Transatlantic Institutions: Can Partnership be Engineered?

Abstract

The transatlantic alliance is widely viewed as being in a state of decline. Conflict over the war in Iraq highlighted a growing divergence between the Bush administration and European Union governments in their attitudes towards multilateralism. The rift severely tested institutions created to manage bilateral EU-US relations in the aftermath of the cold war. This article examines how well this institutional architecture has held up. It scrutinises the limitations of networked governance in transatlantic relations and acknowledges the quandary of trying to manufacture partnership using imperfect institutions. The Brussels-Washington channel is only one among many through which transatlantic relations flow, but we argue that it continues to gain in importance. Despite the limits of institutional engineering, we conclude that the US and the EU remain each other's most important ally.

Post-Hegemonic Climate Politics?

“…So as in other areas of transatlantic relations, the EU and US have experienced significant conflict over climate change, and their strategies for dealing with it, even their identification of it as a thing to be dealt with, have differed significantly. Like in other issues (see for example Peterson and Steffenson 2009, this issue), the US has suffered a significant loss of credibility. But compared to other issues, such as terrorism, the global economy and so on, in EU–US relations over climate in the Bush era, two things stand out as rather different.…”

Structure, agency and transatlantic relations in the Trump era

“…More generally, the NTA shows how partnership in IR cannot be engineered or institutionalized in the absence of common interests (see Peterson and Steffenson 2009).…”

Institutionalization of Strategic Partnerships : Comparative Analysis of Established European Union Partnerships with the United States, Japan and Canada

“…In the NTA and the Joint Action Plan, the parties presented rules and norms which should govern the cooperation� The partners stated that following the values of democracy and free market, they would work towards creating transatlantic community as well as promoting stability and prosperity in Europe and around the world� What should serve this aim is cooperation in solving disputes on threatened territories, engagement in preventive diplomacy, providing development aid and humanitarian assistance as well as cooperation in international organizations (particularly within the UN)� The parties also expressed their mutual support in combating organized crime, terrorism, massive migration, human trafficking, degradation of natural environment, as well as in promoting nuclear safety� The rule that also was to govern the partners' cooperation was the development of close economic relations (through creating a common transatlantic market) and world trade (through strengthening the WTO)� It should be emphasized that the United States and the European Union referred to similar norms when determining rules and aims of their cooperation� As Peterson and Pollack (2003) notice: "it remains clear that norms, values and culture bind the EU and the US together far more strongly that either party is 'bound' to any other part of the world" (p� 140)� Citizens of the EU and the US perceive each other as those who belong to the same Western civilization with regard to the issues of democracy, human rights and market economy (Alcaro, Peterson & Greco, 2016;Fuchs & Klingemann, 2008)� However, it should be noted that besides the sphere of declarations, there is a difference between the partners' approaches to norms and values, which is called a 'values gap' (Kagan, 2003;Peterson & Pollack, 2003) and is related mainly to their different approaches to such issues as death penalty, environment conservation, abortion, religion and gun control� Institutions of cooperation started developing as early as in the 1990s� As Peterson and Steffenson (2009) notice, it was a "golden era in transatlantic institution building" (p� 26)� At present, the parties have joint institutions and stable formats of meetings� According to Steffenson (2005), "the NTA institutions are designed to get experts talking and to get transgovernmental actors to assess how the EU and the US can cooperate under the 'mandate' of the NTA� The vast range of working groups, which are unparalleled in any other dialogue, identify areas where the EU and the US can coordinate efforts" (p� 66)� Moreover, there are numerous informal interactions between the partners�…”