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2 Historical institutionalism and parliament Introduction To understand why parliamentary reform does or does not take place requires a prior understanding of the context in which it does or does not occur. The characteristics of the institution of parliament are a product of its historical development, and that development has fostered the emergence of particular norms and values that continue to shape its functioning and capabilities. Crucially, parliament cannot be understood in isolation from government and, consequently, parliamentary reform cannot be
This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia since the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it explains the EU’s contribution to post-conflict stabilisation and conflict resolution in Bosnia. The book demonstrates that institutions are a key variable in explaining levels of coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and that institutional legacies and unintended consequences have shaped CFSP impact over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy. The study concludes that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU’s international identity along the way.
This book provides readers with an analytical framework that serves to investigate and explain how the EU adapts its foreign policy in the wake of crisis. While a range of studies dedicated to foreign policy stability and change exist for the US context, such analyses are rare for the assessment and measurement of foreign policy change at the European Union level. This book explores a range of theories of (foreign) policy change and assesses their value for explaining EU foreign policy change. Changes to EU foreign policy, this study proposes based upon an in-depth investigation of recent episodes in which foreign policy has changed, are not captured well using existing typologies of policy change from other fields of study.
Offering a new perspective on the question of change, this book proposes an analytical framework focused on how institutions, institutional ‘plasticity’ and temporal context impact on the decision-making process leading to change. It thus provides readers with the tools to analyse, explain and conceptualise the various change outcomes in EU foreign policy. In so doing, it sets the theoretical approach of historical institutionalism to work in an EU foreign policy setting. Based on a rich empirical analysis of five case studies it provides a revised typology of EU foreign policy change. It proposes two novel forms of foreign policy change, symbolic change and constructive ambiguity, as frequent and important outcomes of the EU decision-making process.
change in British central government. Historical institutionalism is particularly suited to examining the temporal dimension of adaptation that forms the basis of our study. In Chapter 8 we take our analytical apparatus further and suggest a framework for explaining change. Europeanisation: adapting to integration The literature on Europeanisation has been growing in recent times and has included detailed consideration of how to define the concept as well as the specification of research designs for exploring its empirical features (Börzel 1999; Radaelli 2000; Knill
’s adaptation to the EU – both across Whitehall and more specifically within individual departments. Our examination of change has been facilitated by the development of tools of analysis derived from two approaches: Europeanisation and historical institutionalism. In particular we have drawn on historical institutionalism as a way of isolating key moments of change and of judging the pattern, degree and extent of adaptation by UK central government. We have used Europeanisation to help us understand the factors driving these changes and the extent to which EU influences can
and institutions has long been regarded as either determined by actors (RI) or institutional structures (SI). Scholars of historical institutionalism (HI) who take temporality seriously assume a mediating position between RI and SI (Hall and Taylor 1996 : 938; Steinmo 2008 : 113). According to Pierson ( 1996 : 126), HI is “ historical because it recognizes that political development must be understood as a process that unfolds over time. It is institutionalist because it stresses that many of the contemporary implications of these temporary processes are
policy can change. In this book I thus develop an analytical framework which explains the process by which EU foreign policy changes and the results of that change. To do this, I use the theoretical lenses of historical institutionalism (HI). Historical institutionalism is an approach to studying politics that suggests that in order to understand politics, we should see it as a continuous process that is embedded in institutions. Institutions are the organisations, rules, routines, policy structures or social norms which guide
This chapter proposes an analytical framework for studying changes to EU foreign policy. The Introduction explained how the ambition to draw up such a framework for the EU level is founded on a theoretical dialogue between historical institutionalism (HI), foreign policy analysis (FPA) and public policy studies. The key argument of this study is that to understand changes of EU foreign policy in the wake of critical junctures we need to understand the decision-making process following those critical junctures, in order to
9780719055157_4_008.qxd 20/3/09 12:05 PM Page 184 8 Understanding the impact of Europe This chapter returns to our concern with Europeanisation as manifested through a historical institutionalist analysis. In the first section of the chapter we use historical institutionalism as a way of taking stock of developments. We concentrate on the lessons to be drawn from the preceding four empirical chapters. The nature and dimensions of the changes that have taken place are examined and we isolate any critical moments and consider which of these might be defined as
on discursive and historical institutionalisms. Both ‘new instutionalisms’ emphasise the role of ideas in politics but they place different emphasis on their importance. Whereas discursive institutionalists see ideas as agents and stress their transformative role, historical institutionalists emphasise the role of structures as facilitators or as constraints to their success. Discursive institutionalists also see institutions as simultaneously Introduction 5 ‘constraining structures and enabling constructs of meaning’14 but they pay far less attention to those