed close relations
between the Commission and the unions and vetoed any proposal to coopt a
trade union delegate in the new executive. The ETUS Secretariat continued to
try to develop a trade union social programme and a strategy for cooperation
with the European Commission. It supported an initiative by the Dutch Minister
of Social Affairs Gerard Veldkamp – backed up by the Commission – to organize
a meeting between the Ministers of Labour, the Commission, the trade unions
and the employers, which was prevented by the French and West German
governments, however.42
While the unions defended the merger of the executives, they opposed the
fusion of the treaties. A merger of the executives would enhance the authority of
the Commission, but with a fusion of the treaties, the unions would lose their
representation in the ECSC High Authority. The whole question led to an intense
debate in the European trade union movement, opposing at times the ETUS,
more inclined to compromise, and the ICFTU-ECSC, which saw its position
in the ECSC jeopardized and considered the merger as a social regression.
They even considered organizing a European strike. The ETUS, however, limited
its protest to a press conference, considering that the unions did not have
the power to win a battle with the European governments over this issue.43
Simultaneously, the ETUS presented a social action programme, focused on
European labour relations and ‘economic democracy’ (along with social protec-
tion of women and the young, working time, revenue policy and the study of
social security). The challenge turned out to be more difficult than ever, however.
Labour relations in Europe had developed in extremely divergent ways, and
while the DGB strongly promoted the West German model of co-determination
(Mitbestimmung) also at European level, France (FO), Italy (the CISL and the
Unione italiana del lavoro (UIL)) and Belgium Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond/
Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique (ABVV/FGTB) resisted such union
integration into the capitalist system.44 Significantly, an agreement was sought
with the EFTA unions.45
The EEC crisis of the mid-1960s, with the so-called ‘empty chair’ policy of
De Gaulle, again demonstrated the weakness of the unions. They tried to advance
their views, but even refrained from condemning De Gaulle. In part, for reasons of
French domestic politics, FO even increasingly shared the views of De Gaulle,
considering supranational institutions as a long-term objective, but certainly not
something to realize in the short term (Pernot, 2001: 436–50). This situation finally
provoked a new discussion and reassessment of the basic orientations of the
unions’ European action, or lack of it, which finally led to the creation of the
ETUC. The ETUC largely suffered from the same impediments that hampered its
predecessors, however, lack of internal cohesion, lack of resources and above all,
the continuing orientation of the unions towards social progress within the frame-
work of the nation-state (cf. Visser and Ebbinghaus, 1992; Ebbinghaus and Visser,
1997; Dølvik, 1999; Martin and Ross, 1999; Greenwood, 2003).
Conclusion
As a transnational political pressure group at the European level, the trade
union movement largely failed (cf. Gobin, 1998). To be effective, the trade unions
were indeed far too fragmented, lacked hierarchical and supranational structures
with real authority, and invested far too little (see Hoskyns, 1996; Waterman,
2001; Reinalda, 2003 for illuminating comparisons with other transnational
122 Patrick Pasture
pressure groups). However, they declared themselves strongly in favour of
European integration and supported it with their actual involvement in European
integration initiatives – from the OEEC to the ECSC and the EEC to EFTA – by
exerting pressure upon national political parties, ministries and governments, and
by propagating a European identity among their members.
This European conviction was primarily rooted in pre-war analyses of the
weaknesses of the continent, which were confirmed by the Second World War.
Other factors played a role as well. For many unions, ‘Europe’ offered an impor-
tant source of symbolic power. Western Europe after the war saw the great break-
through and the political and socio-economic recognition of the trade unions,
who were accepted as the legitimate spokespersons of the working class. This
recognition was continued at the European level. In turn, this recognition strength-
ened the position of the unions and was therefore actively pursued by them as well.
As we have seen, Europeanism was also a strategy of the confederations and their
leaders to enhance their authority in the domestic sphere (see also Braun, 1995;
Pernot, 2001: 35–7). Moreover, after the trade union splits of 1947–9 and the
adoption of the Marshall Plan, Europe – more than transatlantism – offered a
source of identification and solidarity. The FO, for example, saw in the ideal of
the ‘United States of Europe’ a way to transcend internal divisions (Pernot, 2001;
Régin, 2003: 52–4). Equally, the international trade union movement offered the
West German unions from soon after the war legitimacy and an opportunity to
participate fully in the European construction. In contrast to the West German
Social Democrats, the DGB was strongly in favour of the Schuman Plan and
European integration in general (Haas, 1958: 219–20; Braun, 1995). Hence,
it was subsequently highly rewarded by the West German government in terms of
appointments to the ECSC and, on the domestic level, a law on co-determination
largely in accordance with its demands (Braun, 1995; Kaiser, 1996: xliii; Guinand,
2001; Erne, 2002).
The European recognition of the trade unions, however, was motivated by their
support for the Marshall Plan, considered essential, as well as for the Schuman
Plan; also for Monnet it was important that the unions backed his plans for the
EEC. The importance of union support decreased somewhat in the 1960s, how-
ever. On the one hand, as the Spaak Committee set up in 1955 after the Messina
conference to prepare options for further integration demonstrated, union support
was no longer viewed to be as important as in 1947. On the other hand, the unions
had gained their place in society; hence, the backing of Europe became less essen-
tial. In the case of the FO, for example, references to Europe turned into mere
rhetoric (Pernot, 2001; Régin, 2003). At the same time, the prosperous welfare
states appeared to prove that the nation-state offered the best opportunities for
social progress.
It was their experiences in the ECSC including all its flaws and deficiencies,
and its inability to impose a supranational policy and to prevent the coal crisis of
1958 (cf. Mioche, 2001), which turned the European unions from the ‘little
Europe’ into even more convinced ‘Europeans’. It made them strong advocates of
the creation of the EEC and Euratom, and later even favour the merger of the
three executives, even if it entailed a step backwards for them compared to the
ECSC. The latter policy may surprise, but it illustrates that the unions in the end,
as in the 1920s, considered European integration primarily as a means to create
the economic and political conditions for social progress, even if they sought some
means to realize additional progress and upward social harmonization through
European action as well. This perspective was to a certain extent shared by the
EFTA unions that (as the TUC used to emphasize) were also more eager to
promote European integration than their governments, or socialist parties for that
matter. Notwithstanding the mutual incomprehension, the experiences and analy-
ses of the unions in the ‘little Europe’ had an influence on how the unions of the
EFTA unions, and the TUC in particular, considered the EEC and viewed their
position in EFTA. Moreover, the communists also were seduced. In the view of
the obvious progress of the European Communities, in the 1960s some commu-
nist unions slowly reconsidered their opposition to European integration and in
1966, the French and Italian communist unions, with support from the Belgian
Communist Party, established a common committee and office in Brussels to
influence European policy (Pernot, 2001: 310–27; Verbist, 2001).
Between the European union bodies on the one hand and the European
Commission on the other hand, a close and mutually beneficial relationship
developed. Moreover, the actual collaboration between unions of different coun-
tries and of different ideological outlook did smoothen their mutual relations.
Notwithstanding ideological differences and strategic considerations, this was
undoubtedly the case for the Christian and socialist trade unions in the different
European institutions (Pasture, 1999: 377–404). Tania Régin has recently shown
that the European integration equally had a notable positive effect on French
domestic inter-trade union relations (Régin, 2003). In addition, the transnational
European trade union elite – limited in numbers, but outstanding in authority and
prestige (Pasture, 2000; Régin, 2003) – shared a common culture with the bur-
geoning European administration, particularly in the social departments. Trade
unionists figured prominently in European networks and pressure groups, and
intermingled there with politicians and civil servants. The European administra-
tion offered one of the very few career opportunities for trade union officials out-
side the unions. The unions entertained an excellent relationship with Monnet, as
with many other key European leaders such as René Mayer, then his successor as
President of the High Authority, and (considerably less though) Walter Hallstein,
the President of the European Commission from 1958 to 1967. It seems that their
access to influential European political circles – such as the Spaak Committee that
prepared the negotiation of the Rome Treaties – declined though. Some later
European leaders – particularly Jacques Delors – had trade union roots, however.
While their position in Europe weakened, the unions did try to reinforce their
European organization and action. A rapprochement occurred between all
unions of different ideological orientation – in fact they largely lost their ideolo-
gical distinctiveness – which resulted in the creation of the ETUC. According to
Jelle Visser, ‘measured by its scope, resources and impact, the ETUC is without
parallel in the world’ (Visser, 1998: 236). Nevertheless, since its creation, the
124 Patrick Pasture
ETUC has played hardly any role in the European integration (Middlemas, 1995;
Erne, 2002; Greenwood, 2003). While the ideological diversity in the European
trade union world may have dwindled, the unions have definitely not given up
their strong national orientation. Only in the 1990s, when in most countries –
most notably Britain and France – they suffered huge losses of membership and
political influence, did the unions start to develop real and effective transnational
structures, albeit still relatively marginal compared to the weight of the national
dimension (Dølvik, 1999, 2002; Dølvik and Visser, 2001).
Acknowledgement
I wish to express my appreciation for the critical comments of the editors on an
earlier version of this text.
Notes
1 Procès verbal de la réunion du Comité élargi sur les questions d’organisation, Rome,
3 May 1961 (Amsterdam, International Institute for Social History, Archives of the
European Trade Union Confederation [hereafter Arch. ETUC], 441).
2 ERO-ICFTU, Resolution on the Free Trade Area (‘for internal use only’), European
Regional Conference, Brussels, 12–14 May 1958 (Arch. ETUC, 301).
3 Doc. ERO/EC/72 17th ERO Executive Committee meeting [hereafter Ex.Com.],
Frankfurt, 27 June 1959 and correspondence Scandinavian unions – Schevenels 1 April
1959 and 22 May 1959 (Arch. ETUC, 1281); Summary report of the 18th ERO
Ex.Com., Brussels, 29 January 1960 (Amsterdam, International Institute for Social
History, Archives of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions [hereafter
Arch. ICFTU], 1283); Statement of Four Presidents – Scandinavian National Centres,
and Secretariats comments on . . . , 12 May 1960, Doc. ERO/EC/19/2 and 3, Summary
report of the 19th ERO Ex.Com., Brussels, 12 May 1960; Summary report of the 20th
ERO Ex.Com., Brussels, 14 September 1960 (Arch. ICFTU, 1283).
4 ‘Memorandum of the Trade Union Committee of EFTA Countries’, Vienna, 10–11
March 1960 (Arch. ETUC, 302); Arch. ETUC, 305.
5 Summary report of the 4th ERO Ex.Com., Brussels, 3 November 1955 (Arch. ICFTU,
1281).
6 Ibid. and correspondence in Arch. ETUC, 263.
7 Recommendations on the European Economic and Social Council, Joint ICFTU-ERO
Committee on European Social Integration, Brussels, 5–6 April 1956 (Arch. ICFTU,
1428).
8 ICFTU, Rapport sur la Conférence régionale européenne, 4th session, Frankfurt,
22–24 May 1956 (Arch. ETUC, 8).
9 Summary report of the 9th Ex.Com. of the ERO/ICFTU, Brussels, 13 January 1957;
‘Observations relative to the Draft European Common Market Treaty submitted to
the President of the Ministerial Committee by the Free Trade Union Organisation
of the Community’, Brussels, 30th January 1957 (Arch. ETUC, 1281); ORE-ICFTU,
Résolution sur l’harmonisation sociale en Europe, Conférence régionale européenne,
Bruxelles, 12–14 May 1958 (Arch. ETUC, 10).
10 See particularly the note on recent developments and plans in the field of European
social integration, agenda item 3 for the Joint ICFTU-ERO Committee on European
Social Integration, Brussels, 22–23 October 1957 (Arch. ICFTU, 1428).
11 See the documents, among which the resolutions, of the 2nd General Assembly of the
Free Trade Unions of the Member States of the European Communities, Luxembourg,
5–6 March 1959 (Arch. ETUC, 480); Declaration of the ETUS, 12 October 1960
(Arch. ETUC, 440); Nota [Theo Rasschaert], La fusion des exécutifs, ETUS Ex.Com.,
Rome, 14 May 1961 (Arch. ETUC, 441).
12 See reports of the meetings, letters and declarations of the ETUS, in particular the
minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Rome, 14 May 1961 (Arch. ETUC, 441).
13 Nota Harm G. Buiter, s.d., ETUS Ex.Com., Paris, 25 November 1960 (Arch. ETUC,
440).
14 For example, ETUS, Déclaration des représentants des Centres syndicaux à l’occasion
de la réunion avec les parlementaires européens, 25 September 1958; Prise de posi-
tion du Comité exécutif du Secrétariat syndical européen (CISL) [ ETUS] sur les
dispositions sociales du Traité de la CEE, Geneva, 9 June 1960 (Arch. ETUC, 438, 439).
15 Bruno Storti, Perspectives d’une politique syndicale, ETUS Ex.Com. Brussels, 5–6
April 1962 and Harm G. Buiter to Walter Hallstein, President of the Ex.Com. of the
EEC, 28 February 1962 (Arch. ETUC 443).
16 See the documents and minutes (in particular the introduction to the discussion on the
draft social programme by Gaetano Zingone) of the ETUS Ex.Com., Rome 14 May
1961 (Arch. ETUC, 441).
17 See the documents, report and resolution of the third General Assembly of the free
trade unions of the six member states of the European Communities, Brussels, 10–12
January 1962 (Arch. ETUC, 481).
18 See in particular the minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com. Brussels, 3–8 October 1962
(Arch. ETUC, 445).
19 Walter Schevenels to George Woodcock, TUC Ass. General Secretary, May 1958
(Arch. ETUC, 10). See also ICFTU, Rapport sur la Conférence régionale européenne,
5th session, Brussels, 12–14 May 1958 (Arch. ETUC, 10; ICFTU, 1312–13); Statement
of Policy of the TUC, 9 June 1959 (Arch. ETUC, 300). On the attitude and policies
of the TUC see Lieber, 1970: 38–45, 86–9.
20 Summary report of the ERO Economic Committee, 11–12 November 1958
(Arch. ETUC, 1287).
21 ERO-ICFTU Statement of Policy on the European Free Trade Area, by the European
Trade Union Conference on the Common Market, Brussels, 16–17 May 1957 (Arch.
ICFTU, 1318).
22 ERO/ICFTU Memorandum of viewpoints and conclusions retained by the free trade
union movement of Europe in respect of the Free Trade Area (sessions of Economic
Committee of 9–11 June and 15–16 July 1958). According to the minutes of the last
meeting, the memorandum was agreed upon, but only ‘for internal use’ and it was not
published (ETUC, 1287).
23 ERO-ICFTU Statement of Policy on the European Free Trade Area, by the European
Trade Union Conference on the Common Market, Brussels, 16–17 May 1957 (Arch.
ICFTU, 1318).
24 Memorandum of the Trade Union Committee of EFTA Countries, Vienna, 10–11
March 1960 (Arch. ETUC, 302).
25 Letters of Franz Olah, President of the Austrian trades union congress ÖGB, to Walter
Schevenels and to Arne Geijer, President of the Swedish-LO [and of the ICFTU],
30 March 1960 (Arch. ETUC, 304).
26 Report of a Meeting of Representatives of National Centres in the EFTA, London,
26 May 1960 (Arch. ETUC, 305).
27 Correspondence in Arch. ETUC, 304.
28 Minutes of the Ex.Com. of the ETUS, Rome, 14 May 1961 (Arch. ETUC, 441).
29 European Economic Unity – A Background Note, TUC, 10 July 1961 and Memorandum
to the EEC Trade Union National Centres: TUC views on full employment and the
labour provisions of the Rome Treaty, 30 November 1961 (Arch. ETUC, 306).
30 Dossier regarding the European Communities’ enlargement for the Ex.Com. of the
ETUS, Brussels, 9 January 1962 (Arch. ETUC, 441).
126 Patrick Pasture
31 TUC, Memorandum to the EEC Trade Union National Centres on Full Employment
and the Labour Provisions of the Rome Treaty, 30 November 1961 (Arch. ETUC,
306 – also contains preparatory notes and minutes of a meeting 8 November 1961).
Compare Lieber, 1970: 106–12.
32 Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 9 January 1962 (Arch. ETUC, 442).
33 Report of a meeting between delegates of the ETUS and the TUC for the Ex.Com.
ETUS, 5–6 April 1962; Geneva, 13–14 June 1962 (Arch. ETUC, 443–4).
34 Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 8–9 March 1963 (Arch. ETUC, 447). The
stress on the authoritarian implication was also motivated by the French contacts with
the Franco regime in Spain.
35 See the documents in Arch. ETUC, 449.
36 For example, Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 8–9 March 1963 (Arch.
ETUC, 447).
37 Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 9–10 May 1963 (Arch. ETUC, 448); the
Stellungnahme des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes zur mittelfristigen Wirtschaftspolitik
der Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft . . . and minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com.,
Brussels, 6–7 December 1963 (Arch. ETUC, 450); Problèmes sociaux, and minutes of
the ETUS Ex.Com., Amsterdam, 22 October 1964 (Arch. ETUC, 455).
38 Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 9–10 May 1963 (Arch. ETUC, 447) and
following.
39 Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 8–9 March, 9–10 May 1963 (Arch. ETUC,
447–8). See also Guinand, 2001.
40 Note au Comité Exécutif concernant l’état des travaux en matière d’harmonisation
sociale, 3 December 1963, discussed at the Ex.Com., Brussels, 6–7 December 1963
(Arch. ETUC, 451).
41 Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 21 April 1964 (Arch. ETUC, 453). On the
reorientation of FO, opposing trade union integration in the political and socio-
economic structures (and in particular Planism) see Pernot, 2001: 459–66.
42 Doc. and Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Brussels, 8–9 July 1964 (Arch. ETUC, 454);
Minutes of the ETUS Ex.Com., Amsterdam, 22 October 1964 (Arch. ETUC, 455).
43 See esp. ETUS Ex.Com., 14 January 1965 and the letter of Harm G. Buiter to
A. Misslin, Secretary of the ECSC Inter Trade Liaison Committee, Luxembourg,
24 December 1964 (referring also to a resolution of the Action Committee for the
United States of Europe subscribed by ten members of the ETUS Ex.Com.), discussions
at the ETUS Ex.Com., 8 April 1965 (Arch. ETUC, 457).
44 See especially the documents and discussions and documents at the ETUS ‘enlarged’
Ex.Com., Amsterdam, 22 October 1964, 4 February 1965 (Arch. ETUC, 455–6).
45 ETUS ‘Enlarged’ Ex.Com. with delegates of the AELE [EFTA] (Britain and Sweden),
4 February 1965 (Arch. ETUC, 457).
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6 The alliance of European
Christian Democracy and
Conservatism
Convergence through networking
Karl Magnus Johansson
This chapter explores networks of European Christian Democratic and

Conservative parties. Their networking activities have brought these two formerly
more distinct party families closer together in European politics. Most studies of
transnational party co-operation have researched party families in isolation from
each other. In contrast, emphasis is placed here on convergence through networks of
interaction across such groupings of political parties. The rapprochement between
European Christian Democracy and Conservatism follows a certain path. The
primary aim of this chapter is to trace this path and the road ahead along historical-
institutional lines, illuminating persistence and path dependency (see e.g.
Steinmo et al., 1992; Pierson, 1998). Some useful analytical concepts that are also
relevant in this context are discussed in greater detail in other chapters in this book.
They include the discussion of new institutionalism and socialization by Frank
Schimmelfennig and of networks by Karen Heard-Lauréote.
The chapter draws on a large number of interviews and on extensive docu-
mentation compiled through archival research. Various ancillary associations are
also included and so are party foundations and federations, which also contribute
to transnational socialization and convergence. Whereas the chapter is predomi-
nantly empirical in character, I also draw out implications for the development
of theory that may be applied in future research on transnational exchanges of
political parties and politicians.
Political parties in transnational politics and

in the European Union
Political parties are often referred to as an example of transnational actors (see
e.g. Kaiser, 1969; Rosenau, 1990; Smith, 2001). This suggests they are non-state,
societal actors operating across state borders. However, various types of trans-
national actors should be differentiated from each other. Do political parties
qualify as such actors? Political parties are fundamentally different, for example,
from private interest groups and firms. Political parties have distinctive character-
istics. They are generally office-seeking. A political party may form a coalition in
government or in parliament with another political party. This implies that polit-
ical parties might be supportive of a regime and committed to the preservation of
132 Karl Magnus Johansson
state sovereignty, acting in defence of some national interests. This situation serves
to restrain the freedom of action of political parties and their leaders. It is, therefore,
not self-evident that political parties are ‘sovereignty-free’, as Rosenau (1990: 36)
suggests they are.
European democracies have party governments. The so-called ‘regime parties’
are integrated with the state and postwar Italy is an example of this (Partitocrazia).
The Christian Democrats dominated the state there until the early 1990s. There
are special public laws regulating political parties in several European countries.
Modern political parties are in a number of ways semi-public organizations. Most
of them are subject to some kind of public framework laws yet many of their
activities remain voluntary and private in nature. Whereas the top echelon
of political parties could fulfil functions in state institutions, the supporters and
ideological foundations fit more closely with the civil society. Political parties are
traditionally seen as voluntary associations rooted at the societal level. Historically,
political parties emerged on the basis of social cleavages and political conflicts. In
the present era, such conflicts are to an increasing extent played out in supra-
national arenas of policy-making. It is, therefore, logical that political parties also
follow suit and organize themselves in the European political sphere. Political
parties at the European level are emerging and are becoming actors in their own
right. They take policy initiatives and bring together the networks of member
parties and politicians.
A regulation on funding and a statute of European political parties was adopted
in 2003 in light of the revised ‘party article’ in the Treaty of Nice ( Johansson and
Zervakis, 2002; Day and Shaw, 2003; Johansson and Raunio, 2004). In conjunc-
tion with broader institutional changes in the European Union, this regulation
could have a major impact on the ways in which political parties conduct politics
in the future. One could foresee more policy co-ordination on a transnational
basis. Alterations in the EU institutional balance make the emergent European
political parties more significant. I am especially thinking here of the general
reinforcement of the links between the European Commission and the European
Parliament (EP), whose importance has grown considerably as a result of treaty
revisions. European party elites have been instrumental in this development.
The European political parties are confronted with a number of challenges and
in order to meet these they need to be strengthened as organizations and become
more autonomous and integrated. The nature of transnational party interaction
in the EC/EU has changed quite dramatically since the 1970s. This kind of
interaction has three different stages: contact, co-operation and integration
(Niedermayer, 1983). Co-operation has been sustained by the various organiza-
tions that were established in the 1970s (Pridham and Pridham, 1981; Pridham,
1982). The patterns of interactions are transforming themselves, and for the time
being are somewhere in between co-operation and integration ( Johansson and
Zervakis, 2002). Integration means that authoritative decisions, on the basis of
some kind of majority voting, are taken at the European party level and that
national political parties voluntarily comply with these decisions. All the
European political parties allow for majority voting in internal bodies. The future
Christian Democracy and Conservatism 133
power balance in these organizations is hard to predict. The new regulation on
a statute and funding of European political parties could result in centralization
as far as the chain of command is concerned. Whereas Christian Democrats were
pushing for this regulation, conservatives were far from enthusiastic. As for
European party interaction, conservatives tend to be pragmatic and prefer con-
tact and cooperation to integration. Conservatives want to maintain their inde-
pendence and cannot accept being mere national components of a European
political party. National political parties, generally keen on their identity and cred-
ibility, will strive to hold on to their power to nominate candidates for European
elections and run the campaigns themselves within member-states.
European Christian Democracy and Conservatism:

an ever closer union?
Over the years, there have been numerous and durable contacts between Christian
Democratic political parties in Europe. There is a substantial body of literature
on the historical foundations of such contacts (see e.g. Irving, 1979; Gehler and
Kaiser, 2004). Within the Christian democratic family, the Nouvelles Equipes
Internationales (NEI) was founded in 1949. In 1965 the European Union of
Christian Democrats (EUCD) came into being. In view of the direct elections to
the EP the European People’s Party (EPP) – Federation of Christian Democratic
Parties of the EC was formed in 1976 ( Jansen, 1998). From the outset, the EPP
was seen as an embryonic European political party. The EUCD and the EPP
merged in 1998, primarily to avoid duplication of work and also in light of the
inclusion of political parties from EU candidate countries.
Throughout the postwar period there have been meetings of presidents and
secretary-generals of Christian democratic parties. In addition, there have been
contacts among parliamentarians and most notably in the Common Assembly/EP.
The Christian Democratic Group was founded already in 1953. The Conservative
Group only came into being in the context of the 1973 enlargement. In 1979,
following the first direct elections to the EP, the name of the group was changed
into the European Democratic Group (EDG). On 1 May 1992 this group
dissolved as the British and Danish Conservatives became allied members of the
EPP Group. This alliance was agreed to after very complicated discussions and
negotiations (Hanley, 1994; Johansson, 1997; Jansen, 1998). The key personality
was Helmut Kohl, then German Chancellor and leader of the Christlich-
Demokratische Union (CDU), who put his weight behind this alliance. He was
courted by John Major. As the new leader of the Conservative Party and as Prime
Minister, Major, and the people around him, including his party chairman Chris
Patten and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, tried to enter into a coalition with
Christian Democrats and to improve relations with other EC governments more
generally. Major (1999: 265) wrote in his memoirs: ‘I was keen to rebuild shattered
fences, to prevent Britain from being seen for ever as the odd man out to be
excluded from private consultations that so often foreshadowed new policy in
Europe.’ This suggests that motives of power politics contributed to the alliance.
The alliance formed in 1992 was a key event for the future development of
European interactions among conservatives and Christian Democrats. As was
noted earlier, the process of rapprochement between them follows a certain path and
logic of its own. That the Christian democrat leaders finally gave a green light to
the British Tories sent a clear signal that other conservatives were welcome to coa-
lesce with Christian Democrats which has also happened. Conservative parties
from Nordic countries have joined the EPP and its parliamentary group. So have
the Portuguese Partido Social Democrata (PSD), Forza Italia and the French neo-
Gaullist party (previously Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), now the
leading force in the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, UMP,
founded in November 2002). Several political parties in the candidate countries
became associate members or observers of the EPP. The EPP started early to
prepare for this enlargement.
As long as there is a joint Christian Democratic/Conservative Group,
newcomers who identify themselves with any of these two, historically separate,
ideological families are generally welcome there. The alternative of being non-
aligned is far less attractive in terms of both material and non-material resources,
which include budgetary means, a sense of recognition and perhaps also of
belonging, that is, a shared identity. In terms of power it is a fact that important
decisions in the EP often follow from deals made between the largest political
groups.
The alliance has been subject to review after European elections and has been,
and remains, somewhat fragile. The EPP Group added ‘European Democrats’ to
its name after the 1999 European elections and the full name became Group of
the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats
(EPP-ED). This was of symbolic importance since especially the British
Conservatives wanted to signal a separate identity and their autonomy within the
group. They renegotiated the arrangement of the allied membership in connec-
tion with the June 2004 elections to the EP (European Voice, 12–18 February 2004
and 1–14 April 2004). Following a constitutive meeting in July, the number of
deputies in the ED part of the group were altogether 40, including 28 British
Conservatives.
Although described as a loveless marriage of convenience, there were still
strong incentives for the British Tories to remain allied with Christian Democrats
in one and the same political group in the EP. Nevertheless, some members pre-
ferred a departure from the Christian Democrats and the creation of a new group
with free-market and Euro-sceptic, or ‘Euro-realist’, political parties from coun-
tries that joined the European Union in 2004, including the Czech Republic,
Poland, Slovakia and Estonia (European Voice, 23–29 October 2003 and 12–18
February 2004). The choice rested with the leadership of the British Conservative
Party, which remained in opposition to the Christian Democrats’ goal of a federal
Europe and constitution. The British Conservative Party kept aloof from the EPP
organization. However, the new party leader Michael Howard attended the sum-
mit of EPP centre-right leaders and prime ministers in Paris on 4 December 2003
(Financial Times, 4 December 2003). The French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin
hosted the meeting at his office, the Hôtel de Matignon. The main item of the
agenda concerned the EU Intergovernmental Conference and the negotiations
over the new treaty, or constitution as the federalists prefer to call it.
There was considerable networking and co-ordination at the time of the
European Convention (2002–3), which drafted the constitution. The EPP had its
own Convention group and regularly arranged meetings and seminars.
Parliamentarians and politicians from countries due to join the European Union
were involved. Of the 13 members of the powerful Convention Praesidium,
7 came from the EPP including President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Vice-
President Jean-Luc Dehaene. A European constitution was a key priority of the
Christian Democrats, but not of the British Conservatives. For the time being,
there was not ‘an ever closer union’ and a meeting of minds between European
Christian Democracy and British Conservatism. More broadly, however, we can
conclude that conservatives and Christian Democrats have come much closer
together in European politics. There is also policy co-ordination within the EPP,
which is instrumental in weaving a web of networks of interaction among
Christian Democrats and Conservatives in Europe.
Whereas the alliance formed in 1992 was a key event, the real formative
moments or critical juncture can be traced back at least to the 1970s. We must,
therefore, return to that decade to be able to assemble evidence corroborating the
argument of persistence and path dependency. We are dealing with a process that
unfolds over time.
Onto the path: the Inter-Party Conference

The Inter-Party Conference involved conservative parties and those parties
on the Christian democratic side that could live with a conservative political party.
The most regular participants at Inter-Party Conference meetings were those
representing the British and Nordic Conservative parties and the German and
Austrian Christian democratic parties. A series of meetings were held from 1972
in the cities of Oslo (1972), Luxembourg (1973), Helsinki (1974), Munich (1975),
Copenhagen (1976) and Edinburgh (1977). Some meetings took place on the
margins of the annual conference of the British Conservative Party (in Blackpool
in 1975 and 1977 and in Brighton in 1976). There were also a number of party
meetings in Salzburg and in Bonn, or near Bonn, at the Political Academy
Eichholz of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. In 1974–6, party representatives
got together to compare and discuss the programmes of the political parties with
a view to a common political platform, or charter.
The overarching aim of the Inter-Party Conference was to prepare the
foundation of a common European party organization (Kohler and Myrzik,
1982). The youth and student sections put pressure on their parties. These
sections took an initiative at a meeting they held in London in 1972 (Ashford,
1980: 121–2). The British Young Conservatives and Federation of Conservative
Students lobbied their mother party. The 1975 party conference debated and
passed a motion urging ‘the Conservative Party to work more closely with our
political allies in Europe towards the formation of a moderate centre-right
alliance (a European Democrat Party (EDP))’ (quoted in Ashford, 1980: 120; see
also Pridham and Pridham, 1981: 197; Lodge and Herman, 1982: 173). In
Sweden there was a similar pressure from the youth and student sections on the
party, notably in the context of its annual conference in October 1975.1
Youth and student associations then coordinated their efforts at the European
level. Documentary evidence shows that they jointly proposed the formation, and
a charter, of EDP on the basis of a report drawn up during 1974–5. The joint
proposal was presented at the Inter-Party meeting in Munich in June 1975.2
According to this proposal, the alliance should be open to Christian Democratic,
Conservative and like-minded political parties and ‘be the starting-point for the
eventual creation of a trans-national European party, with the different national
parties of the European countries as constituent members’. They also proposed
a research and information office of those parties interested in facilitating the
exchange of information between the different parties and in order to undertake
joint research projects. It was also suggested that joint working groups be estab-
lished at once in regard to the developments in Spain and Portugal. Another idea
was to hold regular party leader meetings similar to those of the Socialist
International. European unity was a priority:
Only a close cooperation between our parties, with the creation of a joint
party on the European level as its immediate and clearly declared objective,
can ensure that the future of the United Europe we seek will not be dominated
by the organized forces of socialism. As the parties responsible for the origi-
nal creation of the European institutions, and as those which have been in
the forefront of the struggle for European unification in the entire post-war
period, it is our duty to take the lead also in the formation of European political
parties. Only in this way can we show that our commitment to a democratically
governed United Europe is real. [Italics added]3
There was a link, at least on an individual basis, to the European federalist

