Managing Europe from Home: The changing face of European policy-making under Blair and Ahern

1

Introducing the study

As two of the longest-serving prime ministers in Europe, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern had a profound impact on both the national and European stage. Their decade in power coincided with perhaps one of the most tumultuous periods of European integration, with no less than two successful rounds of treaty reform, a stalled Constitutional Treaty process, and two ratification crises. This book sets out to explore the way in which both leaders responded to the demands and opportunities of European Union (EU) membership by profoundly reshaping their domestic European policy-making processes in order to further their strategic policy agendas. It addresses a numbers of questions. To what extent did the UK and Irish policy-making process of 2007 differ from the one inherited in 1997? Why did the two leaders embark on such radical reforms? Did they make any difference? What has been their longer-term legacy?

These important empirical and comparative questions are related to broader theoretical and conceptual debates concerning the impact of European integration at the national level. By employing highly innovative conceptual and analytical frameworks, the book considers what these reforms tell us about the causal impact of European integration on national policy-making processes. How do governments try to manage and exploit the ever-changing demands and opportunities of membership? Do they simply adjust to EU-level pressures for change or try to adapt strategically in order to maximise their influence? Are the changes simply attributable to political agency or do they stem from longer-term structural developments in Brussels? These timely questions should be of interest to anyone concerned with the pervasive impact of European integration on domestic patterns of governance.

In this introductory chapter the nature of the research objectives and research questions that frame this study are outlined in detail, as well as the particular methodology that has been employed. It also provides a detailed synopsis of the book’s chapters, their main objectives and principal arguments.

Research objectives

The book is guided by three key research questions:

1 How was the national EU policy process adapted by Blair and Ahern in an attempt to project policy preferences more effectively?

2 How can we evaluate the impact of adaptation on the capacity of the UK and Irish governments to coordinate and project EU policy?

3 To what extent was adaptation driven by wider domestic reform processes or developments at the EU level?

From these we are able to generate a number of testable propositions. With respect to the first question, we hypothesise that the EU policy process within the UK and Ireland has underwent extensive reconfiguration between 1997 and 2007 (proposition 1). For example, Bulmer and Burch (2005) suggest that the UK European policy process experienced a ‘step change’ after 1997. Similarly Laffan and O’Mahony (2007) argue that the Irish European policy-making process was subject to ‘significant systemic change’ after 2001. The book sets out to rigorously test these claims by employing a distinctive ‘network’ analytical framework in order to map the changing face of the national EU policy-making process. The network framework offers a potentially more dynamic account of change within central government than many existing studies, because it enables us to broaden the scope of analysis away from relatively static structures and procedures, towards a consideration of more fluid processes of networking and patterns of power dependency.

Second, the study seeks to test the proposition that the reforms to the UK and Irish European policy-making process enhanced the capacity of their respective governments to project national EU policy (proposition 2). Here the book is careful to distinguish between process and outcome: the study is concerned principally with the institutional capacity of the policy process to formulate, coordinate and project national EU policy effectively, not with the ability of that process to secure ministerial objectives at the European level. Again it attempts to address a gap within the existing literature by combining an innovative theoretical and conceptual analysis of domestic administrative change with a detailed critical evaluation of the policy-making process, as well as practical recommendations for future reform. Although some studies have certainly considered the wider impact of domestic change (see Bulmer and Burch 2005; Rometsch and Wessels 1996; Wessels et al. 2003), there has been little attempt to undertake a rigorous comparative evaluation of change across member states. As such the book offers valuable insights and practical suggestions for enhancing policy delivery that will appeal to both political science researchers and policy practitioners.

Finally, the book hypothesises that the changes were attributable in part to longer-term developments at the EU level (proposition 3). In order to test this, the study sets out to explore how the pressures and demands of the European integration process may give rise to the adaptation and adjustment of national policy-making processes – the structures, procedures and mechanisms of decision making and coordination through which national policy is formulated. The national EU policy-making process provides a valuable microcosm of the wider national policy arena and at which we would logically expect the pressures and demands of European integration to be at their greatest. Although some studies have suggested that European integration does give rise to important domestic effects (notably Moravcsik 1998; Wessels et al. 2003), there has been surprisingly little attempt to analyse these causal processes in a systematic way or to formulate them into a coherent conceptual framework. Drawing upon the existing extensive literature on EU membership and domestic change, this study aims to make an innovative contribution to the concept and analysis of Europeanisation by rejecting conventional top-down accounts of domestic change in favour of a bottom-up research design. This distinctive ‘strategic-projection’ model of Europeanisation enables us to disaggregate the European effect and to begin to attribute relative causation to European integration.

