In this article it will be argued that the contribution of political theory to European studies is rather one-sided and could be enriched by broadening the spectrum. To make this clear, the first part of this article will offer an overview of the contribution of political theory to European integration studies up to the present day. In the second part, avenues for further research will be presented with special attention to the importance of theories of justice for the EU. In close connection to this program, the value of ideal theory will be highlighted as a means to think about the further development of the EU and to critically assess the present functioning of the EU.

While the Netherlands has been a globally leading country in the area of agrofood for the latter half of the 20th century, its chances to maintain that position will co-depend on its capacity to develop its primary sector into more sustainable directions. This is no trivial task. For a long time, strong institutional arrangements provided guidance to practices of governance, consumption, production and innovation in line with a productivist paradigm. Although these arrangements have been significantly destabilized, and novel ones are emerging, a mature institutional landscape, tailored to a more sustainable development, has not yet fleshed out.
This article asks the question how innovative practices deal with this ambiguous and dynamic institutional context. It does so through investigating how, over about a decade, two sets of practices to promote more sustainable development (in the fields of livestock systems and greenhouse horticulture), draw on (remains of) incumbent arrangements, and novel institutional elements to provide normative guidance and mobilize resources (money; knowledge; legitimacy). Theoretically, it thus contributes to (1) understanding the emergence of novel modes of governance in an institutional void, (2) taking into account and extending it to a dynamic context, the paradox of embedded agency.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the news coverage on the euro crisis in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) and the Netherlands. The aim of the research was to identify how newspapers in the Low Countries have portrayed the roots of the crisis, the main victims, and those held responsible to solve the crisis, and ways to do so. This study also analyzed the differences across geographical contexts and types of newspapers. Furthermore, it examined how the coverage changed as the crisis continued. Research findings include that Flemish newspapers more often reported about the causes of the crisis, whereas the Dutch newspapers published more articles discussing the responses to it. Furthermore, financial newspapers provided more news stories searching for a solution, while popular newspapers usually published short, factual descriptions.

In Flanders, every political party has its own political foundation or study centre. Although their importance for the party organisation is widely recognised, a systematic and comparative analysis of these study centres is still lacking. This article is the first attempt to address this empirical void. Based on document analysis, interviews and survey material, we analyse the basic characteristics of the study centres of seven Flemish parties, covering all major political families. We compare their size, internal structure and autonomy vis-à-vis the party, explore the advisors’ profile and background and discuss the generation and products of advice. We conclude that despite their heterogeneity Flemish study centres share a common but limited functionality, being more of an extension of political parties than classical think tanks.

Studies of second-order elections using aggregate data have predominantly focused on examining the extent to which European parliament elections and regional elections are dominated by the national, first-order arena, and paid scarce attention to the analysis of municipal elections. In addition the study of second-order elections is dominated by looking at the impact of first-order factors whilst ignoring the impact of arena-specific factors. This article addresses these shortcomings by analyzing the impact of national and local factors on the performance of national parties in the Dutch municipal elections of 2010. Our analysis shows that there are significant effects of local factors. Most parties lose votes when having been in local government and in some cases as well when having in addition lost an alderman as a result of a political crisis. Parties also lose vote share as a result of the entrance of new national and local parties in a local election, with the effect of new national entrants being larger than that of new local entrants. Our analysis corroborates earlier findings that point to a dominance of national factors, while at the same time showing that it is vital to include local, arena specific factors in order to get to a better estimation of the second-orderness of non-national elections. We discuss our results with respect to the recurring debate about the nationalisation of the Dutch municipal elections.

Since the ‘argumentative turn’ in policy analysis scholars have increasingly focused on discourse as an explanatory factor for the analysis policy processes. This has resulted in a proliferation of rich and deep qualitative discourse-analytical studies on a vast range of policy controversies. However, these studies have two important shortcomings: firstly, they offer limited possibilities for comparative research, because they lack an objectified and standardized measuring instrument. Secondly, according to some critics, these studies do not live up to scientific standards.
This article presents a method based on a combination of content analysis and social network analysis which can be complementary to qualitative approaches, in order to answer to these shortcomings. It is exemplified by a limited case study on two debates within the policy domain of transport-mobility in Flanders. The article concludes with a discussion of a number of possible applications of the method within the broader discipline of political science.