movement including the Young European Federalists (YEF).
In exploring the networks of interaction between European Christian demo-
crats and conservatives special attention must be paid to the British Conservatives.
They have played a central part in the forging of party links. In the 1960s, the
British Conservatives cultivated transnational relations mainly with the Germans,
whom they considered the closest of the continental Christian Democrats.
Considering both the CDU and the Bavarian Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU) as
their nearest allies, the Tories worked quite closely with them in the parliament-
ary assemblies of the Council of Europe, the Western European Union and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). There were also the Königswinter
Conference meetings of the Anglo-German Association that involved parliament-
arians. Politicians also came together in numerous meetings arranged by the
German party foundations including the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and its
London office. Such meetings contributed to an increased knowledge of the value
bases and political platforms of the political parties represented. The German
Christian democratic conception of the social market economy (a salient feature
of European Christian Democracy) was made known to British Conservatives.
This concept would play a distinct role for policy-making in the British Conservative
Party in the 1970s.
In the mid-1970s, there were initiatives to establish cooperation between
the political departments of the larger conservative and Christian democratic
parties, notably the British Conservative Party and the CDU. As Director of the
Conservative Research Department (CRD), Chris Patten was involved in such
a cooperation. A Catholic by confession, he was in a position to build bridges to
European Christian Democrats. He was also well versed in the thinking of that
ideology, including Catholic social teachings. This was helpful when he later,
in the early 1990s, as party chairman, was involved in the talks on an alliance in
the EP. During the course of the 1970s, the British Conservatives became increas-
ingly engaged in developing relationships with political parties in Europe. This is
attested to by a schedule of the nature of the links that existed between ‘different
branches of the Conservative Party and like-minded (and some other) parties in
Europe’.4 This schedule served as a reference document which could be kept per-
manently up-to-date in case of ‘alterations in the nature of inter-party relations’.
At an operational level the International Office of the British Conservative Party
played an active role, primarily through Lady Elles, who was the head of the
office in the 1970s. She stressed ‘the great importance’ of the formation of the
would-be European Democrat Union for all the parties.5 They would be ‘willing
to join in the formation of this union at the earliest possible moment and I think
we must make this clear to our Christian Democrat friends’.6 Lady Elles called
attention to the European Union of Women (EUW) of which she was chairman
in the 1970s.7 Founded already in 1953 and composed of women members of
conservative, Christian democratic and other like-minded parties, the EUW has
contributed to closer party relations. It is noteworthy that the EUW also included
Italian Christian Democrats as well as representatives of the Portuguese and
Spanish centre-right parties. Within the EUW, relations have been close between
the British and Nordic Conservatives and the German Christian Democrats. The
same could be said of the associations assembling representatives of the student
and youth sections of the conservative party and some Christian democratic
parties.
The Shadow Cabinet, under Margaret Thatcher, who was elected new party
leader in February 1975, formulated a policy for a European anti-socialist,
anti-collectivist alliance. There was a domestic–political motive to counter the
international and much acclaimed contacts of the Labour Party. The Shadow
Foreign Secretary, Reginald Maudling, was very concerned about relations
with like-minded parties in Europe (Maudling, 1978: 221–3). So was Douglas
Hurd, the opposition spokesman on European affairs outside the Shadow
Cabinet. He was himself involved in the party contacts pursued by the party’s
International Office, as were the deputy party leader William Whitelaw and
Thatcher herself.
Thatcher made a series of visits abroad to argue the case for an anti-socialist
alliance in Europe. Having met with CDU heavyweights, including Kohl, in
Germany in June 1975, she went there again in May 1976 to address the CDU
Congress in Hanover (Thatcher, 1995: 341, 344). This congress was very
European, both with regard to policies and visitors (Kleinmann, 1993: 373).8 The
Foreign Christian democratic politicians attending the CDU congress were
Amintore Fanfani of the Italian Democrazia Cristiana (DC), Josef Taus from the
Austrian Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP), Tindemans (then prime minister) of
the Flemish Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP) from Belgium and Jean Lecanuet (then
minister of justice) of the French Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS). There
were also leading party representatives from Norway, Portugal, Spain, Chile and
Venezuela. The congress provided an opportunity for Thatcher to forge links. In
her speech Thatcher said: ‘I am convinced that the Christian Democratic,
Conservative and Centre Parties in Europe should now join together in an effec-
tive working alliance. I believe that this is a task of historic importance, and one
in which we should invest all our energies’ (quoted in Ashford, 1980: 120–1).
Reportedly, Thatcher received standing ovations which lasted for at least five
minutes.9
Courting parties less enthusiastic about an alliance including the British
Conservative Party, Thatcher went to the Hague and Rome for talks with leading
Dutch and Italian Christian Democrats and called for their involvement in the
preparations for a European organization (Thatcher, 1995: 345–6). These visits
also served as a way to improve the rather sparse bilateral links the British
Conservative Party had established with Christian democratic parties other than
the German one.
Thatcher was kept informed about the talks in the Inter-Party Conference, and
was herself closely involved and described in interviews as being most interested
and constructive. Other party leaders who involved themselves were Poul Schlüter
of the Danish Conservative party, Kohl and Franz Josef Strauss of the Bavarian
CSU and Taus of the Austrian ÖVP. Significantly, the leader of the Swedish
conservative Moderata Samlingspartiet, Gösta Bohman (Minister of Economic
Affairs 1976–8 and 1979–81), deliberately kept some distance because of the
involvement of Strauss who received a very negative press in Sweden. The
Swedish social democrats, themselves very active internationally, scored party-
political points by publicly questioning this connection between the ‘Moderates’
and a party described in a derogatory way as ‘right-wing’. In fact, Strauss had
established a close contact with General Pinochet of Chile.
Thatcher and Strauss shared a similar anti-socialist and anti-communist
rhetoric, which created problems for Christian Democrats in countries like
Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands where they actually formed government coal-
itions with socialist parties. The leadership of the purely Christian democratic
EUCD decided to find out more about the policies of Thatcher and the party of
which she was the leader. On behalf of the EUCD, its Dutch Deputy Secretary-
General Karl Josef Hahn and the Head of the CDU International Office
Heinrich Böx made an ‘information visit’ to London on 24–25 February 1975.10
The visit was agreed to by the President and the Secretary-General of the EUCD,
Kai-Uwe von Hassel (German CDU) and Arnaldo Forlani (Italian DC). The
Dutch ‘Equipe’ of EUCD was also behind the decision. Hahn and Böx met
with Thatcher and other senior Tories. Lady Elles arranged the visit, the purpose
of which was to get to know better the guiding ideas and political action of the
British Conservative Party. Again, it was concluded that the name and image
‘conservative’ represented serious difficulties. Likewise, it was feared that common
political activities between the conservatives and the Christian Democrats could
give the impression that they wanted to create an anti-socialist Europe.
For their part, the Tories were concerned that all the Christian democratic
parties would unite around the position of the Belgians, the Dutch and the
Italians, thereby leaving the conservatives in limbo. Despite this position and
despite the formation of the EPP, in 1976, the Tories hoped that a majority of
Christian democratic parties would wish to form the EDU. However, no decision
was reached in 1976. One reason for this was the German federal election in early
October that year. Kohl and Strauss were rivals in German politics. Both led
parties in opposition to the governing social democrats. Kohl too argued that
a common European organization of the Christian Democrats and conservatives
could counter the tendency towards a socialist Europe. He visited Thatcher in
London in July 1976 and said that he wanted closer contacts between the CDU
and the British Conservative Party. As Thatcher (1995: 342) herself would put it,
these two parties ‘were bound to be the two key elements’ in the nascent EDU. Its
founding meeting was postponed more than once. Whereas the British and
Nordic Conservative parties remained committed to the idea, the Austrian ÖVP
and German CDU suffered from internal conflicts. The trade union faction and
social wing, or faction of the CDU insisted that the party should stay away from
conservatives and remain loyal to the cause and organization of European Christian
Democracy. After all, European Christian democratic parties had a common
background in the EUCD and its predecessor, the NEI, and they were now about
to form the EPP in view of the first European elections. These were scheduled for
1978 but were delayed until 1979.
Due to the vacillations within the CDU and the ÖVP, the CSU and its leader
Strauss, tried to seize the initiative. The CSU invited party representatives to
a meeting in Munich on 15 March 1977. The venue was the Hanns Seidel
Foundation, one of the German party foundations. The CSU proposed Thatcher
as EDU chairman. This was controversial in the light of sentiments within
Christian democratic parties. Conservatives and Christian Democrats committed
to the EDU became increasingly impatient. There were concerted efforts regard-
ing its formation. The Shadow Foreign Secretary (1976–8) John Davies planned
to see Tindemans in Brussels.11 Tindemans was Prime Minister of Belgium
1974–8 and in 1976 was elected the first EPP President. On 1 December 1977
Thatcher, Kohl and Taus, the ÖVP leader who by now was the designated
candidate to become EDU chairman, met in Brussels with Tindemans.12 They
decided to postpone the foundation of the EDU until a date after the EPP
programme had been agreed in February 1978 and after the French parliamentary
elections had been held in March 1978. Although publicly outspoken against the
formation of the EDU, it is suggested that Tindemans was not that critical in
private. However, he was under pressure from his Flemish party and also had to
give priority to the EPP. He even threatened to step down from his position as
president of the EPP.
The final deal involved the British Conservative Party, the German CDU and
CSU, and the Austrian ÖVP.13 Taus held a private meeting with Kohl. On
20 March 1978 Taus hosted a meeting at his house in Kitzbühel. The persons
attending this meeting were Lady Elles of the British Conservative Party and
the Secretary-Generals of CSU and CDU, Gerold Tandler and Heiner Geißler.
Thus, Nordic representatives were excluded from this meeting despite the fact
that the Secretary-General of the Swedish Moderata Samlingspartiet, Lars
F. Tobisson, had been 1 of 4 members of the Inter-Party working group originally
established to prepare the EDU. The others decided to make programmatic and
organizational changes. This caused considerable acrimony among the Swedes.
In his internal report to the party leadership, Tobisson wrote that one option was
for the party leader to not attend the inauguration and thus refrain from signing
the declaration. Another option raised was that the Swedish party could become
an observer instead of a full member, at least initially. The Finnish conservative
Kansallinen Kokoomus party considered the same option because of its resis-
tance to the goal of ‘European unity’, which was embraced in draft versions of
the EDU charter.
Along the path: the European Democrat Union

The EDU was at last inaugurated at a ceremony at the Kleßheim Castle near
Salzburg on 24 April 1978. This occasion provided a photo opportunity not least
for the hosts, the Austrian ÖVP and its leader Taus, who needed some publicity
to strengthen his position and that of his party in Austrian politics. In attendance
were the party leaders and future Heads of Government Thatcher, Kohl and
Schlüter. Strauss was also present, which seems to have been the real reason why
the leader of the Swedish Moderata Samlingspartiet Bohman stayed away even
though the excuse given for the absence concerned duties related to his position
as minister of economic affairs. It is beyond doubt that there was an element of
domestic politics involved. The media and the Leader of the Social Democrats,
Olof Palme, dubbed the EDU ‘The Black International’. All Nordic Conservative
parties joined the EDU from the outset, with the exception of the one from
Iceland. This party (Självständighetspartiet) was later convinced to join as an
observer.
It was no coincidence that the name of the new party organization did not
contain the word conservative. This was an attempt to placate Christian
Democrats. However, this was not sufficient to convince the Belgian, Dutch and
Italian Christian Democrats to become founding members of the EDU. It is
interesting to note that, on a personal basis, the Italian DC had been represented
in the Inter-Party Conference. This party was represented at EDU meetings and
was adopted as an observer in 1981. Both the Italian DC and the Walloon Parti
Social Chrétien (PSC) from Belgium were represented as observers at the EDU
party leaders conference in Salzburg in July 1980. Still, however, the Italians
remained nervous about a formal link to the British Conservative Party, in par-
ticular. So were the Belgian, notably the Flemish CVP, the Dutch Christen
Democratisch Appèl (CDA) and also the Irish Fine Gael. This party had been
invited to the Inter-Party Conference, but sent an apology. Involved in transna-
tional co-operation, Garret FitzGerald (1991: 343), the party leader, belonged to
those who insisted that the German Christian democrats ‘had to be headed off
from forming an alliance with, among others, the British Tories’. He defined Fine
Gael as a party, within the Christian democratic movement, ‘on the left wing
with the Benelux parties and with some of the French and Italians’ (ibid.).
The Luxembourg Chrëschtlech Sozial Vollekspartei (CSV), under pressure from
the Germans, had been involved in the Inter-Party Conference and became a per-
manent observer of the EDU. The Austrian ÖVP took on a leadership role in the
EDU. Alois Mock replaced Taus as chairman. Other parties from non-EC coun-
tries to link-up with the EDU either as full members or as observers were Svenska
Folkpartiet in Finland, the Swiss CVP, the Greek Nea Demokratia (ND), the
Portuguese Partido do Centro Démocratico Social (CDS), the Spanish Unión de
Centro Democrático (UCD), the Maltese Partit Nazzjonalista (PN), Democratic
Rally of Cyprus (DR) and the Turkish Justice Party. As for Spain there was a cer-
tain rivalry. Manuel Fraga attempted to get into the EDU but this was controver-
sial and postponed because of his record as a minister in Franco’s government. In
1983, however, Fraga’s Alianza Popular (AP) party (the present Partido Popular,
PP) joined the EDU. Of the historic parties within European Christian
Democracy, the French CDS would become indirectly affiliated to the EDU
through the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF), which became an
observer of the EDU. The more conservative Gaullist RPR was a founding
member and, although absent from the inaugural meeting of the EDU, Jacques
Chirac involved himself and hosted a number of EDU meetings over the years.
The ancillary associations had observer status within the EDU and those associ-
ations were the EUW, the Democrat Youth Community of Europe (DEMYC), the
European Democrat Students (EDS) and (from 1981) the European Medium and
Small Business Union (EMSU). The associations were invited to attend meetings
of the various EDU organs, including the working groups.
Besides the party leaders’ conference, which met annually, the most important
bodies of the EDU were the steering committee and the expert/working groups
or committees. Initially, four working groups were established: European struc-
ture, Employment policy, Energy and environment and Euro-communism. The
working group on Euro-communism later changed its name to the European Left.
Carl Bildt was one of the participants from the outset. Another later Prime
Minister, Alain Juppé, at the time economic advisor to Chirac, chaired the work-
ing group on employment policy. Other EDU working groups or committees have
dealt with issues such as technology, consumer protection, the welfare state and
education policy. There have also been a number of ad hoc working groups or
sub-committees, an example of which is a committee that dealt with family policy.
Another committee concerned itself with economic policy and discussed the
terminology and contents of the welfare society in relation to the welfare state.
Subsequently, there was a committee on privatization. Like several other com-
mittees, this one worked on the basis of questionnaires on the achievements and
plans in the various countries that led to a progress report. The discussions on
economics touched upon topics such as supply-side economics, profit sharing,
workers’ participation and youth unemployment. Academic works served as a
basis for some of those discussions, for example, over profit sharing. There was
also an academic side to the discussions on ideology and philosophy among rep-
resentatives of EDU member parties. In 1987, the Austrian ÖVP and its political
academy invited the members of a so-called ‘philosophers’ group’ to a seminar
on neo-conservative thinking and challenges. There have also been workshops on
other specific themes, such as local government.
A much appreciated part of EDU’s work was the expert group on election
management and campaign techniques, which was set up at an early stage and
that dealt more broadly with political communication. The group was later reor-
ganized into a permanent group of campaign managers within individual EDU
member parties. These managers were given the task of following the evolution
of ideas and practices in the field of campaign techniques and reporting this
knowledge to their colleagues. One workshop was held annually. Such seminars
also provided an opportunity to exchange views on opinion research in different
countries. Other topics discussed at such workshops were canvassing and the use
of TV and radio in campaigns. There was a special EDU committee entitled
Satellite Broadcast.
The EDU was seen as being helpful to member parties by pooling information
and ideas in order to benefit from experiences acquired in different countries. The
method of the working group encourages deliberation and personal acquain-
tances among people who get to know each other, which forms one of the main
purposes of all these activities. A politician who has been involved in EDU com-
mittees over the years (including the initial employment policy committee) is
Margaretha af Ugglas, Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in Carl Bildt’s
1991–4 government. She has also been active in the EUW and has served as
chairman of its Swedish section. She argued that the EDU working groups and
the social exchanges were ‘very important’.14 There were ‘lively discussions’ and
relations which were ‘trustful’. The drafting of reports was the most essential
method of EDU. She also narrates that they came into contact with ‘currents of
ideas’. She believes that the EDU working groups also inspired the EPP (of which
she was a Vice-President during 1996–2002).
Just like the EPP, the EDU also organized ministerial meetings.15 As for meetings
of ministers of finance and the economy, the EDU set an example. The EPP
arranged its first meeting of finance ministers in 1998 (EPP/EUCD Yearbook ’98),
whereas the first meeting of this kind under the auspices of the EDU was held in
1986. Only top politicians, including ministers and front-bench spokespersons of
EDU member parties, got together. The first meeting took place in London on
21 April 1986. Nigel Lawson, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, and John
MacGregor, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, attended the meeting.16 One item
on the agenda concerned privatization and this theme was raised again at the
second meeting of finance ministers held in Bonn on 27 May 1988 attended,
among others, by Gerhard Stoltenberg, the German Minister of Finance, Peter
Brooke (British Paymaster-General, non-cabinet) and Rodrigo Rato, the later
Spanish Minister of Finance. One item on the agenda concerned reports on tax
reforms in the various countries. The next meeting of the EDU finance ministers’
Conference convened in Helsinki on 19 May 1989.
In the 1980s, initiatives were also taken to arrange meetings of chairmen of
parliamentary groups as well as parliamentary conferences. One such conference
took place in Berlin in 1986, another in Antalya, Turkey, in 1989. In the 1990s,
there were joint EDU/EPP parliamentary conferences and meetings of chairmen
of parliamentary groups. One catalyst was provided by the prospect of EU
enlargement. Just like the EPP, the EDU tried to reach out to Central and East
Europe and strengthen party links there. There were various fact-finding
missions, both bilateral and multilateral with a clear revelation of a division of
labour. The Swedish Moderata Samlingspartiet was, and still is, particularly active
in the Baltic countries, most notably in Estonia. The CDU, for its part and with
the assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, seemingly gave priority to
Poland but has been active almost everywhere, as Dorota Dakowska also demon-
strates in her chapter in this book. Over the years, the Konrad Adenauer
Foundation has brought together people at the attractive venue of Cadenabbia on
Lake Como. The German party foundations are a role model for foundations
elsewhere, for example, in Britain and the USA (Smith, 2001: 64–6; see also
Pinto-Duschinsky, 1991; Bartsch, 1998; Gellner, 1998; Dakowska, 2002). In the
years 1989–90, the EDU established a support programme for new political par-
ties in Central and Eastern European countries. The EDU steering committee
decided that there would be ‘no financial transfers’ but, instead, that ‘the help
should be concentrated on seminars, visits, donations of technical equipment and
know-how’.17 For the time being, they would concentrate on Hungary and
Yugoslavia.
For logistical and financial reasons it made sense to coordinate the activities of
the EDU and the EPP, especially for the German member parties. They aimed at
some kind of merger between the two organizations, of which they were the
founding members. The rapprochement between the EDU and the EPP from the
late 1990s was significant in the light of the uneasy relationship between
European Christian Democracy and Conservatism (Metsola, 2000). The EDU
Secretariat in Vienna closed in 2000 and these functions became integrated with
the EPP Secretariat in Brussels. The EDU Executive Secretary became deputy
secretary-general of the EPP. At the EPP congress in Berlin in January 2001
statutory changes were agreed, so that the EDU chairman could take part in
meetings of EPP bodies. Another decision was to set up joint working groups, to
be headed by senior politicians from both organizations. A pan-European forum
and working groups dealing with European policy, foreign and security policy,
economic and social policy, campaign management and media, and, finally,
enlargement, were established.
A complete integration of the EDU and the EPP was not possible due to the
Euro-sceptic positions of the British Conservative Party. At the same time,
Christian Democrat leaders seemed to think that it was important not to isolate
that party from the broader European debate and to provide a forum for ongoing
discussions. That is the main reason for maintaining the meetings of leaders of
the former EDU member–parties and also for inviting the leader of the British
Conservative Party to EPP summit meetings. Nordic Conservative parties too had
reservations about the EPP. The Swedes have appreciated the looser organization
and the procedures of the EDU, which tended to have a pragmatic approach
to transnational party cooperation whereas the EPP is seen as being more
bureaucratic and overly centralized.
The EPP is a broad church that has clear differences over ideology and policy.
Such differences come to light when election manifestos as well as party and
action programmes are prepared in the EPP, for instance with regard to employ-
ment and social policy. Some internal problems also concern clashes of personal-
ities. One problem that took up much time and energy of the EPP concerned the
Austrian government coalition, which the ÖVP, an EPP member party, formed
with the radical right-wing FPÖ, the so-called ‘Freedom Party’, in early 2000
( Johansson, 2002b).
Operating within the EC/EU, the EPP was set to become more important
politically than the EDU. From the outset the EPP was intended to be a real
European political party. Whatever its prospects in this respect, the EPP has come
to stay as the most important forum for networking among conservative and
Christian democratic parties in Europe.
Avenues for future research

The final discussion draws out some theoretical implications. This theory devel-
opment is essential for further, theoretically grounded analyses of various aspects
of transnational party networks. One aim of such analyses must be to assemble
sustainable evidence of how and why such networks come about and also whether
and how they affect policy-making in national and European arenas alike. One
effect could be convergence or homogenization of policies and institutions
between the countries in question, corroborating theoretical assumptions pre-
sented by the first generation of Europeanization theorists. In my view, the most
promising area for future research is transnational socialization. This research
agenda and the methodological issues involved are elegantly introduced and dis-
cussed by Frank Schimmelfennig (Chapter 3, this volume). I would like to empha-
size the attention which neo-functionalist theory has paid to actor socialization,
notably of elites within political parties and interest groups. This early theorizing
should therefore be recognized.
The transnational networks of interaction facilitate exchange of information
and dissemination of ideas. Political party elites belong to European structures of
shared beliefs and understandings as well as of communicative action. Their role
can be conceptualized within the context of a constructivist approach to
European integration that emphasizes the role of ideas and norms. In an endo-
genous fashion, these elites can be socialized into inherited ideas and discourses,
or frames of references and action. Interests might therefore be redefined rather
than pre-given, or exogenous. Long-term and durable contacts are sealed in per-
sonal exchanges among political parties and their ancillary associations, including
women, youth and students. They learn something from each other and imitation
may occur on the basis of specific role models or templates and sources of inspi-
ration. At the same time, transnational contacts provide a source of credibility
and legitimacy for political parties and their leaders in domestic settings.
When asked about influences emanating from their participation in trans-
national cooperation among political parties or ancillary associations, Swedish
Conservatives tend to answer that they have learned and been affected, but they
cannot say exactly how. One type of answer is that they are affected uncon-
sciously or subconsciously. This might result in changed normative assumptions
and attitudes to actors from other countries, for example. At the same time, politi-
cians involved in it might first and foremost be reconfirmed in their beliefs and
attitudes rather than acquainted with completely new ideas and proposals. There
is an element of self-selection. Those who are active on a transnational basis tend
to be those politicians who already embrace the European idea and internation-
alist values more generally. Although particular European party organizations
such as the EPP could exert some influence in this respect, one cannot exclude
that they could merely cause the already sympathetic individual politicians, the
political parties or the party governments to submit proposals in line with existing
preferences and policy positions. In any case, it is difficult to test hypotheses about
the effects of socialization, including that of party elites in transnational networks.
Networks of interaction among party elites, some of whom are ministers, could
facilitate decision-making at various levels. At the top, heads of government meet
prior to European Council summits ( Johansson, 2002a,c). Meetings such as these
have become a way to cultivate personal trust, to exchange views, not least in
order to prevent unpleasant surprises, to broaden the knowledge base of other
countries and domestic political problems. Transnational linkages are established
between political parties and leaders who meet as a collective identity, in this case
the EPP, which brings together the network, coordinates policies and drafts political
declarations.
Networking of the kind explored in this chapter has a foreign policy dimension
and provides important channels for access and influence for political parties and
their leaders. Julie Smith points out that political parties play a significant role in
global politics and that the transnational activities blur the distinction between the
‘governmental’ and the ‘non-governmental’:
Governmental actors in liberal democracies are almost invariably represen-

tatives or members of a political party (French or Italian technocrats provide
only a very partial exception to this) and such party-political considerations
may play a part in their foreign policy decision-making. This is a fortiori
the case with the German party foundations, which were intended to be an
instrument of German foreign policy, yet one that is predicated on party-
political links.
(2001: 73)
National representatives and particularly those who are in government have to

take national interests into consideration. This behaviour reflects a kind of
‘nation-state logic’, which is predominant in state-centric analytical approaches.
Another approach suggests that foreign policy is formulated or shaped by the
so-called ‘linkage actors’ (Mingst, 1995), instead of reflecting a kind of ‘trans-
national logic’.
Smith too draws attention to the socialization effects that may follow from
transnational party co-operation. She argues that such effects ‘might be expected
to contribute to a stabilization of party politics and, hence, democratic practice
in newly emerging democracies’ (Smith, 2001: 73). Research on transnational
networks and socialization involving political parties could therefore contribute
to knowledge of democratization and democratic consolidation, for example,
in connection to contemporary political developments in Central and Eastern
European countries similar to experiences from the Iberian Peninsula in the
1970s. The extension of party co-operation to disparate centre-right parties from
the new member states can of course lead to greater internal fragmentation in the
short term. On the other hand, it may well contribute to convergence through
continuous networking and socialization of those parties into the mainstream
EPP and EPP-ED structures, ideas and policies and thus strengthen the
Europeanization of East-Central Europe in the course of EU enlargement and
integration.
Notes
1 Ulf Adelsohn m fl, Stockholm, ang Europa-politiken och europeiska partisamarbetet,
Motion (85), partistämman i Norrköping, 8–11 oktober 1975, Riksarkivet
(National Archives of Sweden), Stockholm, Moderata Samlingspartiets arkiv II,
Partistämmoprotokoll, A1: 8.
2 European Democrat Students, Conservative and Christian Democrat Youth
Community (COCDYC), Joint Proposal, Inter-Party Meeting, München 1975 (the
document The Charter of the European Democrat Party (EDP) is enclosed),
Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Moderata Samlingspartiets arkiv II, F10A,
Handlingar rörande internationella möten och rapporter, F10A: 1, 1973–7, München,
6–8 juni 1975. The same documents are available in the archive of the youth section
of Moderata Samlingspartiet, Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Arninge,
Moderata ungdomsförbundets arkiv, Vol. 446, Internationellt, COCDYC, 1973–6.
And also in the personal archive of Per Unckel, Chairman of COCDYC/DEMYC
1974–6, Riksarkivet, Moderata ungdomsförbundets arkiv, Vol. 281. In 1975 COCDYC
became DEMYC, which transformed itself into the Youth of EPP (YEPP) in 1997.
3 Ibid.
4 Conservative Party International Office, Conservative Party Links in Western Europe,
May 1977, Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Stockholm, Moderata
Samlingspartiets arkiv II, F10A, Handlingar rörande internationella möten och
rapporter, F10A: 1, 1973–7.
5 Letter from Lady Elles to Jens Karoli (Secretary-General, Det Konservative Folkeparti),
4 May 1976, Archive of Det Konservative Folkeparti (the Danish Conservative Party),
Copenhagen.
6 Letter from Lady Elles to Jens Karoli (Secretary-General, Det Konservative Folkeparti),
6 August 1976, Archive of Det Konservative Folkeparti (the Danish Conservative
Party), Copenhagen.
7 Interview with author.
8 Carl Bildt, 1976–05–28, Rapport från CDU-kongressen i Hannover, 23–26 maj 1976.
Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Arninge, Moderata ungdomsförbundets
arkiv, Vol. 306. Bildt argued in his report that this was the first time a non-socialist
party exploited its European party contacts in order to strengthen its position in an
approaching election campaign.
9 Ibid. In Bildt’s view Thatcher’s speech on freedom was the highlight of the CDU
congress. Interestingly enough, Bildt remarked that Tindemans called the speech a dis-
aster and considered himself fooled to take part in some kind of Christian Democratic/
Conservative demonstration of solidarity whose political contents he definitely could
not share.
10 Union Européenne Démocrate Chrétienne, UEDC, 26.2.1975, confidentiel,
K. J. Hahn, Bref rapport sur une visite au Parti Conservateur Britannique, à
Londres, les 24 et 25 février 1975. Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Arninge,
Moderata ungdomsförbundets arkiv, Vol. 446.
11 Minutes of the Inter-Party meeting held at Blackpool on 13 October 1977, Riksarkivet
(National Archives of Sweden), Stockholm, Moderata Samlingspartiets arkiv II,
Handlingar rörande Europeiska demokratiska unionen (EDU) 1975–8, F10B: 1.
12 Lars F. Tobisson, 1977–12–13, Rapport från EDU-överläggning i Wien 1977–12–12,
Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Stockholm, Moderata Samlingspartiets
arkiv II, Handlingar rörande Europeiska demokratiska unionen (EDU) 1975–8,
F10B: 1.
13 The data in this paragraph is based on memoranda drawn up by the Secretary-General
of the Swedish Moderata Samlingspartiet, Lars F. Tobisson: PM ang EDU och mötet i
Klesheim 1978–04–24 and Telefonsamtal med Lady Elles fredagen den 10 mars 1978,
Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Stockholm, Moderata Samlingspartiets arkiv
II, Handlingar rörande Europeiska demokratiska unionen (EDU) 1975–8, F10B: 1.
14 Interview with author.
15 This paragraph, and other information on EDU activities, draws on documentation
kept at the archive of Moderata Samlingspartiet, Stockholm.
16 John MacGregor was elected the first President of the COCDYC at its inaugural
conference in Hamburg in 1964.
17 EDU, Survey on the EDU support programme for new political parties in CEEC
(reference to the meeting of the EDU steering committee, Munich, 6–7 December
1989), Archive of Moderata Samlingspartiet, Stockholm, EDU 26, Committee no. 1,
European Structures, European Policy.
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7 German political foundations
Transnational party go-betweens
in the EU enlargement process
Dorota Dakowska
The German political foundations (Politische Stiftungen) have played an important

role facilitating party cooperation in countries in transition from authoritarian
rule and, more recently, in the context of the transformation of Central and
Eastern European Countries (CEEC). As party-related, publicly financed and
largely autonomous organizations, these foundations are specific transnational
actors. This chapter deals with both theoretical and empirical aspects of a
transnationalist perspective in the study of the enlargement of the European
Union (EU), focussing particularly on the party cooperation preceding the acces-
sion of new member states. The first section discusses the specificity of the
research object and the normative bases of the institutional meshing between the
foundations, the federal ministries and the political parties; it also provides
evidence of the foundations’ involvement in democratization processes. Having
sketched out a few of the analytical biases of government-centred research on EU
enlargement, the case study of the foundations’ involvement in CEEC allows for
the consideration of norm dynamics and legitimation through transnational net-
works in the study of EU enlargement. Finally, an analysis of the transnational
cooperation between the European party federations and the political founda-
tions in the years preceding the accession of new member states to the European
Union in 2004, helps us to reconsider the questions of identity and transnational
socialization in an enlargement context.
The German political foundations as

transnational actors
The political foundations are peculiar research objects in political science.
Considered Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), they are nevertheless
associated with German foreign policy through the Federal Ministry for
Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Foreign Ministry (AA).
Created mainly in the postwar years, they were traditionally committed to run
political education projects, to encourage civic involvement in political life and to
promote pluralism in the postwar Federal Republic. Unlike most NGOs, they are
financed by public funds and the amount each foundation receives depends on
German political foundations 151
the representation of each political party in the Bundestag. Nowadays, six
foundations exist in Germany. The Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) created in
1925 and affiliated to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) is the oldest one.
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) affiliated to the Christian Democratic
Union (CDU) was officially set up in 1964 out of two other organizations, the
Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNS) affiliated to the liberal Free Democratic
Party (FDP) in 1958, and the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS) allied to the
Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) in 1967. The Heinrich Böll Foundation
(HBS) affiliated to the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) was created in 1997 out
of three smaller foundations publicly financed since 1989. Finally, the Rosa
Luxemburg Foundation (RLS) allied to the post-communist Party of Democratic
Socialism received its first public grants in 1999.
The specificity of German political foundations raises the problem of the
definition of non-state actors and of the use of their NGO status in the foreign
policy. Insofar as they are financed mainly by public funds (95 per cent) and have
close links with ministries and with the political parties, they do not fit the classic
definition of NGOs. Most of them are not even foundations in the legal sense.1
However, they do fit the definition of transnational actors if we adopt the
conceptual framework developed by Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie in their
introduction to this book and operate the switch from a structural (formal auto-
nomy) to a more functional definition, looking at the practices and repertoires of
action rather than at the origin of their financial resources. Furthermore, I apply
Thomas Risse’s definition of transnational relations as ‘regular interactions across
national boundaries when at least one actor is a non-state agent or does not oper-
ate on behalf of a national government or an intergovernmental organisation’
(Risse, 1995: 3). Transnational does not refer to a level, as Bastiaan van Apeldoorn
reminds us in Chapter 4 in this volume, but rather to ‘social phenomena that
link different levels’. As party-related organizations, the foundations pursue
their own agendas, in the wake – or in the avant-garde – of party international
cooperation. They build networks across the world, involving political parties and
their organizations, trade unions, professional associations and NGOs. Thus they
may be conceptualized as ‘go-betweens’ between these different groups (Bartsch,
1998). The foundations’ international activities may collude with German
governmental policies. Still, the foundations cannot be regarded as governmental
instruments though, as they represent all the political tendencies represented in
the Bundestag. Another reason is that they act at the multilateral level of trans-
national party cooperation and thus go beyond the governmental framework of
bilateral assistance towards democratization.
It is to be noted that the foundations represent themselves as private organiza-
tions in their activities abroad. The construction and strategic use of this NGO
image help us to perceive more clearly the relationship between German public
and non-public actors and to see how public agencies take advantage of the
transnational, non-state profile of the foundations. Furthermore, the support of
the state may be a crucial element allowing norm entrepreneurs to pursue their
agenda of norm socialization (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). This corroborates
152 Dorota Dakowska
the conclusion of the growing irrelevance of the distinction between public and
private actors, as both these ‘worlds’ (Rosenau, 1990) are closely interwoven. In
the case of Germany, due to the federal and corporatist traditions and to the
democratization of the Federal Republic under the auspices of the allies, trans-
nationalism has been historically rooted, as a brief review of the institutional
origins of the foundations’ entrenchment in German foreign policies will show.
Products of West Germany’s democratization and

the Cold War
The origins of the political foundations stem from the postwar context with allied
control of the reconstruction of democratic institutions in West Germany.
Because of the delay in the institutionalization of foreign policy, the first German
representations abroad in the postwar years, parallel to but sometimes preceding
the embassies, were non-state agencies (companies, church humanitarian organiz-
ations and private foundations) (Danckwort, 1990). Thus, the specificity of the
political foundations is enmeshed in Germany’s character as a ‘semi-sovereign
state’ (Katzenstein, 1978). Germany’s negative international image at that time is
another factor explaining the tendency of German public agencies to delegate
responsibilities – and funds – to private or semi-public organizations, which did
not officially act on behalf of the state and could thus be better perceived and
more easily accepted abroad. This tendency was reinforced by the onset of the
Cold War in Europe, and the confrontation of two ideological blocks. While in
some cases, it was difficult for German diplomats to engage officially in this con-
frontation abroad, the German Foreign ministry took advantage of the activity of
the political foundations and welcomed their initiatives such as the organization
of meetings and seminars for young scholars, trade unionists or politicians from
developing countries trying to prevent ‘communist infiltration’ in these areas.2
Throughout the decades, the cooperation between the foundations and the state
was characterized by a significant continuity of norms, which took shape with the
institutionalization of German development policies.
These norms encompass, to begin with, the notion of pluralism, as the foun-
dations are committed in their overseas activities to reflect the diverse political
tendencies co-existing within German society. The guiding idea is that you can
teach pluralism only while practising it, through the transmission of a plurality of
values, which may compete, complete and overlap each other (BMZ, 1995: 6).
Second, an idea broadly shared by public policy officials concerns the role of the
state. In fact, there is a consensus common to BMZ officials and to the founda-
tions that the state alone is unable to fulfil all the tasks of development and foreign
policies. Thus, compared with state-run programmes, foundations have the
advantage of leading a direct social dialogue to ensure a continuous, long-term
presence, independent of government changes in Germany. Finally, an important
constitutive feature enables the use of NGO status to fulfil the objectives of
state policies. Because of suggestions by the government, the foundations
present themselves in their work abroad as NGOs according to the so-called
‘limited publicity’ principle (BMZ, 1973: 59; BMZ, 1999: 15). This shows
the importance accorded to Germany’s international image and also explains
the difficulties for external observers in understanding the actual status of the
foundations due to their flexible profile that allows them to appear as more or less
state- or party-affiliated, according to circumstances (Bartsch, 1998).
The relationship between foundations, ministries and political parties is based
on their original exchange of resources. As political foundations are party-
affiliated organizations, each of them has close personal and ideological links with
a political party. While the party support emanating from the Bundestag provides
political foundations with the necessary financial resources from the public bud-
get, the party affiliation guarantees them a considerable degree of independence
from possible ministerial influence. Thus, foundations are among the organiza-
tions that enjoy the widest leeway in their relations with the BMZ (Glagow and
Schimank, 1983). From a sociological perspective, the foundations may be con-
sidered as brokers between different institutional fields. An example of a situation
when party resources are reinvested in strengthening the foundations’ position is
the annual vote on the federal budget, which takes place in the Bundestag. The
funds for foundations are divided between them according to a formula which is
based on the numbers of votes obtained by each political party during the last two
parliamentary elections.3 In fact, MPs from each party support their foundation
in the Budgetary Committee. While this all-party coalition, which led to an
increase of funds in the 1970s, used to be publicly criticized as ‘self-service’
(i.e. parties helping themselves to the public budget), it could not prevent some
cuts due to the recent budgetary crises in Germany.
An important part of the foundations’ activity was their support of the oppo-
sition in authoritarian countries. The German foreign ministry welcomed this, as
long as it did not undermine the work of its embassies, which could thus preserve
their neutral position in case of internal conflicts abroad. Owing to their mediat-
ing role and the informal support of opposition movements, the foundations
played an important role during transitions from authoritarian rule in Latin
America, Southern Europe and Africa. The KAS invested the most in Latin
America, not least due to its links to the Christian democratic trade unions in the
Central Latinoamerico de Trabajadores (CLAT) and the American Christian
democratic party federation, the Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América
(ODCA). It has been active in Chile and Venezuela since the the 1960s, and later
also become involved in Guatemala, Argentina, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It
has developed an impressive network of formally independent, but in practice
often political, research organizations and training institutes (Wagner, 1994). In
Chile, the KAS gave decisive support – parallel to the American involvement
through the National Endowment for Democracy – to the plebiscite of 1988,
which led to the overthrow of General Pinochet. The social democratic FES,
while having a strong impact in Costa Rica, was more influential in Africa
especially in support of local trade unions.
The foundations’ activity in Southern Europe is relatively well known due to
their support of the opposition to authoritarian regimes in Spain and Portugal in
154 Dorota Dakowska
the 1970s. The FES, in cooperation with the Socialist International (SI) and the
German trade unions gave decisive support to Spanish political emigrants and
helped them to reconstruct party structures after General Franco’s death in 1975.
It also supported the very pro-European wing of the Partido Socialista Obrero
Español (PSOE) around Felipe Gonzáles in the transition process in Spain
(Ortuño Anaya, 2002). The Portuguese Socialist Party under the leadership
of Mario Soares was effectively formed in Germany in 1973, in one of the FES
education centres (Pinto-Duschinsky, 1991, 1996).
Since the 1970s to 1980s, political foundations have set up their offices also in
industrialized countries, where they tend to reinforce political dialogue. The
Brussels offices are important platforms facilitating access to European institu-
tions. Also the Washington offices, aimed at strengthening transatlantic dialogue,
are considered strategic centres. The activities in Central and Eastern Europe
combine the characteristics of both approaches: assistance for democratization
and political cooperation. Although Central European states were not consid-
ered to be developing countries according to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) criteria, the liberalization of 1989
required a substantial transfer of know-how in the economic, political and judi-
cial spheres. The political foundations supported the reform process, but at the
same time they developed political dialogue with the clear objective of helping
stabilize the party landscape in the target countries and finding potential partners
for German political parties.
The transnational perspective of EU enlargement

