Jim Buller. Department of Politics. University of York. York YO10 5DD.

Transcription

1 ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE 1 (AGAIN): THE NATIONAL-INTERNATIONAL CONNECTION AND THE STUDY OF BRITISH POLITICS. Jim Buller Department of Politics University of York York YO10 5DD jrb6@york.ac.uk Presented to the SGIR 7 th Pan-European International Relations Conference, Stockholm, 9 th -11 th September Not to be quoted without the permission of the author. 1 The first part of the title is lifted from James Caporaso s (1997) review article.

2 Abstract The basic contention of this paper is our understanding of British politics has something to gain from investigating the national-international connection: that is, the way that institutions and actors within the UK polity interact with the external structures and processes surrounding them. While British political science contains plenty of literature that has investigated this subject matter empirically, less progress has been made with reference to how we might theorise these linkages across time and space. In this context, the paper builds on this empirical work and develops five propositions concerning how we might explore in a more systematic fashion this national-international connection, and its consequences for the institutions, processes and policy outcomes of the British state. In other words, this paper is not strictly about British foreign policy; its focus on British politics is somewhat wider. But as we shall see, its conclusions do have implications for the analysis of British foreign policy more generally. Over the years, a number of (largely) US scholars have explicitly urged the discipline of political science to grant more attention to the way the national and international levels are connected. Back in the 1960s, James Rosenau (1969: 2) complained that in a world of increased interdependence, linkages between the domestic and external levels, <have never been subjected to systematic, sustained and comparative enquiry. In the 1970s, Peter Gourevitch (1978) argued that work examining this connection did exist, but such research was hampered by a theoretical division between International Relations and Comparative Politics. Being concerned primarily with explaining the workings of the international system, the former (dominated by the realist approach) was only interested in domestic politics in so far as it could help achieve this goal. As a consequence, the state was conceptualised as a unitary entity or black box. Governments were compelled to promote the national interest (through the accumulation of power) by an external environment characterised by anarchy and competition. Such an approach clearly conflicted with the research agenda of comparativists. Opening up the black box of the state and 2

3 studying its various parts was the dominant focus of the majority of work in this area. Since Gourevitch s seminal review article, other academics have periodically made similar pleas, including Gabriel Almond (1989); John Ikenberry (1996); James Caporaso (1997) and Harold Lentner (2006). 2 What might be gained from traversing this great divide? After all, a number of obstacles exist in the path of those wanting to make such a journey (Rosenau, 1969). As already noted, the respective research communities in International Relations and Comparative Politics have different analytical and theoretical concerns. Studying the national-international connection explicitly in an age of economic, social and political interdependence is almost inevitably going to require an interdisciplinary perspective. Yet while officially scholars (certainly in the UK) are in favour of interdisciplinary work, long-standing suspicions and rivalries between social science departments has often made such collaboration difficult to get going in practice. It follows that taking the national-international connection seriously will also involve the interested student knowing a little about a lot. Unfortunately, the trend (again in British political science) appears to be towards increasing specialisation on the part of researchers, fuelling the concern that any work that dips into literature for the purposes of a more general project, will attract accusations of superficiality. Faced with these barriers, a paper calling for the disciplines of International Relations and Comparative Politics to work together needs to try and spell out the added value of such a project. The traditional argument for taking the national-international connection more seriously is that it would help both international relations experts and comparativists gain a better understanding of empirical developments in their respective subject areas. To take the former, it is now increasingly accepted that the unitary or black box conception of the state is no longer a plausible assumption concerning how national governments interact with their external environment. The internal dynamics of domestic politics will matter when it comes to understanding a 2 British political scientists who sympathise with this argument would include David Coates and Colin Hay (2001) and Andrew Gamble (2003). 3