Federal systems are characterised by compound and complex forms of democratic representation. The federal level addresses citizens both as members of the federal polity and as members of a constituent unit. This paper takes into account the existence of these multiple public identities of federal citizens by systematically comparing the degree of subfederal representation in 13 federal systems with QCA. The analysis shows that, apart from the EU, also traditional federal systems have a high degree of subfederal representation. Additionally, the paper looks in which kinds of federal systems we observe this. It shows that a heterogeneous society combined with low national pride or high economic diversity is sufficient to observe a high degree of subfederal representation. From there on conclusions are drawn on the EU and the Low Countries.

We analyze the relation between (horizontal) fairness in the local property tax and municipal tax policy in the 308 Flemish municipalities in 2012. The local property tax is levied on the property’s assessed rental value, and its unfairness is a by-product of the slow reassessment procedure – such that properties of identical value are being taxed (very) differently. Using data for housing sales, we create an indicator for the unfairness of the local property tax. We find clear evidence that this unfairness affects political decision-making: municipalities in which property taxation is more unfair tend to rely systematically less on this tax as a source of municipal revenue. Instead these local governments tend to generate revenue through local income taxation.

In the current multilateral trade regime, members often negotiate under the shadow of WTO law. In this article, we develop an explanation of how the legal vulnerability of members’ domestic policies affects ongoing multilateral negotiations in the trade regime. First, we show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, increased enforcement does not necessarily make actors shy away from further cooperation. Legal vulnerability can ignite a positive dynamic of cooperation because it can increase the set of feasible agreements of WTO members. In a second stage, we set out how the nature of the issue at stake, i.e. whether it can be easily disaggregated into negotiable units, affects whether this positive dynamics of cooperation takes place. We illustrate the plausibility of the argument by way of four in-depth case studies of how potential (or actual) defendants and potential (or actual) complainants in WTO disputes responded to the incentives brought about by legal vulnerability and negotiated in the Doha round.

Contemporary violent conflicts are mostly internal in nature. The serious humanitarian consequences that they often cause belong in principle to the internal affairs of the sovereign state in which they occur. Since the 90s, however, the international community is playing an increasingly important role in addressing the humanitarian consequences of internal conflicts. What kind of a partner is the West, meeting in this field with China? From the perspective of identities and role conceptions, this article highlights the Chinese debate on the principle of non-interference in internal affairs. This decades old cornerstone of China’s foreign policy is under discussion as a result of China’s rise, which is raising expectations of a more active role of China, including conflict management. This article examines the changing self-images that lead to the search for a new Chinese role but also points to the enduring influence of older role conceptions. The empirical focus is on Africa, with examples from Chinese policy toward some recent african complex crises.

China’s outward investment policy has attracted attention not only for policy reasons, but also in academic debate on the role of source-country institutions in foreign investment. Formal institutions in the form of government policy and regulations have been central to China’s outward investment. This paper is based on a detailed analysis of Chinese policy and regulatory documents, which provide evidence of the motivations, substance and outcomes of investment policy. The paper argues that the factors determining investment policy are complex and evolving, and that elements of the policy may not be coherent and can be conflicting. It also argues that unintended outcomes are frequent, and that enterprises, including state-owned enterprises, attempt to escape the constraints of government policy and regulation. Thus, the relationship between institutions in China and enterprise behaviour is complex, and is not simply one of restriction or promotion of outward investment.

This article examines EU-China relations with regard to two key renewable energy sectors, wind and solar. It finds that, although there have been sources for trade disputes in both sectors, trade frictions have surfaced most prominently in the solar sector. The reason is a double imbalance between the manufacturing and deployment of solar panels, both geographically (with China producing the bulk of solar panels almost exclusively for export) and numerically (with structural overcapacity). Yet, the image of a zero-sum bilateral trade war over solar panels is exaggerated, because there are both opponents and proponents of trade defense measures in China and the EU. The study further argues that the solar dispute is part and parcel of a global wave of clean energy trade frictions and it explores pathways to settle the issue through the negotiation of a multilateral agreement on environmental goods and services.