The study of transnationalism in the European Union and the larger European
political space is a helpful and necessary tool for understanding European
integration in the long term. As Wolfram Kaiser demonstrates in his chapter in
this book, contemporary history can provide important empirical evidence to
help overcome the conceptual limits of intergovernmentalism (with its focus on
EU institutions and inter-state bargaining) and take into account the role of
transnational agents and elite networks in exchanging ideas and influencing
the political agendas. While the study of European integration as such and the
recent studies of Europeanization of domestic policies have acknowledged the
role of transnational actors as important channels of common norms, values and
policy transfer, most enlargement studies still suffer from a strong intergovern-
mental bias. A brief outline of these biases leads on to the question how the
study of transnational relations may help overcome this bias, and bring back the
study of EU enlargement into a broader framework of European integration
analysis.
Most of the EU enlargement studies in the 1990s were embedded in the
intergovernmental perspective, focussing on the macro level, inter-institutional
bargains and treaties (see Sedelmeier, 2002). Thus, they seem to have adopted the
arguments of the intergovernmental analysis, considering EU institutions as
unitary bureaucracies reflecting the interests of the member states. Several factors
explain this perspective: while enlargement was initially conceived as a policy
like any other, it quickly appeared that it was an undertaking without precedence
due to the scope of change, the consecutive growth of heterogeneity within
the European Union and the legal requirements to be met (Mayhew, 1998).
Considering the alleged weakness of civil society and of political parties in the
candidate states, some authors concluded that electoral stakes were marginal in
the institutional change and in the adoption of European norms in Central
Europe (Schimmelfennig et al., 2003). In this way, the unquestionable asymmetry
of the relationship between the European Union and the candidate states as well
as the leadership role played by the Commission from the beginning of the
process (Robert, 2001) has led to a sometimes oversimplified perception of the
EU enlargement as a unidirectional, vertically oriented process, operated
exclusively by bureaucratic agents.
The bias of this analytical perspective concerns, for example, the variety of
actors participating in the enlargement process, where the distinction is rarely
made between the enlargement policies as such – conceived and set up at the level
of institutions (especially the Commission and national governments) – and a
more openly defined enlargement process. The latter involves undoubtedly a mul-
tiplicity of actors at different levels: governments and ministries, but also political
parties, interest groups etc. The empirical demonstration of their pro-active role
in the European agenda-setting has in some cases provided remarkable evidence
of interest groups’ influence on specific policy sectors of the EU enlargement
(Torreblanca, 1998; Sedelmeier, 2002; Saurugger, 2003). Moreover, rejecting the
non-governmental channel because of the weakness of civil society in Central
Europe may seem paradoxical if one keeps in mind the leverage effect transna-
tional coalitions had on transformations in societies under authoritarian regimes
(Grabendorff, 1996; Pridham, 1999). Another bias of the bureaucratic enlarge-
ment perspective is the illusion of a rational, unitary and intentional EU action.
The somewhat mechanical vision of conditionality functioning according to the
logic of cost/benefit calculation, punishments and rewards on the EU side,
leading to a final rule adoption in CEE suffers from a teleological bias. It leaves
little room to study the deviations and inconsistencies of EU policies, their frag-
mented character as well as different structural obstacles to the implementation of
the acquis communautaire in the candidate states. Finally, while the importance of
adapting to the pressures exerted by European institutions in the candidate states
cannot be contested, the scope of resulting convergence is a matter for discussion.
On the one hand, several factors such as the speed of adjustment and the recep-
tivity of Central European elites allow the hypothesis of a more important con-
vergence of the institutional structures in the candidate states resulting from
accession than was the case during former enlargement stages (Grabbe, 2001).
On the other hand, empirical evidence shows that coercive instruments cannot be
widely applied. Due to the diversity of national models, the European Union is
not able to propose a single model in some sectors such as public administration
(Goetz, 2001). So this diffused character of EU influence (Grabbe, 2001) does not
necessarily lead to increased convergence.
156 Dorota Dakowska
Agents of change: foundation strategies in CEEC
Transnational actors deployed their activities in the context of democratization
marked by the prospect of EU accession. According to Thomas Risse, the success
or failure of transnational coalitions in influencing policy outcomes depends on
two main factors: the differences in the domestic structure and the degree of
international institutionalization, that is, the extent to which specific policy areas,
are regulated by bilateral agreements and international organizations (Risse,
1995: 6).
In an overview of democratization processes in Europe, Laurence Whitehead
described the European Union as an important pole of attraction, which has led
economic elites in transition countries to an economic and political convergence
with liberal standards (Whitehead, 1996). The European institutions offer a
strong normative context, which constitutes agents’ identity and provides value
and meaning to their action (Katzenstein, 1997). This normative context has been
progressively extended to the candidate states in the enlargement period, which
has increased their demand for foreign advice. If we apply the analytical frame-
work developed by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink to EU enlargement,
1989 could be considered as the turning point, which led to an international
norm cascade described by the metaphor of ‘contagion’ (Finnemore and Sikkink,
1998). As in some previous cases of democratization, most CEE states adopted
liberal norms even without a clear perspective of EC integration. The domestic
pressure for change by internationally backed opposition movements started in
the 1970s and 1980s (Chilton, 1995), which could be qualified as a norm emer-
gence period. International socialization is the dominant mechanism of the norm
cascade stage (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). The motivation of state elites
engaged in the process of socialization cannot be separated from their identity
and aspiration to be recognized as members of international society. While the
acceleration of political change following 1989 may be considered as part of a
norm cascade process, it seems difficult in practice to separate both stages as well
as the mechanisms characterizing each of them, that is, persuasion and socializa-
tion.4 While socialization and the related imitation were the dominant logics of
normative change in the 1990s, persuasion intervened as part of a more or less
direct conditionality.
The expectation of EU enlargement shaped the strategies of German political
foundations (Dakowska, 2002). The empirical evidence from this process throws
new light on EU enlargement. While focussing strongly on the constraint dimen-
sion of the processes, most existing analysis has failed to sufficiently take into
account the resource dimension, and the way in which actors on both sides use
the European pressures to promote their particular interests. Regarding EU
enlargement, the question may be asked to what extent the constraint of compli-
ance to the acquis communautaire by the candidate states was a resource for foreign
non-state actors, that is, to what extent German foundations used the structure of
opportunities offered by enlargement to enlist the financial and symbolic
resources. I argue that the prospect of EU enlargement gave an important lever to
transnational actors (such as political foundations) for the transfer of both political
ideas and transnational legitimacy and provided them with huge resources in
terms of receptivity and prestige. Thus, foundations can be considered as ‘norm
entrepreneurs’ (Börzel and Risse, 2000), promoting different political values
within a common hard core of liberal norms, and support for European integration
and individualism.
The activities of political foundations reflect the orientations of German
foreign policy enhanced by the specific preferences of each political party. An
informal agreement is made between the foundations about their activities
abroad, which completes their traditional division of labour linked to their polit-
ical profile. Thus, the FES has a traditionally close cooperation with the German
trade unions;5 the KAS puts stress on local government and decentralization in
accordance with the idea of subsidiarity, and promotes the social market econ-
omy. The liberal FNS stresses economic and human rights problems, the HBS
concentrates on ecological and gender issues, while the conservative HSS
specializes in professional training, administration and security questions. Besides
these axes, the official strategy of all foundations aims at the promotion of eco-
nomic stability and market economy, the strengthening of democratic institutions,
the rule of law and party pluralism. All these objectives are part of their broader
aims like the deepening of dialogue at a bilateral level and helping with the prepa-
rations to join the European Union.
All the foundations sent representatives to virtually all CEEC to build a
network with the representatives of political parties, but also with the so-called
‘independent research institutes’ (in practice often party-affiliated), pro-European
NGOs, professional associations, universities etc. Due to its traditional preference
for financing the partners’ structures, the KAS in Poland supported several
European education centres at different universities, the pro-European Polish
Robert Schuman Foundation (with close links to the Union of Freedom party),
the Liberal Market Economy Research Centre, and the Centre for International
Relations (CSM) specialized in strategic questions. This kind of investment brings
benefits to both sides: strengthening of liberal expertise provides the KAS with
access to economic and social data and to experts, who may take political respon-
sibility once their party wins the elections. Several ex-ministers ( Janusz
Lewandowski, Janusz Onyszkiewcz) and an ex-ambassador to Germany,
Janusz Reiter (director of CSM) employed in these internationally financed
research centres are often invited to Germany and become natural interlocutors
in Poland for German delegations invited by the KAS.
The structure and functioning of these transnational networks is limited by
existing legislation. Political parties in CEEC are usually not allowed to receive
grants from a foreign organization. Foundations also do not have the right to
participate directly or indirectly in electoral campaigns. However, they can help
develop the professional skills of social and political actors in providing media
training or public relations courses. An important part of the foundations’
involvement is in the pre-political field. In practice, they have generously sup-
ported youth associations related to political parties or party-related organizations
158 Dorota Dakowska
such as, for example, Young Conservatives or Young Democrats in the case of the
KAS or the Young Social Democrats in the case of the FES in Poland. This
provides them with access to the younger political elite, potentially more receptive
to ideas on European integration. The aim has been to strengthen the expertise
network of political parties, to promote support for European integration and to
encourage exchange between German and Polish party elites.
The foundations organized numerous seminars – often with the participation
of prominent politicians or experts – on bilateral, economic, but also strategic and
foreign policy issues and above all EU enlargement. Different transfers of experi-
ence and know-how may be studied in this context, such as judicial advice for
local administration or constitutional reform, especially at the beginning of the
transformation process, but also more exclusively party-oriented topics like
training on the functioning of political parties or the organization of electoral
campaigns. To give an example, the KAS and FES organized visits to Germany
for Viktor Orban from Hungary in 1998 and for Leszek Miller from Poland in
2001 before their election as prime ministers of their countries, to provide them
with information about the functioning of the German chancellery and the
coordination of governmental work.
In some cases, the foundations’ activity may be compared to a ‘second track
diplomacy’ (Nebenaußenpolitik) (Nuscheler, 1993: 231). The regular and continuous
dialogue carried out by the foundations allows German representatives to access
the local political stage, of which they often have a much better knowledge than
professional diplomats. When a new German ambassador is appointed to a CEE
country, he usually meets the representative of a foundation to get his or her per-
ception of the situation. Compared with the classical aims of diplomacy, some
common features to state diplomacy and party diplomacy include the following.
First, the foundations partly share the representation function with the embassies,
although in a much more informal way. They may invite German party officials
on their visit abroad. However, the informality is an advantage of such meetings.
Second, like diplomats, they provide information about the political situation in
the target country and send it to the ministries and politicians in Germany
concerned with the foreign policy issues. But there are also many differences:
foundations are not bound by protocol; they are not subject to an agreement
between governments, so their contacts remain largely informal. Finally, the
selection of foreign representatives of the foundations is different from the selec-
tion of professional diplomats. Their duty is limited in time and they may leave
the foundation after several years spent abroad.
A key point in understanding the logic of foundations’ networking is to study
their dynamics insofar as their engagement in CEEC is also a resource for
German political parties. The strategy consists of cooperating with potential
elites – not only current governments, but also the governments of tomorrow.
This means that as far as this cooperation encompasses practically the whole
political spectrum of a partner country, there are strong chances that one of the
German foundations will have close links to the governing party. For German
MPs, foundations are important platforms facilitating access to virtually the whole
political scene of the partner country. In the foundations’ international activity,
two kinds of resources serve the party directly: information and the capital of
trust. First, staying in constant touch with the foundation representatives abroad
allows direct information to flow to the parliament. Foundation offices provide a
great deal of expert knowledge on foreign and domestic policy issues, especially
those which are too specialized or long-term to be elaborated by the usual party
political advisors. Second, the foundations’ activities strengthen political links at
different levels while guaranteeing the necessary attention to the sensitivity of
some questions. The advantage of foundations – as compared with state assis-
tance programmes – is their direct access to key decision-makers in host countries.
Thus, foundations could advise their partners in decisions concerning a new
reform project or even encourage coalition building, initiatives that could be
judged unacceptable if coming from the German government.
Transfer of norms and ideas in a social

learning process
In recent years, authors dealing with the role of norms in policy change have pro-
vided evidence of a profound connection between rationality and norms. Martha
Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink speak of ‘a “strategic social construction”, in
which actors strategise rationally to reconfigure preferences, identities or social
context’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 888). The periods of critical juncture,
such as the end of the Cold War, provide opportunities to question existing ideas
about political order (Marcussen et al., 1999). In the process of socialization,
actors acquire new preferences and internalize norms and rules through the inter-
action with a broader institutional context (Braud, 2000; Checkel, 2001). The
likelihood of social learning grows when individuals of a group share common
professional backgrounds, interact regularly, face a context of crisis but remain
insulated from direct political pressure (Checkel, 1999) and also ‘when the per-
suader is an authoritative member of the in-group to which the persuadee belongs
or wants to belong’ (Checkel, 2001: 563). This was the case for the foundations’
representatives in CEEC, who due to their political profile were able to penetrate
deeply into the local political spheres through frequent and informal interaction
and who were perceived as representing German or European party networks.
A first problem with studying socialization of CEE political elites into liberal or
European norms is related to the number of participants and the complexity of
pressures. It is impossible to make precise statements about the amount of change
induced by an organization when one knows that different foreign donors gave joint
support to the most promising parties or institutes. Also, the distinction to be made
between the pressures of globalization, of international organizations such as the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) or of EU institutions is not always easy. The
second problem is the highly complex, heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory
identity of Central European political parties. Thus, their socialization within a
transnational network may imply choice among these different components rather
than switching from one – supposedly homogenous – identity to another.
160 Dorota Dakowska
An example of a party, which benefited from significant international support
but did not manage to establish a clear identity, is the Polish Union of Freedom –
Unia Wolności (UW). Due to the intellectual and democratic profile of its found-
ing personalities, who played a leading role during the negotiated transition, the
party had very diversified foreign contacts. Thus, its leaders cooperated with
Christian democratic, liberal and even social democratic foundations. Being the
most pro-European Polish party, the UW was divided into a Christian-democrat
and a social-liberal wing. After initial efforts to preserve its ideological diversity,
UW finally went for the Christian-democratic option, convinced among others by
the KAS, and joined the European People’s Party (EPP) in 1998. However, after
a split and subsequent defeat in the parliamentary elections in 2001, the UW
leaders decided to switch to the European Liberals. So the important investment
of the KAS in party-related organizations and milieus close to the UW did not
bring the expected stability. As soon as the UW decided to join the European
Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR), the FNS, which already financed
its party-related educational organization (the Civic Club), offered its organiza-
tional and material (indirect) support.6
A more conclusive example was the assistance provided by the FES with the
social-democratization of the Polish post-communist Democratic Left Alliance
(SLD). While the FES transferred a lot of political knowledge and know-how (like
the social democratic party programme, information about political marketing
and electoral campaigning or some specific policy aspects), this evolution was
undoubtedly facilitated by the pragmatic attitude of post-communist leaders, who
from the beginning sought international legitimation in the social democratic
family. As gaining the social democratic label was an essential stake for post-
communist parties (De Waele, 2003), the difficulty for the FES was less about
persuading the SLD to adopt the social democratic programme and discourse
and more about convincing other international partners that the SLD could
effectively be considered a (social) democratic party.
Foreign transnational support may help the existing political or social forces
wishing to strengthen their structures. Thus the Green HBS provided material
and ideational support to feminist groups in Poland and tried to bring them closer
together with ecological movements. While the HBS initially preferred a more
societal than political approach, the formation of the Red-Green coalition in
Germany in 1998 provided an important incentive to establish an office in
Warsaw and give assistance to the possible emergence of a Polish Green party.
Finally, the decision to set up a Polish Green Party, the Partia Zielonych,
supported by the HBS was realized after the EU referendum campaign in 2003,
to which the European Federation of Green Parties contributed.
Transnational party cooperation preceding EU

accession of new member states
The European Union’s Eastern enlargement may be analysed through the prism of
European party cooperation. Authors investigating the transnational circulation
of norms have underlined the relationship between domestic and international
socialization after a regime change: ‘International socialization is important insofar
as it reflects back on a government’s domestic basis of legitimation and consent and
thus ultimately on its ability to stay in power’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 903).
Focussing on this transnational networking, which makes up an important part of the
foundations’ activities, facilitates the forging of a link between the bilateral dialogue
and the multilateral, European level. The international legitimization of political
parties by the admission of a new party to a party International or a European party
federation interferes with the bilateral dialogue as it is the threshold from which
political cooperation can start. This means that a German foundation may engage
in a friendly dialogue with a Central European political partner, but a deeper
cooperation does not occur before the association of that party to a European party
federation or a party International. This kind of association is considered as inte-
gration into the family and provides the new member party with sufficient political
legitimacy, allowing it to be accepted as an equal partner by German political parties.
The cooperation between the German SPD and the Polish SLD during the 1990s is
quite typical of this. The 1993 electoral victory of the post-communist SLD and the
Peasant Party (PSL) in Poland was a significant incident in the legitimization process
of Central European post-communist parties. Yet, a close cooperation with the FES
did not take place until the admission of the SLD to the SI in 1996. Later, the FES
briefed the SLD about the functioning of transnational party cooperation and intro-
duced its leaders to the Party of European Socialists (PES) congresses. Since that
time, the SPD and the SLD have remained in a close relationship, embodied in
a bilateral parliamentary group organized with the help of the FES in Warsaw, which
enables communication and coordination of their positions.
One of the most spectacular cases of international legitimation was KAS support
to the anti-Mečiar opposition in Slovakia. The KAS advised the democratic forces,
encouraged the formation of the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) and promoted
Mikuláš Dzurinda as the potential leader of the movement, guaranteeing his
integrity abroad, providing him with contacts and advice before and following his
electoral victory. This activity also involved mechanisms (mentioned by Wolfram
Kaiser, Chapter 1, this volume) to exclude leaders, who did not respect acceptable
ideas and behavioural patterns. Thus, the KAS marginalized Ján Čarnogurský, one
of the leaders of the Slovak Christian democratic movement, because of his nation-
alist views and his negative attitude towards the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.
A direct influence of the EU policy – which has to be confirmed, though – was the
attempt by the KAS to influence positively the regular report of the European
Commission following the election of Dzurinda in 1998 in order to support the tran-
sition.7 The KAS representative in Prague and Bratislava arranged several meetings
with high-ranking German politicians for Dzurinda. He invited leaders of the EPP
to the region to provide the anti-Meliar opposition with international backing.
The German political foundations have been traditional partners of trans-
national party internationals. As Grabendorff has emphasized:
In the case of large German political parties, the question is not so much
about reciprocal influence, but about the overlapping identity of party and
international. The SPD as well as the CDU dominate their respective
162 Dorota Dakowska
transnational party organisation to such an extent that abroad the latter has
often been identified with either one or the other West German party or their
respective foundation.
(1996: 213)
While the relative weight of German parties has evolved in the EU integration
context, they have remained among the most important members within the
European party federations.
During the enlargement process, the foundations were intermediaries between
Central European parties and EU party networks. The European party federa-
tions consider the German foundations as their embassies in CEEC.8 Owing to
their continuous presence in CEEC and their personal contacts in European
institutions, the foundation field representatives could influence decisions in an
informal way. They helped Western European parties to identify their partners,
observing (sometimes also supporting) their political evolution, finally assessing
their readiness to be admitted as observer or associate member to a transnational
party federation. By diffusing information through party networks they partici-
pated in the process of legitimization of CEEC parties. German political foun-
dations were an important source of information for both sides. On the one hand,
they could advise their partners in Central Europe on the formulation of their
party statutes and programmes and on the conditions that had to be fulfilled in
order to open the association process. On the other hand, they informed the EU
party leaders about the composition and ideological setting of their CEEC polit-
ical parties and also about the quality of contacts maintained with them. This was
the case of Hungarian, Czech, Polish, but also Slovak, Estonian, Latvian and
Bulgarian parties. The Czech Union for Freedom (US) was recommended by the
KAS to the EPP, for example, a few days after its formal application.9 The fact
that the German Klaus Welle, who closely collaborated with KAS offices in
CEEC, was EPP Secretary-General during the first applications from the region,
undoubtedly facilitated the process.
While participating in the enlargement of European party federations through
the association of political parties from the candidate countries, the foundation
representatives helped their partners to adapt to the changing opportunity
structure of the European Union. Making use of the EU institutional structure
and providing political opportunities to domestic actors is an essential component
of Europeanization (Goetz and Hix, 2000). By their activity, the foundation rep-
resentatives helped the CEEC political leaders to perceive Brussels as an arena of
negotiations and of potential political support. In Poland, the FES supported the
strengthening of social democratic expertise on European affairs, structural funds
management etc. The FES financed a series of reports on Poland’s progress in ful-
filling the enlargement criteria. The official presentation of these EU-monitoring
reports in Brussels increased the prominence of the FES and at the same time it
opened influential channels for Polish experts to present their views to a wider
public. Some of them like Jerzy Hausner became ministers and counsellors to the
social democratic government in Poland in 2001. When in 2000 Leszek Miller,
the leader of the (then in opposition) SLD was invited to Brussels with the help of
the FES, it enabled the Commission officials to get in touch with the future prime
minister.10 At the same time, this visit had important domestic repercussions for
Polish public opinion, as it triggered a political debate in the media whether oppo-
sition leaders should present their views about the ongoing accession negotiations
in Brussels. Finally, this incident gave the SLD an opportunity to forge its image
as a pro-European party, which was well accepted by European decision-makers
at a time when accession negotiations entered a decisive phase.
The informality characterizing the foundations’ activities proved an important
resource for European party federations, especially during periods when the evo-
lution of political parties in the CEEC and the future of EU enlargement faced a
high degree of uncertainty. The fact that the foundations did not act officially on
behalf of the party federations helped to overcome some internal dissent. Thus,
foundations could be considered as agents for reduction of uncertainty and diver-
gence. The structure of the European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity
(EFDS), linked simultaneously to the SI and the PES, is a good example of the
use of party foundations by more formal transnational political organizations at
the European level. Created officially in 1993, as a result of a wish expressed by
Willy Brandt, the President of the SI, before his death and of his successor
Pierre Mauroy, the leader of the French Socialists, the EFDS was charged with
cooperation with CEE socialist parties. The creation of the forum reflects a
moment when Western European political parties were profoundly divided
regarding the strategy to adopt towards Central European post-communist par-
ties. The fact that the activities of the EFDS were entrusted entirely to European
political foundations11 was a key element, which helped to promote cooperation
without engaging the PES officially. When a representative of the Forum travelled
to a CEE country, he could meet a wider spectrum of political representatives
than he would be able to do when delegated officially by the PES.12 The seminars
organized by foundations in candidate countries dealt with issues of current
reform implemented in the region such as minorities’ rights and gender issues.
The EFDS could thus be perceived as an international catalyst of ideas and
contacts, helping political parties, which remained outside the European party
structures, to remain in close contact and to focus their priorities on a progressive
rapprochement with the European Union. One of the aims was to encourage the
domestic cooperation of post-communist and other social democratic parties,
a strategy that partially succeeded in Poland and Bulgaria. Since the start of
enlargement negotiations, the EFDS reoriented its activities into non-EU candi-
date states. It thus appears as a structure aimed at preserving ties between the
European Union and in the wider Europe.
This transnational party mobilization shows the EU enlargement as a two-
sided process, affecting both new member states political parties and the party
federations at the EU level. Political leaders from the candidate countries tend to
be recognized by their European partners and to benefit from their material, but
above all, nonmaterial resources (such as legitimacy or contacts). Party leaders in
the European Parliament (EP) perceive their interlocutors from Central and
164 Dorota Dakowska
Eastern Europe as future partners and allies, which could help them to overcome
certain internal crises. The process of new members’ affiliation to transnational
party associations is closely related to the consolidation of European party
federation identity (Devin, 1993).
Bridging the gap between rationality and norms

Studying the mechanisms of these transnational contacts in an institutionalist
perspective enables us to take into account the logic of expected consequences –
based on exogenous preferences and interest calculations – and also the logic of
appropriateness – based on endogenous identity, cognitive dimensions and rules
(March and Olsen, 1998).13 By the mid-1990s, the European party federations
had to face the failure of their initial aims, which comprised the association of
historical social democratic parties from CEEC or the Christian democratic par-
ties based on the Western model. After a few years of cooperation, they realized
that most social democratic parties of some importance in the region were of
post-communist origin while the parties on the Right of the political stage could
hardly fit into the Western definition of Christian Democracy. The European
party federations had to overcome the gap between the aims of associating
stronger partners who were able to increase the weight of federations and the
expectation of a basic agreement on common norms and values. In other words,
they had to find a balance between their aim of increasing their stability and
power on the one hand and preserving a common identity on the other.
The rational objective meant associating as many strong parties as possible, in
order to enforce the federations’ bargaining power and resources after their acces-
sion. Thus, the domestic weight of Central European parties was the prevailing
factor influencing dialogue. Contacts with some conservative parties were pur-
sued notwithstanding the objective criticisms that could be made regarding their
structure (the dominant role of trade unions in the case of Polish Social
Movement Solidarity, RS AWS) or their ideational engagement (like the lack of
conviction in regard to federalism). The power calculation may have prevailed in
the case of the Hungarian Alliance of Young Democrats (FIDESZ), which was
initially a member of the Liberal International (LI), before applying to the EPP.
FIDESZ was pursued actively by EPP representatives and it was regarded
favourably by the EPP Political bureau, while its statutes still placed the FIDESZ
in the LI, of which Victor Orban held the vice-presidency. Thus, the FIDESZ
became an EPP associated party at the end of the year 2000 and a full member
after Hungary’s EU accession and the following EP elections in June 2004. The
KAS office in Budapest was very active during this process. It organized visits and
meetings for FIDESZ leaders and tried to convince them of the benefits of
joining the EPP.
It is also true, however, that European party federations carried out an in-depth
survey of their partners’ effective norm commitment. The programme, statutes
and policy profile of each potential partner were screened. The party federations
sent observers to the CEEC party congresses. These parties, whose strong
commitment to European integration and federalism were not in doubt, were
literally pursued by the European party federations. When a potential member
party respected all the normative criteria, the formal, technical barriers could be
lowered. In the case of the Polish UW accession to the EPP, the observer–member
stage was bypassed for the first time. Once the UW broke its links with the EPP,
the European Liberals made strong efforts to convince the party to cross over to
the ELDR. They invited UW leaders (especially Bronisdaw Geremek and Leszek
Balcerowicz) to their meetings. As usual, material support of the foundations was
requested. In practice, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, the FNS President, was asked by
Pat Cox to back the liberal efforts and to strengthen its financial involvement
in Poland.14 The strong support of European Liberals for the UW has proved a
successful strategy. Resulting from the mobilization of Polish pro-European
voters during the European elections on 13 June 2004, the UW managed to send
four representatives to the EP, including its historical leader Geremek who
unsuccessfully stood in the elections for EP President in July 2004.
It might be useful to distinguish between different stages of socialization. The
meetings and congresses, to which politicians from the CEEC were invited prior
to their association, were the first arena of socialization. Formal association with
a party federation requires organizational and political adaptation and fully
exposes the new party to internal socialization forums. Foundations intervened at
both stages, providing organizational assistance and proposing training sessions
on relevant topics. However, to be effective, exploring social learning mechanisms
has to be based on an analysis of interactions (Checkel, 2001). As a result of this
transnational socialization process, a transfer of discourse and perceptions seems
indeed to have affected both sides. While politicians from candidate countries
affiliated to the EPP have increasingly stressed their attachment to the principles
of the social market economy and subsidiarity, EPP leaders have supported
some of their priorities in their declarations such as when the EPP President
Wilfried Martens supported the FIDESZ position with regard to the Hungarian
Status Law (concerning Hungarian minorities abroad) and criticized the
Hungarian socialists’ arguments advanced during their electoral campaign
(EPP News, 2002).
Conclusion
Research on German political foundations as transnational actors has several
heuristic advantages. First, it allows an empirical refinement of the conceptual
models of transnational networks’ activities, showing that relations with govern-
mental agencies may be decisive for their impact. In fact, whereas German min-
istries are key resource providers for the foundations, the symbolic support of
ministers who also play an important role in their parties is also an important
legitimizing factor for foundations. Second, this research furthers the linking of
the bilateral and the multilateral level through the dynamics of international
party legitimation. Finally, it refines our reflection on the EU enlargement process
and elite socialization mechanisms. Observing the enlargement of European
166 Dorota Dakowska
party federations through the association of new members provides empirical
evidence of the entangled nature of the logic of consequentialism and the logic
of appropriateness. Both the relative and potential numeric weight of CEEC
political parties and the prestige expected from associating political leaders from
the region, who were well known for their commitment to defending democratic
ideas and for their pro-European convictions, were decisive factors influencing the
mobilization of external actors.
As far as the analysis of the foundations’ activities is concerned, the political
and chronological re-contextualizing provides a frame for any conclusive state-
ments. Facilitating their partners’ access to European arenas was critical at the
early stage of partner identification and until the beginning of accession negotia-
tions. At that time, due to the scarcity of information sources, the German
foundations played a particularly important role. Since the first associations in the
second half of the 1990s, the net of contacts of all kinds between CEEC politi-
cal leaders and their European interlocutors has grown and the political founda-
tions have no longer been considered as unique or vital information sources.
However, this transnational communication channel has continued to function in
both ways. Between the end of accession negotiations and the accession referenda
and the European elections including the new member states in June 2004,
the foundations sent political delegations for training in Brussels and supported
those, who were still in process of political identification, looking for an
appropriate political family to join. In CEEC, they helped their partners to
assuage the painful process of persuading public opinion in the new member
states to accept the social consequences of the transformation and accession as
a necessary stage of the enlargement process. The results of the first European
elections including these new member states have shown that domestic factors
and veto players remain essential variables influencing political outcomes, which
party leaders have to take into account if they wish to strengthen the democratic
dimension of the enlarged European Union. The German political foundations
remain useful observers and advisors of the ongoing developments in the new
member states. Although the EU accession of ten new member states in 2004 is
a turning point in the relations between both parts of Europe, the special rela-
tionship between the German parties and foundations and their CEEC partners
will have to be reconsidered as it may develop and change, though not disappear
entirely.
Finally, this chapter contributes to reflecting on the role of the EP in the EU
integration process. Usually considered as a backwater of Europeanization, the
EP may also appear as a socialization arena worthy of further study and analysis.
As far as the actors are concerned, focusing on bureaucratic or governmental
institutions characteristic of some enlargement studies provides only a partial
insight into the impact of EU governance outside of it, especially insofar as the
normative pressures and social learning are concerned. Generating compliance
with EU norms may be a matter for socializing institutions such as party political
transnational networks including the foundations.
Notes
1 Only the liberal Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung is legally a foundation, the others have the
status of a registered association (eingetragener Verein).
2 For a more thorough analysis of the foundations’ origins, see the results of my research
in different public and private archives in my PhD research project, Les fondations
politiques allemandes dans la politique étrangère: de la genèse institutionnelle à leur engagement dans
le processus d’élargissement de l’UE, prepared at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.
3 In 2001 the percentage was: KAS, FES: 3.25 per cent each; FNS, HSS, HBS:
11.66 per cent each; 0.5 per cent for the RLS.
4 For a typology of mechanisms of transnational socialization, see the contribution of
Frank Schimmelfennig in Chapter 3 of this volume.
5 In Poland, the FES supported the Solidarność trade union and tried to work with the
post-communist OPZZ trade union, which was hampered by the disagreement
between these two strongly politicized organizations.
6 Interview with a member of the UW board, Warsaw, 13 February 2004.
7 Interview with a former KAS representative, Berlin, 19 July 2000.
8 Interview with an EPP leader, Brussels, 21 February 2003.
9 EPP archives, Fax of the KAS Prague office director, Reinhard Stuht to the EPP
General Secretary Klaus Welle, 26 October 1998.
10 The internal SLD journal published a photo of its delegation together with Romano
Prodi; Tadeusz Iwiński ‘SLD w Brukseli. Marzenia a rzeczywistoś ć’, Wspódpraca
mi˛edzynarodowa, 1(1), July 2000, p. 5.
11 While the FES had the most important material resources, it cooperated with other foun-
dations within this transnational network, such as the Dutch Alfred Mozer Stichting, the
Swedish Olof Palme International Center, the Austrian Karl Renner Institut, the British
Westminster Foundation, as well as the French Fondation Jean Jaurès.
12 Interview with a PES adviser, Brussels, 25 February 2003.
13 For a discussion of this relationship in party cooperation preceding the EU enlargement,
see Dakowska (2002).
14 FNS archives, Letter of Pat Cox, President of the ELDR to Count Otto Lambsdorff,
Chairman of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Brussels, 15 November 2000.
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8 Transnational actors in
the European Higher
Education Area
European opportunities and
institutional embeddedness
Eric Beerkens
Introduction
In their academic and intellectual orientations, universities historically have been
international institutions. Communicating in Latin, scholars would wander from
one place of learning to another. Nobody asked for their papers or bothered them
with bureaucratic restrictions or academic qualifications. It was a spontaneous
movement and not the result of planning. Although it is clear that the contempo-
rary wandering scholar may be less footloose than in medieval times, interna-
tional academic exchange and mobility have remained important aspects of
university enquiry and teaching. In contradiction to its intellectual orientation,
the universities’ institutional environment has become very national, especially
through the establishments of welfare states in the decades following the Second
World War and the subsequent massification of higher education. The ties
between national authority and university were already intensified in the course
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however (Neave, 2000).
Universities became instruments of states, they were regulated by them and gov-
ernments provided much of their funding. Yet, increasing and diversifying demands
for higher education have pushed countries to find new modes of governance for
their higher education sector. In general these new modes of governance stress
efficiency, effectiveness and accountability and leave more leeway for universities to
make their own choices. This increased autonomy, together with expanding oppor-
tunities for international exchange and communication, has made the international
dimension of the university an important topic again, both in the missions of uni-
versities as well as in research on higher education policies. In Europe, the nostalgic
idea of the wandering scholar pursuing knowledge has over time transformed into
the policy idea of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). In this EHEA,
several actors have emerged that can be considered transnational. Examples of such
actors are higher education consortia, which are groupings of universities that coop-
erate and exchange across borders. International higher education consortia can be
defined as multi-point groupings of universities from three or more countries. They
have a limited amount of members and membership is restricted to particular
universities that are allowed by the other partners to enter the arrangement.
Transnational actors in the EHEA 171
Cooperation and exchange take place in multiple disciplines and/or themes. The
arrangements exceed loose cooperation, since an additional administrative layer is
created above the participating organizations (Beerkens, 2002).
In this chapter, we will look at higher education consortia as transnational
actors and we will make an attempt to relate the behaviour of such consortia to
theories of European integration. We will approach transnational actors as vehi-
cles for transnational transaction and exchange, but at the same time acknowl-
edge that transnational actors are composed of their constituent elements (in our
case universities), which have developed in national institutional contexts. In other
words, we will take a look inside transnational actors. Higher education consortia
as transnational actors contain an inherent tension. On the one hand, they face
new opportunities due to ongoing European integration and on the other, they
might be restricted in their behaviour since they have historically emerged and
still operate largely in a very national context. The question of how transnational
actors deal with the tension between the new opportunities that arise due to fur-
ther European integration and the national embeddedness of their constituent
elements is addressed in this chapter. In order to provide the background for the
study, we will first shortly address the emergence of the idea of the EHEA. After
this, we will introduce our theoretical starting points for looking at transnational
actors. Here, we draw mainly on theories of political integration on the one hand
and sociological-economic theories of embeddedness on the other. On the basis
of three cases, we will attempt to arrive at more general conclusions on the way
in which transnational actors operate and how they deal with the tension between
European opportunities and institutional embeddedness.
Policy background: the idea of the European