4 particular country s foreign policy, and the structure of the international system more generally (Brown, 2001: 82; Hobson, 2000). For example, the statecraft of the Bush Administration cannot simply be accounted for by exigencies of the global political environment. The ideology of prominent neo-conservatives close to the President is generally considered to have had some impact (see for example Daalder and Lindsay, 2003; Ikenberry, 2003). And of course, the legacy of Bush s foreign policy on the Middle East can still be observed. Put in different terms, there is a need to disaggregate the state and problematise its relations with the external. Comparativists are well placed to help with this task. At the same time, students of domestic politics can not longer approach their subject matter from a closed polity perspective. Not only will the global environment matter, it can sometimes have a causal impact on the internal structure of nation states. Indeed, Gourevitch s 1978 article was concerned with reviewing a range of literature which considered the influence of international economic and geo-political forces on domestic politics (the so-called second image reversed approach). There is no need to replicate this review in any detail. But we might mention briefly in this context research on the relationship between the world economy, late industrialisation and the development of domestic state structures (Gerschenkron; Barrington Moore); world systems theory (Wallenstein); the importance of geo-political forces to understanding the causes of national revolutions (Skocpol); and the link between a country s geographical position, its defence posture and its bureaucratic capacity (Hintze) (see also Almond, 1989 for a similar review). To sum up, encouraging a dialogue across the great divide between International Relations and Comparative Politics would be of mutual benefit to both sides. It is one thing to suggest that the study of domestic politics in comparative perspective would benefit from considering links with the international level more systematically. But would our understanding of British politics in particular benefit from this second image reversed focus? Even a superficial review of some recent scholarship underlines how important such a perspective has become for examining 4

5 contemporary UK institutions and policies. Take for example, the voluminous literature on globalization and its implications for British political economy. One influential interpretation argues that since the 1990s, Whitehall has faced a new economic reality that has constrained its autonomy in ways not experienced before. Global networks of trade, production and finance have limited the choices of domestic decision-makers to the repertoire offered by neo-liberals: sound money; low inflation credibility; reduced public expenditure; and free/flexible labour markets (see for example, Giddens, 1999; Cerny and Evans, 2004). This account has been contested by academics sceptical of both the novelty and extent of recent changes to the international economy (Hirst, Thompson and Bromley, 2009; Hay, 2009). However, most writers now concede that some change has taken place, with some consequences for British economic policy, although the precise nature of this change is still a matter of debate (Sorensen, 2006). One publication in particular which has interesting implications for the focus taken in this paper is the article by David Coates and Colin Hay (2001) on the internal and external face of New Labour s political economy. In this piece, both authors are explicitly concerned with exploring the relationship between the Blair Government s foreign and domestic policies (something they argue, that the vast majority of scholarship on the British Labour Party has failed to do in the past) (Coates and Hay, 2001: 447). One of their key conclusions was that New Labour successfully joined up its internal and external faces in a way that old Labour governments never managed. Put a different way, rather than espouse a number of left-of-centre policies (planning; incomes policies etc.) that were undermined by international financial forces (sterling crises) Blair, Brown and their advisers took care to make sure that domestic and foreign economic policy complimented each other. Internally, this strategy emphasised the importance of increasing the competitiveness of the British economy, through a rhetorical commitment to human capital formation and the actual implementation of policies such as welfare-to-work. Externally, what distinguished New Labour s economic policy from its predecessors was a narrative stressing the constraints of globalization and the need for such a competitiveness 5

6 agenda in response. Hay in particular has argued that the Blair Government has exaggerated the reality of this new global economy as a method of legitimising what have sometimes been unpopular domestic reforms. But Coates and Hay go further: It is vital to grasp that New Labour has not simply pushed this agenda internally, or used its presence at international forums merely to describe and justify its internal reform programme<ministers have also pushed for a resetting of the (European) regional and global economic order in the image of their internal settlement (Coates and Hay, 2001: 453). For Coates and Hay, material and ideational connections between domestic and foreign policy have consciously been promoted as part of a broader domestic strategy. Causal relations between the national and international levels do not flow exclusively one way. A second example of literature embracing the national-international connection is scholarship on the Europeanization of British politics (for a good introduction, see Bache and Jordan, 2006). An outgrowth of European integration studies, what originally marked out this approach was its focus on the way that the European Union (EU) impacted on the domestic structures and processes of member states. In particular, research has focused on the goodness of fit between EU and national institutions, policies and beliefs. The larger the divergence between these two levels, the greater the so-called adaptation pressure on governments to act. For many academics, the existence of misfit and adaptation pressure is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for Europeanization to take place. Pressure from the EU will be mediated, even shaped by a range of domestic factors. It follows that Europeanization may refer to instances of domestic change in line with EU initiatives, but may also involve absorption or even provoke resistance within member states. Not surprisingly then, empirical studies have showed how Europeanization has produced varied responses among member states and differentiation between policy sectors within the same country (see for example, 6

