E-Book, Deutsch, Englisch, 376 Seiten
Taking Stock of the Post-Lisbon Era
E-Book, Deutsch, Englisch, 376 Seiten
Reihe: Foster Europe - International Studies Series
ISBN: 978-3-7065-5813-6
Verlag: Studien Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The book addresses this theoretical and empirical gap. Referring TO STUDIES ON PARLIAMENTARISM, FEDERALISM, AND EUROPEANIZATION the contributions discuss how to include subnational parliaments in the existing research. A total of 74 subnational parliaments from eight member states is affected by the new system, which allows them to participate in the so-called Early Warning Mechanism of subsidiarity control. The situation in six EU member states is analyzed in detail. The country chapters illustrate and analyze how subnational parliaments in the federal member states (Austria, Belgium, Germany) and in the decentralized/devolved ones (Great Britain, Italy, Spain) functionally adapt to the new opportunity structure and discuss the repercussions on legislative-executive relations as well as on interparliamentary relations.
With contributions from Gabriele Abels; Katrin Auel and Martin Große Hüttman; Peter Bursens, Frederic Maes and Matthias Vileyn; Peter Bußjäger; Josep-María Castellà Andreu and Mario Kölling; Ben Crum, Annegret Eppler; John Erik Fossum; Anna-Lena Högenauer; Sabine Kropp; Robert Ladrech; Erik Miklin; Matteo Nicolini; Werner J. Patzelt; Tapio Raunio; Werner Reutter; Gerhard Stahl and Bert Kuby; Gracia Vara Arribas.
CONTENTS
Prefaces
Stefan August Lütgenau: Subnational Parliaments and EU Integration
Gabriele Abels: Opening Up a New Research Field – Preface
Annegret Eppler: Engaging in 'Subnational Parliaments in the EU System' - Starting Point and Formation of this Book
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Gabriele Abels: Subnational Parliaments as 'Latecomers' in the EU Multi-Level Parliamentary System - Introduction
Subnational Parliaments in the Multi-Level System of the EU: Conceptual Issues and Research Perspectives
Ben Crum: The Emergence of an EU 'Multilevel Parliamentary Field' - Is there a Role for Subnational Parliaments?
Robert Ladrech: Europeanization and Subnational Parliaments - A Research Perspective
Sabine Kropp: Federalism and Subnational Parliaments - A Delicate Relationship?
Subnational Parliaments and their National and European Environment
Tapio Raunio: National Parliaments - Gatekeepers for Subnational Parliaments?
Gracia Vara Arribas: The Early Warning System in Motion - Comparing Different Practices in Subnational Parliaments
Gerhard Stahl and Bert Kuby: The Growing Role and Responsibility of Parliaments in European Integration and Economic Governance - A View from the Committee of the Regions
Subnational Parliaments as Political Actors in EU Affairs: Case Studies of Federal States
Eric Miklin: Towards a More Active Role in EU Affairs - Austrian State Parliaments after Lisbon
Peter Bursens, Frederic Maes and Matthias Vileyn: Belgian Regional Assemblies in EU Policy-making - The More Parliaments, the Less Participation in EU Affairs?
Gabriele Abels: No Longer Losers - Reforming the German Länder Parliaments in EU Affairs
Werner Reutter: The Quandary of Representation in Multilevel Systems and German Land Parliaments
Subnational Parliaments as Political Actors in EU Affairs: Case Studies of Devolved and Regionalized States
Matteo Nicolini: The New Italian Framework for Regional Involvement in EU Affairs - Much Ado and Little Outcomes
Anna-Lena Högenauer: The Scottish Parliament - Active Player in a Multilevel European Union?
Josep-Maria Castellà Andreu and Mario Kölling: Asymmetrical Involvement of Spanish Autonomous Parliaments in EU Affairs
National and Transnational Cooperation of Subnational Parliaments
Annegret Eppler: Interparliamentary Relations of Subnational Parliaments - Delayed or Different?
Peter Bußjäger: The Conference of European Regional Legislative Assemblies - An Effective Network for Regional Parliaments?
Assessing the Role of Subnational Parliaments in the EU Multi-Level Parliamentary System
Werner J. Patzelt: Changing Parliamentary Roles - What Does this Mean for Subnational Parliaments and European Integration?
Katrin Auel and Martin Große Hüttmann: A Life in the Shadow? Regional Parliaments in the EU
John Erik Fossum: Reflections on the Role of Subnational Parliaments in the European Multilevel Parliamentary Field
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
Prefaces
Stefan August Lütgenau: Subnational Parliaments and EU Integration
Gabriele Abels: Opening Up a New Research Field - Preface
Annegret Eppler: Engaging in 'Subnational Parliaments in the EU System' - Starting Point and Formation of this Book
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Gabriele Abels: Subnational Parliaments as 'Latecomers' in the EU Multi-Level Parliamentary System - Introduction
Subnational Parliaments in the Multi-Level System of the EU: Conceptual Issues and Research Perspectives
Ben Crum: The Emergence of an EU 'Multilevel Parliamentary Field' - Is there a Role for Subnational Parliaments?