Higher Education Area
The Action Programme in the field of education, which was approved by the
European Council in 1976, marked the start of a formal European educational
policy. In this programme a number of broad policy objectives were addressed
among which were the promotion of closer relations between educational systems
and cooperation in the field of education. Although resources linked to this
programme were very limited, the activities did influence the design of later
programmes and stimulated the development of many cooperative networks that
would emerge after the adoption of this programme (Ceri Jones, 1991). In that
same year, the first Joint Study Programmes were established, which are now seen
as the predecessors of the ERASMUS programme that started in 1987. During
the latter half of the 1980s, further initiatives also emerged in the European
domain. Examples include COMETT (to promote cooperation between higher
education and industry), LINGUA (improvement of foreign language compe-
tence) and TEMPUS (focussed on the development of higher education systems
in Central and Eastern Europe). ERASMUS, however, can be seen as the flagship
activity in the field of higher education (van der Wende and Huisman, 2004).
This programme was aimed at and succeeded in boosting student and staff
172 Eric Beerkens
mobility and inter-organizational cooperation within the EC (and later also
included the countries from the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and
from Central and Eastern Europe).
In the second half of the 1990s, the ERASMUS programme became part of
the broader SOCRATES Programme. Although the core policy remained
unchanged, some important shifts could be observed (Wächter et al., 1999). More
priority was given to the internationalization and Europeanization of curricula
which was thought to foster cooperation and strengthen the European dimension
in higher education. One of the instruments used to aid this was the European
Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Another main shift was of a geographical nature.
Under the new programme, the number of eligible countries was significantly
increased, mainly through the inclusion of countries from Central and Eastern
Europe. In spite of these changes, cooperation remained hampered by the diver-
sity in systems, qualifications and educational regulations of the member states.
The subsidiarity principle prevents the European Commission from intervening
in issues such as educational content and quality. Moreover, European interven-
tion in such national issues was politically very sensitive (van der Wende, 2000).
Another issue that hindered the path to a more comparable structure of national
systems was the emphasis placed on the preservation of diversity. Especially in
the period where the resistance against globalization emerged on a global scale,
standardization, homogenization and uniformity obtained a negative undertone,
while diversity and variety received more positive connotations. This set the stage
for a more bottom-up approach, with the initiative shifting from the Euro-
pean to the national level. The ultimate product in this balancing act was the
Bologna Declaration of 1999. According to the Confederation of EU Rectors’
Conferences (CERC) and the Association of European Universities (CRE) this
declaration ‘is a key document which marks a turning point in the development
of European higher education’ (CERC/CRE, 1999: 3). Instead of being imposed
by the European Union, the declaration was signed by 29 European countries as
a commitment freely taken to reform their own higher education system or sys-
tems in order to create overall convergence at the European level. Its aim is to
establish a EHEA and to promote the European system of higher education in
the world. It proposes the adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable
degrees, the establishment of a system of credits, and the elimination of all remain-
ing obstacles standing in the way of free mobility.
Both the EU initiatives in higher education and research and the ongoing
Bologna process have changed the institutional landscape of European higher
education, adding several transnational associations, bilateral partnerships and
multilateral groupings to the existing national landscapes. The wide and dense
network of linkages that emerged through cooperation and exchange has provided
European universities with the need for coordination and communication and for
external positioning. The increasing entanglement of universities, faculties and
departments or institutes and also of individual teaching and research staff, man-
agers, policy makers and students has made transnational, inter-organizational
arrangements in Europe at least more visible, if not more significant. The way in
which they operate, and especially the way they deal with balancing the
‘Europeanness’ of the collective and the national institutional backgrounds of
their constituent elements, will be investigated further in this chapter.
Transactions, exchange and European integration

In studying integration processes in the European Union, a distinction can be
made between schools of thought based on realist and functionalist assumptions.
These assumptions focus on the ways of understanding the motivations, paths
and outcomes of integration processes. The central question here is whether
regional integration is the concerted pluralist articulation of national interests, or
whether it is developing the characteristics of a supranational state, in which
a new level of governance covers the region as a whole, not as individual nation-
states. In the course of further European integration and the study of this process,
the theoretical debate has centred around the intergovernmental-supranational
dichotomy. Intergovernmental institutionalism stresses the role of states, and their
pursuit of power and national interests. Supranationalism on the other hand,
denotes a framework in which supranational factors possess a significant impact
on the member states. Actors and institutions operating above the nation-states
acquire a degree of autonomy and become independent actors. The European
political institutions are the most evident examples of such actors.
As explained in Bastiaan van Apeldoorn’s chapter (Chapter 4, this volume), the
transaction-based theory represents a return to the neo-functionalist legacy of
Ernst B. Haas (1958, 1961). It also incorporates the refinements of neo-functional
theory by Joseph S. Nye (1970) as well as the transaction-based theory of Karl
Deutsch (1957). The basic starting point of the approach is that the relative inten-
sity of transnational activity causes shifts in the level of supranational governance.
With this premise, the approach also allows for different speeds of transformation
in different policy sectors. Different policy sectors may find themselves on
different positions in the intergovernmental-supranational continuum. On this
continuum, EU rules achieve higher degrees of clarity and formalization, EU
institutions gain more autonomy and transnational actors become more present
and more influential. In intergovernmental politics, it is the national governments
that mediate between societal actors and supranational organizations and rules.
In supranational politics, ‘transnational actors have a choice of fora in which to
exert their influence. They may target national governmental structures [. . .] as
well as supranational bodies and they may play one level of against the other’
(Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1998: 10). They can thus intentionally act upon
national governments and supranational institutions, but they can also uninten-
tionally provoke further integration through an increase and/or intensification of
transnational exchange. The need or the desire for more transnational exchange
does not emerge in order to – intentionally – bring about further supranational
regulation (need or desire can emerge out of sheer curiosity, pressures for
efficiency, market imperfections, but also through – material or symbolic – stimuli
from national governments or supranational institutions), but it will trigger
174 Eric Beerkens
supranational regulation if it is substantial enough. The expansion of transna-
tional society thus pushes for supranational governance, which is exercised to
facilitate and regulate that society. The approach shares with neo-functionalists
like Haas (1958) the logic of institutionalization at the supranational level which
implies that when supranational rules, supranational organizations and transna-
tional society have emerged, these rules, organizations and transnational actors
become active driving forces for further integration. The legacy of Deutsch is
mainly situated in the emphasis that is placed on the role of exchange and trans-
actions. Stone Sweet and Sandholtz (1998) agree with Deutsch that exchange
across borders drives integration processes.
If the transaction-based approach claims that transactions and exchange push
for a higher level of political integration, and higher education consortia (and
other transnational organizations) can be perceived as vehicles for transaction
and exchange, it can be assumed that such transnational actors play a significant
role in the integration process. The emergence of the idea of the EHEA confirms
this. The mobility of students and staff, the exchange of ideas, expertise and
knowledge and the transaction of credits and financial means between universi-
ties, have pushed forward the recognition that regulations, structures and policies
in the field of higher education need to be fine-tuned. The focus on transactions
and exchange legitimates a more economical approach to integration. Following
economic–sociological and neo-institutional theories, however, we also need to
acknowledge that exchange takes place in a social environment. Although transna-
tional exchange is put forward as one of the core elements of the transaction-based
approach, the nature and the role of transnational actors remains rather unclear.
Applying perspectives from economic sociology enables us to understand better
how transaction and exchange takes place and therefore provides us with a middle
range theory on the operation of transnational actors and their role in European
integration.
The embeddedness of transaction and exchange

Transactions, exchange, communications or flows, do not take place in a vacuum,
but in a particular context. The transaction-based approach locates the develop-
ment of European integration on a continuum. For the case of higher education,
which has historically developed in a national context and is therefore very much
embedded in national institutions, the national context continues to play a signif-
icant role. However, as we have seen in the previous sections, an increasing level
of exchange of people, practices and ideas can be observed within the European
Union and has led to the (idea of the) EHEA. It is claimed here that this causes
a tension in the operations of transnational actors. Although such actors are
transnational as a collective actor, their constituent elements, be they organiza-
tions or individuals, still have their national background in which they emerged
and that has shaped their thinking and behaviour.
Transaction-based theories on European integration thus see transactions
and exchange as the main driving force for further integration, and economic
sociological theories argue that exchange takes place in a social context.
Therefore, looking at the constituent elements of transnational actors brings the
process of integration back to the level of real actions of real actors and therefore
can be considered a microcosm for studying the impact of Europeanization on
universities (and other organizations). Since contemporary universities have
developed in an environment dominated by national regulations, cultures, norms
and organizational rules, the way this context has impacted on them cannot be
ignored when they engage in international collaboration and exchange. The basic
idea behind this line of thinking is related to the term ‘embeddedness’. The
notion of embeddedness was coined by Polanyi (1944, 1957) and has more
recently been extended into what is now termed the ‘new economic sociology’
(Swedberg, 1991). Granovetter (1985) argued for economists and sociologists to
theorize economic action in ways that acknowledge its strong linkages to social
structure. He argued that the economy is structurally embedded in social net-
works that affect its functioning. The concept of embeddedness is typically treated
as synonymous with the notion that organizations and the economy are part of
a larger institutional structure (Baum and Dutton, 1996). Granovetter (1985)
uses the term in a more specific way to mean that economic action takes place
within the networks of social relations that make up the social structure. In
criticism of this narrow conception, DiMaggio (1990, 1994) has argued that
economic action is embedded not only in the social structure but also in culture.
Zukin and DiMaggio (1990: 14–22) make further distinctions between different
kinds of embeddedness, including cognitive (i.e. structured regularities of mental
processes), cultural (i.e. the role of shared collective understandings), political
(i.e. the role of social, political, and other non-market institutions), as well as struc-
tural (i.e. contextualization of exchange in patterns of ongoing interpersonal
relationships) embeddedness.
Perceiving transnational actors as vehicles for transnational exchange between
national organizations or individuals uncovers the tensions that exist in such
transnational arrangements. Our premise is that transnational actors as compos-
ite arrangements of national elements need to balance their operations. They
need to exploit the opportunities that they face due to European integration and
at the same time acknowledge that their constituent elements are restricted in
their behaviour. In the case of higher education consortia this would mean that
the constituent universities can exploit each others’ strengths and they can create
economies of scale and scope. Through membership, universities can gain access
to research facilities, to student markets, to local knowledge, to scientific knowl-
edge, to financial resources, etc. In order for a consortium to gain synergy from
this exchange there must exist a situation where universities have something to
offer to each other. In other words, there needs to be complementarity between
the constituent parts of the consortium. However, since we have acknowledged
that exchange (of knowledge and resources) takes place in a social context, the
constituent parts also need to share similarities in order to cooperate. Institutional
contexts of the constituent parts can be so different or incompatible leading
to clashes in cooperation, which would leave the higher education consortium
176 Eric Beerkens
useless, since exchange cannot take place. The other side of the coin thus demands
the constituent elements of a transnational actor to be compatible with each other.
For transnational actors this means that they need to be organized and managed
in such a way that they find the correct balance between difference and similarity,
between complementarity and compatibility. The resources to be exchanged in
higher education consortia are expressed in the portfolio of activities and projects
agreed upon by a consortium. If in the implementation of projects, partner char-
acteristics appear to be incompatible, the consortium needs to apply institutional
coping mechanisms in order to reduce, avoid or solve problems due to dissimilarities,
after which the endeavour to perform can proceed.
Operationalization and design

Following our theoretical approaches, universities as constituent elements of
transnational actors such as consortia are trapped in a paradox. On the one hand,
they face new opportunities due to collaboration and exchange with other univer-
sities and therewith push forward the wider processes of integration. On the other
hand, they are very much embedded in their national and organizational context.
They operate mainly under national legislation and they are shaped by national
culture. Furthermore, they have created their own organizational rules, norms and
habits. We will examine this issue by first taking a closer look at three consortia and
the way in which they balance the exploitation of new European opportunities
and the national embeddedness of their members. A comparison of the three cases
enables us to make more general statements on such higher education consortia.
These considerations lead to the hypothesis that higher education consortia will
perform better if their constituent elements have similar institutional backgrounds,
at least in those cases where different institutional backgrounds have a negative
effect on collaboration and exchange. In other words, the constituent elements
need to show a considerable level of institutional fit in order to achieve their
objectives. The empirical findings on these consortia are presented below and are
based on a detailed analysis of a broader study of consortia in Europe and
Southeast Asia which highlights the tension between global opportunities and
institutional embeddedness (Beerkens, 2004). This analysis was based on inter-
views with persons that held central positions in these consortia and on question-
naires that were sent to all persons that were involved in activities of the consortia.
The questions that were asked related to performance (expressed by the impor-
tance and the attainment of objectives) and the institutional fit between the
participating universities (expressed by the impact and the presence of institu-
tional differences). The hypothesized relation between institutional fit and perfor-
mance was tested through a questionnaire and further explored through
interviews and document analyses. Performance was measured on the basis of an
assessment of the perceived attainment (5 point scale from (1) not successful to
(5) very successful) of the formal objectives of the consortia weighed by the
perceived importance of those objectives (5 point scale from (0.2) not important
to (1.0) very important). For each of the individual objectives this results in an
assessment in the range of 0.2 and 5. Institutional fit was measured on the bases
of the assessment of perceived differences in six types of institutional forms
between the partners in a consortium (on a 5 point scale from (1) homogeneous
to (5) heterogeneous). These differences were weighed by the perceived impact of
such differences (on a 5 point scale ranging from (1) negative impact to (0) no
impact to (1) positive impact).
The six types of institutional forms are based on a classification of institutions
developed by Ingram and Clay (2000) and extended by Ingram and Silverman
(2002). Ingram and Clay claim that in neo-institutional thinking one can distin-
guish three classes of actors: individuals (or groups of individuals), organizations
and states. Ingram and Silverman added civil society as a fourth class. While insti-
tutions are typically categorized as formal or informal (North, 1990; Nee and
Ingram, 1998), Ingram and Clay (2000) use a more fine-grained categorization
based on two dimensions: who makes the rules (public or private entities) and how
are they made and enforced (in centralized or decentralized fashion). On the basis
of these two dimensions, they identify three types of institutions (excluding the
possibility of public decentralized institutions). Ingram and Silverman have
recently extended these types by including the latter. On the basis of these two
dimensions, they arrive at four types of institutions: (i) decentralized/private:
norms, with social groups as chief actor; (ii) decentralized/public: culture, with
civil society as the chief actor; (iii) centralized/private: rules, with organizations
as chief actors; and (iv) centralized/public: law, with states as chief actor.
This typology makes evident that several sources of incompatibility can
emerge. For the domain of norms, we will look at the conception of academic
work and the character of the university (exemplified by its size, scope and age,
which we regard as a source of diversity in university operations). For rules,
we will look at two factors: the division of authority within the university and the
formal organizational procedures. Culture as an archetypical type of institution is
accounted for through the issue of national culture and law as a type of institu-
tion by the issue of national legislation and the organization of the national
higher education system.
Three case studies

We have looked at three higher education consortia: the ALMA network, the
Coimbra Group of Universities and the European Consortium of Innovative
Universities (ECIU). After an introduction to the cases, the general findings
on performance and institutional fit will be compared. After this, we will look in
more depth at the various mechanisms for managing the institutional diversity in
consortia.
ALMA Network ALMA is a cooperative network of four universities in the

Meuse-Rhine Euregion. This region forms the intersection between the most
southern part of the Netherlands, the eastern part of Belgium and the western
part of one of the German Länder, Northrhine-Westphalia. The network was
178 Eric Beerkens
launched in 1990, and at that time consisted of the University of Maastricht, the
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen (Aachen University of
Technology) and the University of Liege in French-speaking Belgium. A year
later, the Limburgs Universitair Centrum from Dutch-speaking Belgium joined
the network. ALMA emerged in the euphoria of the early 1990s, a phenomenon
that – through the Maastricht Treaty – especially was seized as an opportunity
by the University of Maastricht. At the start, many projects focused more on
collaboration in research than in education. A reason for the orientation on
research was the dependency on Interreg subsidies (the EU programme for fund-
ing inter-regional cooperation). Projects eligible for Interreg needed to have a
socio-economic impact on the region and collaboration in research seemed to be
more successful in this respect than programmes focussing on mobility. Through
the Dutch Programme on cross-border cooperation in 1997, the network received
a financial boost to develop projects outside the Interreg framework. Some of the
major achievements of the cooperation between the ALMA universities have fur-
ther developed outside the direct authority of the network. Examples of this are
EURON, a European graduate school in neurosciences, and the Transnational
University Limburg, a joint venture between the University of Maastricht and the
Limburgs Universitair Centrum.
The ALMA network was established on the basis of complementarity between
the participating universities. To exploit this complementarity, ALMA has never
envisaged close integration of activities, but has functioned as a coordinator and
facilitator for local initiatives. The network, however, has changed strategies, struc-
tures and objectives to cope with insufficient exploitation of complementary
resources and with sources of incompatibility. ALMA’s core business in the begin-
ning was the promotion of mobility, but this has developed somewhat disappoint-
ingly due to a lack of interest on the side of the students. This disinterest was partly
due to financial support regulations, but also to the fact that many students prefer
more remote places. In general, we can observe a somewhat low appreciation of
ALMA by the respondents, which can be best explained by a lack of perceived
institutional fit. The lack of fit is mainly caused by a perceived negative effect of
several institutional factors, especially the centralized institutional types like legisla-
tion, organizational procedures and the division of authority in universities.
Complementarity between the partners is sufficiently present but does not lead to
higher performance. The reason for this could be that complementarity is not
exploited sufficiently or that there might be a case of over-complementarity in the
case of ALMA. This supports the idea that there exists a paradox between com-
patibility and complementarity, where an excessively high level of complementarity
is accompanied by an excessively low level of compatibility.
Coimbra Group of Universities The origins of the Coimbra Group lie in a meet-
ing held in 1985 at the Catholic University of Louvain where 12 universities from
the old European university towns gathered to discuss the possibility of establish-
ing strong cultural links. The participants in this meeting realized that, along with
cultural links, common activities in the field of student and staff mobility might
be particularly fruitful. This belief was strengthened by the subsequent creation
of the ERASMUS programme by the European Commission. The Coimbra
Group Charter was drawn up and signed by 19 participating universities in
September 1987 during a general meeting at the University of Pavia. By 2003,
the number of members has increased to 39 universities, now also including uni-
versities from Central and Eastern Europe. The Charter lays down the criteria for
membership along with the general aims and purposes of the Group. In its exis-
tence of over 15 years, the Coimbra Group has strongly held on to its identity of
a traditional, comprehensive academic community and has stuck to its objectives
of facilitating and promoting intra-European mobility of students and staff. In its
early years, its policies were very much geared to the upcoming and ambitious
European schemes. The Group has played an important role in this pioneering
stage of European integration in the field of higher education.
Of our three case studies, the Coimbra Group displays the highest level of per-
formance and the highest level of institutional fit. Membership of the Coimbra
Group is based on the old, traditional and comprehensive nature of its members.
Correspondingly, the data from the respondents show that the differences in the
nature of the participating universities are rather small. It also becomes clear,
however, that the universities come from very different traditions, and that these
differences sometimes slightly negatively impact on cooperation. This is most
evident for the legal national contexts in which the universities operate. The
differences in organizational procedures and in the division of authority are also
great in the consortium. The diversity in national cultures is also assessed as high,
although many see those differences as positive.
The Coimbra Group’s activities focus on removing obstacles for cooperation,
for instance, through mutual recognition and mutual exemption from student
fees, but also through lobbying on the European level and through provision of
information on differences between the systems, qualifications, methods, etc. used
at its member universities. Furthermore, the Group tries to improve cooperation
through the stimulation of the use of new technologies. For these activities, it has
set up an organizational structure which has remained relatively stable in the
history of Coimbra, and which has recently been simplified. Many of the task
forces, working parties and committees that emerged in the early years of
Coimbra have continued to exist. The cooperation in the task forces, with their
relative endurance in composition is valued very positively by its members.
European Consortium of Innovative Universities At a meeting of the CRE in 1996,
the rector of the University of Twente at that time took the initiative to assemble
a group of ‘like-minded’ universities to establish a consortium. This consortium
should give the member universities an opportunity to position themselves strate-
gically vis-à-vis their European and international environment. After consecutive
meetings in Twente in September 1996 and in Warwick in April 1997, this
ultimately led to the signing of a charter in Dortmund in November 1997, where
ten universities decided to commit themselves to the ECIU and the members are
all from Western European countries. Roughly, the development of ECIU from
1996 until 2003 can be divided in three phases. The start-up phase, running from
1996 until 1999, was mainly marked by the preparation of ECIU and the search
180 Eric Beerkens
for suitable and eager partners. The core of ECIU at that time displayed
a high level of trust between the leaders and managers. In this phase, the
main areas for strategic cooperation were identified. The foremost reason for
cooperation for the participating universities was the establishment of a strategic
position vis-à-vis their external environment and was less based on internal
exchange of staff and students. In the strategic plan for 2000–2 that was devel-
oped in 1999, the total collection of activities was brought back to manageable
proportions and several priority activities were selected. Also, there was a shift
from highly ambitious to more realistic objectives. Another change that took place
was the shift from external strategic positioning to a mix of external and internal
activities. In this second phase in the development of ECIU, from 1999
until 2002, many of the planned activities were realized. In the operational phases
however, the consortium became exposed to problems due to different legislation
in different countries and due to different and shifting levels of commitment.
More recently, from 2002 onwards, a third phase has commenced. In this
phase, the new ‘ECIU Graduate School’, improvement of student and staff
mobility and university–industry interaction will become the future focus points
of ECIU.
In ECIU, the employment of institutional coping mechanisms in order to solve
obstacles or bridge differences has not been applied on the overall ECIU level. An
explanation for this could be that partners were considered to be ‘like-minded’
from the start and that incompatibility would not be an issue. In general, it has
not focussed much on changing the institutional fit between partners, but more on
the complementarity of the partners. A final aspect should be noted here in rela-
tion to the below average performance of ECIU. This can to a certain extent be
explained by the high ambitions of many of its objectives. The level of integra-
tion envisaged by the ECIU objectives (e.g. joint doctorates, joint research schools,
joint accreditation) is higher than for the other consortia. But also in regular
internationalization activities such as student mobility, ECIU goes beyond the
traditional objectives (e.g. by integrating mobility with international internships).
Putting the stakes too high, however, can also lead to a disinterest or distrust of
people on the work floor or of other partners. On the other hand, focussing
only on mainstream activities would probably not result in the exposure of the
opportunities in the consortium. More risky, entrepreneurial activities do result
in the possibility that real sources of complementarity become manifest, even
though this is likely to proceed in a process of trial and error, due to considerable
institutional differences.
Comparing the three case studies

Comparing the three case studies, institutional fit and performance only show a
significant correlation in the case of ALMA. The results indicate that a minimum
level of compatibility is a precondition for successful collaboration in consortia.
This claim is based on the results of the questionnaire (Table 8.1) and the interviews
that were conducted with persons that represented the consortia.
Table 8.1 Performance, institutional fit and the correlation between them
ALMA Coimbra ECIU
Performance 1.85 2.65 1.91

Institutional fit 0.63 0.03 0.27
Correlation (performance–institutional fit) 0.424* 0.042 0.047
Note
* Pearson R significant for p 0.05.
If we look in more detail at the different types of institutional forms, we arrive

at the results of Table 8.2. A statistically significant difference in institutional fit
can be observed between ALMA on the one hand and Coimbra on the other. The
table shows that the differences between ALMA and Coimbra can be largely
explained by the relatively strong negative impact that ALMA respondents
perceive as coming from legal differences and differences in the division of author-
ity at the partners. Furthermore, ALMA respondents on average see cultural
differences as impacting on cooperation in a negative way, while the other consor-
tia see this as positive. The moderate level of institutional fit in ECIU can chiefly
be explained by the perceived negative impact of differences in centralized insti-
tutional forms and the diversity of these forms in the consortium. Overall, it is the
centralized types of institutions (national laws, organizational procedures and the
formal division of authority) that constitute the main source of incompatibility.
We have claimed, however, that the performance and institutional fit of these
consortia are not static, but need to be managed, like in any other organization.
Consortium management and institutional diversity