Methodology

The analysis of policy-making adaptation under Blair and Ahern offers a unique insight into how national governments respond to the ever-changing demands and opportunities of EU membership. As two of Europe’s longest-serving prime ministers (from 1997 to 2007, 2008 respectively), the two leaders were in office during one of the most rapid and turbulent phases of European integration. The study therefore offers a valuable opportunity to explore the extent to which national governments are able to adapt strategically to EU-level developments while furthering their own strategic interests. By examining the decisions behind this process, we also gain a much clearer understanding of the nature of UK and Irish EU policy over this period, and offer a unique glimpse into the wider reforms and leadership styles that defined their decade in power.

In addition to the empirical merits of studying two of Europe’s most important political figures over the past decade, the selection of the UK and Ireland as case studies through which to explore the wider impact of European integration upon national policy-making processes offers four distinct advantages. First, the comparative approach provides a more convincing insight and exploration into the causal significance of EU membership than can be garnered from relying on counterfactual analysis within a single country (Andersen 2004: 51). This is complemented through the use of a longitudinal analysis. By studying the nature of change over a decade (1997–2007), it avoids presenting a static snapshot of the national EU policy-making process. Furthermore, temporal analysis allows us to undertake process tracing by which examples of domestic change are traced backwards in order to identify causation. Because of the likely time lag between any EU-level development and its manifestation at the national level (which could in theory be several years), analysis over a decade offers the opportunity to determine the causal significance of European integration during a particularly intensive period of treaty reform (undertaken or attempted in 1998, 2001 and 2005). It also enables us to conduct a direct comparison of the management and coordination of the UK and Irish EU presidencies in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

Second, the selection of the UK and Ireland also offers an entirely original comparison. Most empirical studies that consider the Europeanisation of national administrations tend to be of the single-state variety (see Armstrong and Bulmer 1996, 2003; Bulmer and Burch 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2005, 2009; Goetz 2004; Ladrech 1994; Zubek 2001). Moreover, there are only a handful of studies that analyse the Europeanisation of administrative arrangements in Ireland (see Adshead 2003, 2005; Laffan 2001, 2003; Laffan and O’Mahony 2007, 2008). Although these provide a wealth of detail and valuable analytical insights, the lack of a comparative dimension and their tendency to focus on macro-level features of the state as explanatory variables limits the generalisability of their findings. Most of the comparative studies that have been undertaken have been of large-scale studies of multiple member states (see Hanf and Soetendorp 1998; Kassim et al. 2000a; Rometsch and Wessels 1996; Wessels et al. 2003). Regrettably, not all of these studies have focused exclusively on national administrative change, with the consequence that there is often little direct or detailed comparative analysis.

Third, the few small-scale comparative studies that do exist tend to compare cases which are similar in terms of ‘size’ and ‘weight’ within the EU, but with widely divergent state forms – for example, the UK and Germany (Bulmer and Burch 2001; Knill and Lenschow 1998), France and the Netherlands (Harmsen 1999), Germany and Spain (Börzel 1999), the Nordic countries (Lægreid et al. 2004), or between the new Central and East European states and older member states (see Laffan 2005; Zaborowski 2004). In contrast the UK and Ireland have been selected as case studies for this book precisely because they diverge so significantly in terms of physical and population size, their political and economic ‘weight’ in the EU (in terms of formal voting and informal influence), and the scale and capacity of their national administrations. This approach allows us to explore how well comparatively ‘small’ Ireland is able to cope with the demands and pressures of EU membership vis-à-vis much ‘larger’ UK. In particular, it permits us to test and determine the causal significance of key independent variables in explaining divergence between the two: the availability of administrative resources, the style of executive leadership, the number and type of veto points, the degree to which power and responsibility is centralised, and the extent to which decision making and coordination is institutionalised. As characteristics of the policy-making process, rather than state form per se, these variables provide a more rigorous comparison and allow us to generalise to a greater extent from the research findings.