7 Goetz and Hix, 2001; Green Cowles, Caporaso and Risse, 2001; Bulmer and Lequesne, 2005). Since the turn of the millennium, political scientists have started to argue that Europeanization is a bottom-up as well as a top-down process. In other words, studying Europeanization is not simply about charting pressure from the EU level and examining how it is mediated by member states. National governments will try to up-load their ideas and policies at one time (t1) so that any initiatives coming back down from Brussels at a future date (t2) will be more commensurate with their own interests. This change of emphasis reflected what many believed to be the reality of the EU policy process. After all, integration studies have consistently told us that member states will be prominent actors within this regional organization, even if they do not always get their own way. Perhaps one problem with this new emphasis on the bottom-up is that it erodes the distinctiveness of Europeanization as a concept. As already suggested, what initially distinguished Europeanization was its top-down focus. European integration studies focused on variables at the European level, scholars of Europeanisation were concerned with the domestic impact of the EU. However, what this discussion points to once again is the interrelationship between the domestic and foreign (Borzel, 2002; Borzel and Risse, 2003; Bulmer and Lequesne, 2005: 12; Bache and Jordan, 2006: 18-20). In short, any empirical account of British politics in a world of increased economic and political interdependence needs to take seriously the way the national and international levels are connected. However, to make the above statement is to say little about how, when and why the global level might impact on the domestic at any given moment in time. Put a different way, we know less about how to theorise the national-international connection(s) in a way that might help to simplify research in this area. The rest of the paper attempts to develop some theoretical propositions concerning how the internal and external levels impact on each other, and how this linkage might be an important factor in our understanding of British politics. In doing so, it tries to build on some of the arguments noted in the literature reviewed above. But before engaging in this task, it is important to note that the literature 7

8 above has raised four difficult questions which need to be broached before we can move forward. (a) The second image reversed perspective may not be enough. While British political science now contains a lot of scholarship investigating the impact of international processes on the UK polity, it is clear from the brief review above that a simple dyadic relationship running from the external to the domestic may not be enough. The literature on the globalization and Europeanization of British politics has identified a more dynamic, interactive process whereby national policy-makers don t simply react to their international environment. Groups or classes within the British Polity may attempt to influence regional and international structures in a way that supports their particular interests and objectives. In other words, our dependent variable (British politics) or certain aspects of it, may influence our independent variable in a way that will feedback onto the dependent variable again. If we are to develop a theoretical approach concerning the nationalinternational connection and the consequences for British politics, it needs to be able to cope with this complexity (see also Moravcsik, 1993). (b) Can we keep the analysis of foreign and domestic policy separate? If (as suggested above) the domestic and external levels are increasingly interconnected, much of today s foreign policy will be increasingly intangible. It will be mixed into what have traditionally been thought of as domestic issues, such as the economy, social policy, the environment and so on. Steve Smith (1991: 54; 60-61) has made a similar point, arguing that foreign policy might now be a misleading term in that it implies a distinct identifiable sector in terms of content and process. Of course, we can still say that certain aspects of policy merit the label foreign because the world is still separated into distinctive territorial units, and those units are still an important part of the international system. This fact has led Christopher Hill (2003: 3) to define foreign policy as, the sum of official external relations conducted by an 8

9 independent actor (usually the state) in international relations. Yet the properties of this concept (its intension) seem out of sync with the phenomenon it is designed to cover (its extension) (Gerring, 1999). There is no explicit mention of the fact that in reality, the external and internal activities of states are often likely to be intertwined. In this context, we might go further and ask whether it still make sense to conceptualise foreign and domestic policy as separate entities? (c) How should we conceptualise the (British) state in a world of increased interdependence? Before broaching this question, it should be noted that such a world of complex interdependence has led some academics to question the need for a theory of the state at all (Hay and Lister, 2006). The role of the state in international politics is waning: why bother conceptualising a concrete entity which is in decline? However, as the discussion in the last paragraph makes clear, this paper rejects this position. That being said, how theories of the (British) state might accommodate, say, the twin processes of globalization and Europeanization is not clear. However, recent trends in the literature provide some pointers. One tendency is for theories of the state to reject determinacy and emphasize contingency. A second has been to downplay structuralism and highlight the importance of agency. Different individuals, groups, coalitions or classes can undertake strategic action, although within certain limits or structural constraints. This institutional terrain on which actors co-operate and conflict will unlikely be neutral, but the precise configuration of structural power will not be fixed and can be subject to change. Finally, comparativists have moved away from Weberian conceptions of the state in favour of disaggregating and problematising its component parts, something we have already mentioned. The focus is less on factors external to the state and more on forces outside its institutional boundaries. (Marsh, 1995; Marsh and Lister, 2006). At the same time, the disciplines of International Relations/International Political Economy have plenty to contribute to this debate. As already noted, global 9