As we have stated before, the level of institutional fit is not necessarily fixed. The
consortia apply mechanisms in order to deal with sources of incompatibility and
institutional mismatch. They adapt their measures in accordance with the insti-
tutional forms that are the cause of incompatibility. Furthermore, they deal in
different ways with legal differences than with cultural differences and differently
with cultural differences than with procedural differences.
Where national legal differences and the differences in higher education systems
present obstacles in cooperation, the consortia seem to be relatively powerless, since
they are not in a position to change such laws or systems. A closer look reveals, how-
ever, that some of the consortia have been active in handling such obstacles. This
has been most apparent in the case of Coimbra. This consortium (sometimes in
cooperation with other European consortia) is active in lobbying on the European
level. In broad European developments, such as the Bologna process, the consor-
tium is actively involved or active in influencing (national) opinions through their
personal contacts and the publishing of statements and recommendations. In
ALMA this has also been the case, although more on a bilateral level. National
legal frameworks were adjusted and a bilateral treaty was concluded to enable the
Table 8.2 Institutional fit for the different institutional forms
ALMA (N 27) Coimbra (N 64) ECIU (N 42)
Ia Hb IF c Ia Hb IF c Ia Hb IF c
Differences in conceptions of academic work 0.04 3.67 0.15 0.03 2.74 0.11 0.01 3.27 0.09
Differences in the character of universities 0.07 3.87 0.41 0.14 2.58 0.36 0.07 2.93 0.23
Differences in national culture 0.02 3.50 0.15 0.31 3.84 1.25 0.13 3.69 0.44
Differences in the division of authority 0.24 3.68 1.04 0.02 3.56 0.01 0.13 3.47 0.42
Differences in organizational procedures 0.17 3.86 0.78 0.08 3.46 0.43 0.17 3.67 0.50
Differences in legislation 0.48 4.21 2.19 0.28 3.67 1.19 0.44 4.00 1.70
Overall institutional fit 0.63 0.03 0.27
Notes
a I Impact; 1 negative impact on cooperation; 1 positive impact on cooperation.
b H Heterogeneity; 1 homogeneous; 5 heterogeneous.
c IF Institutional fit Impact Heterogeneity, where a higher score means a better fit. Note that in this table ‘Institutional fit’ does not exactly equal ‘Impact’
‘Heterogeneity’. ‘Impact’ and ‘Heterogeneity’ are multiplied for each respondent separately. The mean in this column thus is not the product of the means of ‘Impact’
and ‘Heterogeneity’ but the mean of all individual products of ‘Impact’ and ‘Heterogeneity’.
establishment of a transnational university (although the two individual institutions
played a more substantial role in this than ALMA as a whole). In a more indirect
manner, the frequency of cooperation and exchange in Coimbra (mainly in the
framework of ERASMUS and SOCRATES) has made European authorities
aware of obstacles that arise due to incompatibility of national regulations and
thereby contributed to the process of European integration in higher education.
This, of course, is a consequence of European cooperation and exchange in
general and not just of Coimbra, although Coimbra is large enough to have had
a substantial influence on this process. ALMA uses similar tactics, although they
rarely act at the pan-European level but more on a multilateral and Euregional
level. ALMA is fairly embedded in Euregional society and politics through their
relationships with local business and local/provincial governments. However,
the authority of such actors on national regulations is limited. ECIU is relatively
inactive in exerting influence at a European level.
National regulations often do not so much obstruct exchange and cooperation
as to raise additional barriers that require extra administrative tasks and knowl-
edge about other systems. Such tasks (e.g. recognition of study periods) increase
transaction costs in cooperation. The consortia can be a way to institutionalize
cooperation between a particular group of universities and in that way can
create structures that minimize transaction costs. Frequent cooperation within the
framework of a consortium avoids the need to perform specific tasks or gain
specific knowledge over and over again. The Coimbra Group has set up such
structures through its Task Forces and through the informal relations that have
grown between international relations offices. The most obvious example for this
is the exemption of tuition fees for intra-consortium mobility of students
(although this is now regulated on a European level). This is also a feature of
ECIU’s Student Exchange Programme. However, tuition fees cannot be regarded
as part of national regulations in all countries since in some universities or coun-
tries they can also be determined by universities themselves, and therefore need
to be classified under the centralized private institutions or organizational rules.
Differences in such organizational rules and procedures also provide obstacles
to cooperation. With regards to exchange of staff and students as well as
cooperation, specific organizational rules can frustrate activities in a consortium
either through ignorance or lack of information, or also because specific organi-
zational procedures do not match. The former issue is often coped with through
the provision of information and facilitating opportunities for staff to get to know
one another’s universities. Especially, in cases where terminology used at the
different member universities creates confusion, the provision of information, as
happened in Coimbra, can be a simple way to create clarity. From the respon-
dents from Coimbra, it became also apparent that the regular meetings and
the relatively stable composition of the Task Forces created a very positive stance
on these groups. The fact that Coimbra is more structured and that its structure
has remained stable, has created networks of personal relationships within the
consortium. Such networks seem to be beneficial for the exchange of information,
but also for the commitment of persons to consortium activities. Obvious examples
184 Eric Beerkens
of organizational differences that create obstacles for exchange are academic
calendars and credit systems. A first step in dealing with such obstacles is acquir-
ing knowledge about each others’ calendars or systems. The ECIU has dealt with
this through the provision of ‘fact sheets’ with (references to) the required infor-
mation for students. Obstacles due to the differences in credit systems have also
been acknowledged by the consortia. In the case of Europe, a collective solution
to this problem was found in the ECTS.
The latter mechanisms constitute a level of cooperation that already is a step
further than information exchange. When knowledge about each others organi-
zation does not sufficiently alleviate the obstacles, member universities need to
mutually adjust to each other. What becomes clear in the case studies is that,
when cooperation enters this level, many universities back away. This is partly
related to the fear or unwillingness to lose autonomy mentioned earlier. What can
also be observed is that member universities might not be willing to come to
mutual adjustment because they would see this as a decline of the quality of their
own organizational procedures. A statement of one of the respondents illustrates
this: ‘the culture of “we are the best” certainly hinders true academic communi-
cation and progress’. Steps towards mutual adjustment have been taken by some
consortia, but have proven to be difficult to realize. In the case of ECIU, the
ECIU Quality Review System can also be seen as a step to mutual adjustment.
Although this has been successfully set up in the first years of the ECIU, until
now it has failed to be implemented on an ECIU-wide basis, and therefore has
had little impact on the actual operations in its member universities. In general,
we can conclude that mutual adjustment is used as a mechanism to cope with
organizational differences, but that it frequently fails in the implementation phase.
If mutual adjustment is taken one step further, this results in the possibility of
the creation of separate organizations or joint ventures. Such new organizations
incorporate the organizational differences and this will in time (optimistically)
lead to assimilation of sources of diversity. Considering the problems that are
being faced with mutual adjustment, it does not come as a surprise that these
mechanisms are not frequently used. In ALMA, it has however taken place on a
bilateral basis with the establishment of the Transnational University of Limburg.
This organization is set up in a way that national differences and organiza-
tional differences are incorporated in one organization, so that the partners in
cooperation fall under a bilateral regime and, in legal terms, under one organ-
izational regime. This university has an autonomous legal status, although it is
clearly entangled with the two parent organizations, both in terms of governance
and the location of facilities. A similar structure has been applied by the ECIU
Graduate School. Unlike the Transnational University of Limburg however, this
school is not a legal entity. ECIU, however, does consider the possibility of creat-
ing separate private organizations in those cases where national or organizational
differences with regard to educational regulations or fees constitute obstacles.
Joint Masters Programmes are now for instance offered by the Graduate School,
but the establishment of a separate private organization to offer these Joint
Masters is not ruled out for the future. Such joint ventures would demand
substantial commitment from the partners, a characteristic that was not highly
assessed in ECIU. Coimbra has never displayed any real aspirations in setting up
joint ventures.
The case studies have shown that the centralized institutional forms (e.g.
national law, organizational rules and procedures) present the most difficulties and
are the main causes for a lack of institutional fit between the members in the con-
sortia. It is therefore not surprising that the consortia mainly employed coping
mechanisms to tackle problems due to national and organizational procedures
and regulations. In some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between public/
national institutional differences and private/organizational institutional differ-
ences. This is related to the fact that some universities are more tightly controlled
by national governments than others. In some cases, for instance, the issue of
tuition fees is related to national regulations, while in other cases universities are
free to set these tuition fees. In general, we can observe that the employment of
coping mechanisms becomes more complex in the cases where a higher level of
integration of activities is envisaged. On the other hand, these are the areas where
concrete coping mechanisms such as measures for mutual adjustment or the
establishment of separate organizational structures are most needed.
Problems caused by differences in decentralized institutional forms like culture,
norms and beliefs were perceived as less crucial. In many cases, differences in
national, organizational and professional cultures are even perceived as positive or
at least as a positive challenge. This observation is rather contradictory to much of
the international management literature on international consortia and inter-
national strategic alliances. This could be a specific characteristic of inter-university
cooperation compared to general inter-organizational cooperation. Universities in
general (at least in Europe) also see themselves as carriers of national cultures and
therefore cultural diversity might be valued higher than in the business sector.
Learning about each others’ cultures can in this respect be seen as a core acade-
mic value and in turn, cultural diversity may become a source of complementar-
ity in a consortium. An additional explanation might come from the coping
mechanisms that are used in the consortia. In the case of the more intangible
institutional forms like culture, norms and beliefs however, mechanisms are not
aimed at mutual adjustment or integration but mainly at the process of becom-
ing acquainted with different cultures and habits and the recognition of those
differences. This does not so much take place in the form of (acculturation)
courses or written information but seems to be more successful in a process of
‘learning by (frequent) doing’. Support for this claim is provided by activities in
the Coimbra Group. Because of the consistent and stable nature of their sub-
structures (Steering Committee, Task Forces) there is a high level of interaction
between the persons involved, both face-to-face and through new technologies.
Through frequent interaction, persons get better acquainted with each other and
with each other’s norms and habits. Coimbra has also established a task force for
cultural diversity. The benefits of frequent interaction in order to get to know
each others’ (university) cultures have also frequently been mentioned by respon-
dents to the questionnaires. If we include language as an expression of culture
186 Eric Beerkens
and thereby as a part of the public context, we can detect some more concrete
coping mechanisms. In general, coping with problems due to linguistic differences
has led to one solution that has been applied everywhere – the use of the English
language. In all consortia this has officially become the working language, even
though other languages are used sometimes in smaller settings. This measure has
proved successful in most cases in all consortia. Universities also offer courses in other
foreign languages for students or staff members who want to spend time abroad.
What becomes apparent from the case studies is that the personal and organi-
zational relationships play a decisive role in cooperation. Even if there is an insti-
tutional fit between the members, this was not always a guarantee for success.
It has mainly been in the cases where individuals were satisfied with the relational
themes where the consortium objectives were seen as relatively successful. This
implies that these relational issues should also be of concern to the consortium
management. The question then becomes: what have consortia done to improve
the relationships between individuals and organizations? In general, three broad
methods can be distinguished on the basis of the case studies: sufficient commu-
nication, a clear organizational structure and the stimulation of commitment
among the members.
The improvement of communication at the consortium level can be rather
straightforward, for example, through regular newsletters and updates on activities.
On the project level, this can take place through mailing lists for instance, but also
through providing the opportunities for more frequent face-to-face meetings.
These measures are especially apparent for Coimbra. This consortium has issued
newsletters on a regular basis and has facilitated regular meetings of its sub-units.
Furthermore, coordination can also be supported through a clear organizational
structure, where the tasks and responsibilities of the various sub-units are clear and
known by the persons involved in consortium activities. Coimbra provides the best
support for the argument that a clear organizational structure is necessary. The
stability and the transparency in the organizational structure have led to a high
assessment of the coordination of Coimbra as a whole. Most of the Task Forces in
Coimbra have existed for a long time and in many cases the composition of these
groups has remained rather stable. This creates a situation where people know
each other and know what they can expect from each other. Several respondents
of Coimbra pointed to the high commitment and effectiveness of the work that is
being done in the task forces. In the case of ALMA, activities are based more on
content and of a temporary nature. Accordingly, bodies set up for those activities
are also of a temporary nature and, after projects are initiated, operate rather inde-
pendently from ALMA. The ECIU on the other hand has set up a structure that
entails both project related groups and more generic permanent bodies. The latter
are the Thematic Working Groups of ECIU, but in these groups there seems to be
a lack of consistency and commitment in comparison to the Coimbra Task Forces.
The fact that these Coimbra Group Task Forces have existed substantially longer
than the ECIU working groups, can (partly) explain these differences.
This takes us to the final relational issue: how to stimulate commitment
between individuals. Commitment between individuals arises from trust and
familiarity between the people involved. The qualitative data point to the
existence of processes of socialization among members in specific bodies within
the consortia. Socialization is generally defined as the process of inducting actors
into the norms, rules and ways of behaviour of a given community (Checkel,
2003; see also Frank Schimmelfennig, Chapter 3, this volume) and can be seen as
a condition for commitment to materialize. When frequent meetings take place,
where there is sufficient communication and where there is a relative stability in
the people involved, a process of socialization can emerge. What seems to be the
case is that such processes flourish better in small groups. Commitment between
the member organizations thus becomes more likely if this arises in a bottom-up
way. It starts in smaller groups and then reflects on other levels in the consortium.
Also cooperation between a limited number of members, instead of all members,
can increase the commitment, since members that are not committed to a specific
type of activity are not ‘forced’ to take part.
Conclusions: transnational actors

as organizations
In conclusion, we argue that the management of transnational actors or organi-
zations is a combination of employing mechanisms for increasing institutional fit
in combination with ‘relationship management’, that is the facilitation of the rise
of commitment through communication and organization. Obviously, the more
complex mechanisms have a more substantial influence on cooperation, but also
require higher levels of trust and commitment between members. The lack of
willingness or ability to be involved in close and intense cooperation is related to
the institutional contexts in which the universities operate and have developed.
We have used this institutional perspective to support the notion that members in
a consortium also have to share some similarities in order to cooperate. This
proposition was based on the assumption that universities are, much more than
firms for instance, embedded in their (nationally and organizationally moulded)
institutional contexts. The study has shown that this assumption does not have to
be rejected. The impact on cooperation is, however, less straightforward than we
expected.
We have seen that different institutional forms influence cooperation in
different ways. In all consortia that we have studied, the impact of centralized
institutional forms such as national laws and organizational rules were perceived
to have a negative impact on cooperation. This was much less the case for decen-
tralized institutional forms like culture, norms and beliefs. The latter were seen
by many as one of the interesting factors involved in cooperation. Academic and
cultural diversity therefore can – with the right attitude – be a main source of
complementarity instead of incompatibility. We have also observed (see Beerkens,
2004) that non-academics seem to place more emphasis on the institutional dif-
ferences in their assessment of the performance of the consortia (while academics
seem to place more emphasis on complementarity factors). This would mean that
the institutional embeddedness of the university is more apparent in the eyes of
188 Eric Beerkens
non-academics than academics. This could be explained by the reasoning that the
activities on which academics cooperate are of a more universal nature than is the
case for non-academics.
In general, we have seen that there is not a strong relationship between
performance and compatibility. Only in cases where institutional fit between the
universities is perceived as low, has this hampered cooperation. This leads to the
conclusion that a minimum level of institutional fit is required, but the universi-
ties and their staff are very well capable of handling obstacles that arise due to
incompatibility. On the other hand, we have also observed that most consortia do
not pursue very close cooperation and tight integration. It is likely that if the
intensity of cooperation increases, the discrepancies in institutional contexts will
become more apparent and obstructive to cooperation. In this regard, it is useful
to remain focussed on compatibility factors in cooperation, especially in cases
where tight integration is foreseen, such as (private) joint ventures set up by uni-
versities from different countries and (future) mergers between higher education
institutions from different countries.
The results do not necessarily point to a convergence of the institutional
contexts of universities. On the contrary, the differences in national institutional
contexts are still widely apparent and substantially influence the activities of
universities in the eyes of the respondents in this study. What can be observed,
however, is that universities also become embedded in regional contexts (i.e. the
European context). Naturally, this regional institutional context is likely to become
a bigger influence in the case where regional institutions are stronger. Even
though the national context is evidently predominant, for European universities
the regional European context has an increasing influence on a university’s
behaviour. The consortia that were very much connected to regional (political)
institutions and that had adapted their activities to the programmes and policies
(and the available funding) of these institutions (e.g. the European programmes
for mobility and cooperation) seem to be more successful. Therefore, as in orga-
nizational studies, where adaptation to the external environment of organizations
is seen as an important determinant in an organization’s performance, this
argument can be extended to the consortia as well: European higher education
consortia that adapt to their European environment are more successful.
Internally, higher education consortia can also be approached from an organiza-
tional point of view. If we look at higher education consortia as a specific type of
organization, we can detect characteristics that are also typical for universities.
Van Vught (1989: 52–4) in this respect points to the authority of professional
experts, the knowledge areas as the basic foci of attention and the related
organizational fragmentation, and the extreme diffusion of decision-making
power. These characteristics are also apparent in higher education consortia. The
leadership-driven character of these consortia can then partly explain the dissat-
isfaction found by academics within them. Activities that correspond with values
in ‘academia’ (e.g. cross-cultural exchange, exchange of knowledge) therefore
seem to be more successful than activities that emerge out of pressures for
efficiency and effectiveness.
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9 Copweb Europe
Venues, virtues and vexations of
transnational policing
Monica den Boer
Introduction
This chapter discusses the emergence of transnational policing patterns in the
European Union (EU). General processes such as Europeanization and global-
ization have provided incentives for the evolution of transnational governance, as
the editors also demonstrate in the introduction to this book. In turn, this is
beginning to have a pervasive effect on the criminal justice arena, especially since
terrorism has been framed as a transnational and networked threat that is in need
of a global response. Transnational policing in the European Union has had the
possibility to mature because member states compensate their resistance against
the creation of supranational law enforcement agencies by being tolerant about
other forms of cross-borderization which are less detrimental to national sover-
eignty. There are, however, continuous frictions between the call for more cen-
tralized coordination at national level and the pragmatic need to develop flexible
cooperation practices at the decentralized level.
In this chapter, we will first undertake a theoretical analysis of the pendulum
between the maintenance of national sovereignty and the development of
transnational cooperation practices in the EU criminal justice arena. In the
second section, a number of transnational policing practices that are currently
unfolding within the Europen Union are discussed. Salient practices of trans-
national policing include, on top of the creation of official bodies such as the EU
Police Office (Europol), the exchange of liaison officers between national author-
ities, transnational private policing, the exchange and imposition of best practices,
the transnationalization of public order policing and police participation in inter-
national humanitarian peace missions. The third section looks at two research
projects that have analysed the development of transnational policing practices.
The first concerns Europeanization tendencies in the national law enforcement
organizations of the EU member states. In particular, it looks at the convergence
hypothesis, which starts from the assumption that EU legislation in the field of
Justice and Home Affairs ( JHA) cooperation demands a certain level of approxi-
mation between working practices and organizational structures, which could
eventually mean that organizations begin to adopt similar features. The second
theme is the development of mostly informal practices of cross-border policing in
192 Monica den Boer
European border regions: here, transnationalism is pragmatically developed on
the basis of common needs (Spoormans et al., 1999). One of the interesting dimen-
sions concerns the interaction between those border practices and the institutions
that carry a formal mandate to take part in international mutual legal assistance.
The chapter concludes by raising a number of critical questions concerning
the emergence of transnational policing practices, which includes the observa-
tion that within and between transnational police networks, the coordination of
activities and the harmonization of professional standards is hard to achieve.
Moreover, the proliferation of transnational police networks may be ill at ease
with good governance requirements, such as the need for transparency and
accountability.
How to define transnational policing?

In order to describe what transnational policing is and how it should be consid-
ered, it is necessary to introduce a few more general concepts which are related
to transnationalism, governance and the state, which is the political-administrative
context in which the police organization traditionally operates. At the same time,
the analysis of changes in policing can tell us more about fundamental changes in
styles of governance, as policing is one of the core functions of government and
governance, in general.
In the field of European police cooperation, two styles of governance have
intermingled: on the one hand, there is still a strong presence of informal bilateral
or multilateral policy-making, and on the other hand there is an emphasis on
formal policy-making through the creation of legal-regulatory frameworks. The
former style could be characterized as transnational police governance, whilst the
latter tends to be more associated with intergovernmental police governance,
which is often subject of institutionalization such as Interpol and Europol. These
two styles of police governance, which are regarded as ‘horizontal’ versus
‘vertical’ policing are not juxtaposed, but tend to be complementary.
At the same time however, as we will see later, they may operate on and across
contested borderlines (den Boer and Spapens, 2002: 17). Horizontal police
cooperation – even if based on formal legal frameworks that for instance autho-
rize operational actions across the national border (such as the Schengen
Implementing Agreement) – tends to be more ad hoc and focussed on specific
cases, and a much closer link seems to exist with local and regional issues.
Within the European Union, there are various examples of long-established
informal cross-border networks of officials from customs and diverse police forces,
and of the regionalization of bilateral security regimes (Nogala, 2001b: 137), such
as the Cross Channel Intelligence Conference (Sheptycki, 1998). These networks
are generally constructed on the basis of personal acquaintance and personal
trust, and are primarily used to exchange information (Nogala, 2001b: 137; den
Boer and Spapens, 2002). Trust and reciprocity tend to be key ingredients for the
establishment of a successful transnational (law enforcement) network (Anderson,
2002: 37).
Copweb Europe 193
Vertical police cooperation on the other hand, seems to be much more a
product of elite bureaucracies, which are traditional, formal and hierarchical
in nature. Seen from the perspective of a multi-level governance model, the layers
of cross-border (horizontal) police cooperation can be found beneath (or along-
side) ‘the level of high politics and head offices’ (Nogala, 2001a: 97).
In between the vertical and horizontal levels of police governance, powerful
policy networks (e.g. on organized crime) arise out of frustration with the slow EU
bureaucracy. These concern themselves with coordinating an effective response to
serious and organized crime at the global level, working through international
organizations at the policy and operational level (Norman, 1999: 104). Examples
of these are the EU Multidisciplinary Group on Organized Crime, the G8 Senior
Experts Group on Organized Crime (known as the Lyon Group), and the Council
of Europe’s Multidisciplinary Group on Corruption, which are all contributing to
inter-organizational governance in the field of organized crime (ibid.: 115).
Without much conscious steering or management, police organizations have
had a long tradition of exploring and developing professional ties across the
national border, partly out of need, partly because of the fun. Some sociologists
even maintain that there may be something like a global ‘cop culture’, in which
professional police agents tend to recognize each other’s discourse and behaviour.
According to Reiner (2000: 87) however, despite the commonalities brought about
by socialization and the transmission of stories, myths, jokes and the exploration
of models of good and bad conduct, the culture of the police is neither mono-
lithic, universal nor unchanging. But as Hebenton and Thomas (1995: 195)
observe, all police officers are knowledge workers, ‘spending increasing amounts
of time producing and communicating knowledge for their own systems of risk
management and security provision’.
The increased need for knowledge production and distribution have thus facil-
itated transnational pioneering practices and the establishment of professional
epistemic communities, which are also discussed by Karen Heard-Lauréote
(Chapter 2, this volume). In many ways, this has had the result that police orga-
nizations have a significant advance compared to other agents in the criminal
justice chain, such as judges and public prosecutors. Moreover, the establishment
of international epistemic communities, which is driven by the need to share
knowledge and information, has been parallelled by the transnational law
enforcement discourse concerning the ‘war against drugs’ (Sheptycki, 2000a:
201). In addition, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the terrorist
train bombings in Madrid on 11 March 2004, have fuelled the ‘war against
terrorism’. Other potent discourses concern organized crime, compensatory
measures against the security deficit resulting from the abolition of internal border
controls, and immigration control (Aden, 2001: 105; Sheptycki, 2001: 145).
In parallel with the development of new forms of governance, the gradual
‘hollowing out’ of the state (Rhodes, 1997) is also affected by processes of transna-
tionalization. The move away from interstate politics may erode the sovereign
power of the nation-state (Eising and Kohler-Koch, 1999: 4), and as a side effect,
the police organization traditionally so deeply embedded within the nation-state
194 Monica den Boer
becomes a plural agent in a looser, less hierarchical administrative context.
Typical features of this development are a growth of organizational autonomy
and more interlinkage with other societal organizations. However, it should be
acknowledged that, especially when it comes to questions related to internal and
external security, states are still the important institutions in global politics
(Sheptycki, 2000b: 6). In conceptualizing transnational policing, we also need to
understand the role and influence of sub-state actors and even of non-state
actors. Globalization has created enhanced opportunities for non-state actors to
develop cross-border activities. As such, a multi-level governance model of policing
is also beginning to emerge in several West-European states, as will be demon-
strated further in the analysis of Euregional policing.
Traditionally, policing is principally defined as the exercise of coercive power
and the monopoly of violence in the maintenance of the internal social order of
the state’s territory (Sheptycki, 2000b: 9). More widely, however, policing is con-
cerned with the management of security in the important sense of guaranteeing
that communities and territories are secured. A range of agents, including the
state police, private citizens and commercial companies ( Johnston, 2000b: 210)
may thus take part in ‘policing’. The subject of policing may include both terri-
tory and population, and it may be either public or private in nature (Sheptycki,
2000b: 11).
Also, the subject of policing itself has become more transnational. Security
concerns have been considerably redefined as a consequence of globalization.
States have had to recognize that ‘internal security’ can no longer be dealt with
nationally (Alain, 2001):
In particular it has become increasingly difficult for individual states to

exercise monopoly power over who resides on their territory, or over the
movement of persons (migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers) across state
borders, or over unlawful cross-border movements of, for example, criminals.
International migration and cross-border crime, both major societal issues,
have become the subjects of transnational regime-building.
(Wallace, 2000: 49)
Hence, newer targets of policing are transnational organized crime, the war on
drugs and counter-terrorism. Moreover, law enforcement agencies are confronted
with the effect of globalization in the communities policed by them: these
communities are increasingly less homogeneous or even fragmented. An added
feature is that increased individualization leads to more anonimity (especially in
urban areas); the consequence of these developments is that the police no longer
seem to ‘know’ their community. In the post-modern era, police and security
organizations are confronted with a society that is changing fundamentally, which
is characterized above all by increasing fragmentation and pluralism (Reiner,
2000: 216). Further, in line with the upsurge of neo-liberal politics, the state tends
to recline and actively unfolds strategies of distanciation in the form of privatiza-
tion ( Johnston, 2000a) and ‘responsibilization’ (Garland, 2001: 124f.). Policing
Copweb Europe 195
thus represents an ‘extended policing family’, by entrusting private security
guards and neighbourhood wardens with the monitoring of security (Crawford
and Lister, 2004). Against the background of a far more diffused array of policing
processes (Sheptycki, 2000b) the police organization no longer reflects or symbol-
izes a cohesive social order which no longer exists (Reiner, 2000: 217). Even
though new communities frequently concentrate around the theme of security
(Boutellier, 2002: 90ff.), their stability and homogeneity seem rather feeble, which
constitutes a real test-case for ‘policing by consent’.
The international demand to tackle organized and serious crime, together with
the re-scaling of policing activities at an increasingly central level, could therefore
better be approached as a set of interlinked discourses. These discourses, which
are closely related to political influence, massage law enforcement services into
the direction of the transnational stage, which may imply a gradual move away
from the local community (Bigo, 2000: 84).
The subject of policing is largely determined by transnational crime control
agendas: international connections between crimes and crime categories are con-
tinuously under construction. International law enforcement efforts – including
implementation of international legal agreements – contribute to the common
denomination of crime and disorder (Gregory, 2000: 117). Recent examples within
the European Union are the EU arrest warrant which facilitates the extradition of
suspects of 32 different criminal offences and the Mutual Legal Assistance
Convention. Vehicles for the transportation of this transnational – sometimes near-
universal – crime discourse are organizations such as the United Nations and the
European Union, who announce their joint strategies by means of joint action plans
against organized crime, terrorism, corruption or trafficking in human beings.
Transnational policing is thus shaped by three factors: a fragmented legal

frame and the consequent weak purview of legal norms; a priority of des-
peration (especially coming from geopolitically dominant states) that asserts
that state sovereign power must be preserved; and a moral logic which pro-
vides the justification for the extra-territorial extension of formerly nationally
bound police institutions into the transnational realm. This is a potent mix
and there is seemingly no democratic mechanism to guide the process.
(Sheptycki, 2000b: 168)
Forms of transnational policing

The practice of international police cooperation tends to be rather incremen-
talist, both in policy-making terms as well as in operational terms (den Boer and
Wallace, 2000: 518; Walker, 2000). There are various examples of transnational
policing that have come into being, such as the exchange of liaison officers, the
operationalization of joint investigation teams, the growth of transnational
private policing and the dissemination of police knowledge.
Liaison officers are seen as the ‘human interface between various national
police forces’ (Bigo, 2000: 74) even to the extent that they have become the
196 Monica den Boer
human interface for data interconnection in order to avoid misuse of data files.
Zagaris (2002: 156) writes that there has been a trend to expand the use of
specialized liaison officers by the USA and other countries in areas like drug traf-
ficking, customs, immigration, tax and counterfeiting. The most important tasks
are the management of data flows and acting as the cultural-linguistic broker
between different law enforcement practices. Also, as Zagaris (ibid.) maintains,
liaison officers are crucial ‘to the success of selecting and conducting transborder
criminal investigations and helping to prosecute transnational criminals’. Bigo
(2000: 67) argues that the principles of free trade and free movement have made
the liaison officer role crucial for policing in Europe, because it is they who
manage the flow of information between their respective agencies: ‘Indeed,
police, customs and immigration agencies have all sought to develop specialist
liaison officers and the development of various bilateral and multilateral agree-
ments have more or less codified these emergent networks.’ Liaison officers thus
reinforce the interconnection between these agencies (ibid.).
What characterizes (police) liaison officers is often their multilingual capacity,
their past successful endeavours and their professional perspective as knowledge
workers (Bigo, 2000: 73). Moreover, they tend to belong to an elitist world which
is at the margins of the police world (ibid.). Examples of police liaison officers are
officials seconded by foreign law enforcement organizations to diplomatic ser-
vices, international police organizations such as Interpol and Europol, and bilat-
erally between all EU countries, for example in the Schengen framework.
In the wake of the attacks on 11 September 2001, two liaison officers from each
EU member state, one from the police service and one from the intelligence
service, were seconded to Europol (den Boer, 2003: 199). Moreover, counter-
terrorism liaison officers and magistrates were exchanged between the USA and
Europol and Eurojust respectively (ibid.: 201). Well documented is the stationing
of liaison officers in Europe by the American law enforcement agencies: the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) (Nadelmann, 1993; Zagaris, 2002:
156) a practice which has grown since the Second World War. The DEA had
77 offices in 56 countries, whose mission includes the conduct of bilateral inves-
tigative activities, the coordination of intelligence gathering, the engagement in
foreign liaison, the coordination of training programmes for host country policy
agencies and the assistance in the development of host countries counternarcotics
law enforcement institutions (Zagaris, 2002: 157).
Activities by liaison officers do not go unnoticed by host authorities but are
allegedly not always easy to control: undercover and surveillance are methods
frequently used by liaison officers, and it is difficult to check whether and to what
extent they hand over information required by them to their host country
counterparts. One of the most significant problems – seen from an accountabil-
ity perspective – is that most foreign liaison officers enjoy diplomatic or consular
immunity (ibid.: 168); this has also been the case in relation to liaison officers
stationed at Europol, but this may be subject to change.
Copweb Europe 197
The inception of joint investigation teams illustrates a new development that is
currently taking place in the European criminal justice arena (den Boer and
Spapens, 2002: 18). A legal basis for the creation of joint investigation teams
within the European Union forms the Convention of Mutual Assistance in
Criminal Matters, which was adopted by the JHA Council in May 2000.
Joint investigation teams may be established on the basis of a prior agreement
between the competent authorities of EU member states. Furthermore, they are
created for a specific purpose and for a certain amount of time. Different agen-
cies can be represented within a joint team: police officers, customs officials,
members from prosecution agencies, but also members from EU organizations,
such as officials from the Office de la Lutte Anti-Fraude (OLAF ), Europol
and Eurojust, and officials from non-EU countries as well as other international
organizations like Interpol.
Interestingly here, we may observe an intermeshing between vertical and
horizontal international policing arrangements. OLAF is an agency of the
European Commission primarily charged with investigating fraud against
the European Union. Europol was established by virtue of the Maastricht Treaty
on European Union which entered into force in 1993 and became operational in
July 1999. The objective of this agency, which is based on an intergovernmental
footing, is to gather and synthesize intelligence from the EU member states on
serious and organized international crime, such as drug trafficking, trafficking
in human beings and terrorism. Its future supportive role in the joint investigation
teams will lend it semi-operational power. Eurojust, meanwhile, was established
in the aftermath of the Tampere Summit on JHA cooperation in the European
Union in October 1999. Its objective is to act as the judicial counterpart of
Europol and to coordinate criminal investigations into serious and organized
international crime via the nationally responsible prosecution authorities (House
of Lords, 2004). As well-established EU organizations, they will gradually be
vested with further powers and become increasingly integrated in the formal EU
governance structures. The new EU Constitutional Treaty contains the intention
to establish a European Prosecution Office from Eurojust (den Boer, 2004).
Returning now to the issue of the EU joint investigation teams, the territorial
link is that such a team is stationed where it has been established – this will be
in the EU member state where the most substantial part of the investigation
takes place. A joint investigation team will be supervised by an official from that
particular country. When the team is no longer active within a member state,
the team leadership may change. The team is required to respect the law of the
country in which it operates. This development illustrates the increasingly
inter-territorial character of law enforcement cooperation, which implies that
accountability will become a complex issue as it is divided between different
agencies with diverse mandates and competencies. Joint investigation teams are a
combination of interconnections between different levels of regimes (Aden,
2001), which can be seen as one of the principal characteristics of multi-level
governance.
198 Monica den Boer
Transnational private policing takes place by or within multinational companies,
for example, private security guards employed by multinational firms, corporate
security specialists (e.g. industrial espionage but also cybermonitoring of employees).
Johnston (2000b: 22) mentions the fact that the commercial security market is
dominated by a small number of transnational companies: ‘These multifunc-
tional organisations form complex transnational security networks by virtue of
the interaction of their parent companies and branch plants with other commercial
and non-commercial security providers.’
The market which covers these activities – including manned guarding,
cash-in-transit, electronic systems, Circuit Camera Television (CCTV) and access
control – transcends and penetrates the state, and is undergoing significant
growth (ibid.: 24). Risks have become big business (Boutellier, 2002: 40). In his
research, Johnston (2000b: 31) noted that there are several interstices between
commercial security, government and the military through the personal curricu-
lum vitae of private consultants, which obviously has a bearing on accountability
questions (see further). The previously mentioned erosion of the sovereign nation-
state may well contribute to the freeing of control of bureaucracies from legal lim-
its imposed by frontiers, and the scope for private actors may be enlarged to build
remote social control policies (Bigo, 2000: 95).
Another form of transnational policing is the dissemination of police knowl-
edge. In some cases it can be demonstrably argued that the convergence of police
knowledge, policing practices and policing models is directly linked to interna-
tional cooperation. Investigation strategies are a very telling example.
Undercover investigation has been repeatedly promoted by international

cooperation agencies. Avant-garde countries for undercover policing, espe-
cially the USA ( . . . ) and to a lesser degree Germany, have used international
circles and organizations to promote or even to impose their concepts for
policing. Common operations, for example in cases of international drugs
trafficking, have led to standards for the steering of investigations by under-
cover means. Police cooperation circles not only diffuse the knowledge about
undercover policing, but they also play a coordinating role.
(Aden, 2001: 101)
Hence, the promotion of intelligence models through transnational policing

practices implies a sharing of police knowledge (see Sheptycki, 1998; quoted in
Manning, 2000: 181; Sheptycki, 2001: 148; Schimmelfennig, Chapter 3 in this
volume).
The emergence of a transnational law enforcement bureaucracy revolves
around certain synergies, which are apparent from the creation of compatibility
in computerization, models for intelligence-gathering and the employment of
police techniques (fingerprint searches, DNA, firearms) (Anderson, 2002: 38). In
this regard, the evolution of international police education and police research
plays an essential role in the transmission of knowledge and experience. The
stepwise creation of CEPOL – the European Police College established by virtue
Copweb Europe 199
of the Tampere European Council in October 1999 – proves that at the national
level, reflection has seriously begun on taking part in the construction of interna-
tional curricula. Once this comes off the ground in a more wholesome fashion,
police officers throughout Europe will enjoy the possibility of internationaling
their professional knowledge of police systems, police techniques and criminal
law. Courses and seminars will offer a perfect environment for further trans-
national socialization, a concept discussed in much greater detail by Frank
Schimmelfennig in this volume, and for the development of transnational law
enforcement networks, as has already been practice through other international
policing arenas (e.g. the International Police Association).
Convergence: towards a transnational law

enforcement bureaucracy?
Despite the diversity between police organizations in West-European societies,
there is also convergence of the structures and functions of police organizations.
In turn, this growing convergence could be regarded as the emergence of a
transnational law enforcement bureaucracy. In part, this development results from
the fact that national law enforcement bureaucracies have similar historical roots,
but also from an exposure to similar functions and expectations (Aden, 2001:
100). A more recent development is the influence which national law enforcement
bureaucracies experience from the European Union, in particular through the
approximation of legislation and the standardization of working practices.
An illustration of this development is the demand from the European Union
that all EU member states create specialized units for criminal investigation and
national anti-drugs units. This demand also percolates down into the national law
enforcement bureaucracies through the global prohibition discourse against drugs
(Castells, 1997). As a consequence, the apparatus of drug enforcement has
become an integral feature in all the national policing systems of the European
Union (Anderson et al., 1995: 161–4). The fight against drugs, but also against
organized crime, terrorism and illegal immigration has infused the creation of
national coordination facilities. Anderson (2002: 38) illustrates this by writing that
‘a centralising effect is evident in decentralised systems so that the contrast
between forms of police organisation in the member states is not quite as marked
as it was two decades ago. The setting up of the National Criminal Intelligence
Service in Britain and the refusal to allow direct contact between the police forces
of the German Länder (they must proceed via the (federal level) Bundeskriminalamt)
are two examples’.
Centralization tendencies do however not stand alone. Johnston (2000a: 26ff.)
argues that globalization ‘gives rise to inconsistent and sometimes contradictory
patterns’. On the one hand, the role of national ministries and home affairs has
been reinforced as the steering agent of coordinated cooperation across borders;
and on the other hand, these same agents are faced with a diminishing capacity to
manage their internal security affairs independently. Paradoxically, therefore, cen-
tralization can be parallelled (as we will see in the next section) by regionalization
200 Monica den Boer
and localization. ‘The result of globalization is not uniformity but an unstable
combination of tendencies: centralisation and decentralisation; internationali-
sation and nationalism; homogeneity and diversity; fragmentation and consolida-
tion’ (ibid.: 29).
In our research project we sought to analyse the extent to which the focus on
international organized crime provided a catalyst in the Europeanization of
national police and prosecution agencies (den Boer and Doelle, 2002). The
surging awareness of the security challenge posed by organized crime has forced
EU member states to acknowledge that only a joint approach in the control of
international organized crime can be successful. At the EU summit in Helsinki on
10 and 11 December 1999, the European Council approved the report on the
finalization and evaluation of the High Level Action Group on Organized Crime,
which had been adopted during the Dutch EU Presidency in 1997. The first
recommendation of that Action Plan asked the member states to ‘. . . examine
whether it would be appropriate . . . to designate a body at national level which
would have an overall responsibility for the coordination of the fight against
organised crime’. Several member states had already created such a coordination
body before this recommendation came out, such as the national Anti-Mafia
Directorate in Italy, which was created back in 1991 (ibid.: 14).
The Helsinki report makes a mention of the fact that the implementation of
the Action Plan suffered difficulties and delays. This prepared the ground for a
follow-up to the Action Plan, which led to the adoption of a new programme,
entitled ‘The Prevention and Control of Organised Crime: A European Union
Strategy for the beginning of the new Millennium’. This programme covers the
period until 30 June 2005, and contains 39 recommendations which enlarge and
deepen many of the recommendations of the 1997 EU Action Plan. Only a few
of those recommendations are expected to have some impact on the organiza-
tional structures and procedures of national law enforcement bureaucracies. One
of those is Recommendation 10, which may have a noticeable impact on the
standardization of working procedures in the field of illegal immigration net-
works: ‘Member States shall undertake, in close cooperation with Europol, the
Commission and the European Judicial Network, to ensure that clear rules on
the coordination of investigations into such networks are laid down at both the
law enforcement and the judicial level’ (ibid.: 20).
The step towards an increased compatibility between professional law enforce-
ment working practices and the move towards structural convergence may
however be hindered by various factors. One of those may be the existence of
prejudices against foreign police systems. Anderson (2002: 39) even maintains that
‘mistrust or suspicion of the foreigner has been built into the foundations of
modern police systems’. This may be a particularly sensitive issue in relation to
intelligence-exchange (den Boer, 2002: 152). Another factor may be the tremen-
dous variation between politico-administrative systems, in particular the reasons,
the objectives, the reform trajectories and the methods of implementation can
differ widely (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000). Moves towards convergence between
law enforcement organizations may however go unnoticed: organizational
Copweb Europe 201
changes towards central coordination and centralization may be an almost
internal process which is hardly noticeable to the wider public. Specialization,
coordination, centralization and the enlargement of scale are all reform trajecto-
ries which potentially contribute to the approximation between national law
enforcement bureaucracies, but they are rarely homogeneous in nature. On the
surface, reforms which are expected to contribute to a more efficient and effective
international cooperation may even be contradictory. Some member states have
simultaneously implemented a mixture of organizational schemes, varying from
the creation of single-purpose units (e.g. units for the investigation of synthetic
drugs or the hormone mafia), to the creation of (horizontal) coordination units
that should guarantee the coherence of policy and services (den Boer and Doelle,
2002: 23).
All these observations lead us to the conclusion that for the moment, the EU
regulation has not yet significantly contributed to the convergence between
national law enforcement bureaucracies (ibid.: 41), let alone to the establishment
of a transnational law enforcement bureaucracy. A wider conclusion may be that
the European Union may have the power to facilitate, but not to impose, the
emergence of transnational policing.
The European Union does however, with all the platforms it provides (such
as the EU Crime Prevention Network, the JHA Council Working Groups, the
meetings between the Heads of the National Intelligence Services, Europol,
Eurojust, CEPOL and the Task Force of Chiefs of Police), significantly contri-
bute to the growth of transnational law enforcement networks. As already
observed by Heard-Lauréote in (Chapter 2, this volume), transnational networks
can take various forms and shapes. For the moment, professional law enforcement
networks that move at the EU level tend to be pragmatic and issue-related, and
also generally elitist to the extent that mainly national officials who represent the
higher echelons of the national law enforcement bureaucracies take actively part
in those networks. We should, however, keep in mind that these professional
networks are actors who are either governmental or who are mandated by their
governments, and that they tend to be relatively influential on EU policy-making
in the area of internal security (Norman, 1999). Within this context, formal
representatives of government who take part in transnational police networks can
be seen as mediators who transfer opinions, values and perspectives about police
and security matters. Hence, although these networks are sites of strategic action,
these are explicitly not the kind of networks that bypass national and intergov-
ernmental channels. In contrast, in the next section, we will discuss the formation
of professional networks in European border regions, between governmental
actors (police officials) who primarily interrelate in an informal capacity.
Analysing transnational policing in

