Peer-reviewed journal articles
2020
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Heidbreder, E. G., & Schade, D. (2020). (Un)settling the precedent: Contrasting institutionalisation dynamics in the spitzenkandidaten procedure of 2014 and 2019. Research & Politics. Sage Publishing, London. Abstract: The article analyses the application of the spitzenkandidaten procedure as instances of a larger institution building process in which the European Parliament and the European Council try to enact competing rules. The Treaty of Lisbon introduced a new clause on how to appoint the Commission President. While in 2014 the European Parliament successfully realised its interpretation according to which the winning spitzenkandidat became Commission President, in 2019 the Council succeeded in deciding not only who would take the Commission presidency but also other key positions. We consider both appointments as cases of decision-making in a natural arena that lack stable institutions about how to appoint the Commission president. Accordingly, the single decisions pended on the case-specific strategic use of resources. While the analysis of the two single cases does not allow us to predict what the institutional rules for future appointments will be, we can identify key resources and strategies that will determine how the institutional rules will be shaped in the elections to come and thus further the understanding of the institutionalisation in the making.
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2019
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Heidbreder et al. (2019). EU referendums in context: What can we learn from the Siss case?. Public Administration, Vol. 97, Issue 2 (pp. 370-383). Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Abstract: The rising number of referendums on EU matters, such as the Brexit and the Catalonian independence votes, highlight the increasing importance of referendums as a problem-solving mechanism in the EU. We argue that the Swiss case provides essential insights into understanding the dynamics behind referendums, which are often lacking when referendums are called for in the EU. Referendums in EU member states on EU matters differ substantially from those in the Swiss context. Nevertheless, proponents of more direct democratic decision-making regularly cite the Swiss example. Our systematic analysis of why referendums are called, how they unfold and their effects in the EU and Switzerland reveals that the EU polity lacks the crucial conditions that embed direct democracy within the wider political and institutional system. The comparative perspective offers fundamental insights into the preconditions required for direct democracy to function and its limitations in the EU.
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2018
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Heidbreder, E. G. & Hartlapp, M. (2018). Mending the hole in multilevel implementation: Administrative cooperation related to worker mobility. Governance. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Abstract: European economic integration creates unintended consequences for national public administrations. This article offers a conceptual and empirical analysis of how these challenges are met. First, three challenges are identified: a reduced capacity to offer services to citizens who move freely, increasing administrative burdens, and negative externalities for all parts from a single states’ administrative failure. Second, a conceptual framework is developed that links each challenge to a most likely response in form of modes of administrative cooperation. Third, the framework is illustrated by an empirical analysis of the coordination of social security systems, labor inspectorates, and posted workers. The case studies show that horizontal administrative cooperation is developed stepwise over time and in line with the theoretical framework. In sum, we can sustain that horizontal administrative cooperation is a relevant additional integration dynamic that buffers unintended effects of market integration on formally independent but increasingly interdependent member state executive bodies.
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Klein, J., Plottka, J. & Tittel, A. (2016). Der Neustart der europäischen Integration duch eine inklusive Avantgarde?. Integration (pp. 141-168). Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden. Abstract: The Brexit referendum in June 2016 rekindled the discussion about the future of European integration, leading to a number of initiatives by different European actors. This article sums up the state of the current reform debate, showing that so far, only few specific reform projects have been initiated, before giving an overview over the results of the research project “The Relaunch of Europe”. The project compared the reform willingness and preferences of 27 member states in the policy areas of asylum and border protection, Economic and Monetary Union, Social Union and Defence Union. The results show that the group of members most willing to reform includes not only Germany and France, but also further founding states such as Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as Spain. Together, they are willing to further deepen integration in all areas of the survey and form an “inclusive avant-garde” remaining open for other groups of member states to join for particular policy areas if they are willing.
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2017
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Heidbreder, E. G. (2017). Public Policy, Institutional Formation, and Multilevel Policy-Making – or “How to Get It to the People?”, International Journal of Public Administration, 40:14, 1175-1185. Abstract: Revisiting Adrienne Héritier’s work, the article offers a meta-analysis of her writing that has contributed to the formation of three fields: policy analysis, institutional theory, and multilevel policymaking and polity formation. Along the roughly chronological description of these three foci, a narrative traces the intellectual elaboration of three central dimensions: structures, actors, and arenas. In sum, the formative relevance of Héritier’s theory-guided empirical approach is highlighted and depicted as seminal for future research.