10 institutions and processes can impact on, even shape domestic structure, but as Ikenberry (1996: 295-6) has argued, the precise nature of this impact will vary at any one time. Some external factors will provide catalysts for internal change, others will provide mere background conditions to strategic action at the national level. There may be cases where structures or forces at the international level have a determinative, causal effect on the domestic, so much so that the consequences endure for considerable periods of time. In such instances, the precise nature of these national-international connections can be a broader source of structural power, leading to the terrain of the British state to favour some actors rather than others. This will especially be the case if those self-same actors were responsible for promoting such connections in the first place. Our theory of the state needs to take these considerations into account (see also Almond, 1989: 254; Hill, 2003: 30-37). (d) Epistemological Questions. If ontologically, it is accepted that the national-international levels are inherently linked, what might be the epistemological consequences of taking such a position? Most obviously, the task of producing a parsimonious framework for studying this subject matter looks difficult to realise. Separating out and operationalising the independent from the dependent (not to mention intervening) variables so as to develop generalizations is likely to be problematic. 3 Perhaps the best we can hope for in the short to medium term is a thick description rather than an explanation of how when and why the domestic and the external combine, and with what effect for the particular country(ies) under study. Yet such a claim is likely to be contentious in a discipline where positivism still enjoys influence. After all, theoretical frameworks are supposed to simplify complex reality. One of the reasons why realists developed a unitary conception of the state (rejected in this paper) was because it made their task of constructing generalizations 3 For a good discussion of such problems in the context of understanding the Europeanisation of economic policy in various member states, see Dyson (2008). 10

11 about the international system easier. To have admitted that nation states were differentiated internally, and to have accepted that those internal dynamics had an important influence on the external environment (and vive versa) (a position accepted in this paper) would have rendered parsimonious theory-building practically impossible (Lumsdaine, 1996). Of course, there is always a delicate balance to be struck between the parsimony of a theory and its ability to plausibly represent a complicated world. But in taking the national-international connection(s) seriously, we need to try if we can to provide a schema that simplifies rather than reproduces the multifarious nature of politics in the twenty-first century. Understanding the National-International Connection in British Politics: Some Theoretical Propositions. So far this paper has argued that our understanding of British politics would benefit from considering in a more systematic fashion how its domestic institutions and actors are related to their external environment. Building on the questions raised above, the rest of the paper tentatively attempts to develop some theoretical propositions concerning how, when and why these levels will be linked. These propositions fall under two sub-headings familiar to political scientists: structure and agency. They will be developed in the sections below. Structure Proposition 1: Some aspects of the domestic structure of the British state and its external context will be mutually constituted in a semi-permanent way. In such circumstances, we should not think of the national and international levels as interlinked, more as related parts of a broader whole. So far, we have established that when it comes to understanding the institutions, processes and policy outputs of a particular country, its domestic institutions and 11

12 actors will be interlinked with the external level. The international environment can sometimes decisively shape the contours of the national polity under investigation. But national decision-makers are not passive recipients of this global context. Political elites or societal groups may discursively construct the external in the hope that such narratives help to support their position at home. National politicians and bureaucrats may go further and attempt to reform the material institutions of the international system in a way that helps them to realise their domestic objectives. Following Ikenberry (discussed briefly above) some of these national-international connections will be epiphenomenal: they will have a short-term impact before fading from view. Other will have a more enduring quality, perhaps contributing to the essential properties of the British state in a way that confers significant structural power on some actors over others. It is this second connection that I want to consider in more detail below. It is likely to be of more importance for understanding the possibilities for domestic strategic action in an increasingly interdependent world. It is in this context that some of the recent work of James Caporaso, Alec Stone Sweet and Wayne Sandholtz has been particularly useful. We have noted briefly above how Caporaso is in favour of bringing the study of International Relations and Comparative Politics closer together. In a review article dedicated to this task, he singles out a recent approach he calls the domestification of international politics as generating fruitful lines of enquiry. As the label suggests, this approach describes a process whereby the international system is increasingly becoming like a domestic polity. That is to say, the global environment is characterised more and more <by stable authority patterns [and] patterns of recognised rule< (Caporaso, 1997: 579). One key indicator of such domestification has been the growth <of specialized institutions for making and adjudicating laws and interpretations binding on parties [i.e. member states] (Caporaso, 1997: 579). Twinned with this domestification trend has been the gradual constitutionalization of aspects of the international system. Caporaso (1997: 580) defines constitutionalization as: 12