Finally, the choice of the UK and Ireland maximises congruence between the two case studies in order to control for ‘macro’ characteristics of state form, such as distinctive historical, constitutional and politico-institutional arrangements. A number of these characteristics are common to both countries during this period. First, historical, cultural and economic ties between the two ensured that simultaneous accession was always highly likely, equalising the length of time that both countries have had to adjust. Moreover, being latecomers to the integration project has meant that early adaptation was primarily reactive, aimed at catching up with the demands of integration rather than attempting to steer the project in a particular direction. Second, despite the disparity of electoral systems and the frequency of coalition government in Ireland, the political executives in both countries are unified constitutionally and are relatively politically homogeneous, giving rise to a predominance of strong, stable and ideologically unified governments. Third, as a microcosm of the Westminster/Whitehall model, the Irish political system is characterised by cabinet government and parliamentary sovereignty, while the civil service maintains a professional, apolitical ethos displaying shared characteristics of permanence, trust, consultation and information sharing (Menon and Wright 1998: 47). Finally, general elections in May and June 1997 heralded the arrival of new governments and prime ministers in the UK and Ireland respectively. Over the following decade both countries enjoyed a high level of political stability: neither experienced a change of government (Labour in the UK, and Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats in Ireland) nor of prime minister (Tony Blair in the UK and Bertie Ahern in Ireland), and both retained comfortable parliamentary majorities. Moreover, both governments entered office committed to the projection of a broadly pro-European policy. Blair envisioned the UK as a ‘bridge’ between the EU and US, and aimed to repair the damage inflicted during the Major years by instigating a ‘step change’ in the UK’s relations with its European counterparts. Similarly Ahern sought to maintain and build upon Ireland’s reputation as a communautaire member state and its perceived success in managing the 1996 EU presidency, while developing a more strategic approach aimed at satisfying Irish interests with respect to the Agenda 2000 negotiations and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. The wider political context in the two countries therefore remained relatively stable and congruent. Because these potential independent variables are common to both case studies, it allows us to control for their causal significance. In other words, the importance of these factors in explaining any differences between the UK and Ireland is minimised.

Book synopsis

The book begins by outlining the broader political landscape which forms the backdrop to the study. Chapter 2 is not intended to provide a detailed historical analysis of the European issue in UK and Irish politics, not least because many exceptional examples already exist. Rather it sets out to analyse and explain the divergent developmental trajectories of UK and Irish European diplomacy in the post-war period from a comparative perspective. It then presents a detailed assessment of EU policy under the Blair and Ahern governments – their aims and objectives, principal accomplishments and perceived failures. The rest of the book is divided into three parts, the first of which lays out the conceptual and analytical foundation for the study. Chapter 3 addresses the conceptual challenge posed by Europeanisation by reflecting on the utility of the existing goodness-of-fit model for exploring domestic adaptation aimed at uploading national policy preferences onto the EU arena. The chapter instead proposes a highly innovative strategic-projection model of Europeanisation, distinguishing between four distinctive modes through which change may be induced or instigated within national policy-making processes. In order to operationalise this model, Chapter 4 proposes the use of a distinctive strategic–relational network framework through which to map the boundaries of the EU policy process over time. This extends the focus of analysis from formal structures and procedures towards a consideration of the dynamic relationships that connect policy makers, and it facilitates evaluation by analysing the effectiveness of different strategies of adaptation.