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Heidbreder, E. G. (2017). Strategies in multilevel policy implementation: moving beyond the limited focus on compliance. Journal of European Public Policy, 24:9, 1367-1384. Abstract: Policy implementation in the European Union is most prominently analysed taking compliance as a conceptual starting point. However, compliance has an inherent top–down and state-centred bias. To overcome this limitation, a conceptual framework that links dimensions based on top–down/bottom–up implementation and vertical/horizontal multilevel governance is proposed. The thus derived four ideal-types of implementation in multilevel settings – centralization, agencification, convergence and networking – are complemented by functional expectations about policy-makers’ strategic choices over these types. A screening of existing research completes the contribution. The results show that the suggested conceptualization offers indeed a comprehensive framework to describe the implementation strategies to propose avenues for future explanatory studies on strategic choices over implementation types.
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2016
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Brandsma, G. J., Heidbreder, E. G. & Mastenbroek, E. (2016). Accountability in the post-Lisbon European Union. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 82(4), 621–637. Abstract: This special issue takes stock of recent post-Lisbon additions to the European Union’s accountability toolkit. It provides indications that older decision-making tools tend to be more accountable than newer ones, and that, in some areas, decision-making is shifting towards less accountable arenas. This introductory article reviews the debate on the gradual evolution of the European Union’s accountability system and introduces key aspects of the post-Lisbon era that can be expected to affect accountability in the European Union, and that have been overlooked by the literature thus far: delegated acts, economic governance and regulatory evaluations. The contributions to this special issue address each of these domains in detail and highlight the degree to which accountability has been enhanced. A final contribution shows how these arrangements fit into the wider landscape of already-existing European Union accountabilities and how this landscape has developed over time.
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Brandsma, G., Heidbreder, E. & Mastenbroek, E. (2016). Imputabilité dans l’Union européenne post-Lisbonne. Revue Internationale des Sciences Administratives, 82, 657-673.
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Klein, J. (2016). Europapopulismus - ein genuines Phänomen im europäischen Krisenkontext?. Integration (pp. 283-303). Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden. Abstract: In the past years, the eurosceptical and populist potential experienced a sharp growth throughout Europe. With the British referendum to leave the EU in June 2016, europopulist parties and movements were able to achieve a success without precedent. The article at hand tackles the ideological and strategical characteristics of europopulist parties and asks the question whether there is a genuine “europepopulism” in the European party system. Despite contextual differences and fragmentation phenomena, the similarities between euroscepticism and populism can be identified as extreme ideological positions, anti-establishment-campaigns, a narrative critical of the system, political emotionalisation, a flexibility regarding political content, and a tactical approach towards elections.
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2015
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(2015). Governance in the European Union: A Policy Analysis of the Attempts to Raise Legitimacy through Civil Society Participation. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 17:4, 359-377. Abstract: The article focuses on two flagship initiatives – the open method of co-ordination and online consultations – in which the European Union aimed to improve democratic legitimacy through collaborative governance. Offering an analytical framework to scrutinize the large body of existing theoretical and empirical research, the article concludes that not only were the high expectations on the effects of applied governance disappointed, the results also hint at larger, more general implications for the governance concept that, in contrast to the high expectations, appears to be indeed strongly dependent on government-like conditions to operate successfully.
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(2015). Multilevel Policy Enforcement: innovations in how to administer liberalized global markets. Public Administration, Vol. 93, Issue 4 (pp. 940-955). Willey Blackwell, Oxford. Abstract: Multilevel governance that spans beyond traditional hierarchical steering within states creates new policy enforcement challenges because it involves autonomous administrations of different jurisdictions in a single administrative act. Scrutinizing concrete new coordination tools, the article aims at conceptualizing coordination strategies and instruments to overcome structural problems in multilevel policy execution and trans-boundary administration. The empirical findings on instrument innovation in the European Union highlight the increased strategic promotion of horizontal administrative coordination. The functioning logic and autonomy-preserving character of such vertical coordination makes it a potential solution to functionally equivalent enforcement challenges on the global scale, exemplified by the administrative implementation of international trade agreements.
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2014
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Heidbreder, E. G. (2014). Kehrtwende in der Koordinierung europäischer Politikumsetzung: Horizontale Kapazitätsbündelung statt vertikaler Kompetenzverlagerung, Der moderne Staat: dms: Zeitschrift für Public Policy, Recht und Management, 1-2014, S. 37-54. Budrich, Leverkusen. Abstract: Policy coordination in multilevel systems faces particular coordination problems because competences to formulate and to apply law are usually attributed to different levels of the system. This article analyses recent innovations that indicate an extend use of horizontal cooperation. Based on a systematic illustration of horizontal administrative cooperation, the aim is to conceptualise the key characteristic of the underlying steering strategy as direct, decentralised and joint policy execution. Besides the supranational centralisation of administrative competences or the convergence of national administrative systems, horizontal cooperation thus represents a theoretically distinct approach to multilevel policy implementation.