13 ... a metaphor of political integration among states based not on interdependence but more on a structural merger of their constituting principles, that is, their constitutions (author s emphasis). In highlighting these tendencies, Caporaso is claiming that the international system has developed in ways that diverge significantly from the anarchical Westphalian environment described by realists (see also Mancini, 1991; Stone Sweet, 1994). Caporaso (in his work with Stone Sweet) (1998) expands on these claims by discussing the role the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has had constitutionalizing the EU, a process that that has impacted significantly on the economic and social policy provision of member states (including the UK). A detailed account of this story has been provided many times and need not detain us here (see for example, Dehousse, 1998). That said, a few examples can be reproduced to illustrate the more general argument to be developed below. The origin of this constitutionalization process is usually traced back to two landmark rulings in the 1960s allowing the Court to significantly enhance the status of Union law, as well as its own role in interpreting it. In 1963, Van Gen en Loos, a Dutch transport form brought an action against Dutch customs after it increased the duty on a product which the company wanted to import from Germany. The firm argued that the Dutch authorities had breached Article 12 of the Treaty of Rome, which prohibited member states from introducing new duties or increasing existing ones on imports. Such a decision should be reversed because, since the Netherlands had signed the Treaty of Rome, EC law had direct effect in national law. Unsure how to proceed, the Dutch court asked the ECJ for a preliminary ruling (as it was entitled to do under Article 177). Adopting what many viewed as a wide interpretation, the ECJ decided that in negotiating the Treaty, member states had agreed to create a new legal order which had direct effect in their national jurisdictions. This ruling persisted despite the fact that a number of member states protested saying they had not intended to do any such thing. Although Van Gen en Loos established the principle of direct effect, such a ruling at the time would not have guaranteed the effective application of Community law, let 13

14 alone the constitutionalization of the EC. On occasions when European law had direct effect in national law, both enjoyed identical authority and status. If the two conflicted, the Treaty was silent on what would happen next (Dehousse, 1998: 41). The case Costa versus ENEL (1964) established the principle that, in the event of such a conflict, EC law enjoyed supremacy. In the absence of specific legal guidelines, when asked to rule on Costa, the ECJ once again turned to the spirit of the treaty. Following on from Van Gen en Loos, it argued that the EC had now constituted its own legal system. When member states joined the EC, this system became an integral part of their own constitutions. More generally, in forming the EC (with its principle of supranationality) member states had agreed to limit their sovereign rights. It followed, according to the ECJ (in quite a leap of logic) that the uniform application of EC law was an obligation of membership, and that European law should enjoy supremacy over national legal judgments. The impact of the ECJ s rulings on the economic policies of EC member states continued to be felt with the establishment of the principle of mutual recognition at the end of the 1970s. In the case of Cassis de Dijon (1979), an importer of the French liqueur appealed against a decision to prevent its sale in Germany because it contravened minimum standards as set down in German law. 4 In doing so, it was argued that this legislation breached the Treaty of Rome, especially the policy of guaranteeing the free movement of goods throughout the Community. The ECJ agreed, going further in ruling that if a product satisfies the regulatory requirements in one member state, different guidelines in another member state cannot be used as a barrier to import. In the 1980s, the Commission appropriated this principle of mutual recognition, employing it is one of its techniques for pushing forward progress on the Single Market programme. At a time when its tradition harmonization approach was meeting significant resistance in the Council of Ministers, mutual recognition played a key role in helping to eradicate non-tariff barriers within the EC (Dehousse, 1998: 84-87; Stone Sweet and Caporaso, 1998; ). 4 German law forbade the sale of spirits with an alcohol content of less than 25%. Crème de cassis was approximately 20% proof. 14

15 The ECJ s contribution to social policy has arguably been as important as its role in extending the EC s competence in economic affairs. Defrenne (1976) was the first case in which the Court articulated a vision of the Community as a social as well as economic union. However, it was through a number of rulings in the 1980s that the ECJ enforced a range of changes on British social policy in particular, which were unanticipated and continually resisted by Whitehall. For example, it conferred judicially enforceable rights on individuals in the UK to claim their work was of equal value to that of another person, and thus deserving of the same pay. The case of Marshall (1986) led to a reversal of the practice whereby women were dismissed from their jobs once they were eligible for a state pension. Because different retirement ages pertain to men and women in the UK, such instances were deemed to be discriminatory and illegal under EC law. Dekker (1991) saw the enactment by judicial decision of the main elements of the Pregnancy Directive, even though such legislation had been constantly opposed by British negotiators in the Council (Stone Sweet and Caporaso, 1998: ). Finally, this activism on the part of the Court dovetailed with the Commission s attempt in the second half of the 1980s to create a Social Europe. In particular, the ECJ found in favour of the Commission in 1996 when it was taken to court by the British government for pushing through the Working Time Directive under Article 118a as a health and safety measure. The then Major Administration argued that the Commission had misinterpreted Article 118a, which allowed for measures to be passed via a qualified majority vote (this bypassing the British veto), but the ECJ rejected this reasoning. It should hopefully now be clear from the above examples that, as far as the UK Polity is concerned, not only will its institutions be linked to institutions at the external level. In some cases these institutions will be mutually constituted in a way that may significantly shape the structural properties of the British state more generally. Utilising the research of Stone Sweet and Caporaso, we have noted how the combined action of the ECJ, national judges and private litigants has created a body of law that has constrained the autonomy of Whitehall in areas of economic and 15