European border regions
In an empirical research project which looked at the complementarity between
centralized and decentralized criminal investigations into (international) organized
202 Monica den Boer
crime, we learned that informal contacts across the border, networks and
‘horizontal’ patterns of information-exchange are crucial levers for cross-border
law enforcement cooperation (den Boer and Spapens, 2002: 3). The leading
assumption throughout the research was that cross-border law enforcement net-
working finds a fruitful basis in European border regions, which are often char-
acterized by a common cultural background, linguistic code and common
problems with criminality. The pre-judicial investigation of cross-border (organ-
ized) crime, which in most continental criminal justice systems is a priority of the
police, can be facilitated by previously existing contacts between law enforcement
officials across the national borders. Taking account of subsidiarity (distribution
of responsibility between law enforcement agencies) and confidentiality (intelli-
gence) requirements, we argued that even larger-scale cross-border investigations
into organized crime tend not be dealt with at the supra-regional level even if, as
in the example of Belgium, the authorization of a national magistrate is required
for the execution of cross-border operations (such as a controlled delivery or a
surveillance).
Throughout the research, we established that cross-border law enforcement
cooperation in European border regions can certainly be found, and in some
areas it is even thriving, such as in the Euregion Rhine-Maas (Belgium, the
Netherlands and Germany) and in the Channel (UK, Belgium, France and
the Netherlands; Gallagher, 1998). But a preference for formal cooperation
through the national channels may imply that investments are minimized and that
there are misgivings about the more pragmatically driven direct cross-border
cooperation: these may vary from concerns about the lack of coordination to
concerns about a failing compliance with data protection requirements.
Transnational criminal cases which are dealt with by regional law enforcement
agencies are not investigated beyond the control of national authorities, but the
interconnection between (Eu-)regionally investigated cases and (inter-)nationally
investigated cases may sometimes be rather thin. In fact, with the exception of the
occasional request for mutual legal assistance, there seems to be little interaction
between formal procedures that are handled through (inter)national authorities
(e.g. a Ministry of Justice, or Europol) and the execution of cross-border investi-
gation competences. Network contacts in border regions also allow the relevant
actors to be creative within the confines of the law, and to be pragmatically
opportunistic.
Within the Euroregion Maas-Rhine, for instance, five partner regions are
involved in cooperation (South-Limburg, five municipalities in Middle-Limburg,
Belgian Limburg, the German-speaking community in Belgium, the province
Liège in Belgium and the Aachen region in Germany). In many respects, the
police and judicial systems of the Netherlands and Germany are similar, to the
extent that the sub-national level of police governance tends to be prominent and
the involvement of central-national authorities in criminal investigation is limited.
At the border between Germany and the Netherlands, there are hardly any
linguistic problems, because most Dutch people who live in this region are capa-
ble of understanding, reading and speaking the German language; increasingly
Copweb Europe 203
also, German public officials who work at the border speak Dutch. Furthermore,
people who live near the border master the same dialect. For the same linguistic-
cultural reason, cooperation between the Netherlands and the Flemish-speaking
parts of Belgium tends to be no problem at all. Formal as well as informal
contacts are upheld by both the Belgian and the Dutch police. Relations between
the Dutch police and Belgian authorities are occasionally thwarted as the Dutch
are apparently less inclined to pay attention to protocol. Like in Germany and the
Netherlands, authorities at the sub-national level are also important in the inves-
tigation of organized crime, but national authorities are explicitly responsible for
authorization matters and the deployment of technical equipment or surveillance
units (Spapens, 2002: 55f.).
One of the best-known forms of law enforcement cooperation in this area
concerns the longstanding NEBEDEACPOL, which is a forum for Dutch–
Belgian–German chief police officers. There are several other examples of cross-
border law enforcement cooperation in this area, including the creation of liaison
bureaux on either side of the Dutch and the German border; the joint training of
Belgian, Dutch and German arrest teams; a joint Belgo-Dutch initiative to clean
up the Maastricht ‘junky-park’; a joint agreement between Belgium and the
Netherlands in 1994 which allows the Belgian police to exercise certain compe-
tences on the Dutch side of the river Maas and vice versa; the facilitation of direct
Internet communication between notification rooms, joint patrols, and a joint
training module for Dutch, German and Belgian operational police officers and
their direct supervisors (van Twuyver and Soeters, 1999: 153).
Regional network contact points have been established along the whole
Dutch–Belgian–German border. In the Netherlands, these are called ICC
(Informatie en Coordinatie Centrum); in Germany, they are called Verbindungsstellen, and
in Belgium, they are called OIPGs (Operationeel Invalspunt Aan de grens). The ICC
in Limburg-South was the first Dutch contact centre and was established on
29 March 1995, just after the entry into force of Schengen. Except information-
exchange, the ICC functions as a help-desk, and provides support to all forms of
operational cooperation and management. In particular, the information-
exchange seems to be a thriving function of the ICC. The South-Limburg ICC
cooperates directly with the OIPG in Genk and Eupen in Belgium, and with the
Verbindungsstelle in Aachen for the German forces Aachen and Heinsberg.
The so-called ‘European Multi Media Information’ (EMMI) project – which
started in January 1996 with the financial support of the European Union (Verbeek
et al., 1999: 26) and which also involves the Euroregion Rhine-Maas-North – has
even helped to accelerate information-exchange across the border. The project
involves direct cooperation between 4 different universities (Aachen, Liège,
Maastricht and Diepenbeek) and 5 police forces (Mönchengladbach, Aachen,
Genk, Limburg-North and Limburg-South) in the three countries involved. The
four EMMI-products are: PALMA (an electronic form for requests to another coun-
try, e.g. about the antecedents of a suspect); a Euroregional kiosk (Euroregional
translation of Digital representation system); video-conferencing which allows
direct visual contact between police forces by means of video- and document
204 Monica den Boer
cameras; and e-mail, which allows direct electronic information-exchange within
a closed network. Within the Netherlands, the EMMI network has been linked with
the national police computer network (Police Data Computer System – PODACS).
A transnational criminal investigation often starts with the discovery of a
criminal fact, which then leads on to the investigation of a diversity of other
criminal activities. In the ‘Alphabet’ case, for instance, which was initiated in 1998
by criminal investigation authorities in the Region Meuse-Rhine, a severely
maimed body of a murdered person was discovered floating in the River Meuse.
Evidence pointed to possible suspects in the Netherlands and Belgium and a
request for mutual legal assistance was submitted to the Belgian authorities for the
interception of telecommunications related to those suspects. As the case evolved,
it became clear that the suspects were active both on Belgian and Dutch territory,
which provided legitimate grounds for a close cooperation between the police and
judicial authorities of those two countries. The criminal investigation gradually
focussed on the production and smuggling of synthetic drugs. As it transpired, the
suspects involved also maintained contacts with persons suspected of firearms
trafficking, counterfeiting, money laundering and the use of violence in conflict
settlement, including murder. The criminal investigation concentrated both on
the smuggling activities to Austria and Slovenia and on the shipment of chemi-
cals via the Netherlands resulting in the manufacturing of the drug Ecstasy in a
Belgian town. In both sub-cases, the cooperation amounted to a number of
arrests and seizures, for instance of a courier in Germany (Spapens, 2002: 58–62).
The case illustrates the sizeable number of actors involved in the transnational
investigation of cross-border crime, and the span of control and coordination
which it requires. Without a high level of interpersonal communication, this
would not have worked. In the Euroregion Meuse-Rhein, the network of detec-
tives tends to be tight, is based on personal relations, mutual trust and frequent
contacts, propelled by the almost inherently international nature of most serious
criminal offences in this region. The trust and reciprocity factors are crucial ingre-
dients in this delicate context. Cooperation tends to be swift and adequate,
because in the first instance, the requests for mutual assistance are handled in an
informal manner. If there are many questions, detectives may visit their counter-
parts at the other side of the border, to discuss information or even to have a
direct look at the files or reports. When certain information appears useful, a for-
mal request for mutual assistance is submitted, which paves the path for a formal
and legitimate handling of the evidence by a court at a later stage. The formal
way is normally only used when no personal contacts are available, or when the
political situation in the relevant country is unstable to the extent that the integrity
of police and judicial officials cannot be guaranteed. In the latter situations,
contact tends to be established through Interpol or Dutch liaison officers.
Interestingly, during the Alphabet case discussed earlier, Europol was merely used
to establish initial contacts with the authorities in Slovenia, Bosnia, France,
Switzerland, Hungary, Austria and Spain. Transnational cooperation between
police and judicial authorities in different countries may also give rise to semi-
formal procedures, such as the mutual signing of a ‘framework contract’
Copweb Europe 205
(convenant) allowing for the exchange of certain data, the exchange of team
members, and the employment of special investigation methods for the duration
of a certain criminal investigation (ibid.: 62–5).
The case also demonstrates that the internationalization of criminal activity
demands an open-minded police professional who is willing to open and maintain
contacts with his or her colleagues abroad. Although it appears that the capacity
of local or regional criminal investigation agencies does not match the vast action
radius of international criminal networks, their operational knowledge and logis-
tic means of operation cannot and will never be matched by officials who work for
supranational law enforcement agencies such as Europol. Hence, the informal
networking contacts between police officers across national borders still have unde-
niable advantages, such as the relative absence of bureaucracy and mutual trust.
The development of decentralized and regional governance is seen as a way to
bring the European Union closer to its citizens, which is the reason why the
European Commission plays a pivotal role in mobilizing regional interests across
the European Union. The European Commission’s White Paper on Governance,
published in 2001, emphasizes the role of local and regional government (Hoetjes,
2002: 84). For the purpose of our research project, we interviewed several key
actors who have experience with cross-border police cooperation. They expressed
differing views and opinions about the need to decentralize and regionalize law
enforcement cooperation across national borders. In line with this observation, it
is not necessarily the case that local or regional elites seek to expand decentralized
responsibility for issues with global ramifications, such as international terrorism
and large-scale organized crime (see also de Vries, 2000: 219).
Theoretical perspectives on transnational cooperation at the decentral level
thus tend to accentuate the interdependency between law enforcement officials
who are active at a decentral level and those who are active at the level of national
coordination. The management of internal security is becoming such a complex,
multidimensional governance arena that officials who perform cross-border inves-
tigations are exposed to several new challenges. They have to operate within an
increasingly complex network of competent actors, both nationally and abroad;
at different levels and domains of governance; within an extended chain of imple-
mentation; within a mixed and unstable environment of (strategic) partnerships
and competition; and within a pluriform accountability environment (den Boer
and Spapens, 2002: 18). In sum, this means that it becomes increasingly hard to
draw a clear line between decentralized and centralized practices of cross-border
policing. The networked professional is capable of maintaining working contacts
at various levels at the same time. His or her cobweb becomes metaphorical for
the transnational law enforcement arena within which he/she operates.
Conclusion: critical issues concerning

transnational policing in Europe
Transnational policing embodies a continuous tension between formal police
cooperation agreements at the intergovernmental level (notably at the level of the
206 Monica den Boer
EU polity) and informal arrangements for police cooperation at the internal
borders between EU countries. The question is to what extent transnational polic-
ing may be regarded as complementary with international police cooperation,
which is more driven by the coordination between central/national law enforce-
ment services? Transnational policing is based on an evolving international
consensus and a growing international discourse, and it may thus expected to be
more effective than the imposition of international policing through newly
created institutions such as Europol. The failing contribution of member states to
Europol (e.g. lack of transfer of intelligence) could well be read as resistance
offered by national police organizations to the sharing of competence with inter-
national agencies. Rivalries, frictions, territorial struggles can all be interpreted as
symptoms of a newly emerging governance, which will be far more complex than
the former international law enforcement practices, and which will thus be far
more demanding on the national coordination capacities.
Another tension exists between transnational policing and good governance.
Indeed, to what extent does the proliferation of transnational policing practices
affect accountability? Transnational public policy processes are embedded in
political institutions that are less clearly defined, and much less authoritative, than
those of the traditional state – and this creates an imbalance of participation and
access between public actors, but also infuses asymmetry and aggravates the lack
of transparancy.
Furthermore, the complex arena of international security management
demonstrates that there is a lack of a unified legal framework (Sheptycki, 1998:
235). As a consequence of the proliferation of initiatives, culminating in a
crowded policy space (Hebenton and Thomas, 1995: 38) internationally operat-
ing police officers may be Alices-in-Wonderland when it comes to applying the
right instrument and the right code in unique and challenging situations. But
despite Sheptycki’s scepticism (1998: 235) about the potential of supranational
policing agencies such as Europol to homogenize police communications and
police knowledge, police officials may not simply fall prey to a post-modernist
fragmented governance. Indeed, several avenues towards legal harmonization and
the standardization have been opened up by the European Union. In this regard,
the common Schengen rules concerning the employment of cross-border police
competencies at the internal border are a good illustration. This is not to argue
that transnational policing will ever be fixed and settled in a neat administrative
pattern. Rather, like policing itself, transnational policing will experience the con-
tinuous motion of a changing world society, which is increasingly global and
networked in character.
This chapter has also highlighted that more empirical research is required on
a range of issues. First: who exactly are the agents who take part in transnational
police networks? What is their mandate, their motivation, their influence on
policy-making and operational practices? Are transnational police networks flex-
ible and open, or rather stable and closed? Second: more reliable research is
required on the interaction between formal and informal transnational police
networks; do they compete or is there an increasing flow of information between
Copweb Europe 207
those channels? Third: what are the disadvantages of a crowded transnational
policing arena? Are concerns about the lack of transparency justified or are
they used as arguments against the exploration of non-intergovernmental
cooperation initiatives? And finally: to what extent are transnational police
networks similar to other transnational policy networks? Can we find evidence to
support the assumption that police officers are the best-networked professionals in
the European Union?
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10 Transnational consensus
building in EMU economic
governance
Elite interaction and national
preference formation
Daniela Schwarzer
Introduction
Economic governance in the European Monetary Union (EMU) is based on a
complex set of rules and procedures. While monetary policy is centralized with
the European Central Bank (ECB), the member states retain autonomy in other
important fields of economic policy-making. In order to avoid negative spill overs
in the interdependent economies of the EMU and European Union (EU), vari-
ous procedures and processes to coordinate national policies have been devised.
These are the Stability and Growth Pact and the Excessive Deficit Procedure of
the Maastricht Treaty which limit national fiscal discretion. In addition, various
processes relying on soft coordination and voluntary policy alignment, such as
the European Employment Strategy, the Cardiff Process on structural reform, the
Macro-Economic Dialogue or the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Employment
have been set up. The annual Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPG) bring
together the different approaches and economic policy objectives in a single
framework.1 Whereas critical evaluations of the formal mechanisms of economic
governance in the Eurozone and the efficiency of outcomes flourish (see e.g. von
Hagen and Mundschenk, 2001; Jacquet and Pisani-Ferry, 2001; Collignon, 2003),
most studies neglect the informal transnational structures in which the coordination
processes are embedded (but see Pütter, 2003; Schwarzer, 2003).
This chapter contributes to filling this gap.2 It first explains why the application
of a transnational lens to economic policy coordination can yield insights into the
mechanisms of coordination that many other approaches to European integra-
tion would ignore for ontological and epistemological reasons. The chapter then
turns to the Eurogroup. This informal meeting of the Economic and Finance
Ministers, together with the committees preparing its work, fulfil important
consensus-building functions among policy-makers in the Eurozone. However, this
consensus is only the consensus of a small number of governmental and admin-
istrative decisions-makers. It is disconnected from national preference formation
processes. Yet, a transmission of the elite consensus into broad public (national or
transnational) debates is crucial for the Eurogroup, and for all processes of soft
coordination to gain political salience – especially if they touch on sensitive policy
EMU economic governance 211
decisions. This leads to the question of how far a Eurozone-wide public space has
emerged. In its last section, the chapter brings together the observations on elite
consensus-building and transnational public debates in a simple model of decision-
making concluding with hypotheses on the conditions under which these
processes of transnational interaction reach political relevance in domestic and
European policy-making.
A transnational lens on economic policy

coordination in EMU
The Eurogroup is at the core of economic governance in the Eurozone. It gathers
the Economic and Finance Ministers and one State Secretary per member state
together with the representatives of the European Commission and the ECB. The
member states and their supranational agents, that is, the actors who are assigned
the key roles in intergovernmental and supranational bargaining processes in the
European Union, are usually studied with the widespread analytical approaches in
the intergovernmentalist tradition. Given the actors studied, it may be surprising to
cast a transnational view on the European Union, especially as transnational rela-
tions have been defined as regular interactions across national boundaries when at
least one actor is a non-state agent or does not operate on behalf of a government
or an intergovernmental organization (Risse-Kappen, 1995: 3).
As the editors explain in greater detail in the introduction of this book, this
volume is based on a broader concept of transnationalism than suggested in the
course of the first and second debate on transnationalism, which developed
among political scientists in the second half of the twentieth century. The first,
dating back to the mid-1970s (see e.g. Keohane and Nye, 1977), attacked the state-
centric bias of neo-liberal and realist theory, but did not conceptualize the actions
and steering mechanisms independent from the nation-states and their inter-
national organizations in detail. In 1990s, in the light of the increasing activity of
Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) in a globalized world, the second debate
triggered by Risse-Kappen (1995) circled around the question to which degree
and how transnational organizations were autonomous actors in processes of
global governance – in opposition to the traditional structures of sovereign states
and the international organizations that states have constructed (see Rittberger
et al., 1999 for an overview). Hence, a seeming dichotomy between state and
non-state actors was constructed, leading many researchers to de facto treat
transnational relations as occurring in a distinct sphere beyond the nation-states.
Of course, ministers and civil servants are, by definition, job-wise representa-
tives of national governments or international organizations. However, they can
also act in a transnational manner. In the Eurogroup, the Economic and Finance
Ministers are not involved in bargaining processes among fixed national positions,
as would be the case in intergovernmental or supranational policy-making. As in
the case of party cooperation (see Karl Magnus Johansson, Chapter 6, this
volume) or transnational police cooperation (see Monica den Boer, Chapter 9, this
volume), there are extremely close inter-relationships between these transnational
212 Daniela Schwarzer
informal networks, and the ‘official’ intergovernmental sphere. This volume hence
treats the functional role of actors (rather than their formal status) as decisive for
policy outcomes. This allows one to include state representatives who interact in
networks or fora beyond the formally established institutions of intergovernmental
consultations or supranational policy-making in the European Union.
This is an asset as the transnational lens has much to offer to the investigation of
policy areas. Approaches with an intergovernmental or supranational focus cannot
satisfyingly explain the functioning and impact of this informal meeting of minis-
ters. There is, in fact, no reason for liberal intergovernmentalists to assume that
transnational interaction makes any difference for the economic governance of the
Eurozone, given the rationalist preference model and the failure to provide analy-
tical space for the idea that social interaction can have an impact on preferences.
This is a weakness, because empirical evidence suggests that the Eurogroup has a
crucial role at the core of the economic governance mechanisms in the Eurozone.
It is not the institution where intergovernmental deals are struck, but it is the forum
in which important consensus-building processes take place and shared evaluative
backgrounds for the assessment of policy options are established. The Eurogroup
is a forum in which the social reality of EMU is constructed.
Research on transnational relations in International Relations and in EU
studies, together with the increasing application of the constructivist approach,
has provided tools to investigate this grey zone of interaction in the European
Union. Transnationalism shifts the focus to developments beyond intergovern-
mental bargains, and analyses social interaction beyond the EU institutions.
Policy transfer and learning, consensus-building and the impact of ideas are core
concepts which transnational approaches to the study of integration build on.
Bringing these insights together with the empirical case of EMU allows filling
the research gap persisting to date.
A forum for transnational consensus-building

and identity formation
Despite assembling members of national governments, the Eurogroup is an informal
forum. It is so far not mentioned in the EU Treaties, and has no formal decision-
making power. The Eurogroup gets together on the night before the monthly
meetings of the Ecofin Council to discuss developments in the Eurozone. Debates
in the Eurogroup do not have to reach a formal compromise or joint conclusions.
The course of debates and their results usually remain confidential. Press brief-
ings do not follow a standardized pattern and no outcome is published in the
official journal. Despite this lack of a formal status, of decision-making power and
of formalized communication, participants in the Eurogroup and close observers
emphasize its importance for economic governance in the Eurozone. A former
Minister of Finance of an EMU member state revealed that ‘The Eurogroup was
crucial from the start of EMU. When we came together first, we did not know
what to do about economic governance in euroland. We started to debate, and we
learned about it together’ (interview with the author).
Empirical evidence drawn from interviews suggests that the Eurogroup serves
as a forum for controversial discussions. Interview partners have mentioned the
following aspects in which learning processes and consensus-building occur
and mutual understanding has increased. First, all actors have had to learn about
the new environment in which fiscal and broader economic policy decisions are
embedded since the start of EMU. They have had to understand the implications
of a single monetary policy for national economic performance and policy-
making. Going through this learning process together had the advantage of
developing shared standards for the assessment of the Eurozone economy and of
the impact of certain policy strategies. Norms, such as fundamental policy con-
cepts play an important role in the assessment of adequate policy responses. For
soft coordination to work, some kind of minimum consensus has to exist – if not,
there is no common frame of reference. In EMU, the starting position was the
institutionalization of a neo-liberal consensus through the Maastricht Treaty.
However, the practical management of the Eurozone has led to a modification of
this consensus towards acknowledging the stabilizing function of fiscal policies
(for details see Hancké, 2003; Schwarzer, 2003). Second, a working relationship
with the relevant partners was constructed, especially among the national gov-
ernments and the ECB. The ECB emerged as a new player with the start of
EMU in 1999 and patterns of interaction first had to be established among the
monetary and the national fiscal authorities. According to Eurogroup observers,
the possibility of an informal exchange of analysis and interpretation of eco-
nomic developments in the Eurozone has enabled the Finance Ministers to better
understand the ECB’s reasoning and allows them to better anticipate its manoeu-
vres or interpret its official communication – and vice versa. In its monthly
bulletin of October 2000, the ECB for the first time positively appraised the
existence of the Eurogroup. At the start of EMU, the ECB had been dismissive
of this informal forum and did not participate on a regular basis until autumn
2000 (see Klau et al., 2000). Then, the attitude towards the meeting of the first
ECB President, Wim Duisenberg, apparently changed. He judged the Eurogroup
as follows:
Well, if anything has changed, maybe it is the experience of working together

with the Eurogroup, that is the 11 – now already 12 – Ministers of Finance, of
engaging in a very constructive dialogue about all our policies, both monetary
as well as economic and financial policies, once a month. It has developed, and
still is developing, in the direction of a truly constructive dialogue. So, although
in the beginning I may have been a bit skeptical about the significance of such
a dialogue, I must say I increasingly appreciate it as a golden opportunity both
to hear and to tell our, may I call them our political counterparts, what we think
of them and what they think of us.
(Duisenberg, 2 November 2000, ECB Press Conference)
Third, the exchange within the peer group enables Finance Ministers to evaluate
their policy choices against the background of developments in other member
countries. This not only involves a comparison of the best practices. Given strong
economic interdependencies in the Eurozone, member states became aware of
the potential repercussions that economic policies in other member countries
could potentially have on their economic performance. This increased their inter-
est in the developments in other member states. Fourth, in case of conflicting
interpretations and resulting policy strategies, the open exchange in the
Eurogroup has allowed Finance Ministers to better understand the (political,
institutional or economic) constraints of a partner who seemingly ignores the
European interest with national policy choices. An example of this is the German
and Austrian reluctance to support European legislation on the withholding of
tax, which they felt undermined national legislation and traditions of bank secrecy.
In fact, there are cases in which conflicts have been overcome through delibera-
tion in the Eurogroup. The instances are probably the most valuable examples for
the argument that the Eurogroup does make a difference, despite the absence of
formal decision-making power. On several occasions, the Eurogroup has de facto
pre-agreed Ecofin decisions, after being able to resolve points of contention on
the implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact. This was the case in 2002,
when France wanted the EU balanced budget objective to be given up. It was also
the case when Germany did not comply with the EU budgetary targets in 2002.
The Eurogroup, involving the European Commission, reached a consensus that
Germany had to correct its budgetary plans. Germany agreed and the informal
accord in the Eurogroup prevented an application of the formal warning mech-
anisms and sanctions (see also Pütter, 2003).3 These incidents suggest that inter-
action in the Eurogroup makes a difference. However, little has been said on why
it does, and where the limits are.
Participants and observers identify four aspects that distinguish the Eurogroup
from Council meetings. First, the group is considerably smaller, with about 25
participants, compared to 200 in the Council after the EU enlargement in 2004.
Membership is restricted to two representatives per country. As a rule, the
Commission and the ECB are ‘invited’ to participate, and the President or Vice-
President of the ECB and the Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs
and his Director-General usually do so. Second, the atmosphere is collegial and con-
fidential, which enables members to table national concerns, to test ideas in their
peer group, and to understand better what considerations drive the other member
governments. Third, interview partners pointed to the fact that there is ample time
for in-depth debate. As there is no hard deadline to end discussions, they often
extend over dinner and late at night before the next morning’s Ecofin meeting.
Fourth, the preparation provided for the discussion by the European Commission
and the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) differ from the input into
Council meetings prepared by the diplomats of the Committee of Permanent
Representatives (COREPER). In particular the Commission’s input and the
comments that follow from the ECB President or his representative emphasize a
Eurozone logic as a background against which the participants have to position
themselves. Consensus-oriented behaviour is triggered by the fact that the member
states have learned that they face truly common challenges given the strong
interdependencies in the Eurozone, and their immense uncertainty as to how to
govern the Eurozone effectively. National interdependencies and the existence of
public goods in EMU require joint decisions – but formal governing structures are
non-existent. Informal processes of transnational elite consensus building have hence
become an important part of economic governance in the EMU. However, problems
of efficiency, democratic accountability and transparency remain unresolved.
All five aspects (small group, confidentiality, time for exchange, Eurozone-
oriented input into discussions, perceived need to act together) encourage delib-
erative processes that allow the members to establish common interpretations of
the developments in the Eurozone. The confidential atmosphere encourages
debates and allows actors to test positions and policies, and the small number of
participants guarantees interactivity and arguing and persuasion processes which
are a prerequisite for consensus-building. The Eurozone ministers can have a
unique forum for an exchange of ideas, including those issues which will be tabled
the next morning in the Ecofin in a much more formal manner and under the
pressure of finding binding agreements. Social interaction has allowed for social-
ization processes and contributes to a slowly emerging Eurozone identity. ‘We
were not thinking “European” when we first came together. We were thinking in
national terms and especially in terms of national economies. We had to learn
that the Eurozone is one economy with one currency.’4
In this volume, Frank Schimmelfennig defines international socialization as a
process of inducting actors into adopting the constitutive schemata and rules of
the EC. International socialization is not a process solely reserved for non-state
actors though. It can apply to government representatives if the necessary space
for social interaction is provided for. In the Eurogroup, these processes go even
further than adopting schemata and rules. To an important degree, the rules and
patterns of interaction first had to be created at the start of EMU. When the
Eurogroup took up its work, treaties and legislation relevant to the economic gov-
ernance of the Eurozone already existed. But these formal institutions left many
questions unanswered which were relevant for the practical governance of the
Eurozone. The making of a monetary union is a project, which is finished with
the bargaining rounds establishing the Treaties. Creating a new monetary order
involves intense social processes – on the elite level and in the broad public –
enabling the construction of an EMU social reality.5 Empirical evidence suggests
that the Eurogroup played an important role in the creation of informal rules and
identities among the political elite.
Interview partners involved in the Eurogroup or working very closely with its
members have pointed to the importance of discussions in the Eurogroup to
understand the implications of EMU membership, to learn to refer to the
Eurozone as one European economy and to identify as members of the Eurozone.
The socialization processes are not restricted to the Economic and Finance
Ministers and their State Secretaries. The processes also apply to the members of
the EFC and through them spill back into the national ministries. The Eurogroup
includes top-level representatives from the ECB and the European Commission
who can participate in the deliberative processes. Given the formal independence
of the ECB and the lack of a European economic government facing it (as would
be the case in a nation-state setting), the Eurogroup hence offers important
dialogue structures. The ECB insists on its legal and political independence, but
is very interested not to lose touch with the member states.6
Schimmelfennig’s socialization concept is particularly useful for analytically
grasping the impact of the Eurogroup as it emphasizes some degree of rule adop-
tion, that is, a process internal to the actor with the potential to ensure compli-
ance. It is a fundamental characteristic of the Eurogroup that it does not dispose
of coercive mechanisms to ensure that its members comply with decisions. The
minimum requirement for Eurogroup decisions to make any difference is that
the members have made these as their rules and comply with them despite the
absence of external sanctions. These social learning processes rely on argumen-
tative action, in which actors engage in discourses seeking to convince their peers
with the help of a better argument. Other participants can be persuaded by the
legitimacy of the validity claims involved. Also, a second of the four possible
mechanisms of socialization, which Schimmelfennig identifies, can be observed in
the Eurogroup. Given the closeness and regularity of interaction and the degree
of trust involved, there is an important potential for social influence based on
social incentives and disincentives to adapt behaviour. Many interview partners
have pointed to the importance of peer pressure. Although peer pressure and
processes of persuasion through arguing are closely interrelated, they are still two
distinguishable forms of social interaction. In the Eurogroup, processes of per-
suasion are more important than peer pressure, as one important condition for
peer pressure to work among politicians with an interest in re-election is absent – the
publicity of naming and shaming.
The relevance of transnational elite interaction

