Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EUROBORD (Bordering Europe: Boundary Formation and European Integration)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-05-01 bis 2024-10-31
From the global financial crisis via the migration crisis, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic to the Russian war on Ukraine: recent developments highlight how strongly European integration is challenged by events at or beyond the EU’s external borders. Yet current theorizing of European integration focuses almost exclusively on internal factors. EUROBORD therefore engages in a ‘bordering’ analysis aiming to describe and explain how boundary shocks and changes have shaped European integration.
EUROBORD understands boundary configurations as markers of political development. EU boundary closure – how permeable boundaries are for the movement of persons and products – is an indicator of exclusive or inclusive community building. Boundary control – to what extent the EU gains the authority to regulate and the resources to enforce boundaries – is an indicator of centralized or decentralized capacity building. Analyzing EU boundary closure and control helps us understand the nature of the EU polity and the factors that have shaped its development.
How does the EU react to shocks to its external boundaries? What drives the opening or closure of EU boundaries? When and why has the EU reinforced its supranational boundary management capacities – and under which conditions have member states reasserted control over their borders? Do transboundary crises strengthen EU polity formation? These are the questions that EUROBORD seeks to answer in a comparative analysis of bordering processes and crisis episodes.
To this end, EUROBORD builds a boundary configuration dataset. It measures closure and control for a large variety of economic, political, cultural and coercive boundaries for the movement of persons and products between European states and their neighbors, from 1980 to today. EUROBORD examines how boundary gaps (asymmetries between member and nonmember states at the external boundaries of the EU) and boundary shocks (disruptive changes in cross-boundary movements) affect bordering processes and the political development of the EU. Further subprojects study the politicization and politics of bordering at different levels: citizens’ perceptions and preferences, party discourse and competition, and intergovernmental conflict and negotiations.
In sum, by studying the boundary configuration of the EU, its changes and drivers, the project aims to provide a novel and better understanding of the characteristics and the development of the EU as a novel type of polity. It also examines the effects that the increasing geopolitical rivalries, the autocratization of countries surrounding the EU, and transboundary crises have had on EU polity formation.
EUROBORD understands boundary configurations as markers of political development. EU boundary closure – how permeable boundaries are for the movement of persons and products – is an indicator of exclusive or inclusive community building. Boundary control – to what extent the EU gains the authority to regulate and the resources to enforce boundaries – is an indicator of centralized or decentralized capacity building. Analyzing EU boundary closure and control helps us understand the nature of the EU polity and the factors that have shaped its development.
How does the EU react to shocks to its external boundaries? What drives the opening or closure of EU boundaries? When and why has the EU reinforced its supranational boundary management capacities – and under which conditions have member states reasserted control over their borders? Do transboundary crises strengthen EU polity formation? These are the questions that EUROBORD seeks to answer in a comparative analysis of bordering processes and crisis episodes.
To this end, EUROBORD builds a boundary configuration dataset. It measures closure and control for a large variety of economic, political, cultural and coercive boundaries for the movement of persons and products between European states and their neighbors, from 1980 to today. EUROBORD examines how boundary gaps (asymmetries between member and nonmember states at the external boundaries of the EU) and boundary shocks (disruptive changes in cross-boundary movements) affect bordering processes and the political development of the EU. Further subprojects study the politicization and politics of bordering at different levels: citizens’ perceptions and preferences, party discourse and competition, and intergovernmental conflict and negotiations.
In sum, by studying the boundary configuration of the EU, its changes and drivers, the project aims to provide a novel and better understanding of the characteristics and the development of the EU as a novel type of polity. It also examines the effects that the increasing geopolitical rivalries, the autocratization of countries surrounding the EU, and transboundary crises have had on EU polity formation.
The focus of the project has been on developing the EU boundary configurations database. We understand boundaries as functional and spatial institutions regulating the movement of persons and objects across territories. We examine 18 functional boundaries for the entry and exit of persons (such as workers, refugees, students, and military personnel) and 32 functional boundaries for the entry and exit of objects (such as industrial goods, personal data, audiovisual content, and arms) representing a broad variety of boundaries. For each functional boundary, we code the level of closure (how easy is it to cross the boundary?) and control (how much legislative, executive, and judicial authority does the EU exercise over the boundary?) for the internal boundaries of all member states, and for their external boundaries with the countries of the neighbourhood and with several important distant countries (like the US, China, Japan, and India). The dataset covers the period since 1980 and is based on the manual analysis and coding of the relevant EU law.
