2007/2 |
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ÖZP 2007/2, 107-124 [INHALT] [German]
Fiona Hayes-Renshaw (Brussels)
The Council presidency was conceived in the 1950s as an administrative chore to be shared on the basis of strict equality among the member states of the then European Communities. Today, it is a politically prestigious office, carrying with it important rights and responsibilities in a wider and deeper European Union, although many of the office’s rights and responsibilities are constrained both formally and informally. This article tracks the changes which have occurred to the office over time as a result inter alia of the weakening of the Commission, the burgeoning role of the European Council, changes in voting rules, deviations from the so-called ‘Community method’, enlargement and new transparency rules. The historic development and recent reforms of the office are traced by examining its four main functions (administration and coordination, the setting of political priorities, mediation, and internal and external representation) and the organisation of the presidency from the point of view both of the EU as a whole and of the member state in the chair. The preoccupation of recent presidencies with issues of publicity and information may be an attempt to help the public to distinguish one presidency from another. ÖZP 2007/2, 125-138 [INHALT] [German] Christopher Lord (Reading, UK) This paper assesses the notion of ‘dual representation’ and its implied claim that individual Council Members can be accountable to their national parliaments, whilst the Council of Ministers as a whole is checked and balanced by the European Parliament. The paper evaluates a number of possible constraints on the capacity of national parliaments to control the behaviour of their own governments in the Council of Ministers, including the decision rules of the Union, the non-transparency of the Council, asymmetries of information and the shape of domestic political systems. As far as the European Parliament is concerned, the paper argues that limits on its powers follow directly from the very notion that it should check and balance, and not control, the Council. To the extent those limits, in turn, discourage the politicisation of the Parliament, and its election on the basis of competition and choice relevant to the operation of the Union, ‘dual’ representation is itself a constraint on the evolution of ‘direct’ representation in the European Union arena. ÖZP 2007/2, 139-156 [INHALT] [German] Andreas Maurer (Berlin) This contribution examines reasons and basic conditions for the reform of the system of rotating presidencies in the Council of the European Union and the European Council. The problem is put into the larger context of the EU’s system and institutional reform as well as the ongoing mutations of the internal EU Council system. Given the perspective of the EU as a dynamic, polyarchic, multi-level and multi-actor system, any attempts for reforming the Council’s presidency must be analysed in a set of overlapping contexts: first with regard to the intra-institutional Council system, secondly with regard to the EU’s inter-institutional framework, thirdly with regard to the relations between the EU institutions and those of the member states and fourthly with regard to the relations between the EU member states. The paper therefore firstly explores the discursive arguments "in the field" as well as the empirical evidence on the (mal)functioning of the Council system within the EU structure. Only in a second step the contribution analyses which reforms of the Council Presidency system may accommodate the normative challenges of a more efficient and effective EU. The contribution closes with an independent suggestion for reforming the Council Presidency system. ÖZP 2007/2, 157-166 [INHALT] [German] Martin Westlake (Brussels) One of the innovations of the Constitutional Treaty would be the creation of a permanent Presidency of the European Council. A less-remarked upon provision in the Treaty is for the continuation of the traditional rotating presidency for all Council configurations except the future Foreign Affairs Council. In reality, most of the Treaty’s provisions in this context have already been quietly implemented through changes to the Council’s rules of procedure. This article examines why, even in a Union of 27 or more member states, the traditional presidency, with six-monthly rotations (grouped together into eighteen-month partnerships), still matters. It goes on to consider how, in effect, the traditional presidency’s role, particularly with regard to coordination, would become even more important if the permanent Presidency of the European Council were to be established. ÖZP 2007/2, 167-184 [INHALT] [German] Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger (Vienna) The most important items on the agenda were: the constitutional treaty and the debate on the future of the Union; enlargement, foreign policy, crisis management; energy policy, growth and employment, internal market; finances of the Union; area of freedom, security and justice; sustainable development. The domestic agenda of the semester was marked by a series of horizontal issues including growth and employment, energy, migration and security - solid routine work rather than watershed decisions. In terms of foreign policy the semester was characterized by a series of unexpected challenges, all of which suggest that the EU’s role at the international stage is likely to remain an issue of paramount importance. New ground was broken with regard to energy policy and crisis management. ÖZP 2007/2, 185-200 [INHALT] [German] Eric Linhart / Susumu Shikano (Mannheim) In this article we analyze the coalition building process in Austria after the general election of 2006. This process was in this respect complicated as none of the possible winning coalitions were preferred by all involved parties. With a particular regard to the actually formed grand coalition of SPÖ and ÖVP this paper aims to answer following questions: To what extent can the preference constellation of Austrian political parties explain the difficult coalition formation process? How stable is this game’s outcome, the grand coalition? Did any further coalitions have a realistic chance to be formed? To this end, we use a coalition-theoretic model which considers an office-oriented as well as policy-oriented motivation of actors. According to the empirical results, there is no coalition which is in a stable equilibrium, which confirms the difficult situation for coalition formation. Our analysis also shows that the grand coalition fulfils more likely conditio sine qua non for all participating parties than other alternative winning coalitions. Most of three-party coalitions can be less likely formed since at least one of the parties prefers with a high probability to be in the opposition than in the coalition. Due to the absence of alternative coalitions, we conclude a certain stability of the grand coalition. ÖZP 2007/2, 201-218 [INHALT] [German]
Michael Girkinger (Salzburg) Think tanks are institutions that create knowledge which influence public opinion and policy making processes. In fact, neoliberalism can look back on a long tradition in this respect. Beginning with the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich v. Hayek in 1947, there arised first in England, then in other countries numerous institutions whose intention were to oppose the Keynesean after-war-consensus. Hayek called Western democracies "unrestricted democracies" that would be inconsistent with a liberal order. In his view they would finally lead to "The Road to Serfdom", that is the title of his famous book published in 1944. The Viennese Hayek Institute wants to support the worldwide renaissance of the Austrian School of Economics and tries to make its ideas useful for public affairs activities. Starting with giving an overview of the basic ideas of Hayek the article first outlines the neoliberal think tank scene on a broad scale, also in a historical perspective, and tries to evaluate the significance of the Austrian School within this network; then it deals with the activities of the Hayek Institute and analyzes the connections with both national economic and political elites and a transnational neoliberal community. |