16 social policy. However, a further quote from the authors further emphasises this blurring of domestic and European levels: In this case law, the ECJ has imagined a particular type of relationship between European and national courts < *a+ partnership *whereby+ national judges become agents of the Community order they become Community judges whenever they resolve disputes governed by EC law (authors emphasis) (Stone Sweet and Caporaso, 1998: 103; see also Burley and Mattli, 1993: 62-64). This fusion of EU and domestic institutions is unlikely to be reversed any time soon. To do so, member states would have to unanimously accede to a Treaty amendment curbing the ECJ s powers. Despite ongoing irritation and frustration with many of the Court s rulings over the years, in practice member states have never come close to agreeing such a line of action (Alter, 1998). It should be noted in passing that this discussion envisages a thicker notion of structure than that underpinning, for example, the two-level game metaphor associated with the work of Robert Putnam and others. 5 This approach takes the domestic and external levels as given and proceeds to investigate the connections between them. It does allow for processes of mutual feedback and in some cases, synergy, but ontologically the two levels remain distinct (Evans et. al. 1993). Yet (following on from Caporaso again) our proposition that domestic and external structures may also be mutually constituted, <requires the (partial) elimination of the conditions defining *their+ separateness (Caporaso, 1997: 580). Rather, we need a broader conception of this national-international connection which conceptualises it as two parts of a broader whole (Ikenberry, 1996: 297). Of course, not all such connections will be as thick as this constitutionalization process suggests. In the case of Britain, its links with the external world outside the EU are likely to be thinner. In these circumstances, the two-level game may be an appropriate metaphor for capturing the realities of the internal-external linkages. But there may be times when British negotiators will be operating on an institutional terrain characterised by a fusion of 5 I would like to thank Kai Oppermann for first reminding me of this fact. 16

17 domestic and global structures, a combination which may decisively rig the rules of the game in favour of certain participants. 6 To make this point is not to assume that any fusion of domestic and external structures will be biased inexorably towards the interests of a particular domestic group or class. This is the second theoretical proposition to be proposed in this paper. In line with our earlier observations concerning the increased importance of contingency in state theory, this paper adopts an open-ended conception of how the national-international connection may impact on the possibilities for strategic action at any one point in time. Indeed, our discussion of the constitutionalization of EU economic and social policy, and its impact on British political economy, would appear to give some support to such a position. We can see how successive rulings by the ECJ helping to remove obstacles to the completion of the Single Market would have benefitted the business community, especially large firms involved in cross border transactions. However, we have also seen how Court judgments at the same time, in the area of social policy have entrenched the rights of individual workers at the expense of their employers, although these gains should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence of the strengthening position of the working class as a collective whole. Perhaps the clear loser from this constitutionalization process was the British Conservative Party. It was a clear loser in the sense that concerns over increasing EC competence in the area of social policy helped to fuel growing Tory Euroscepticism in the 1990s, which in turn undermined party unity and proved fatal to its electoral fortunes in In this context, we have already noted the Major Government s decision to take the Commission to the ECJ over the Working Time Directive. However, as we have also see, this anxiety reflected a broader trend which also included opposition to the Social Chapter, a protocol attached to the Maastricht Treaty which gave the social partners (including the European Trade Union Confederation) the right to propose legislation within certain narrowly defined 6 For a similar conception of this fusion between the domestic and external, see the concept of the Frontier in the work of James Rosenau (1997: 5-6) 17

