Differentiated integration as symbolic politics? Constitutional differentiation and policy reintegration in core state powers

Abstract

What are the policy consequences of constitutional differentiation in core state powers? We argue that the most important consequence is not necessarily the exclusion of the constitutional outs from the policies of the ins, but their reintegration by different means. The outs often have strong functional and political incentives to re-join the policies they opted out from, and the ins have good reasons to help them back in. We develop a theoretical framework that derives the incentives for reintegration from the costs of a policy exclusion. We use a novel dataset of reintegration opportunities to map trends and patterns of reintegration across policy fields and member states. We analyze selected cases of reintegration to probe the plausibility of our theoretical argument.

Does differentiated integration weaken parliamentary involvement? Evidence from the European Union's interparliamentary conferences

“…Voluntary differentiation does, however, depress participation. In this respect, we do not see similar 'reintegration' as Genschel et al (2023) observe in the analysis of policies and intergovernmental relations.…”

“…It has been argued that the more national parliamentarians are involved in the EU, the more they could communicate EU affairs to the public, encourage informed public debate, and perhaps even enhance popular support (Auel et al, 2018; Auel and Raunio, 2014; Rauh and De Wilde, 2018). Parliamentary involvement might, however, be weakened by the differentiated integration (hereinafter referred to as DI or differentiation) of the EU, defined as the exemption and exclusion of member states from selected policy domains (Holzinger and Schimmelfennig, 2012; Schimmelfennig et al, 2015). Differentiation has often been considered positive for European integration as it helps overcome cross-national ideological and capacity differences (de Neve, 2007; Kölliker, 2006; Schimmelfennig and Winzen, 2020; Stubb, 1996), but does it undermine the motivation of parliamentarians from less integrated member states to become involved in EU affairs?…”

Differentiated integration in the European Union: Institutional effects, public opinion, and alternative flexibility arrangements

“…In their contribution, Genschel et al (2023) show, however, that suboptimal or dysfunctional legal differentiation is not the end of the story. Treaty-based legal opt-outs can be circumvented or complemented by alternative agreements or practical steps that mitigate their negative effects on policy efficiency.…”

“…In this special issue, we do not ignore de facto differentiation, but prefer to keep it conceptually separate from de iure DI, to be able to study the effects of de iure on de facto differentiation and for comparing DI with other forms of flexibility in EU policy making. Two important forms of de facto differentiation that we will also explore in this special issue are noncompliance (Andersen and Sitter, 2006;Sczepanski and Börzel, 2023) and informal cooperation between groups of member states, including the ad hoc participation in integrated policies of countries that have formally opted out (Adler-Nissen, 2009;Genschel et al, 2023). Moreover, flexibility in implementation (Zbíral et al, 2023) and "experimentalist governance" (Zeitlin and Rangoni, 2023) refer to forms of differentiation in policy implementation and policy development over time, which do without the legal exemption or exclusion of member states from EU policies.…”

“…This is the case particularly in the domain of core state powers, in which governments opt out of integration because they are concerned about formal sovereignty or because domestic ratification failure forces them to. Genschel et al (2023) provide numerous examples of technical, low-level, or informal reintegration. Insiders typically welcome such reintegration because they had wanted the opt-out countries to be on board in the first place; and outsiders are able to lower their functional costs of exclusion without incurring the political costs of formal integration.…”