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(2014). Why widening makes deepening: unintended policy extension through polity expansion. Journal of European Public Policy, 21:5, 746-760 Abstract: By analysing widening as the cause of deepening, the contribution examines unintended effects of enlargement. During the Eastern enlargement process, the European Commission was assigned competences vis-à-vis the candidate states which exceeded the powers formally conferred to it by the European Union acquis. During the pre-accession phase, the Commission thus implemented double standards that applied to candidate states but not to members. However, these special capacities did not expire in all policies, as expected. Theoretically, this raises the question: Under which conditions does policy-making lead to an increase of supranational capacities? The contribution concludes that widening produces systematic pressure for the deepening of supranational policy-making capacities. Whether such deepening persists depends not only on the interplay of actor preferences and institutional contexts, but to a decisive extent on the actual policy type that is institutionalized. Along these lines, the policy-making exercised in the most recent widening rounds did indeed cause deepening.
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2013
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Heidbreder, E. G., Frieß, D. & Feller, J. (2013). Demokratisierung durch Partizipation? - empirische Ergebnisse und neue Fragestellungen zivilgesellschaftlicher Beteiligung jenseits des Staates. ZPol Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, Heft 4 (pp. 605-626). Nomos, Baden-Baden.
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Heidbreder, E. (2013). European Union governance in the shadow of contradicting ideas: The decoupling of policy ideas and policy instruments. European Political Science Review, 5(1), 133-150. Cambridge Univeristy Press, Cambridge. Abstract: The institutional architecture of the European Union is based on two fundamentally competing ideas: supranational rule and national sovereignty. These two underlying ideas are not reconcilable and work at different levels in the background of the policy debate. While on the normative level public sentiments remain strongly linked to the idea of state autonomy, on the cognitive level the paradigm of a functional necessity to cooperate is decisive for actual policy making. Only in some policy domains, such as the single market program, have policy-makers attempted to re-couple normative and cognitive ideas. In contrast to this, the central argument is that policy-makers mostly adhere to an alternative strategy: the systematic decoupling of normative and cognitive ideas. Focusing on public administration, it is shown how deft policy instrumentation allows actors to realize program ideas that satisfy demands for increased supranational governance. At the same time, however, these instruments are in dissonance with how policies are framed against the background of public sentiments that assume domestic bureaucratic independence.
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2012
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Heidbreder, E. G. (2012) 'Civil Society Participation in EU Governance'. Living Review on European Governance Vol. 7: 2.
Abstract: For the longest time, the participation of civil society has not been an area of interest for neither EU researchers nor political decision-makers. This changed with a rising interest in the democratic credentials of the European Union. With the end of the initial permissive consensus on EU integration, civil society emerged as a possible remedy to bridge the gap between supranational governance and citizens. This Living Review presents the two dominant analytical perspectives on civil society participation: the notion of civil society as organized actors that contribute actively to multilevel governance, and civil society as the mold for an emerging European public sphere. Both these conceptual views are reflected in hands-on initiatives on the EU level. On the one hand, the European Commission in particular promotes the inclusion of organized societal interests in the informal decision-making procedures. On the other hand, various forms of deliberative practices have been introduced that build on the encompassing notion of constituting a trans-European public sphere. The review offers a comprehensive overview on the multiple definitions of civil society and the distinct role attributions these coexisting conceptions imply. The contribution draws a number of critical conclusions on the actual outcomes that the active promotion of civil society participation has thus achieved, and questions whether civil society participation has indeed led to a more grounded legitimacy of EU decisions or a more settled European public sphere.
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2011
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(2011). Structuring the European administrative space: policy instruments of multi-level administration, Journal of European Public Policy, 18:5, 709-727. Abstract: How can we perceive a European administrative space (EAS), given the persistent diversity between public administrations of the member states? To overcome theoretical and conceptual hurdles, I argue that a suitable pragmatic approach is to start from typology that presents ideal types of supranational instrumentation. The distinct actor constellations between supranational and national levels that are linked to each type entail divergent dynamics of an integrating administrative structure. Despite the external promotion of a metaphorical single administrative space during the Eastern enlargement, the driving dynamics of the emerging EAS remain based on mechanisms that respect and sustain differences between increasingly interdependent national public administrations. The theoretical framework and empirical application provide a first step for further research towards a comprehensive understanding of multi-level public administration and a systematic account of the varying effects that EU governance has on domestic public administrations.
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