Author: JEPP Online

Dear friends of JEPP:

We are looking back to an eventful year and thank our dear reviewers, authors and readers for producing great research, constructively commenting on manuscripts and continuously engaging with the pieces published in JEPP. Looking ahead, 2023 marks JEPP’s 30th anniversary and hopefully Jeremy will share some anecdotes about how everything started with us. We promise to have some interesting features throughout the year, celebrating some of the best contributions to JEPP throughout the past three decades.

But before we start the new year, we all will enjoy some quiet days in the sun or the snow. Scroll down to read more about our plans. Hopefully, all of you can also enjoy a well-deserved break over the holidays. We are looking forward to seeing you in the next year! Stay tuned for our upcoming issues, debate sections and special issues. Follow us on Twitter (@jepp_journal), read and subscribe to our newsletter.

Season’s greetings and all good wishes,

Your JEPP team

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Over the holiday, Berthold & Jess had every intention to spend as much time in the snow as possible, provided there is any left. There is reason to be hopeful: For the first time in a very long time, visiting a Christmas market in December in my upper Bavarian village required wearing a proper coat rather than a T-Shirt. But then came another round of Covid, and hence maybe looking at the snow will be just as fine. That’s also what Semih, the mouser-in-chief, prefers anyway. He and his buddy Valter (see picture) are ready to welcome 2023. Stay safe & take care, everyone!

 

Sonia and I will spend our usual Christmas at Akaroa, and hope to do the same Boxing Day walk as we did last year (see photo). Boxing Day is also BBQ day, though I have been demoted to serving only drinks this year. Alas, Tess and Molly’s partners are, respectively, Australian (Billy) and Kiwi (Iain), and so trump any Englishman in this fiercely competitive Australasian sport.  Our dog, Murphy, tells me he doesn’t give a bugger who runs the BBQ. It all tastes the same to him (and he always wins the ‘fastest eater’ prize anyway!).

 

Michael and his family are celebrating the return of Christmas markets – Glühwein & cotton candy – and will spend a week with his mother, sister & family in Erlangen, otherwise he stays in Munich. For Michael, this will probably be a very “normal” Christmas break – compared to the previous Covid-years and compared to his new Ukrainian neighbours. After the holidays, he looks forward to many new JEPP debate and research agenda section proposals.

 

Sarah and Alex are excited to be hosting some of the holiday celebrations in Innsbruck this year. The only thing that stands in the way of the festivities is the question about how to fit the extended family into the apartment. Once all the guests have left after the Christmas hustle and bustle, she will devote herself to Tilda’s new passion of sledging and hopefully find some time for skiing. Thus, as Berthold, she hopes for cold temperatures and lots of snow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Increasing levels of polarization enhance the pressure for policy regimes to change even if they are highly institutionalized. Based on this idea, Marco Di Giulio and Stella Gianfreda investigate how anticipatory policy design affects liberal migration policy regimes in times of growing securitization. Their analysis of the Italian asylum policy shows that anticipatory strategies of both “entrenchers” and “dismantlers” are relevant to understand the dynamics of change. Even in the Italian context where dismantling forces have profoundly shaped the national policy regime, entrenchment strategies (e.g., providing incentives to foster compliance) have proved effective in stabilizing and renovating liberal institutions. Beyond these insights that policy dynamics may emerge as in-coherent and stratified policy mixes, the article calls for further micro-level analysis to complement existing macro-level studies on migration policy change in order to shed light on how agency may or may nor shape future changes of policy regimes

 

 

 

 

 

To what extent can national electoral contexts explain citizens’ vote for Green parties in EP elections? JeongHun Han and Daniel Finke argue that in EP elections, voters express their sincere environmental issue preference rather than their dissatisfaction with the performance of national mainstream parties. Analyzing voter survey data from the 2019 EP election, JeongHun and Daniel demonstrate that genuine environmental preferences indeed drive support for a Green party. Interestingly, green issue voting tends to be stronger for small Green parties than for large ones and if the Green party owns the environmental issue. Additionally, the party system matters: sincere voting for Green parties is particularly relevant in contexts in which mainstream parties also pick up environmental and climate policies. Overall, this research indicates that first-order motives become increasingly decisive for understanding vote choice in EP elections while previous second-order characteristics seem to lose some of their explanatory power.

Especially during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, women heads of government were praised for their seemingly better performance in leading their countries through this health crisis. Making use of the unique circumstances of the global pandemic, Jessica C. Smith sheds light on how the gender composition of government impacts national responses to the crisis. Based on data from the UN COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker, her analysis of 62 countries demonstrates that the presence of women in government matters in two ways. First, women-led countries have more gender diverse COVID-19 task forces compared to those led by men. Second, women’s participation in these task forces increases the likelihood that the policy responses will be gender-sensitive. Hence, in addition to normative reasons advocating for the representation of women beyond elected bodies, Jessica’s research provides evidence that women’s presence can ensure that measures implemented to cope with crisis situations take gender inequalities into account and thus make for better policies

The EU increasingly relies on national stake-holders such as NGOs to raise non-compliance issues before national courts. In particular the environmental sector has witnessed a shift from centralized infringement procedures initiated by the European Commission to decentralized enforcement by private actors. To shed light on the work and effectiveness of national enforcers, Konstantin Reiners and Esther Versluis analyze the actions taken by the German NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe to encourage compliance of German States with the Ambient Air Quality Directive. In their case study they show that the NGO mostly used litigation (i.e., initiating a high number of legal proceedings) to increase the salience of the topic in national debates and the media. The interplay of public pressure caused by increased issue salience of air quality and legal pressure has positively affected compliance by German states. Overall, these insights indicate that private actors such as NGOS can indeed play a crucial role as additional guardians of the Treaties to tackle national compliance deficits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To assist countries most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the EU launched the largest aid package in its history. Monika Bauhr and Nicholas Charron make use of this unprecedented course of action and analyze the factors that drive public support for international aid in times of crises. A vignette survey experiment conducted in 25 European countries provides evidence that elite cues are more consequential for public support than receiving information about the aid package. In particular, national governments’ endorsement for financial assistance increases the likelihood to support a European-wide response to the pandemic. By contrast, details on the package do not influence public opinion in either direction. The study thus implies that domestic governments can play a crucial role in swaying citizens’ opinion on redistribution within the EU as well as future EU integration.

 

European Administrative Networks (EANs) are a distinctive feature of the EU governance system that aim to foster regulatory harmonization. Even though they have been operational for more than two decades, we know little about how they react to changes in their policy environment. To fill this gap in the literature, Francesca Pia Vantaggiato conceptualizes EANs as dynamic social networks. A Bayesian network model of the Council of European Energy Regulators’ structure shows that the collaboration has shifted from learning (i.e., exchanging information) to a cohesive structure of cooperation aiming to inform and influence EU policy-making. The article thus provides a first step towards conceptualizing and operationalizing the processes of evolution of EANs.