Looking at the conditions for Eurogroup members to establish a consensus among
each other is without doubt important to understand the functioning of the
Eurogroup: ‘The political impact of informal circles of ministers in the EU
depends on their ability to trigger consensus formation among the involved
actors . . . . [The] informal co-ordination structures only work effectively if the
participants enact the group consensus elsewhere’ (Pütter, 2003). Undoubtedly,
this point is correct. But the analysis should not stop here, as it tells us nothing
about the conditions under which agreements among an informal group of
Finance Ministers reach political salience for the formal decisions within the com-
munity structures or at the domestic level. Consensus-building failed on several
occasions: either because deliberation did not bring about a consensual view of
issues at stake, or because although the Finance Ministers agreed, the member
states still behaved differently. Against this background, rationalist approaches to
the study of economic governance in the EMU seem to have strong arguments to
call into doubt the importance of the deliberative processes. Liberal intergovern-
mentalism argues that member states strategically interact only according to
domestically defined national preferences, not because of some transnational elite
consensus. The most prominent example is the clash among the member states
and with the European Commission over the question of whether the Stability
and Growth Pact should be applied to Germany and France in November 2003.
Both countries had failed to push their deficits below the prescribed ceiling of
3 per cent of GDP, and this for 3 years in a row. The Commission requested
Ecofin to impose budgetary measures on the two countries and to threaten them
with fiduciary sanctions in case of non-compliance. Neither the Eurogroup, nor
the Ecofin reached a common position on this issue. Despite repeated and long
sequences of deliberation, the Eurogroup was unable to build a consensus on how
to deal with this issue. Interview partners indicated that a consensus existed on the
idea that Germany and France should reduce budget deficits to the margin pre-
scribed by the Treaty, and that this should at best happen quickly. There was a dis-
agreement over the question of whether this process would be successfully sped up
by applying the rules in a strict way, however. Whether or not the member states
had a preference to sanction Germany and France depended on the individual
countries’ expectation to be coerced themselves. The more likely that this could
happen, the less likely they are to demand hard implementation of the rules. In
addition, controversial understandings persisted on the issue of which scope of
interpretation of the Stability and Growth Pact could be used without completely
undermining this institution. Here, especially smaller countries such as the
Netherlands or Austria insisted on sticking to the word of the Pact without using
any scope of interpretation, in order not to bend the rules to accommodate large
countries’ interests. The Ecofin did not adopt the Commission proposal (which
would have required a qualified majority vote) and put the deficit procedure
against Germany and France on hold. The decision left not only the Eurogroup
and the Ecofin deeply divided, but also increased tensions between the
Commission and those member countries which opposed its proposal. The dis-
pute was settled legally by the European Court of Justice on 13 July 2004. The
Court acknowledged the right of the Council to vote down a recommendation by
the Commission, but at the same time annulled its decision to suspend the disci-
plinary procedure against France and Germany for repeatedly breaking the euro
rules (see Hulverscheidt et al., 2004). While the Court ruling brought procedural
clarification and strengthened the role of the Commission in the process of
budgetary surveillance, it did not solve the underlying problem of preference
formation processes and the limits of consensus building.
Two further, though qualitatively different, empirical examples seem also to
support the intergovernmentalist scepticism. In September 2000, the Eurogroup
agreed not to lower taxes as a means to compensate for high oil prices, although
pressure from interest groups, such as the trucker lobby, had mounted on several
governments. Although the Finance Ministers of these countries were under
considerable pressure to react, their peers in the Eurogroup convinced them that
unilateral tax rebates would lead to unfair competition in the Eurozone and put
pressure on other governments to engage in this race to the bottom. Agreeing to
the fellow Finance Ministers in the Eurogroup meant privileging the Eurozone
logic over immediate national consideration. However, a little later France, the
Netherlands and Belgium decided otherwise, and granted tax rebates to their
lorry drivers. Also in 2000, the Eurogroup ministers agreed to use unexpected tax
revenues to reduce budget deficits, in line with the provisions of the Stability and
Growth Pact and the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, which postulated that
governments should attempt to reach a budgetary stance of close to balance or in
surplus. This objective is part of the non-binding policy co-ordination in EMU
and hence based on voluntary commitment by the member states. Accordingly,
the decision by the Eurogroup on measures in line with this objective was likewise
only based on voluntary commitment. The Eurogroup – including the French
Minister of Finance and the Economy – reached a consensus on this issue.
Nevertheless, France only months later defected from this objective. Finance
Minister Christian Sautter, who tried to defend the consolidation promise domes-
tically, was eventually ousted from his position. One explanation, which liberal
intergovernmentalists would probably put forward, is to qualify the agreement in
the Eurogroup as ‘cheap talk’. This view denies that any substantial consensus-
building within the Eurogroup occurs.
An alternative interpretation, for which empirical evidence was found in the
course of this study, is the following: the Eurogroup functions successfully as a
forum for consensus-building – but it involves the wrong people in the right place.
The short history of the Eurogroup shows that whenever agreements were broken
by the EMU member states, this involved domestic disputes within the government
which opposed the Finance Minister (i.e. the participant in the Eurogroup) to the
Head of State or Government. The Heads of State and Government are more
strongly driven by domestic policy considerations, while the Finance Ministers
through the Eurogroup tend to be more involved with questions related to the
governance of the Eurozone that are less easily linked to domestic interest groups.
The considerations by the Heads of State and Government (who are often also
leaders of their political parties) are natural given the nature of domestic political
systems. It is rational for government leaders to maximize their utility by behav-
ing in a way which they think increases their chance of re-election (or their par-
ties’ chances of winning regional or even local elections). And if their behaviour
reflects the median voter’s preference – although it may violate the Eurogroup
consensus and be economically inefficient – it is democratically legitimate. Of
course, the Heads of State and Government are also involved in transnational
networks such as European party organizations etc. These, however, are much less
specialized than the Eurogroup, whose meetings take place more often, are more
intense and more focused on a continuous debate on economic governance of
the Eurozone. Hence, transnational networks, in which the Heads of State are
involved, are likely to provide for less consensus-building processes than the
Eurogroup.7
A transnationally constructed consensus among Finance Ministers which con-
tradicts previously formulated national preferences will only influence member
state behaviour if one of the following two conditions is met. Either, the decision-
makers involved in the consensus-building process have the power (and the pref-
erence) to impose this norm domestically – against the median voter’s preference.
This is unlikely in economic policy-making. Budgetary decisions, especially, are
not only the responsibility of the Economic and Finance Ministers, but strongly
influenced by the Heads of States and Government, the Parliament, regional
entities, national budgetary rules, etc. Or, alternatively, the consensus receives
public backing, which reduces the political costs of enacting this consensus. This
case, however, is unlikely as transnational structures for consensus-building
beyond the political elite are only emerging. If deliberation in the Eurogroup
leads to a modification of the preference articulated by the Finance Minister pre-
sent in the Eurogroup, peer pressure and learning processes have worked at the
individual cognitive level of this specific national representative. The consensus
may spread into national ministries, not only through the initiative of the minis-
ter, but also through the civil servants involved with the Eurogroup and through
the EFC. But the path for this consensus to reach domestic political salience is
long. Given the secrecy of interaction in the Eurogroup and the technicality of
macro-economic policy-making, the transnational elite consensus-building
processes are disconnected from public debates in the member states. As far as
budgetary decisions are concerned, the Eurozone aggregate budgetary stance is
economically relevant, that is, the question of how the overall aggregate bud-
getary balance suits the monetary policy stance of the ECB. Second, the national
budgetary stance is relevant with regard to potential output and the development
of the domestic price level. However, these abstract economic figures are not what
elections are fought on. Here, individual measures such as income tax decisions,
expenditure programmes and short-term growth and employment effects matter.
These, of course, affect the macro-economic policy mix. But these effects are posi-
tive or negative in the mid- and long-term and not usually a matter of public
debate. This dichotomy between long-term considerations of economic governance
and immediate political considerations is a key to explain the limits to the political
salience of a consensus in the Eurogroup.
National Finance Ministers gathering in this informal forum may undergo an
individual preference change as the result of deliberation. The reason can be the
provision of new Eurozone data and forecasts by the European Commission,
arguing with peers which may allow for an increased understanding of domestic
policy processes in other member countries, a transfer of information regarding
the other players in the coordination game (the ECB and the social partners
involved in national wage setting) etc. This can change the evaluative background
against which the actors judge domestic policy options. However, it cannot be
assumed that the same information and the same arguments are accessible to the
voters in domestic debates. But national preferences are still defined domestically
in a bottom-up process taking into account the national interest groups, the
median voter etc. This can disconnect the Finance Minister’s preference from
the preference articulated by other members of the cabinet, and especially by the
Head of State or Government. In the worst case, the Finance Minister defends a
policy solution agreed upon in the Eurogroup, which may be economically
efficient for the Eurozone, but democratically illegitimate and of course, non-
binding. This policy solution is then overruled by a national policy decision,
which may be legitimate, binding – but economically inefficient given the new
conditions of economic policy-making in the Eurozone. This has been illustrated
by the two examples of tax rebates in view of the high oil price, and the case of
the French ‘cagnotte’.
For the Eurogroup, the same is true as for all other processes of soft policy
coordination in EMU: structured and intensified social interaction and exchange
of information does not guarantee domestic policy adaptation. Whether soft
coordination contributes to policy change depends on its impact on the domestic
preference formation process. Three phases of the political process can be distin-
guished: agenda setting, the definition of policy options and the formation of
a preference for one of the policy options. For each phase, there are specific
conditions under which, and channels through which, the behaviour of national
policy-makers can be influenced.
Phase 1 – Agenda setting The interaction with EU partners and the European
Commission can modify the actors’ cognitive perception of problems to solve
through new information, a modified understanding of causalities, shifts in dom-
inant normative frames etc. However, the choice to put an issue (high) on the
political agenda depends on the likeliness of the issue to gain interest and support
in the domestic public. This, in turn, depends on the media interest in the issue,
and the existence of counter-interests etc. Thus, soft coordination will modify the
actors’ agenda setting, if the costs of not acting rise. Rising costs can result from
the mediatization of positions other than the government’s, for example, through
peer pressure or activities by the European Commission who can raise these issues
for example, in the draft of the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines. An example
of this channel of influence can be the increasing awareness of the German
working population about the differences in public childcare provision and subsi-
dies in other EU countries. Comparisons of the highly criticized German system
with the Scandinavian or even the French model in leading newspapers and
television programmes have raised the awareness about the need for reform.
Phase 2 – Definition of policy options New knowledge or a new assessment of old
knowledge may lead civil servants in national ministries and political leaders to
enlarge or re-define the scope of policy options to tackle old or new problems. Peer
review can have an impact on the cognitive level of the individual as an ‘incentive
providing mechanism focusing on improving policy performance through de-politi-
cized administrative learning and scientific arguing’ (Meyer, 2003: 10). Studies and
reports issued by the European Commission can further enhance transparency on
measures and their impact. The benchmarking process may also give trans-national
networks of non-state actors such as interest groups, research institutes, epistemic
communities and their respective policy suggestions, greater weight in public debates.
Phase 3 – Preference formation The choice of a policy option is determined by its
likeliness to win votes for democratically elected governments. As outlined above,
policy choices consequently depend on support among interest groups, public
support reflected in opinion polls, media attention etc. It thus becomes crucial
how the attempts to influence national policy formulation from the EU-level are
decoded in national media. EU-coordination processes can have an influence if
governments can exploit the pressure from the EU-level to justify policy decisions
that the government may have put aside earlier given domestic opposition. Or,
domestic opposition parties can exploit the pressure put on a national government
and can hence incite the government to adopt different policies.
Soft policy coordination as happens in the Eurogroup and the Committee

assembling national civil servants can hence gradually introduce new issues and
solutions, it can (re-)structure debates and help policy-makers gather support.
Analytically, there are two dimensions in which soft coordination can influence
the policy process. First, it can happen on the individual cognitive level of policy-
makers through exposure to new information and arguments. Such learning
processes are more likely to occur on the level of administrative staff gathered in
the committees etc. than on the ministerial level or among the Heads of State and
Government in the European Council. An exception is the Eurogroup due to its
small size and its confidentiality. The European Council receives too strong a
public attention, which makes it more difficult for the Heads of State and
Government to revise judgements. Civil servants have more time to exchange
information in committees, interact more regularly and informally, and they have
the task to search for solutions, while the Heads of State and Government are
guided by considerations of day-to-day politics.
Second, soft coordination can interact with and induce public discourses
within and across national boundaries, increasing the awareness of the issues at
stake. Public recommendations are a soft stick for translating peer pressure into
action. Soft coordination is a governance mechanism, which relies on the impo-
sition of reputational costs to ensure compliance, or on the learning effect
induced by social interaction. In the first case, it assumes that electoral success can
be influenced by what is discussed in public. For two reasons, this mechanism is
likely to work on the level of political leaders, that is, the ministers gathering in
the Council of Ministers or the Heads of State and Government in the European
Council. First, the elected leaders are more likely to be concerned by public dis-
course as it directly relates to the probability of future electoral success. Second,
benchmarking and recommendation processes on the highest political level are
not only public per se, but are also likely to raise the attention of the mass media
given that prominent persons are involved. Policy or institutional change can be
brought about through public credibility crises, which may or may not be linked
to a real change in material circumstances.8 In differentiated modern societies,
political leaders cannot shift political ideas on their own. They need public
support from civil society actors such as interest groups or academic experts.
Even more importantly, they need the mass media to reach a broader audience who
not only act as an interface, but also as gatekeepers, agenda-setters and opinion-
entrepreneurs. Whether the soft rules are followed or ignored depends not only on
whether the media make the process and the actors visible but also the extent to
which they are considered as legitimate matters. The media not only act as trans-
mitters, but also as decoders and thus actors themselves. If a recommendation is
decoded as legitimate, policy-makers can more easily exploit the situation to push
for policy change in line with the recommendation. If the EU advice is deemed
an illegitimate meddling in domestic affairs, policy-makers will have little incen-
tive to adopt the recommendation. Public discourse is increasingly discussed as an
intervening variable to explain domestic adaptation of policies, institutions and
ideas as a result of European integration. It is not only used to explain socializa-
tion or learning processes. Broad public mediatized discourse influences rational
interest calculation, and thus decision-makers’ behaviour, even if their personal
conviction has not changed.
There is no automatic link connecting soft coordination and policy change. In
the policy process, there are two periods during which barriers can make soft
coordination ineffective: during the agenda-setting and the preference formation
phase. As soon as political actors evaluate policy change as too costly, soft
co-ordination will have no impact. The basis for this evaluation is the way in which
the soft pressure from the EU level is decoded on the national level. Here, the
media and other actors involved in public opinion formation have their role to play.
A Eurozone public space

Since the start of the EMU on 1 January 1999, public debates on economic
governance in the Eurozone have developed in intensity, quality and scope. Two
strands of the debate can be distinguished: first, the transnational exchange of
information and opinions on an expert level, and second, a broad public debate
in the national media is developing as interest in the governance of the Eurozone
is increasing. The two, of course, overlap.
On an expert level, a growing number of researchers and analysts, mostly
economists, study the developments in the Eurozone. This has started in the run-
up to EMU after the Maastricht Treaty was signed and by now has brought about
a whole range of fora, which institutionalize the exchange among experts on a
regular basis. Various transnational networks or internationally staffed research
institutes which contribute to the academic debate on EMU exist, for instance
the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in Brussels or the Centre for
European Policy Studies (CEPS) in London, German–French working groups
assembled by organizations such as the German–French Institute in Ludwigsburg
or the German Institute for International Security (SWP). Likewise on a German–
French initiative, a new institute for economic research with a strong focus on
EMU takes up its work in Brussels in the second half of 2004. This European
Center for the International Economy, the creation of which the German and the
French government decided on 22 January 2003 on the fifteenth anniversary
of the Elysée Treaty, will be opened to participation from other member states
after the starting phase and will hence be another transnational research institution.
The Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI) has set up a so-called ‘EMU
monitor’.9 Twice a year, economists from several EMU countries publish a judge-
ment of developments and adequate political responses for the Eurozone. While
the German ZEI is the official publisher of this EMU monitor, the participants
come from various (and changing) renowned national research institutions, which
ensures the transnational view on developments in the monetary union.
The European Commission’s Fifth and Sixth Framework Programmes have made
cross-border cooperation a prerequisite for EU funding, and has catalyzed projects
such as Ezone Plus bringing together several research institutes from the European
Union and accession countries in a transnational network on the Eurozone’s Eastern
enlargement (www.ezoneplus.org). The Commission also financed the European
Political Economy Infrastructure Consortium, a network and conference series
for PhD candidates from throughout the European Union (www.epic.ac.uk). The
European University Institute in Florence is a prime example of a European
research institute gathering junior and senior scholars for an intensive exchange.
Data from the Commission and its studies and policy papers on the Eurozone
(for instance the Europaper series), represent a common reference for researchers
against which they form their judgements. Annual Commission reports such as
‘Public Finances in EMU’ are widely quoted in the academic debate. Publications
by national institutions in EMU member countries, which were previously mainly
concerned with the national economy, now mostly include chapters on EMU
developments. This was no automatic switch with the start of EMU on 1 January
1999. For instance, the Banca d’Italia, the Italian Central Bank, only introduced
a detailed chapter on the analysis and economic outlook of EMU with its
economic bulletin of March 2000 (Banca d’Italia, 1999, 2000). An important
development is that economists increasingly work with harmonized data, which is
provided by the European Commission or the ECB. Experts working on the
Eurozone (as is usually the case in international economics) use English as a
common language, and it can be said that the exchange among experts of the
Eurozone is to a very large degree transnationalized. These transnational expert
debates feed into Commission study groups. The national institutions also draw
on international expertise and bring together academics in internationally staffed
working groups, as done for instance by the Banca d’Italia.
These examples show that the academic sphere is not only transnationalizing,
but that boundaries to the policy-making sphere are increasingly blurred. For
instance, several well-known economic and financial leaders including former and
current CEOs, Central Bank Presidents, Finance Ministers, leading academics
and others have created the ‘Euro 50 group’ with members from all EU countries.
Among other initiatives, the group organizes semi-annual round tables on
European economic policies in order to ‘identify major issues, alert institutions
and inform public opinion’ (www.euro50.org) with academic assistance provided
by the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. A second example of the
close link-up between the academic and the policy-making spheres is an annual
conference set up by the Centre for Financial Studies (CFS) in Frankfurt. ‘The
ECB and its watchers’ conference brings together senior ECB representatives
with the most prominent European economists from academic and financial
institutions for a day-long dialogue every year since 1998.
These events receive media coverage, which shows that the expert sphere is
not isolated from the public sphere. Many research institutions in fact explicitly
look for public exposure and increasingly professionalize the marketing of their
publications and statements to international journalists. Private sector institutions,
for example, economists from banks and other financial institutions, regularly
issue statements and reports on the Eurozone. Think tanks widely distribute
Eurozone-oriented policy proposals, which are often quoted by the national
media. A good example is the ‘EMU monitor’ of the ZEI, which primarily con-
sists of media information (press conference, press statement and background
material). Individual researchers seek media exposure for individual publicity or
because they expect more weight for their point vis-à-vis decision-makers by
writing articles in the international press. These offers meet with a demand from
journalists who themselves request Eurozone information. Their interest in the
economic performance of the Eurozone as a whole grows, and Eurozone experts
are used to provide judgements for their analysis. Some media even trigger larger
processes to generate Eurozone information. Euroframe, a group of top research
institutes from several member countries, calculates a Eurozone indicator at the
request of three European newspapers within the Pearson Group, the Financial
Times, Financial Times Deutschland and the Spanish Expansión (www.euroframe.org).
Also, the European institutions contribute to the exposure of the expert knowl-
edge on the Eurozone by publicly hearing Eurozone experts, and seeing to the dis-
tribution of this information. The European Parliament (EP) regularly sets up
public euro-briefings and the Commission organizes expert workshops, the con-
tributions to which are subsequently published. The EU institutions largely draw
on the above mentioned research institutes and transnational networks. Every
year, the Commission also stages a large annual conference on economic gover-
nance in the Eurozone when the spring forecasts are out. This event not only
brings together international experts for two days of debates, it also involves political
leaders, which encourages news coverage in the national media.
It can hence be observed that the transnational processes of elite consensus-
building (policy-makers and administrative staff) are embedded in a transnation-
alized expert sphere, which closely interacts with the policy-making sphere. The
media pay increasing attention to these developments. What matters here is not
that the debate is necessarily transnational in the sense that precisely the same
article is made available to different national publics, but rather that the national
media increasingly transport and decode what happens in the Eurozone. This
concerns particularly the Stability and Growth Pact whose implementation has
received ample news coverage. As argued above, this is important for peer pressure
to work: naming and shaming hurts most when it is public, as, for instance, the
example of the German Finance Minister Hans Eichel and the blame for unsound
German fiscal policies by the Council in 2004, or the reprimand to Ireland in
February 2001 have shown (see Schwarzer, 2003 for further examples). The media
are also an important source of information for policy-makers, and shape the con-
science of leaders for instance by bringing information on the Eurozone to their
attention. If decision-makers have internalized the Eurozone logic through debates
in the Eurogroup, and find this reflected in the media, they will more readily share
these insights publicly. It is crucial for societal consensus-building processes that
people fuel this process who command respect in public debates.10 There is a
strong chance that the creation of a stable Eurogroup presidency for a period of
two years as of 1 January 2005 and the naming of Jean-Claude Juncker, the
Luxembourg Prime Minister and Finance Minister, as its first President will
increase the visibility of the Eurozone in the European Union itself and on an
international scale. This has the potential to spread the Eurozone logic in public
debates.
Conclusions: transnational interaction

and domestic preference formation
Figure 10.1 brings together these observations on elite and broad public consensus-
building processes in a model of EU policy-making.
On the top level, the figure depicts traditional processes of preference forma-
tion. Societal groups form preferences with regard to the structural conditions
and the material concerns which they evaluate against some kind of ideational
background. These groups then compete in the domestic policy process and
against the background of national public debates. The government formulates a
national preference, which it defends in the process of EU policy-making. Given
the economic interdependencies, the cross-border interaction of interest groups,
and of policy-makers, transnational interaction can influence all stages of this
preference-formation process. The transnational in this case is not a distinct spa-
tial level, nor does it involve a group of distinct actors, but it consists of domestic
and EU policy-makers, experts, journalists etc. which interact in a transnational
context beyond the formal EU institutions. It is a multi-level phenomenon with
a potential to subtly influence the preference formation of social groups and
the choice of governments when they formulate their national positions for EU
Structural state1...n
conditions
Traditional national sphere
Preferences of Domestic National

social groups intermediation preferences
Material EU
involving
concerns NP1 NPn policy-making
SG1 SGn public
... debate ...
Ideational
content
Transnational interaction (economic interdependencies, social interaction etc.)
Figure 10.1 National preference formation and transnational interaction.

policy-making. As argued above, the media have a crucial role to play. They can
transport information to the broad public and hence influence these domestic
choice processes. As long as this link to the broad public is not strong enough, all
informal processes of transnational elite consensus building are likely to be irrel-
evant in a democracy, if the consensus is in opposition to domestic policy inter-
ests. Whenever the Eurogroup has produced a consensus, which did not reach
political salience, an important reason was the missing link to the domestic pref-
erence formation process. This raises the problem of economic efficiency and
democratic accountability in the EMU – and sketches the avenues of necessary
future reform of the institutional setting.
Notes
1 For a complete overview over the processes including the role of the member states and
the EU institutions see European Commission (2002).
2 The empirical observations in this chapter are based on more than 20 expert interviews
conducted for a research project on macro-economic policy coordination in
EMU, which is in press. More information can be obtained from the author at
dschwarzer@gmx.net
3 The fact that both countries, Germany and France, actually provoked the deepest crisis
in EMU since its creation in November 2003 is discussed below in following sections.
4 Former Eurogroup participant in an interview with the author.
5 Based on Searle (1995) and his understanding of the social construction of reality, these
processes have been described for the private sector in Collignon and Schwarzer
(2003).
6 Interview with an ECB official.
7 This observation, however, remains to be proven empirically which points to the
importance of including the transnational perspective in the analysis of domestic and
EU policy-making.
8 The German discussion of the OECD PISA-Study on school education is a prime
example of how benchmarking process and comparative ranking of countries can
translate into vivid domestic debates, which lead to policy change.
9 www.zei.de/zei_english/aktuell/presse_emu_download.htm (downloaded on 24 July
2004).
10 See Collignon and Schwarzer, 2003 for a model of a societal consensus building
process.
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Index
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate tables.
AA (Foreign Ministry) 150 ‘Alphabet’ case 204