Part II explores the nature of adaptation within the UK and Irish EU policy-making processes in detail. With reference to the three research propositions outlined above, Chapters 5 to 7 test the first proposition by analysing change from 1997 to 2007 using the distinctive network analytical framework. Structured thematically around the defining characteristics of governmental networks outlined in Chapter 4, the chapters allow us to disaggregate the nature of the adaptation strategy pursued in each country. Chapter 5 maps the boundaries of the UK and Irish EU networks by defining their common strategic agenda and detailing the codes of conduct that governed the formal roles and informal procedures of key players between 1997 and 2007. Chapter 6 moves beyond these relatively static features to consider more fluid and dynamic processes of vertical networking, exploring how resources were redistributed in order to bring about a wider shift in patterns of power dependency. In Chapter 7, the study focuses on horizontal networking – that is, the reform of formal structures and informal processes used to coordinate EU policy across departmental boundaries.

Part III seeks to explain the nature of network change. Chapter 8 begins by evaluating the effectiveness of network adaptation under the Blair and Ahern governments in order to test proposition two. Using a simplified Guttman scale of coordination, it analyses the capacity of both networks to coordinate EU policy at each distinctive ‘level’ and considers how this has changed between 1997 and 2007. Employing the model of Europeanisation as strategic projection, Chapter 9 tests the third proposition by tracing the process of change backwards so as to disentangle the range of domestic and European independent variables. This enables the study to attribute relative causation to the political decisions and leadership styles of Blair and Ahern (agency) and the shared, longer-term impact of EU-level developments (structure). The book concludes in Chapter 10 by reflecting on the value of the conceptual and analytical frameworks employed, and drawing upon comparative insights from research on other member states in order to speculate about the generalisability of the findings presented here. It ends by presenting a number of key recommendations for enhancing the coordination and projection of UK and Irish EU policy in the future.

2

Setting the scene: the politics of Europe in the UK and Ireland

Despite the position of the UK and Ireland on the geographical periphery of the continent, Europe has never been far from the heart of domestic politics in either country. This chapter is not intended to provide a broad historical overview of the European issue in UK and Irish politics, not least because many exceptional examples already exist (notably Coombes 1983; Dooge and Barrington 1999; George 1992, 1998; Gowland and Turner 1999; Keatinge 1991; O’Donnell 2000; Young 1998). Rather it sets out to analyse and explain the divergent developmental trajectories of UK and Irish European diplomacy in the post-war period from a comparative perspective. It is divided into two parts. The first reflects on the relative importance of five aggregate variables which have shaped and help to explain the nature of EU relations prior to 1997: namely geopolitics, economics, institutions, party politics and public opinion. The second section presents a detailed assessment of EU policy under the Blair and Ahern governments – their aims and objectives, principal accomplishments and perceived failures, and the extent to which their records represent a significant break from their predecessors. The purpose of this chapter is therefore to set the broader political scene: to explain the distinctive character of UK and Irish EU policy and detail what the Blair and Ahern governments set out to achieve in Europe. The rest of the book is devoted to analysing and assessing their strategy for doing so.

Explaining the UK and Ireland’s European diplomacy

The UK and Ireland have sought to pursue very different national interests and policy strategies towards the EU since accession on 1 January 1973. Despite the passage of over three decades, the UK remains an uncertain member state in many ways – uncertain about the advantages of membership, its relationship with other leading states, and about the future direction of the integration process (Allen 2005: 120). Long characterised as the ‘awkward partner’ (George 1998), the UK’s European diplomacy has often displayed prolonged episodes of ambiguity, punctuated by brief phases of activism in Brussels (from 1970 and 1997) or open obstructionism (in 1989 and 1996). For Ireland by contrast the benefits of membership have been relatively clear and tangible, enabling successive governments to project a broadly communautaire European diplomacy (Dooge and Barrington 1999). However, the rejection of the Nice Treaty in the 2001 referendum reveals the extent to which even Ireland’s pro-Europeanism has become increasingly conditional.

In order to understand why, we need to consider the broader context of external developments and political choices that have shaped the policies of successive UK and Irish governments both before and after accession. Although a variety of structural and contingent explanations exist, we can group these together around five aggregate (independent) variables which have served to channel the distinctive European trajectories of the UK and Ireland since 1945. Taking each of these variables in turn, we set out to provide a brief appraisal of their relative importance.