Robert Ladrech: Europeanization and Subnational Parliaments - A Research Perspective
Sabine Kropp: Federalism and Subnational Parliaments - A Delicate Relationship?
Subnational Parliaments and their National and European Environment
Tapio Raunio: National Parliaments - Gatekeepers for Subnational Parliaments?
Gracia Vara Arribas: The Early Warning System in Motion - Comparing Different Practices in Subnational Parliaments
Gerhard Stahl and Bert Kuby: The Growing Role and Responsibility of Parliaments in European Integration and Economic Governance - A View from the Committee of the Regions
Subnational Parliaments as Political Actors in EU Affairs: Case Studies of Federal States
Eric Miklin: Towards a More Active Role in EU Affairs - Austrian State Parliaments after Lisbon
Peter Bursens, Frederic Maes and Matthias Vileyn: Belgian Regional Assemblies in EU Policy-making - The More Parliaments, the Less Participation in EU Affairs?
Gabriele Abels: No Longer Losers - Reforming the German Länder Parliaments in EU Affairs
Werner Reutter: The Quandary of Representation in Multilevel Systems and German Land Parliaments
Subnational Parliaments as Political Actors in EU Affairs: Case Studies of Devolved and Regionalized States
Matteo Nicolini: The New Italian Framework for Regional Involvement in EU Affairs - Much Ado and Little Outcomes
Anna-Lena Högenauer: The Scottish Parliament - Active Player in a Multilevel European Union?
Josep-Maria Castellà Andreu and Mario Kölling: Asymmetrical Involvement of Spanish Autonomous Parliaments in EU Affairs
National and Transnational Cooperation of Subnational Parliaments
Annegret Eppler: Interparliamentary Relations of Subnational Parliaments - Delayed or Different?
Peter Bußjäger: The Conference of European Regional Legislative Assemblies - An Effective Network for Regional Parliaments?
Assessing the Role of Subnational Parliaments in the EU Multi-Level Parliamentary System
Werner J. Patzelt: Changing Parliamentary Roles - What Does this Mean for Subnational Parliaments and European Integration?
Katrin Auel and Martin Große Hüttmann: A Life in the Shadow? Regional Parliaments in the EU
John Erik Fossum: Reflections on the Role of Subnational Parliaments in the European Multilevel Parliamentary Field
Gabriele Abels
Subnational Parliaments as ‘Latecomers’ in the EU Multi-Level Parliamentary System – Introduction
1. Introduction1
‘(I)t is for each national Parliament or each chamber of a national parliament to consult, where appropriate, regional parliaments with legislative powers.’ This specific stipulation of Article 6 of Protocol No.?2 on Subsidiarity and Proportionality of the Lisbon Treaty lies at the heart of this book. With this provision the 2009 Lisbon Treaty opened a ‘window of opportunity’ for a specific subtype of regional or subnational assemblies, i.e. for those endowed with autonomous legislative powers, powers, seeking involvement in the subsidiarity monitoring process. This process, often called the Early Warning System (EWM), has become an integral part of EU policy-making. But what is the reality ‘behind’ it? How does it really affect these regional parliaments? What are its broader implications for the EU polity? This book addresses these questions from various perspectives. First, it is important to consider what regions are and what regional parliaments are. In the EU context, the term region is quite ambiguous. It refers here to the meso-level in an EU member state, i.e., a sub-state polity positioned between the local/municipal and the national level. Some regions, however, consider themselves to be nations (e.g., Catalonia, Scotland). For this reason in this book the term ‘subnational’ is used to distinguish it from the local, national and supranational levels. Accordingly, regional parliaments serve as legislative assemblies located at this meso-level. Thus, we speak of ‘subnational parliaments’ in this book. Regions have been interested in participation in EU affairs, dating back to the early 1990s and the Maastricht Treaty. These early activities were dominated by subnational governments. More recent activities do not come out of the blue; rather they have a longer history which established a ‘path’ of regional participatory practices. The Lisbon Treaty has brought significant changes. Based on insights from historical and sociological institutionalism, one can argue that the Protocol No.?2 stipulation opened a ‘window of opportunity’ in the sense that regions, especially subnational parliaments, now possess an instrument that they may choose to use, reinforced by a new norm favouring pro-active parliamentary behaviour. How subnational parliaments opt to respond to new incentives, e.g., by undertaking diverse reform processes and behavioural changes, varies. By and large, the reforms focus primarily on involvement in the EWM, but they also go beyond this mechanism. The aim is to adapt their institutional and cognitive structures in order to develop ‘regional EU capacity’ (Carter and Pasquier 2010:?297). This is important for all subnational parliaments. This capacity, however, does not include the ability to establish direct relations with EU institutions or to become an actor at EU level. It will affect the vertical territorial relations in the domestic political arena, i.e., the role of subnational parliaments vis-à-vis their subnational governments, their national parliament and the national government. Given the diversity of constitutional orders in the eight member states immediately affected by Article 6, the reform processes and their consequences will differ among a total of 74 subnational parliaments.2 The first thing to bear in mind when analysing these changes is the policy dimension, focusing on the policy sectors in which the subnational level has legislative competences; this differs among the eight member states based on their respective constitutional orders. Secondly, participation