18 fields. Put in different terms, Conservative Euro-scepticism not only reflected the fear of an emerging European superstate and the threat it might pose to parliamentary sovereignty, but the more concrete consideration that the EU might provide an opportunity structure for the British trade union movement to regain influence after the repressive policies of the Thatcher regime (see for example, Bale and Buller, 1996; Buller, 2000). The supreme irony is the Conservative Euro-sceptics now appear to have drastically over-estimated the threat of Euro-corporatism. EU institutions may have co-operated to strengthen the rights of individual UK workers. But the notion that Brussels would empower the Trade Union Congress now appears considerably wide of the mark. This example serves to remind us that it may not only be the material reality of this national-international connection that is important. (Mis)perceptions of this linkage (or linkages) can also generate causal effects that exist independently of the material properties embedded in this mutually constituted structure (see for example, Hay, 2002: pp ; Risse, 2004; Barnett, 2008). Had the Conservative Euro-sceptics operated with a more accurate understanding of the development of EU social policy in the 1980s and 1990s (and what it meant for their domestic neo-liberal strategy) they may have been less obsessive in their criticism of the EU, making the task of party management easier. This is not to argue that a better appreciation of the realities of the EU would have solved the Tories political problems at this time. Conservative Euro-scepticism was clearly sustained by a collection of concerns, of which EU social policy was only one. That said, the ideas or narratives that domestic (or indeed external) actors have about the national-international connection may have an impact on British politics which is relatively autonomous from the material reality of this linkage. This is theoretical proposition number three. Agency Acknowledgment of the importance of agency as well as structure is of course crucial to understanding economic, social and political outcomes (McAnulla, 2002). Indeed, 18

19 the standard position on the subject these days is to stress that agents are potentially purposive entities whose actions can reproduce and transform society, yet at the same time, society is made up of a number of relations which structure the interaction between actors. However, it is worth emphasising this point briefly because some of the literature reviewed in the first section of this paper has been criticised for failing to stress the role of agency enough. For example, while Gourevitch clearly supported the decision of much of the second image reversed literature to disaggregate the state and consider how external structures and processes impacted on its component parts, he complained that it did do in such a way that politics disappeared from the interpretation. To quote Gourevitch in full: many arguments focus on process and institutional arrangements divorced from politics; on structure in the sense of procedures, separate from groups and interests which work through politics; on the formal properties of relationships among groups, rather than the content of the relations among them; on the character of decisions (consistency, coherence, etc.) rather than the content of decisions. (Gourevitch, 1978: 901) A similar complaint is sometimes made about the Europeanization literature. While plenty of scope is given over to investigating the way that EU institutions, policies and beliefs are mediated at the national level, as Mair (2004) has asserted, often research contains little about the political preferences of different groups and the way such preferences (as well as the ideas/discourse accompanying them) are mobilised vis-à-vis other actors. In particular, there is little on the opposition to Europeanization, even though Euro-scepticism appears to have been on the rise in a number of European countries. One of the reasons for this rather anaemic account of domestic politics might be the influence of New Institutionalism on the analytical frameworks underpinning Europeanization studies. New Institutionalism can often employ a very broad conception of institutions to the point where the approach almost defines agency out of the equation (Buller, 2006). In short, any attempt to theorise the national-international connection and how it may impact on British politics must open up the black box of the state itself and give 19

20 emphasis to the strategic action of individuals, groups, coalitions or classes within economic, social and political institutions. Such a summary leads us to our fourth theoretical proposition, familiar to students of foreign policy analysis: because domestic and external policy is now intermeshed in many ways, the statecraft of a particular country (in this case Britain) will not be an elite affair. A plethora of different actors will have the potential to be involved. Of course, in one study it will not be possible to examine the importance of every single actor involved in mediating the national-international connection. The potential list of candidates is self-evidently enormous. Instead, the final choice of which actors to prioritise will largely depend on the analytical focus and questions driving the research. Clearly a book investigating, for example, the way domestic beliefs and narratives about globalization have impacted in British political economy will necessitate the inclusion of a different set of actors to a thesis concentrating on the impact of the European Parliament on the House of Commons. The fact that foreign and domestic policy is now increasingly indistinguishable, and because actors will be operating on a structural terrain which, in some cases will be characterised by the fusion of national and international institutions, leads us to our final theoretical proposition. In such circumstances, actors will not practice foreign policy but linkage governance. Linkage governance can be defined as: The beliefs, institutions and policies that actors employ to manage the various national-international connections that face them. It follows from this definition that a particular linkage governance strategy will be comprised of at least two elements. The first is a set of beliefs, frames or understandings concerning the nature of the various dilemmas/opportunities that may emerge from governing in an institutional environment where domestic and external structures are interlinked. For example, some British governments in the past have declared themselves to be faced with problems they have defined as being global in origin. The Brown Government s analysis of the credit crunch and the 20

