Jcms-Journal of Common Market Studies最新文献

What role do border regions play in fostering a European identity? The European Union considers them relevant places of integration and has dedicated €10 billion to cross-border co-operation between 2014 and 2020. This action relies on the idea that border regions are hot spots of integration, as they allow citizens to engage in transnational activities, stimulating a sense of cross-border community, which is said to increase attachment to Europe. However, it remains unclear whether individuals in border regions are indeed more attached to Europe, as theory would predict. We address this research question by comparing the attachment to Europe of 25,257 German border and non-border residents, analysing several factors that could impact attachment to Europe in these regions. Our results indicate that living in a border region is unrelated to increased attachment to Europe. This finding casts doubt on the thesis of border regions as hot spots of an emerging European identity.

Building on the existing literature on business power that has evolved against the background of a liberal economic world order, this article develops a novel analytical framework to capture business strategies in an altered, geoeconomic context. It addresses the research question whether and how business power has been affected by the more recent turn of European policy-makers to adopt geoeconomic measures in response to external geopoliticising pressures. The relevance of these categories for analysis is illustrated by discussing recent cases of business lobbying on the EU's geoeconomic agenda, as well as business responses to the sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. These illustrative examples show that whilst most business actors have adapted their strategies, there are also cases where business actors adhere to and defend the status quo. The article prepares the ground for further research on the understudied consequences of the geoeconomic turn for business power.

Counter-disinformation policies have become a prominent subject of study in Europe. The story of their early development in the European Union (EU) reveals the surprising influence of small states, in particular Latvia. This article exposes how, as a first mover in a growing coalition of like-minded states, Latvia shaped the development of counter-disinformation policies in the EU starting with the creation of the East StratCom Task Force (ESTF) in 2015. This has had a significant impact on the governance of disinformation, providing valuable lessons for the study of small states' influence in the EU. Building on 30 interviews with policy-makers, this case study demonstrates that utilising the Council Presidency can be a fruitful strategy for small states seeking to make a mark on EU security governance, with a plethora of examples as to how they can get other states and institutions on board, thereby securing long-lasting leverage.

City diplomacy between European Union (EU) and Chinese cities has become an increasingly significant layer of bilateral relations. The collaboration between cities is extensive and covers a wide range of thematic areas, with around half of European cities having partnerships with Chinese counterparts, according to a survey of 745 cities. However, despite the commonality of these partnerships, our research has highlighted a disconnect between subnational relations and the upper levels of European policy. Despite some previous initiatives, local actors have not been effectively engaged in EU policy-making. The European Parliament has called for greater co-ordination with substate actors, but this call has gone unanswered. This article unpacks the city level of EU relations with China, showing its scope, patterns of co-operation and potential impact. The authors present theoretical and empirical arguments to support the notion that city diplomacy could have a much more significant impact on EU policy towards China.

Heightened geopolitical tensions and the growing securitization of economic exchange over the past decade have prompted many countries to adopt new geoeconomic tools. Long resistant to this geoeconomic turn, the European Union (EU) has since 2017 created a panoply of innovative policy tools that blend trade and investment with essential security concerns. This article asks why and how the EU has been able to operate the doctrinal and policy changes necessary to put economic tools at the service of geopolitics. After introducing a typology of the defensive and offensive geoeconomic tools deployed by advanced industrial economies, we present the novel geoeconomic toolkit quickly assembled by the EU, which we explain by the confluence of external factors that triggered European leaders' beliefs that change was necessary and internal factors that made such change institutionally and politically possible, a trend reinforced by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The European Union (EU) has taken a geoeconomic turn since 2017 by creating a series of new unilateral instruments designed to preserve European autonomy and adjust to the progressive unravelling of the liberal international economic order. The most controversial of these instruments is the 2023 Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), designed to deter third countries from targeting the EU and its member states with economic coercion through measures affecting trade or investment. This article analyses why this new policy instrument was created, traces its institutional genesis and explores its implications by asking whether the ACI represents an intentional attempt to transform the foreign policy issue of coercion into a commercial one. Using process tracing based on interviews and primary and secondary materials, we argue that ‘foreign policy becoming trade policy’ through the ACI was an unintended consequence both of external pressures to institutionalise the trade–security nexus and of the EU's uneven internal competence base.

The article analyses the impact of Brexit on hard Eurosceptic discourses in the Visegrád Group countries from 2015 to 2023. As the negative implications of Brexit for the UK economy became clear, many hard Eurosceptics softened their rhetoric, using the referendum as a proxy for a ‘hard’ exit. Whilst the classical soft–hard typology remains dominant amongst scholars in the study of Euroscepticism, the case of Brexit shows that long-term principled opposition to the European Union (EU) can hide behind equivocal rhetoric. The article suggests studying the changing tactics of Eurosceptics by matching current EU and domestic contexts together with the long-term points of departure of hard Eurosceptics.

The European Union (EU) Timber Regulation (EUTR) formally requires EU operators to conduct due diligence along their supply chains to prevent illegally sourced timber products from entering the European market. Little is known about the regulatory behaviour and motivations of operators to comply with this regulation. We explore the regulatory behaviour of companies by applying a synthesis of behavioural theories of regulatory compliance and transnational market regulation. Informed by qualitative and quantitative mixed methods, this study finds that EUTR compliance is influenced by operators' regulative, economic, normative and cultural-cognitive motivations. The empirical analyses reveal that larger, publicly exposed companies are driven to comply through social pressure and the deterrence effect of sanctions and control. Operators' perceptions of the costs and benefits do not explain compliance behaviour in a significant, quantitative way. The Internal values to abide by the law are found to be a stronger motivator than economic cost–benefit calculations.

The European defence market can be described as a geoeconomically relevant sector that forms part of Europe's overall economy, not least in the way that it is a producer of military capabilities and technologies and a repository of scientific skills. Traditionally, European Union (EU)-level steps to support and liberalise the sector have reflected a regulatory approach marked by soft law, but in recent years, the EU has also developed financial tools to incentivise defence co-operation. Looking specifically at the European Defence Fund (EDF), this article views this transition as evidence of a ‘geoeconomic turn’ in European defence market policy that is a response to structural challenges related to technology control, security of supply and geopolitical competition. Employing relative gains theory and liberal intergovernmentalism, this article charts the transition from market liberalisation to industrial policy in EU defence market initiatives based on specific intra- and extra-political dynamics.