rights, i.e., access to European policy-making arenas, should not be confused with real impact. Impact assessment is still in its infancy; this book therefore concentrates on the institutional framework; it addresses some elements of behavioural-cognitive change but does not systematically investigate the actual impacts on policy. The number of ‘regional parliaments with legislative powers’, 74 at present, is almost double the number of national parliaments and/or the number of chambers in national parliaments across all 28 EU member states.3 The literature on national parliaments and their role in European integration has flourished since the mid-1990s, especially in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty; there is now a vast array of Europeanization-inspired studies on national parliaments.4 The large group of subnational parliaments has not attracted wide attention thus far, however, while the literature on regionalization and the territorial impact of European integration on subnational parliaments comprises, at best, a footnote. This book attempts to overcome the prevailing ‘governmental fixation’ in the literature to date, by attending to such imbalances and locating subnational parliaments in the EU multi-level polity. The investigation of their role in multi-level governance is linked to the intense debate about the democratic or legitimacy deficit afflicting international politics, in general, and the European Union, in particular. The need for full parliamentarization of the EU polity is a well-established strand in the deficit-oriented literature. Parliaments clearly lie at the heart of complex systems for securing democratic legitimacy through national representation since they function as the institutional embodiment of popular sovereignty. Yet, in politics beyond the nation state parliaments face new challenges, having lost they role as key actors. Contemporary government-parliament relations reflect an imbalance in favour of executive dominance; the EU itself offers a good example of this power shift. The decline in national parliamentary powers has not been compensated at the EU level by increasing powers for the European Parliament, resulting in a parliamentary legitimacy gap there. In response, national parliaments especially are widely perceived as ‘losers’ or, at best, as ‘latecomers’ to European integration (see Maurer and Wessels 2001). While national executives have adapted to Europeanized policy-making in ways that increase their influence on supranational policies, parliaments have faced greater difficulties in responding to Europeanization effects. Overcoming this gap will require a solution that goes beyond a simple ‘either-or-model’; the Union needs to develop a more complex model of representative politics which strengthens the role of the European Parliament and national parliaments, thereby enhancing both representative pillars of democratic legitimacy upon which the EU as a polity sui generis must rest (cf. Benz 2003; Hurrelmann and Debardeleben 2009). Recent empirical research attests that it is simplistic to fixate on a clear trend towards deparliamentarization. While the 1992 Maastricht Treaty offered non-binding declarations regarding national parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty transformed these into a binding protocol. The unsuccessful Constitutional Treaty of 2005 likewise foresaw an enhanced role for parliaments at all levels, from the supranational down to the regional level. The 2009 Lisbon Treaty turned these into a legally binding stipulation, highlighting the principle of representative democracy in Art. 10 TEU. Placing stronger emphasis on parliamentarization at the supranational level via the European Parliament and at national level via national parliaments, it also calls for stronger interparliamentary cooperation (Art. 5 and 12 TEU, and Protocol No.?1 on the role of national parliaments). One thus observes paradoxical trends, deparliamentarization and parliamentarization occurring within EU politics, which call for a more nuanced analysis a multiple levels that captures this complex phenomenon. So far, most empirical studies have either focused on the amazing evolution of the European Parliament or on disempowered national parliaments. The former has emerged as the clear winner of all treaty reforms since 1992 (Maastricht Treaty) in terms of gaining greater legislative control. The 2014 elections tell a story about the European Parliament’s own Leitbild intent on fostering a full-blown system of parliamentary rule under which even the selection of the European Commission president depends on the support of EP political party groups. A Commission candidate now participates in EP election campaign, serving as Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate), for his or her European party family (see Hobolt 2014). There is moreover a growing body of literature on national parliaments in the 28 member states, addressing their involvement in EU affairs at the national and supranational levels.5 The question is how parliaments might best respond to changes induced by European integration, what Auel and Benz (2005) called ‘the politics of adaption’. New challenges centre on exercising parliamentary functions vis-à-vis national governments, the Europeanization of law-making, and the need to intensify interparliamentary cooperation at the EU level. The broader implications of these developments for parliamentary rule in the EU are widely discussed either in numerous single case or small-n comparative studies. Empirical studies have had a profound effect on conceptual developments regarding parliamentary legitimacy. Conceptualized as a ‘multi-level system’ of governance since the 1990s, the multi-level paradigm has infiltrated different strands of EU research on parliaments. The terms ‘multi-level parliamentarism’ (Maurer 2002, 2009, 2011, 2012) and ‘multi-level parliamentary...