The dataset is a starting point for describing and explaining the political development of the EU. It also allows us to compare the development of the EU against the historical development of the modern state and against the expectations of major theories of state building and regional integration. We are interested in how external factors such as democratization and democratic backsliding, geopolitical rivalries, and security threats as well as internal factors such as the politicization of European integration affect boundary formation. We also examine how the specific features of the EU as a "regulatory polity" built on top of existing nation-states have shaped its boundary and polity formation trajectory. We look at the relationship between closure and control, internal and external boundaries, and differences between boundary closure and control for exit and entry as well as for the movement of persons and objects.
Our descriptive analyses show that the EU has increasingly gained authority over the boundaries of the member states. We further observe that whereas EU control of both internal and external boundaries has increased, a persistent gap between higher EU control of internal as opposed to external boundaries has remained. EU bordering is internally driven. And whereas boundary control has increased in all dimensions (legislative, judicial, and executive), legislative and judicial control are dominant, and executive control has lagged behind. We further find that boundary control for objects has remained persistently higher than for persons. As for closure, we find the increasing gap between internal and external closure expected by state-building theories, but the development has been driven by internal opening rather than by increasing external closure. We also find that EU external boundary closure has become increasingly differentiated in the post-Cold War period. According to current state of our research, closure is mainly an expression of community building: the more "European" and the more democratic countries are, the more the EU opens its boundaries. By contrast, the increase in supranational external boundary control is the result of a functional and constitutional "spillover" of internal boundary control. We find that EU bordering is much in line with the political development of a liberal-democratic regulatory polity.
The dataset is a starting point for describing and explaining the political development of the EU. It also allows us to compare the development of the EU against the historical development of the modern state and against the expectations of major theories of state building and regional integration. We are interested in how external factors such as democratization and democratic backsliding, geopolitical rivalries, and security threats as well as internal factors such as the politicization of European integration affect boundary formation. We also examine how the specific features of the EU as a "regulatory polity" built on top of existing nation-states have shaped its boundary and polity formation trajectory. We look at the relationship between closure and control, internal and external boundaries, and differences between boundary closure and control for exit and entry as well as for the movement of persons and objects.
Our descriptive analyses show that the EU has increasingly gained authority over the boundaries of the member states. We further observe that whereas EU control of both internal and external boundaries has increased, a persistent gap between higher EU control of internal as opposed to external boundaries has remained. EU bordering is internally driven. And whereas boundary control has increased in all dimensions (legislative, judicial, and executive), legislative and judicial control are dominant, and executive control has lagged behind. We further find that boundary control for objects has remained persistently higher than for persons. As for closure, we find the increasing gap between internal and external closure expected by state-building theories, but the development has been driven by internal opening rather than by increasing external closure. We also find that EU external boundary closure has become increasingly differentiated in the post-Cold War period. According to current state of our research, closure is mainly an expression of community building: the more "European" and the more democratic countries are, the more the EU opens its boundaries. By contrast, the increase in supranational external boundary control is the result of a functional and constitutional "spillover" of internal boundary control. We find that EU bordering is much in line with the political development of a liberal-democratic regulatory polity.
This project aims to produce a new approach to describe and explain European integration. First, we expect that our bordering analysis offers an insightful analysis of the development of the EU as a polity in its capacity-building and community-building dimensions. Second, we expect our boundary configuration dataset to provide data on European integration that go beyond existing measures in offering a more fine-grained analysis of its progress and development. Third, we contribute to a better understanding of European integration in a phase, in which its development is likely to be shaped strongly by external factors and a more hostile international environment.
Until the end of the project, we will be able to update and make full use of the boundary configurations dataset in describing and explaining the political development of the EU, and in studying the effects of external boundary shocks and boundary gaps. We also aim to gain insights on how boundaries and boundary issues are evaluated by citizens and politicized by parties. In addition, we aim to study in depth how transboundary crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine have led to changes in the EU's boundary configuration.
Until the end of the project, we will be able to update and make full use of the boundary configurations dataset in describing and explaining the political development of the EU, and in studying the effects of external boundary shocks and boundary gaps. We also aim to gain insights on how boundaries and boundary issues are evaluated by citizens and politicized by parties. In addition, we aim to study in depth how transboundary crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine have led to changes in the EU's boundary configuration.