Geopolitics

The legacy of wider geopolitical considerations weighs heavily on the decision by the UK and Ireland to opt out of participating in the early experiments towards European integration. For the UK, the legacy of empire and world war offered a powerful historical narrative of British exceptionalism founded on the need to sustain its global (rather than regional) ambitions. Although the importance attached to the new Commonwealth soon waned, the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US has long provided a powerful magnet for successive premiers seeking to assert the UK’s continued geopolitical relevance. This would be less of a problem for its European diplomacy were it not for the fact that relations with the two continents are frequently viewed in narrow, ‘zero-sum’ terms (see Gamble 2003). A second explanation derives from the extent to which Britain’s wartime experience reinforced its faith in the nation state and national sovereignty, in contrast to the growing attraction of federalist and functionalist alternatives on the continent (Milward 2000). This collective experience spawned a deep-rooted hostility to supranational forms of integration which necessitate the pooling of sovereignty, and an entrenched preference for looser modes of intergovernmental cooperation that preserve the veto power of national governments.

For over three decades after independence in 1937 Ireland’s first president, Eamon de Valera, sought to carve out a distinctive international role for the country. Ireland became an important contributor to debates within the interwar League of Nations, a founding member of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and the Council of Europe in the late 1940s, while the United Nations (UN) later provided the framework through which Ireland pursued its three pillars of foreign policy – the promotion of human rights, peace keeping and development issues (Skelly 1997). This internationalism was tempered however by a firm commitment to non-alignment (which ruled out membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)), economic protectionism, and a preference for intergovernmental cooperation (such as the UN). For this reason Ireland was unwilling to sacrifice the spoils of political, economic and cultural sovereignty at the altar of European integration (Foster 2007).

Economics

The later conversion to the cause of integration, and the wider rationale underpinning the parallel applications of the UK and Ireland for membership in 1961, 1967 and 1972, was largely borne of economic necessity. In both cases external developments played a critical role in shifting internal narratives about how best to promote prosperity. In Britain the ideological opposition of the Attlee government to supranational control over the country’s recently nationalised coal and steel industries gave way to a more pragmatic reappraisal of the European project. The spectre of relative economic decline vis-à-vis the European Economic Community (EEC) ‘six’, together with the realisation of declining influence through the Commonwealth and the US (after the Suez debacle), combined to challenge Britain’s early post-war assumptions. By the early 1960s all three main parties had, somewhat reluctantly, come to the conclusion that there was no alternative to EEC membership as a way of sustaining the UK’s status and wealth (Young 1998).

Instrumental considerations played an equally vital role in Ireland. For two decades the de Valera governments had fostered an idealised vision founded on the Gaelic language, the Catholic faith and a rural economy (Laffan and O’Mahony 2008). Yet this autarchic programme had come at a high price: stagnant economic growth, high rates of unemployment and unprecedented levels of emigration (Coombes 1983). Faced with accelerating economic decline, the Lemass and Lynch governments embarked on a radical reorientation of economic policy in the 1960s aimed at fostering urban and rural modernisation, social and economic liberalisation, and closer integration with the rest of Europe (Laffan and O’Mahony 2008: 19). This was underpinned by a powerful narrative about the need to end Ireland’s political insularity and dependency on UK markets, as well as the economic benefits of enhanced trade and access to the CAP (Keatinge 1991).

Institutions

As latecomers to the European project, successive UK and Irish governments have had to accommodate and adapt to politics and policies that were initially moulded to suit the strategic interests of others (Bulmer and Burch 1998; Laffan 2001). This has given rise to a perception of institutional incongruity or ‘misfit’ in several respects (see Cowles et al. 2001). First, characteristic features of the European polity, namely multilevel governance, confederalism, subsidiarity and network-based modes of policy-making, are perceived as being at odds with the tradition of highly centralised, unitary government found in the UK and Ireland (Bache and Jordan 2006). Only in recent years has the establishment of regional authorities in England and Ireland, together with devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, begun to close this gap. Second, fundamental principles of European integration, such as supremacy, direct effect, judicial review and qualified majority voting (QMV), are viewed as incompatible with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty (Page 2004: 39–44). Similarly, the English common law system has been forced to adapt to the demands of Roman-based Community law which has juridified a raft of new economic and social entitlements (Bulmer and Burch 2009: 11). However the