21 resulting recession in Britain would fall into this category. On other occasions, political parties in Britain have judged the dilemmas facing them as stemming from factors lodged firmly at the national level. An example in this context would be the governing approach of the Thatcher Government, certainly in the first half of the 1980s. The UK s economic problems were presented by the Conservatives as being a result of deficiencies in the structure of British domestic economic markets, especially the power of the trade unions. The second component of a linkage governance strategy is the institutions and policies employed to manage/solve the problems or exploit the opportunities flowing from an environment where a plethora of national-international connections are prevalent. Some policy instruments and institutions may be domestically-oriented : they will be set or geared towards national conditions which it comes to addressing issues. Others will be externally-oriented, designed to deal with a conundrum which is thought to have its roots in the international system, or some part of it. Take for example, the question of inflation in the UK. In the 1970s and the 1980s, a number of schools of thought concerned with how to maintain low and stable prices had an impact on the decision-making process in Britain. For example, Friedmanite monetarists argued that inflation could be controlled through manipulation of the national money supply, and advocated setting targets for constraining the growth of the so-called monetary base (notes and coins in domestic circulation). Alternatively, Global monetarists asserted that the increased interdependence of the international economy meant that inflation could be transmitted between one country and another. The way to avoid such a scenario was through exchange rate management: domestic monetary policy would be adjusted to help maintain an external parity for the currency believed to be consistent with price stability (Burton, 1982). Thatcherite economic policy oscillated between a domestic-oriented response to inflation in the first half of the 1980s (in the form of the Medium Term Financial Strategy) and a global monetarist response (shadowing the Deutschmark; ERM membership) in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s (Buller, 2000). 21

22 It should finally be made clear that linkage governance is not the preserve of any group, elite, coalition or class. Linkage governance can be practiced by any actor which believes that negotiating linkages with the external level (whatever their precise form) is important for the achievement of their interests or the realisation of their ideals. At any one time, different actors operating in British politics may employ different linkage governance strategies, which have the potential to come into conflict with each other. On other occasions, a wide consensus among state and societal groups may exist concerning the precise linkage governance strategy to be adopted in the face of the governing dilemmas facing the country. And of course, there may be periods where no coherent linkage governance strategy is present. Indeed, misunderstandings of the national international connection may generate incoherent responses which, in turn, may have a crucial impact on domestic politics more generally. Conclusions. This paper has argued that an account of British politics in a world of increased economic, social and political interdependence needs to take seriously the ways that the national and international levels are connected. Indeed, plenty of empirical work exists which studies British politics in a global perspective. Moreover, a closer look at this literature reveals a number of clues concerning how we might develop some more general theoretical propositions that might account for how, when and why such connections will be important at any one time. The second half of this paper has suggested a number of theoretical propositions as a way of trying to stimulate debate on this particular issue. Hopefully, these suggestions will not be the last word on this subject. They are certainly not intended to represent a fully-fledged theory. One final comment needs to be made on the question of how linkage governance relates to the concept of foreign policy. It should be emphasised that this paper is not 22

23 calling for the abolition of foreign policy as a political science concept, nor is it questioning the value of foreign policy analysis. 7 As noted above, Hill must surely be right to argue that certain aspects of policy merit the label foreign, if only because the nation state remains a core component of the international system. To define foreign policy, then, as the sum of official external relations conducted by an independent actor (usually the state) in international relations, still captures some of the reality of national governance in an interdependent world. Yet as students of foreign policy, we also instinctively know that the boundary between domestic and foreign is now increasingly blurred. A range of actors operating within the nation state (as well as the international system) will be involved in managing this multitude of interconnections between the internal and the external. It is this phenomenon that the concept of linkage governance is trying to capture. In this sense, linkage governance is perhaps best viewed as a subset of foreign policy not an attempt to replace it. REFERENCES Almond, G. (1989) Review Article: the International-National Connection, British Journal of Political Science, 19, Alter, K. (1998) Who Are the Masters of the Treaty?: European Governments and the European Court of Justice, International Organization, 52 (1) Bache, I & Jordan, A. (eds.) (2006) The Europeanisation of British Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bale, T. and Buller, J. (1996) Casting Doubt on the New Consensus; Conservatives, Labour and the Social Chapter, Review of Policy Issues, 2 (1) 59-80, Barnett, M. (2008) Social Constructivism. in J. Baylis, S. Smith and P. Owens (eds.) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (4 th ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 7 Many of the musings contained in the pages above originated from the author s exposure to the literature on FPA. 23

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