ABVV/FGTB (Algemeen Belgisch Amato, Giuliano (Vice-President, European
Vakverbond/Fédération Générale du Convention) 51
Travail de Belgique) 121 American Committee for a United
‘acculturation’ 18 Europe (ACUE) 25
ACF (Advocacy Coalition Framework) American Federation of Labor (AFL)
41–2, 47 110, 111
acquis communautaire 156 Amsterdam IPE project 93
Action Committee for a United States of Anglo-German Association, Königswinter
Europe, Monnet Committee 24, 115 Conference meetings 136
Action Programme in field of AP (Alianza Popular) 141
education (1976) 171 appropriateness, logic of 64
‘actor socialization’ 62 ‘argumentative persuasion’, meaning 24
actors, transnational: actor-centredness 86; arrest warrant, extradition 195
‘domestic’/‘international’ nexus between Association of European Universities
91; transnational business as ‘actor’ 84–5 (CRE) 172, 179
ACUE (American Committee for a Austria, Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP)
United Europe) 25 138, 139, 140, 141, 142
Aden, Hartmut 198 authority, socialization 67
Adenauer, Konrad 27; Foundation 8, 9, Auto Oil Directive, advocacy coalition
135, 143 approach 49
adoption costs, socialization 68–9
advocacy coalitions, networks 7, 41; Banca d’Italia (Italian Central Bank) 223
Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) bargaining, socialization, transnational 65, 66
41–2, 47; Single Market 49 Beerkens, Eric 9, 170–90
AFL (American Federation of Labor) Belgium: Algemeen Belgisch
110, 111 Vakverbond/Fédération Générale
Africa, FES, impact in 153 du Travail de Belgique (ABVV/FGTB)
agencies: law enforcement 196; 121; Liege, University of 178; Limburgs
socialization 63–4 Universitair Centrum 178; Walloon Parti
agency: levels of 97; modern history and 19 Social Chrétien (PSC) 141
agenda setting, political process phases 220 ‘benchmarking’, concept of 98
Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond/Fédération BEPG (Broad Economic Policy Guidelines)
Générale du Travail de Belgique 210, 218
(ABVV/FGTB) 121 BEUC (European Consumers’
Alianza Popular (AP) 141 Organization) 48
allegiance to Europe 24 Bevir, Mark 39
ALMA network, case study 177–8, 180, Bidault, Georges 23–4, 26
181, 183, 186 Bildt, Carl 141, 142
Index 229
Blair, Tony 51 CDU (Christian Democratic Union)
BMZ (German Federal Ministry (Germany) 8, 133, 136, 137, 139, 140, 143;
for Economic Cooperation and Congress (1976) 138; Konrad Adenauer
Development) 150, 152, 153 Foundation affiliated to 151
BNFF (Bureau of Nordic Family CEECs (Central and Eastern European
Forestry) 49 Countries): communist past 51; electorates,
Bohman, Gösta 138, 140 concerns of 76; EU impact on 75;
BOND (British Overseas NGOs for foundation strategies 156–9; political
Development) 54–5 foundations as embassies in 162;
border regions, transnational policing socialization of 52, 53; transformation 150
in 201–5 CEMR (Council of European Municipalities
Bothereau, Robert (FO Secretary-General) and Regions) 25, 36
115, 120 Center for European Integration Studies
Böx, Heinrich 138, 139 (ZEI) 222–3
Bretton Woods system, expansion of world Central and Eastern European Countries
economy under 99 see CEECs (Central and Eastern
British Overseas NGOs for Development European Countries)
(BOND) 54–5 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 25, 196
British Young Conservatives 135 Central Latinamerico de Trabajodores
Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPG) (CLAT) 153
210, 218 Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS)
Brooke, Peter 143 (France) 138, 141
Brugmans, Hendrik 26 Centre for Economic Policy Research
Buiter, Harm G. 113, 120 (CEPR) 222, 223
Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Centre for European Policy Studies
Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) (CEPS) 222
150, 153 Centre for Financial Studies (CFS) 223
Bureau of Nordic Family Forestry Centre for International Relations (CSM) 157
(BNFF) 49 CEPF (Confederation of European
business, transnational 83–106; interest Forest Owners) 49
group pluralism 90–3; International CEPOL (European Police College)
Relations discourse 86–7; meta-theory 198–9, 201
96; methodological issues 96–8; CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy
neo-functionalism 7, 87–90; Research) 222, 223
neo-Gramscian transnationalism 7, 20, CEPS (Centre for European Policy
93–6; research examples 98–100; Studies) 222
theoretical perspectives 84–6 CERC (Confederation of EU Rector’s
Conference) 172
Cameron, David R. 5, 31 CFS (Centre for Financial Studies) 223
CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) 20, 45 CFSP (Common Foreign and Security
Capitalist class formation 83–106 Policy) 52
Caporaso, James 89 CGT (Confédération Générale du
Cardiff process on structural reform 210 Travail) (France) 110
case studies: ALMA network 177–8, 180, Checkel, Jeffrey T. 24, 65–6
181, 183, 186; Coimbra Group of Chirac, Jacques 141
Universities 178–9, 180, 183, 185, Chrëschtlech Sozial Vollekspartei (CSV)
186; comparison 180–1, 181, 182; (Luxembourg) 141
empirical 5–10; European Consortium Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP) (Flemish)
of Innovative Universities 179–80 138, 141
Catholic Church, and ideas, values and Christen Democratisch Appèl (CDA) 141
norms 27 Christian Democracy 8, 131–49; EDU
CCTV (Circuit Camera Television) 198 140–4; Inter-Party Conference 135–40;
CDA (Christen Democratisch Appèl) 141 political parties, in transnational politics
CDS (Centre des Démocrates Sociaux) 21–2, 131–3, 145
(France) 138, 141 Christian Social Union (CSU)
CDS (Partido do Centro Démocratico Social) (Bavaria/Germany) see CSU (Christian
(Portugal) 141 Social Union) (Bavaria/Germany)
230 Index
Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU) Confederazione italiana dei sindacati
(Germany) see CDU (Christian Democratic lavoratori (CISL) (Italy) 110, 121
Union) (Germany) Conference of European Churches 52
Christliche Volkspartei (CVP) consensus building (EMU economic
(Switzerland) 141 governance) 9–10, 210–27; economic
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 25, 196 policy coordination 211–12; elite
Circuit Camera Television (CCTV) 198 interaction 216–22; Eurozone public
CISC (International Federation of Christian space see Eurozone; forum for 212–16;
Trade Unions) 110–11 political process phases 220–1;
CISL (Confederazione italiana dei sindacati transnational interaction and domestic
lavoratori) (Italy) 110, 121 preference formation 225–6
CIVICUS (World Alliance for Citizen consequentiality, logic of 64, 67
Participation) 55 Conservative and Christian Democrat Youth
‘Civility’ (research program), network Community (COCDYC) 146, 147
analysis 54 Conservative Party (British) 134, 135, 136,
Civil Society Development Programme 139, 140; Euro-sceptic positions of 144;
(EU) 53 International Office 137
class, transnational 83–106 Conservative Research Department
CLAT (Central Latinamerico de (CRD) 137
Trabajodores) 153 consortium management, and institutional
Clay, Karen 177 diversity 181–7
COCDYC (Conservative and Christian constitutionalization, European 1
Democrat Youth Community) 146, 147 Constitutional Treaty, intention to establish a
co-decision procedure, introduction of European Prosecution Office 197
(1992–93) 22 constructivist turn 62
co-determination model, promotion by Convention of Mutual Assistance in
DGB 121 Criminal Matters (2000) 197
COGECA (General Confederation of conversion concept, transnational
Agricultural Cooperatives in the communities 23
European Union) 45, 48 ‘core Europe’, integration theory 20, 22, 24,
Coimbra Group of Universities, case study 25, 26, 28, 45
178–9, 180, 183, 185, 186 COREPER (Committee of Permanent
College of Europe, Brugmans as Representatives) 74, 214
Rector of 26 corporatism, policy networks 38
COMETT 171 costs: adoption 68–9; transaction 68, 73
Committee of Permanent Representatives Council of Europe: British Conservatives
(COREPER) 74, 214 and 136; Multidisciplinary Group on
Committee of Professional Agricultural Corruption 193; trade unions 111, 112,
Organizations in the European 115, 116
Union 45 Council of European Municipalities and
‘Committee of the 21’ 111, 112, 113, 114 Regions (CEMR) 25, 36
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 20, 45 Council of Ministers 3, 120
Common Foreign and Security Policy Court of Justice, European 3
(CFSP) 52 Cowles, Maria 97, 98, 99
community formation, transactionalist Cox, Robert 102
approach to 2 CPE (European Farmers Coordination) 36
CONCORD (Confederation for Cooperation CRD (Conservative Research
of Relief and Development) 55 Department) 137
Confédération Générale du Travail CRE (Association of European Universities)
(CGT) (France) 110 172, 179
Confédération Générale du Travail – Force Crime Prevention Network (EU) 201
Ouvrière (FO) see FO (Confédération Cross Channel Intelligence Conference 192
Générale du Travail – Force Ouvrière) CSM (Centre for International
Confederation of EU Rector’s Conference Relations) 157
(CERC) 172 CSU (Christian Social Union)
Confederation of European Forest Owners (Bavaria/Germany) 8, 136, 139, 140;
(CEPF) 49 Hanns Seidel Foundation allied to 151
Index 231
CSV (Chrëschtlech Sozial ECB (European Central Bank) 213, 215,
Vollekspartei) (Luxembourg) 141 216, 219
CVP (Christelijke Volkspartij) (Flemish) ECIU (European Consortium of Innovative
138, 141 Universities) 177, 179–80; Graduate
CVP (Christliche Volkspartei) School 180, 184; Quality Review System
(Switzerland) 141 184; Student Exchange Programme 183;
Cyprus, Democratic Rally (DR) 141 Thematic Working Groups 186
Czech Union for Freedom (US) 162 ECJ (European Court of Justice) 3
Ecofin 217; Council 212
Dakowska, Dorota 8, 53, 75, 143, École Nationale d’Administration, College of
150–69 Europe as 26
Daugbjerg, Carsten 49 Economic and Finance Ministers 210,
Davies, John 139 211, 215
DC (Democrazia Cristiana) 138, 140–1 Economic and Financial Committee (EFC)
DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) 196 214, 219
De Bruijn, Johan A. 40 Economic and Social Committee 119
de Gaulle, Charles 52–3, 116, 119–20, 121 Economic Committee for Europe in UN 111
Dehaene, Jean-Luc (Vice-President, ECSC (European Coal and Steel
European Convention) 135 Community) 20, 22, 26; Consultative
Delors, Jacques 50, 123; Delors Committee 112, 114; High Authority 30,
Committee 50 114, 116, 121; trade unions and 109, 111,
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) (Poland) 113, 114–15, 122, 123
160, 161, 163 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System)
Democratic Rally (DR) 141 172, 184
Democrat Youth Community of Europe ED (European Democrats) 51
(DEMYC) 141 Eder, Klaus 72
Democrazia Cristiana (DC) 138, 140–1 EDG (European Democratic Group) 133
DEMYC (Democrat Youth Community EDP (European Democrat Party) 136
of Europe) 141 EDS (European Democrat Students) 141
den Boer, Monica 9, 191–208 EDU (European Democrat Union) 8, 139,
Deutsch, Karl W. 2, 23, 61, 89, 173 140–4; Executive Secretary 143; as ‘The
DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) 111, Black International’ 140
115, 116, 119, 121, 122 EEB (European Environmental Bureau) 48
Di Maggio, Paul 175 EEC (European Economic Community) 6;
Directorate General for Agriculture 45 British membership 20; creation 112,
Directorate General for Environment 45, 49 115, 122; crisis of 1960s 121
Directorate General of Social Affairs 116 EFC (Economic and Financial Committee)
‘domestication’, socialization 73 214, 219
‘domestic conditionality’, dominant EFDS (European Forum for Democracy and
socialization strategy of EU 75 Solidarity) 163
domestic resonance, socialization 68 EFR (European Financial Services
Dowding, Keith 29, 44, 45 Roundtable) 36, 50, 100
DR (Democratic Rally) 141 EFTA (European Free Trade Association)
Drahos, Michaela 22, 52 28, 172; trade unions and 8, 113, 114,
Drinking Water Directive, advocacy coalition 115, 117–19, 121, 122
approach 49 Egeberg, Morten 74
Drug Enforcement Administration EHEA (European Higher Education Area)
(DEA) 196 170–90
drugs, war on 194 Eichel, Hans 224
Duchêne, François 115 Eising, Rainer 74
Duisenberg, Wim 213 ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and
Dulles, Allen 25 Reform Party) 160, 165
Dumoulin, Michel 25 ELEC (European League for Economic
Dutch Programme on cross-border Cooperation) 25
co-operation (1997) 178 elite networks, transnational, role 6
Dutrieue, Anne-Myriam 25 Elles, Lady 137, 139, 140
Dzurinda, Mikuláš 9, 161 embeddedness concept 175
232 Index
EMMI (European Multi Media Information) Crime 193; as ‘multi-venue system’ 73;
203, 204 neo-Gramscian transnationalism 94–5;
‘empty chair’ policy (1965) 109, 121 policy-making process 21, 50–1; post-
EMSU (European Medium and Small Maastricht 22; as transnational
Business Union) 141 space 1–14
EMU (European Monetary Union): EUCD (European Union of Christian
economic governance, consensus building Democrats) 133, 138, 139
9–10, 210–27; economic policy Euratom 112, 122
coordination 211–12; elite interaction Euregion Rhine-Maas 177; cross-border
216–22; Eurozone public space law enforcement 202, 203
see Eurozone; forum for consensus Euro-12 group 5
building/identity formation 212–16; Euro-50 group 223
network analysis 49–50; political process ‘Euro-Communists’ 22
phases 220–1; transnational interaction Euroframe (group of research institutes) 224
and domestic preference formation 225–6 Eurogroup 10, 210, 214, 215, 218, 219, 220;
entitativity, concept of 71–2, 77 Economic and Finance Ministers 211
EP (European Parliament) 3, 163–4, 224; Eurojust 197
Christian democratic membership 28; EURON (European graduate school in
Commission and 132; elections to 72, neurosciences) 178
116; European Ideas Network and 51; European Central Bank (ECB) 213, 215,
influence of 22 216, 219
EPC (European Political Co-operation) 52 European Coal and Steel Community see
epistemic communities (networks) 7, 41, 52 ECSC (European Coal and Steel
EPP (European People’s Party) 51, 133, 134, Community)
135, 139–40, 142, 160; Berlin congress European Commission: Directorate General
(2001) 143; EDU and 144; political for Agriculture 45; Directorate General
bureau 164; UW accession to 165 for Environment 45, 49; European
EPP-ED (Group of the European People’s Parliament and 132; Fifth and Sixth
Party and European Democrats) 134 Framework Programmes 223; on interest
ERASMUS programme 171–2, 179, 183 group representation 73; network research
Erhard, Ludwig 26 53; role 3; subsidiarity principle 172
ERO (European Regional Organization) 8, European Confederation of Free Trade
111, 113, 114, 115, 117–18; Joint Unions in the EC 114; see also ETUS
ICFTU-ERO Committee on European (European Trade Union Secretariat)
Social Integration 112, 115 European Consortium of Innovative
ERP (European Recovery Programme) 110 Universities see ECIU (European
ERT (European Round Table of Consortium of Innovative Universities)
Industrialists) 3, 11, 89, 95, 100 European Consumers’ Organization
ETUC (European Trade Union (BEUC) 48
Confederation) 8, 114, 121, 123–4 European Convention (2002–3) 135
ETUS (European Trade Union Secretariat) European Council: Action Programme in
113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121 education approved by (1976) 171;
EU (European Union): accession of new summits 145
Member States, party cooperation European Court of Justice (ECJ) 3
preceding 160–4; CEECs, impact on 75; European Credit Transfer System (ECTS)
Civil Society Development Programme 172, 184
53; Committee of Professional Agricultural European Defence Community 111
Organizations in 45; complexity 51; European Democratic Group (EDG) 133
Constitutional Treaty, intention to European Democrat Union see EDU
establish a European Prosecution Office (European Democrat Union)
197; Crime Prevention Network 201; day- European Democrat Party (EDP) 136
to-day politics 4; ‘domestic conditionality’, European Democrats (ED) 51
as dominant socialization strategy of 75; European Democrat Students (EDS) 141
enlargement, transnational perspective European Economic Community see EEC
154–5, 165; government systems 51; (European Economic Community)
Multidisciplinary Group on Organized European Employment Strategy 210
Index 233
European Environmental Bureau (EEB) 48 Europol (EU Police Office) 192, 196, 201;
European Farmers Coordination Maastricht Treaty 197
(CPE) 36, 54 Euroregional kiosk (EMMI products) 203
European Financial Services Roundtable Euro-sceptics 134, 144
(EFR) 36, 50, 100 Eurozone 210, 212, 215, 217, 218,
European Forum for Democracy and 219, 222–5
Solidarity (EFDS) 163 EUW (European Union of Women) 137,
European Free Trade Association see EFTA 141, 142
(European Free Trade Association)
European Higher Education Area see EHEA FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) 196
(European Higher Education Area) FDP (Free Democratic Party) (Germany) 151
European Ideas Network 51, 56 Fédération Générale du Travail de
European Judicial Network 200 Belgique (FGTB) 121
European League for Economic Federation of Conservative Students
Co-operation (ELEC) 25 (UK) 135
European Liberal Democrat and Reform FERN (Forests and the European Union
Party (ELDR) 160, 165 Resource Network) 49
European Medium and Small Business FES (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung) (Germany)
Union (EMSU) 141 8–9, 151, 153, 154, 157, 158, 162, 163
European Monetary Union see EMU FGTB (Fédération Générale du Travail
(European Monetary Union) de Belgique) 121
European Multi Media Information (EMMI) FIDESZ (Hungarian Alliance of Young
203, 204 Democrats) 164
European Parliament see EP Fine Gael, Ireland 141
(European Parliament) Finland: Kansallinen Kokoomus party 140;
European People’s Party see EPP (European Svenska Folkpartiet 141
People’s Party) Finnemore, Martha 156, 159
European Police College (CEPOL) FitzGerald, Garret 141
198–9, 201 FNS (Friedrich Naumann Stiftung)
European Political Cooperation (EPC) 52 (Germany) 151, 157, 160
European Political Economy Infrastructure FO (Confédération Générale du Travail –
Consortium 223 Force Ouvrière) 110, 120, 121, 122;
European Productivity Agency 117 R. Bothereau as Secretary-General
European Recovery Programme (ERP) 110 115, 120
European Regional Organization Ford Foundation 25
see ERO (European Regional Foreign Ministry (AA) 150
Organization) Foreign Policy Centre, as European
European Round Table of Industrialists think tank 54
(ERT) 3, 11, 89, 95, 100 Forests and the European Union Resource
European Social and Economic Council: and Network (FERN) 49
Council of Europe 115; DGB withdrawal Forlani, Arnaldo 139
of support for 116 Fouchet Plan (1961) 120
European Social Charter 115, 116 FPÖ (Freedom Party) (Austria) 144
European Trade Union Confederation Fraga, Manuel 141
(ETUC) 8, 114, 121, 123–4 France: Christian Democratic/Conservative
European Trade Union Secretariat (ETUS) groups 134, 138, 141; ECSC, origins 26;
113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121 Franco-German Treaty of Friendship
European Union see EU (European Union) (1963) 120
European Union of Christian Democrats Franco, General Francisco 154
(EUCD) 133, 138, 139 Free Democratic Party (FDP) (Germany) 151
European Union of Women (EUW) 137, Freedom Party (FPÖ) (Austria) 144
141, 142 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES)
European University Institute (Germany) 8–9, 151, 153, 154, 157,
(Florence) 223 158, 163
European Youth Campaign (1951–8) 25 Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (FNS)
Europeiska democraktiska unionen 147 (Germany) 151, 157, 160
234 Index
G8 Senior Experts Group on Organized Hanns Seidel Stiftung (HSS) (Germany)
Crime (Lyon Group) 193 139, 151
Gaspari, Oscar 25 Hay, Colin 44, 46
Geddes, Charles J. 112 HBS (Heinrich Böll Stiftung) (Germany)
Geißler, Heiner 140 151, 157, 160
General Confederation of Agricultural Heard-Lauréote, Karen 6–7, 21, 36–60,
Cooperatives in the European Union 131, 193, 201
(COGECA) 45, 48 Hebenton, Bill 193
Geneva Circle 23; Christian democratic Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS) (Germany)
parties and 25, 30; meetings (1948–51) 11 151, 157, 160
German Federal Ministry for Economic Helsinki Summit (1999), High Level Action
Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Group on Organized Crime 200
150, 152, 153 High Level Action Group on Organized
German Institute for International Security Crime, Helsinki Summit (1999) 200
(SWP) 222 historical materialism, transnational 93
Germany: Anglo-German Association 136; historiographical tradition 17
Bundestag 153; CEEC, foundation history: as ‘historical social science’ 19;
strategies 156–9; Cold War 152; modern 19; Western Europe,
democratization (West Germany) 152–4; transnational (post-1945) 6,
EU enlargement, transnational perspective 17–18, 19–28
154–5; Konrad Adenauer Foundation see Hix, Simon 4
KAS (Konrad Adenauer Foundation) Hoffman, Paul G. 25
(Germany); norms, transfer of 159–60; Hoffmann, Stanley 3, 19
party cooperation, preceding accession of ‘hollowing-out’ of state 6, 39, 193
new Member States 160–4; political HSS (Hanns Seidel Stiftung) (Germany)
foundations see political foundations; as 139, 151
‘semi-sovereign state’ 152; see also CDU Hungarian Alliance of Young Democrats
(Christian Democratic Union) (Germany); (FIDESZ) 164
CSU (Christian Social Union) Hungary, EU accession 164
(Bavaria/Germany); FES (Friedrich Ebert Hurd, Douglas 133, 137
Stiftung) (Germany); FNS (Friedrich
Naumann Stiftung) (Germany); SWP ICC (Informatie en Coordinatie Centrum) 203
(German Institute for International ICFTU (International Confederation of Free
Security) Trade Unions) 8, 110, 111, 114, 120;
Gill, Stephen 102 European Regional Organization 111;
Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry (President, Executive Board 111; Joint ICFTU-ERO
European Convention) 135 Committee on European Social
globalization 1; and sovereignty 36 Integration 112, 115
Gonzáles, Felipe 53, 154 ICFTU-ECSC (Metalworkers’ and
governance concept: interest group pluralism Miners’ Inter-Trade Committee)
90–3; multi-governance approach 90, 91; 113, 121
network analysis 39 identification, socialization 67–8
Grabendorff, Wolf 161–2 ideology, neo-functionalism 88
Granovetter, Mark 175 ILO (International Labour Organization)
Greece: military regime in 51; Nea 111, 112, 115, 116
Demokratia (ND) 141 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 159
Green Pool 111 Imig, Doug 72, 73
Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) 151 imitation, socialization, transnational 64–5
Greenwood, Justin 74 Informatie en Coordinatie Centrum (ICC) 203
Group of the European People’s Party and Ingram, Paul 177
European Democrats (EPP-ED) 134 ‘institutionalisms’ 7
integration theory: ‘classical’
Haas, Ernst B. 2, 88, 89, 173 (neo-functionalist legacy) 87–90;
Haas, Peter M. 22, 41 ‘core Europe’ 20, 22, 24, 25, 26,
Hahn, Karl Josef 138, 139 28, 45; definition of ‘integration’ 61;
Hallstein, Walter (EEC Commission neo-functionalism 2, 3, 87–90;
President) 28; Hallstein Plan 116, 118 political society formation, integration
Index 235
as 17–35; ‘politicization’ hypothesis Journal of European Integration (Alan S.
of integration 70 Milward) 19
‘intensive transgovernmentalism’ 5 Journal of European Public Policy 62
interdependency notion, network analysis 40 Journal of Theoretical Politics 50
interest groups 73; neo-functionalism 88, Juncker, Jean-Claude 225
92, 96; pluralism 90–3; political economy Juppé, Alain 141
of 20 Justice and Home Affairs ( JHA) 191
intergovernmentalism 3, 4; institutionalism
173; socialization and 62; Kaiser, Jakob 27
supranationalism and 90, 91 Kaiser, Karl 2
International Confederation of Free Trade Kaiser, Wolfram 1–14, 17–35, 45, 89, 151,
Unions see ICFTU (International 154, 161
Confederation of Free Trade Unions) Kansallinen Kokoomus party, Finland 140
International Federation of Christian Trade KAS (Konrad Adenauer Foundation)
Unions (CISC) 110–11 (Germany) 8, 9, 143, 153; CDU,
International Labour Organization (ILO) affiliated to 151; in Poland 157;
111, 112, 115, 116 Political Academy Eichholz 135
International Monetary Fund (IMF) 159 Keck, Margaret 42
International Police Association 199 Keohane, Robert O. 2, 86
International Political Economy (IPE) 84, Kohl, Helmut 133, 138, 139
85, 93 Kohler-Koch, Beate 74
International Relations: business, transnational Königswinter Conference meetings,
86–7; ‘institutionalisms’ in 76; obsolete Anglo-German Association 136
nature of approaches 4; socialization 62; Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS)
transnational business 84, 85 (Germany) see KAS (Konrad Adenauer
International Trade Secretariats (ITS) 111, Foundation) (Germany)
112–13 Koutzine, Victor 30
Inter-Party Conference 131–49 Kubiceck, Paul 53
Interpol 192
Interreg subsidies (EU programme Lambsdorff, Otto Graf (FNS
for funding inter-regional President) 165
cooperation) 178 law enforcement, transnational policing
interventionism 10 199–201
‘intra-EC exchanges’ 90 Lawson, Nigel 143
IPE (International Political Economy) 84, Le Galès, Patrick 39
85, 93 legitimacy, socialization 67
Ireland, Fine Gael 141 Lewandowski, Janusz 157
Italy: Banca d’Italia (Italian Central Bank) Lewis, Jeffrey 74
223; CISL (Confederazione italiana dei LI (Liberal International) 164
sindacati lavoratori) 110, 121; Liberal International (LI) 164
Democrazia Cristiana (DC) 138, 140–1; Liberal Market Economy Research
European University Institute (Florence) Centre 157
223; UIL (Unione italiana del lavoro) 121 Liege, University of 178
ITS (International Trade Secretariats) 111, Limburgs Universitair Centrum
112–13 (Belgium) 178
‘limited publicity’ principle 152–3
Jenkins-Smith, Hank 47 Lindberg, Leon N. 62
JHA ( Justice and Home Affairs) 191 LINGUA 171
JHA Council 197; Working Groups 201 Lisbon Strategy for Growth and
Johansson, Karl Magnus 4, 8, 21, 131–49 Employment 210
John, Peter 50 ‘little Europe’ 112, 113, 115, 118, 120, 122
Johnston, Alistair I. 65–6 London Progressive Governance Conference
Joint ICFTU-ERO Committee on European (2003) 51
Social Integration 112, 115 London Underground map, network
Joint Masters Programme, ECIU Graduate analysis 43
School 184 Luxembourg, Chrëschtlech Sozial
Joint Study Programme 171 Vollekspartei (CSV) 141
236 Index
Lyon Group (G8 Senior Experts Group on Nebenaußenpolitik (second track
Organized Crime) 193 diplomacy) 158
NEI (Nouvelles Equipes Internationales) 26,
Maastricht Treaty (1992): agenda 4; Europol 133, 139
and 197; Excessive Deficit Procedure neo-functionalism: business, transnational 2,
210; institutionalization of a neo-liberal 3, 7, 87–90; governance analysis 91, 92;
consensus through 213; negotiations institutionalization and 174; interest
11, 21 groups and 88, 92, 96; ‘politicization’
Maastricht, University of 178 hypothesis of integration 70; spill-over see
MacGregor, John 143 ‘spill-over’, concept of; transnational
Macro-Economic Dialogue 210 ideology 88; transnational society 90
Major, John 133 neo-Gramscian transnationalism 7, 20,
Malta, Partit Nazzjonalista (PN) 141 93–6, 101–2; historical materialism 93;
March, James G. 64 Marxism and 94
Marsh, David 26–7, 40, 41, 45–6 Netherlands, Dutch Programme on
Marshall Plan 109, 110, 111, 122 cross-border co-operation (1997) 178
Martens, Wilfried (EPP President) 165 Network for Progressive Governance 36, 51
Maudling, Reginald 137 networks, transnational 36–60; advocacy
Max-Planck School, policy networks 38 coalitions see advocacy coalitions,
Mayer, René 123 networks; criticism of network analysis
Mazey, Sonia 73 26–7; epistemic communities 7; ‘graph
Messina Conference (1955) 112 theory’ branch of mathematics 50;
Metalworkers’ and Miners’ Inter-Trade interdependency notion 40;
Committee (ICFTU-ECSC) 113, 121 methodological issues 43–7; ‘network
meta-theory, business 96 paradigm’ 39; policy networks see
Miller, Leszek 158, 162–3 policy networks; research example 47–55;
Milward, Alan S. 19, 23, 24 theory 37–43
Mitbestimmung (co-determination ‘new economic sociology’ 175
model) 121 NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations):
Mock, Alois 141 advocacy coalitions 42; EMU, economic
‘Modeling Policy Networks’ ( Journal of policy coordination and 211;
Theoretical Politics) 50 environmental 49; ‘limited publicity’
Moderata Samlingspartiet 138, 140, 143 principle 152–3; networks 48, 49;
Monnet, Jean 122, 123; Action Committee non-state actors 151; political foundations
for a United States of Europe 24, 115 as 150; principled 87; role in global
Moravcsik, Andrew 3, 19, 24, 87, 89, 90 politics 5; see also British Overseas NGOs
Mouvement Républicain Populaire 26 for Development (BOND)
Muller, Pierre 39 Nice Treaty (2001) 132
Multidisciplinary Group on Corruption, Non-governmental Organizations see NGOs
Council of Europe 193 (Non-governmental Organizations)
Multidisciplinary Group on Organized Nordens Faglige Samorganisasjon 119
Crime (EU) 193 norms: rationality and 164–5; transfer of
multi-level governance 4, 194 159–60
Mutual Legal Assistance Convention 195 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
111, 136
National Criminal Intelligence Service (UK) Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) 26,
199 133, 139
National Endowment for Democracy 153 Nye, Joseph S. 2, 86, 173
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
111, 136 ODCA (Organización Demócrata Cristiana
Natura 2000 network, forest owner de América) 153
associations 49 OECD (Organization for Economic
ND (Nea Demokratia) 141 Cooperation and Development) 154
NEBEDEACPOL (forum for OEEC (Organization for European
Dutch–Belgian–German chief police Economic Cooperation) 109, 111, 112,
officers) 203 115, 116, 122
Index 237
OEEC Trade Union Advisory Committee Foundation 157; Union of Freedom
(OEEC-TUAC) 112 (UW) 160, 165
OEEC-TUAC (OEEC Trade Union Police Data Computer System
Advisory Committee) 112 (PODACS) 204
Office de la Lutte Anti-Fraude (OLAF) 197 policing, transnational 9, 191–209;
OIPGs (Operationeel Invalspunt Aan de grens) 203 bilateral/multilateral policy-making 192;
OLAF (Office de la Lutte Anti-Fraude) 197 border regions, analysing policing in
Olivetti, Adriano 25 201–5; critical issues 205–7; definitions
Olsen, Johan P. 64 192–5; forms 195–9; ‘horizontal’/‘vertical’
Onyszkiewcz, Janusz 157 192; law enforcement agencies 196; law
Operationeel Invalspunt Aan de grens (OIPGs) 203 enforcement bureaucracy 199–201;
Orban, Viktor 158, 164 legal-regulatory frameworks, creation 192;
Organization for European Economic liaison officers 195; police cooperation,
Cooperation (OEEC) 109, 111, 112, 115, international 192, 194, 195
116, 122 ‘policy community’, origins of term 43
organized crime, transnational 194 Policy Network (think tank) 51
Organización Demócrata Cristiana de policy networks 6–7, 37–8; terminology
América (ODCA) 153 43, 44
Organization for Economic Cooperation policy options, definition, political process
and Development (OECD) 154 phases 220
Ortuño Anaya, Pilar 53, 154 Polish Social Movement Solidarity
Osterhammel, Jürgen 18 (RS AWS) 164
ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei) 138, 139, political foundations: as embassies 162;
140, 141, 142, 144 as NGOs 150; pluralism and 152;
as transnational actors 150–2;
PALMA (EMMI products) 203 see also Germany
Palme, Olof 140 political parties: cooperation, preceding
Parrish, Richard 49 accession of new Member States 160–4;
Parsons, Craig 26, 29 ‘regime parties’ 132; in transnational
Partido do Centro Démocratico Social politics 21–2, 131–3, 145; see also
(CDS) (Portugal) 141 Christian Democracy
Partido Popular (PP) 141 political process phases (elite interaction):
Partido Social Democrata (PSD) agenda setting 220; policy options 220;
(Portugal) 134 preference formation 220–1
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) Politische Stiftungen see political foundations
53, 154 Portugal: Partido do Centro Démocratico
Partit Nazzjonalista (PN) (Malta) 141 Social (CDS) 141; PSD
Party of Democratic Socialism (Partido Social Democrata) 134;
(Germany) 151 Socialist Party 154
Party of European Socialists (PES) 161, 163 PP (Partido Popular) 141
Pasture, Patrick 8, 21, 28, 109–30 preference formation, political process
Patten, Chris 133, 137 phases 220–1
Peasant Party (PSL) (Poland) 161 ‘Prevention and Control of Organized
Persson, Göran 51 Crime’ 200
PES (Party of European Socialists) 161, 163 Pridham, Geoffrey 76
Peterson, John C. 48 ‘privileged transnational business civilization’,
Pinochet, General 138 concept of 102
pluralism: interest groups 90–3; policy Progressive Governance 7
networks 38; see also policy networks; Progressive Governance Conference, London
political foundations and; Western (2003) 51
Europe (post-1945) Progressive Governance Network 56
PN (Partit Nazzjonalista) (Malta) 141 Progressive Governance Summits (New York,
PODACS (Police Data Computer Florence and Berlin) 51
System) 204 PSC (Walloon Parti Social Chrétien) 141
Poland: Green Party 160; Konrad Adenauer PSD (Partido Social Democrata)
Foundation in 157; Robert Schuman (Portugal) 134
238 Index
PSL (Peasant Party) (Poland) 161 Sheptycki, J. W. E. 195
PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) SI (Socialist International) 154, 163
53, 154 Sikkink, Kathryn 42, 156, 159
Single European Act 91
Radaelli, Claudio M. 49–50 Single Market coalition 49
Raffarin, Jean-Pierre (French Prime Minister) Single Market Programme 3, 11, 89
134–5 Självständighetspartiet (Iceland) 140
Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) Slaughter, Anne-Marie 5
(France) 134, 141 SLD (Democratic Left Alliance) (Poland)
rationality, norms and 164–5 160, 161, 163
Rato, Rodrigo 143 Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) 161
Red-Green Coalition (Germany) 160 Slovakia, anti-Mečiar opposition 9
Régin, Tania 123 Smith, Julie 145
Reiner, Robert 193 Smith, Martin 44
Reiter, Janusz 157 Smith, Michael 52
Renard, André 112, 114 Soares, Mario 154
research examples: business 98–100; Social Charter, European 115, 116
networks 47–55; socialization 70–6 social constructivism 62
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Social Democratic Party (SPD) (Germany)
Hochschule (Aachen) 178 151, 161
Rhodes, Rod 39, 40, 41, 45–6 social influence, socialization 65, 66
Richards, David 44, 46 socialization, transnational 7, 22–3, 61–82;
Richardson, Jeremy 73 ‘acculturation’, and 18; ‘actor socialization’
Risse[-Kappen] Thomas 4, 71, 86–7, 151, 62; adoption costs 68–9; ‘anticipatory
156, 211 socialization’ 76; authority, and
RLS (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung) legitimacy 67; bargaining 65, 66; definition
(Germany) 151 of ‘socialization’ 63; deliberation/setting
Robert Schuman Foundation, Poland 157 68; domestic resonance 68; ‘failed
Rome Treaties see Treaties of Rome (1957) socialization’ 69; ‘heuristic claims’ 29;
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) identification 67–8; imitation 64–5;
(Germany) 151 mechanisms 64; methodological issues
Rosenberg, Ludwig 118 69–70; national and 77; networks and 52;
RPR (Rassemblement pour la République) other socialization processes distinguished
(France) 134, 141 63–4; primary political 77; research
RS AWS (Polish Social Movement examples 70–6; rule adoption 63, 65;
Solidarity) 164 social influence 65, 66; social learning
rule adoption, socialization 63, 65 65–6; structural compatibility/opportunities
68; theory 63–9; time horizon, socialization
Sabatier, Paul 42, 47 research 27; transaction costs 68
Sandholtz, Wayne 3, 89 Socialist International (SI) 154, 163
Satellite Broadcast, EDU committee 142 Socialist Movement for the United States of
Sautter, Christian 218 Europe 115
Scheingold, Stuart A. 62 social learning, socialization 65–6
Schengen Implementing Agreement 192 SOCRATES Programme 172, 183
Schevenels, Walter 111, 112, 115 Soros Foundation 75
Schimmelfennig, Frank 7, 22–3, 27, 52, Spaak, Paul-Henri/Spaak Report (1956),
61–82, 88, 131, 144, 215, 216 integration theory 22
Schlüter, Poul 138 Spaak Committee 122, 123
Schröder, Gerhard 51 Spain: Alianza Popular (AP) 141; Partido
Schumacher, Kurt 29 Popular (PP) 141; Unión de Centro
Schuman, Robert 26 Democrático (UCD) 141
Schuman Plan 122 SPD (Social Democratic Party) (Germany)
Schwarz, Hans-Peter 17–18 151, 161
Schwarzer, Daniela 9–10, 210–27 ‘spill-over’, concept of 3, 7, 61; ‘political’/
SDK (Slovak Democratic Coalition) 161 ‘cultivated’ spill-over 71, 73, 76
Serrarens, P. J. S. (Dutch Secretary General Stability and Growth Pact 210, 214, 217,
of Christian trade union movement) 26 218, 224
Index 239
Starie, Peter 1–14, 151 transactionalism, theory of 23
state-centrism 4 transaction costs, socialization 68, 73
Stockholm Convention, and EFTA 118 transactions, European Higher Education
Stoltenberg, Gerhard 143 Area 173–4
Stone Sweet, Alec 89 Transatlantic Business Dialogue 100
Strauss, Franz Josef 138, 139 transgovernmental relations, International
Streeck, Wolfgang 98 Relations 64
structural compatibility and opportunities, transnational actors: definition 5; functional
socialization, transnational 68 roles 11; as organizations 187–8
subsidiarity principle 172 transnational business see business,
supranationalism 5, 173; transnational
intergovernmentalism and 90, 91; Transnational Corporations (TNCs) 86, 92,
neo-functionalism and 88; socialization 94, 100
and 62 transnationalization: conceptualizing 23;
Svenska Folkpartiet, Finland 141 empirical evidence 24; integration and 83;
Sweden: free trade association with EC, neo-Gramscian transnationalism 94;
seeking 20; Moderata Samlingspartiet post-war Europe 31; process of 1, 2;
138, 140, 143 studies 12
Switzerland, free trade association with EC, transnationalism, defined 36, 84
seeking 20 transnational networks see networks,
SWP (German Institute for International transnational
Security) 222 transnational policing see policing,
transnational
Tampere European Council 197, 199 transnational relations, defined 151
Tandler, Gerold 140 transnational socialization see socialization,
Tarrow, Sidney 72, 73 transnational
Taus, Josef 138, 139, 140, 141 transnational society, neo-functionalism 90
TEMPUS 171 transnational space, EU as 1–14
ten Heuvelhof, Ernst F. 40 Transnational University, Limburg 178, 184
Thatcher, Margaret 137, 139 transnational Western Europe see Western
Thatcher, Mark 39 Europe, transnational
theory: business 84–6; networks 37–43; Treaties of Rome (1957): EU environmental
Western Europe, transnational action, omission in 45; integration theory
(post-1945) 19–28 24; trade unions and 118, 123
Thomas, Terry 193 Trenz, Hans Jörg 72
Tindemans, Leo 138, 139, 140 Trondal, Jarle 74
TNCs (Transnational Corporations) 86, 92, ‘trust’, concept of 24
94, 100 TUAC (Trade Union Advisory
TOBB (Turkish Union of Chambers Committee) 111
of Commerce, Industry, Maritime TUC (Trades Union Congress) (Britain) 110,
Commerce and Commodity 111, 112, 115, 118, 120, 123
Exchanges) 53 Turkey: Ankara, EC Delegation in 53;
Tobisson, Lars F. 140 Justice Party 141
Trades Union Congress (TUC) (Britain) 110, Turkish Chamber Development
111, 112, 115, 118, 120, 123 Programme 53
Trade Union Advisory Committee Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s
(TUAC) 111 Association (TUSIAD) 53
trade unions: Christian 110; Council of Turkish Union of Chambers of Commerce,
Europe and 111, 112, 115, 116; ECSC Industry, Maritime Commerce and
and 109, 111, 113, 114–15, 122, 123; Commodity Exchanges (TOBB) 53
EFTA and 8, 113, 114, 115, 117–19, TUSIAD (Turkish Industrialists and
121, 123; European involvement 109–10; Businessmen’s Association) 53
German 154; integration and 3, 21,
114–17; international organization UCD (Unión de Centro Democrático)
110–14; ‘outer seven’ 117; Rome Treaties (Spain) 141
118, 123; as transnational movement UDF (Union pour la Démocratie
109–30; ‘two Europes’, in 119–21 Française) 141
240 Index
Ugglas, Margaretha af 142 video-conferencing (EMMI products) 203
UIL (Unione italiana del lavoro) (Italy) 121 Visser, Jelle 123
UMP (Union pour un Mouvement von Hassel, Kai-Uwe 139
Populaire) (France) 134
UNICE (Union of Industrial and Employers’ Wallace, Helen 5, 194
Confederations of Europe) 100 Walloon Parti Social Chrétien (PSC) 141
Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) Warleigh, Alex 49
(Spain) 141 Watt, Robert 46
Unione italiana del lavoro (UIL) (Italy) 121 Welle, Klaus 162
Union of Freedom (UW) 157, 160, 165 Western Europe, transnational (post-1945) 6,
Union of Industrial and Employers’ 17–35; ‘Americanization’ of 25;
Confederations of Europe (UNICE) 100 historiographical tradition 17, 18; history
Union pour la Démocratie Française and theory 23–8; methodology 28–31;
(UDF) 141 theory and history 19–23
Union pour un Mouvement Populaire West Germany, democratization 152–4
(UMP) (France) 134 WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions)
United Kingdom: Anglo-German 110, 111
Association 136; British Young Whitehead, Laurence 156
Conservatives 135; Conservative Party Whitelaw, William 137
134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 144; World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Federation of Conservative Students 135; (CIVICUS) 55
National Criminal Intelligence World Federation of Trade Unions ( WFTU)
Service 199 110, 111
United Nations, Economic Committee for Worldwide Fund for Nature ( WWF) 48
Europe in 111 WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) 48
United States of Europe: Action
Committee 24, 115; ideal of 122;
Socialist Movement 115 YEF (Young European Federalists) 136
Unit Pricing Directive, advocacy coalition YEPP (Youth of EPP) 146
approach 49 Young Conservatives 158
US (Czech Union for Freedom) 162 Young Democrats 158
UW (Union of Freedom) 157, 160, 165 Young European Federalists (YEF) 136
Young Social Democrats 158
Vachudova, Milada 76 Youngs, Richard 54
van Apeldoorn, Bastiaan 7–8, 83–106, Youth of EPP (YEPP) 146
151, 173
van der Pijl, Kees 94, 99 Zagaris, Bruce 196
van Vught, Frans 188 ZEI (Center for European Integration
van Waarden, Frans 22, 38, 52 Studies) 222–3
Veldkamp, Gerard 120–1 Zielonych, Partia 160
Verbindungsstellen (regional network contact Zito, Anthony R. 41–2
points) 203 Zukin, Sharon 175
Via Compesina (global network) 54 Zysman, John 3, 89

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Transnational European Union

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the European Union is an increasingly

● Theoretical chapters examining and discussing the main conceptual

This volume will be of great interest to students and researchers of

Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth

Peter Starie is Principal Lecturer in Politics at the University of Portsmouth.

‘Transnationalism’ broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people

1 New Transnational Social Spaces

2 Transnational Muslim Politics*

3 New Approaches to Migration?

4 Work and Migration

5 Communities across Borders

7 The Media of Diaspora

9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora

10 International Migration and the Globalization of

* Also available in paperback.

13 Transnational Activism in Asia

14 Diaspora, Identity and Religion

15 Cross-Border Governance in the European Union

16 Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf

17 Central Asia and the Caucasus

18 International Migration and Security

19 Transnational European Union

ISBN 0–415–36512–0 (Print Edition)

The European Union as a transnational political

1 Transnational Western Europe since 1945: integration

2 Transnational networks: informal governance

3 Transnational socialization: community-building

4 Transnational business: power structures in

5 Trade unions as a transnational movement in the

7 German political foundations: transnational party

8 Transnational actors in the European Higher

9 Copweb Europe: venues, virtues and vexations of

10 Transnational consensus building in EMU economic

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the European Union is an increasingly

Towards conceptualizing transnational

Conceptual perspectives and empirical case studies

Aspects of European transnationalization

Theory and history

History and theory

Transnational networks of public, quasi-public and private actors are increasingly

As a meso-level approach, it found itself in ‘no-man’s land’; it did not have

In sum, although the network approach discusses patterns of interaction among

In the early days of regional integration theory, ‘transnational socialization’ was

Imitation According to the mechanism of imitation, the community rules are

Table 3.1 Mechanisms of socialization

Logic of appropriateness Logic of consequentiality

Rules Templates, Validity claims Conditions of rewards and punishments

The literature further distinguishes system-structural, process and domestic-

Table 3.2 Conditions of rule adoption

Logic of appropriateness Logic of consequentiality

Imitation Social learning Social influence Bargaining

System structure Authority (agency), legitimacy (rules), Power (agency)

Authority and legitimacy Transnational socialization is more likely if domestic

Transnationalization can be seen as an important aspect of the European

Transnational relations and transnational business

‘Classical’ integration theory: the

European governance and public policy:

Neo-Gramscian transnationalism: transnational

Original European involvement

International trade union organization: cradle

Resuming European integration

EFTA – an alternative to the European