Europeanization of turkish subnational administrations

CONCLUSION

This chapter has introduced the origins and conceptual developments in the Europeanization literature and its relevance for the objectives of the thesis. The differentiated domestic impact and the institutionalist sources of Europeanization seem to be common features in the literature. Particularly, the impact of EU rules and policies has not always led to convergence but usually brought about a limited and differentiated impact on intergovernmental relations in member (and candidate) states. Given the lack of institutional prescriptions and of adaptational pressure in the regional acquis, such divergences among states, and to a certain degree within states, are remarkable. This indicates the importance of the domestic context, while explaining the outcomes. The epistemological contribution of the new institutionalist account is therefore helpful for explaining the degree and direction of change in different national settings. The new institutionalism is also useful for determining the independent and intermediating variables of the research.

There have been, however, disputes over the definitions, usages and mechanisms of Europeanization. Determining the usage and scope of Europeanization largely depends on the chosen policy areas. The focus of this research is on regional policy and structural funds in candidate states— encompassing the direct and indirect effects of Europeanization. On the whole, the main focus in the accession literature has concentrated on a general explanation of the transformative powers of the EU membership conditionality and on examination of what has been changing in the regional policy of accession countries as a result of Europeanization. This largely intersects with the so-called first generation Europeanization literature. In a similar fashion, the impact of EU on Turkey has been examined within the first generation and the research is mainly confined to positivist, normative and legalistic agendas. Given the asymmetric relations between the EU and Turkey, top-down Europeanization has been applied to explain domestic change in the Turkish domestic arena. The second generation agenda, however, emphasizes more complex interactions (top-down, bottom-up and horizontal) in which Europeanization is not limited to changes in political-administrative structures and the formal content of national policy because European values and policy paradigms are also to some (varying) degree internalized at the domestic level, shaping the discourses and identities.

Even if the applicant status of Turkey allows one to focus solely on downward causation primarily due to the asymmetric nature of conditionality, this chapter has claimed that it is insufficiently understood within a narrowly positivist framework whereby EU conditionality is seen as a formal instrument for the transposition of the EU’s rules, norms and institutional templates to the candidate states (Hughes et al., 2004). The research therefore embraces the idea of EU conditionality that includes not only the formal technical requirements on candidates but also the informal pressures arising from the behaviour and perceptions of actors engaged in the political process. This offers a deeper understanding of the enlargement process as a dynamic interaction between international incentives and rules and domestic transition factors (ibid).

Consistent with the approaches outlined above, the research not only situates Europeanization in a top-down (coercive) fashion where domestic change is traced back to EU sources, but also evaluates the indirect and horizontal effects of Europeanization where one may additionally observe the voluntary mechanisms such as lesson-drawing, learning and policy transfer. Yet considering formal (technical) and informal (cognitive) effects of Europeanization in isolation from domestic dynamics (national and subnational level) also misses the empirical reality in any attempt to generalize. This suggests a new research agenda in Turkish-EU relations, which combines the institutional variants of Europeanization (such as opportunity structures and learning) with domestic intermediating factors at national and subnational levels. Such an understanding also suits the bottom-up research design (see Chapter 3). The chapter has also proposed a periodization to unveil the dynamic features of EU influence on the Turkish domestic arena since the Helsinki Summit of 1999. Given that the empirical findings deriving from interviews and survey analysis were obtained between April 2011 and June 2012, the main focus for the rest of the thesis is generally on the last period, which is the period of Alaturka Europeanization. While the first generation of Europeanization is largely a case during the Europeanization as Democratization period, the second generation Europeanization has taken its roots during the Alaturka Europeanization and to some extent the Proto-Europeanization period.

Overall, the domestic impact of Europeanization has changed the relationship between national and subnational levels in applicant states towards the creation of triadic governance including the supranational level. Although there are certain constraints derived from the membership or prospect of membership, Europeanization has created new opportunity structures and a new political space for SNAs for their political action and (functional) territorial interests above and beyond the national level (Kassim, 2005: 286). This is generally captured by the multi-level governance approach. The key policy area initiating the creation of multi-level modality in member (and applicant) states is the regional policy and its relevant financial instruments. The following chapter moves on to explaining the multi-level governance and the domestic politics approach to shed light on the creation of multi-level modality in Turkey with specific reference to mobilisation of SNAs across the EU arena.

CHAPTER 2 MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE AND DOMESTIC POLITICS APPROACHES

2.1. INTRODUCTION

The previous chapter has analysed the evidence to determine the scope and extent of Europeanization and its application to the member (and candidate) states. It has subsequently discussed the different interpretations of Europeanization in the context of changing territorial relations in the wider EU arena. What has become clear is that Europeanization makes domestic policy areas increasingly subject to EU decision-making. Nevertheless, the domestic impact of Europeanization embraces certain resource dependency approaches (i.e. intergovernmentalist, supranationalist and multi-level governance) (Börzel, 2002: 211). These approaches generally conceive of the EU as a structure with new political opportunities that provides some domestic actors with new resources whilst depriving others. The research does not consider the emerging opportunity structure in a zero-sum game. Rather, it seeks to examine how the process of Europeanization shapes, affects, constrains or opens opportunities for the behaviour of SNAs and their engagement with the EU level institutions.

To grasp the extent to which subnational actors utilize the changing political opportunity structure in the EU, MLG has been applied in many empirical studies exclusively with regard to Europeanization and in the context of EU regional and cohesion policy. The authors who developed the concept of MLG use it to explain the subnational mobilisation at the EU level by investigating and measuring the sources of regional representation in Brussels (Marks et al., 1996; Hooghe & Marks, 2001). Their scope of investigation particularly focuses on explaining subnational mobilisation at the EU level through the creation of channels of communication and influence. The approach has been applied by a number of case studies regarding the subnational mobilisation and the foreign activities of SNAs (see Chapter 4). In this respect, this chapter turns its attention to the multi-level governance and the domestic politics approaches in order to illustrate their usefulness particularly for the issue of subnational mobilisation. It is organized in three parts. The first part analyses the stance of two early integration theories on the subject matter. The second part introduces the multi-level governance approach. The final part explains why it is useful to weight the MLG approach with the domestic politics approach. This part also presents the potential domestic intermediating variables of the thesis.