This special issue focuses on some new perspectives for European Union Studies. Since the rejection in 2005 of the ratification of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, the European Union has suffered stagnation and crises. Although the Lisbon Treaty amended the treaty on the European Union and contributed to the institutional developments of the European Union, no major institutional change is expected in the near future. No major political elites and representatives of member states expect a qualitative leap for the European Union. At the same time, the European Union is an important and indispensable actor on the world stage. The amendments introduced by the Lisbon Treaty contributed to the more effective functioning of the European Union.

The seven articles in this issue deal with major changes or turning points in the European Union from various viewpoints. Some shed new light on the current developments of the institutions of the European Union, while others analyze historical developments. The articles will contribute to a further understanding of the special nature of the European Union.

The paper revisits multi-level governance (hereinafter: MLG) in the EU in both theoretical and empirical terms. For theoretical reconsiderations, it examines some reasons why MLG has been so attractive to many scholars working on EU politics during almost the past quarter century. Two points are noted:first, MLG studies posit that the transformation of a national sovereignty has emerged in the EU; second, we have found the so-called “a governance turn” in EU studies around the year 2000, which leads our concerns to investigate the EU day-to-day institutional practices. These MLG studies have drawn our attention to the following relative transformations of power: from a state to a societal organization; from a central government to a local/regional government; and from a national government to an international organization. The paper argues that this type of a polity image, in which a national sovereignty has been transformed, is hard to be found in EU’s political practices of MLG.

For its empirical survey, the paper analyses the conceptualization of MLG in the EU, drawing on the 2014 Multi-level Governance Charter of the Committee of the Regions and the 2014 Conclusions of the Council of Ministers on Macro-Region Strategies, and then investigates two typical multi-level governance practices of cross-border cooperations: the Macro-Region Strategies (MRS) and the European Neighbourhood Policy Cross-Border Cooperation (ENP CBC). From these examinations of policy documents, the paper suggests an over-interpretation of multi-level governance studies that regards the EU as a multi-level polity. What has been found in the EU is not a legally established multi-level institutional complex, but just only a political slogan that tries to instigates voluntally cooperative practices among various levels of governments.

On the basis of these theoretical and empirical considerations, the paper finally pays attention to two critical viewpoints of preceding studies against MLG. The first points out that MLG damages European democracy in terms of both representativeness and accountability; and the second suggests that MLG studies posit a political harmony in horizontal and vertical governmental interrelations and thus underestimates power politics in which an ideology, such as neo-liberalism, becomes prevalent.

In concluding remarks, the paper suggests one notable point in MLG, which is an opening of a political field for mutual learning of practitioners going beyond national borders. This multi-level practices are exactly what Ian Manners suggests as a source of normative power Europe in his paper of 2002. What we need to see in MLG is not institutional complexes for vertical and horizontal intergovernmental relations, but a sustainable training system for learning a partnership among practioners trying to make European policies.

The rule of law has been one of the core principles on which any modern constitutional states have been founded. It shall be considered that this principle is enabled by securing an independent judicial power or supremacy of law. This principle has been deprecated around the world recently. Peoples facing the global economy and the changing international order have a tendency to hope for charismatic political leaders who relieve their anxiety. Such leaders may not hesitate to show mettle to disdain the rule of law so as to meet people’s expectations.

Such a situation has been observed in Europe. The shocking case is that of Hungary, which is facing blame for attaching little importance to the rule of law related to the independence of the national central bank and of the constitutional court, freedom of expression amongst civilians and in the media, national election system and minority protection.

How has the European Union, of which this state is a member, recognized and reacted to its negligence of the rule of law?

This analysis could be helpful in speculating on how the Union, being composed of 28 European states, has formed a community of values. As expressed in the Schuman Declaration of 1950, the original aim of the Union was to become a community of security led by France and Germany. In order to realize such a community, states made an attempt to construct an economic community. It was later that the Union and its member states developed an awareness of a need to become a community of values. Citizen’s lives and the activities of companies had been affected by the Union’s day-to day decisions directly, and addressing of the Union’s common policies toward Communist or Arab/African countries made the Union conscious that its policies should be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles. Furthermore, in the process of enlargement to the eastern part of the European continent, a thorough sharing of these principles amongst all member states was perceived as one of the Union’s priorities.

This paper seeks to examine the Union’s deficient powers in taking preventive measures and making Hungary comply with the rule of law. The European Commission has introduced a new framework in order to strengthen the rule of law in member states, though the council of the Union has hesitated to accept it. Hungary treats the EU with considerable distrust because of the Union’s authoritative nature and the perception of the Union as being a factor in causing economic stagnation after the global financial crisis. Even if the Union could acquire additional power to force its principles, it is difficult to foresee successful formation of a community of values at present.

In their monumental work Competitive Authoritarianism (2010), Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way insist that a high level of Western linkage guarantees democratization. However, according to recent research by Freedom House, the democratic conditions of several EU member countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, and Latvia, and the EU candidate country, Turkey, are backsliding. The aim of this article is to examine why these countries have experienced a deterioration of democracy in recent years, with specific focus on the case of Turkey.

After being recognized as an EU candidate in 1999, Turkey implemented eight harmonization packages and two constitutional amendments. The Justice and Development Party (JDP), known as pro-Islamic party, is one of the main actors supporting Turkey’s accession to the EU. From 2002 to 2005, the JDP earnestly pursued democratic consolidation in line with the EU accession process, in order to establish its legitimacy in both internal and external politics. The EU accession process also benefited the development of civil society in Turkey, and guaranteed the country’s democratization. However, after 2005, when Turkey formally became an EU candidate country, the EU accession process stagnated because of harsh opposition from several EU member states, such as the Republic of Cyprus and France. In addition to such opposition, the JDP chose to enforce the accession process in the manner of civil-military relations or religious freedom;consequently, Turkey’s democratization has gradually slowed. The range of civil society activity has also diminished. This trend became more apparent after 2011, when the JDP won its third general election. The most symbolic manifestation of Turkey’s democratic backsliding was the Gezi protest in May and June of 2013. Initially the protesters aimed to protect a historical park from redevelopment, but harsh response from the police provoked them to change their focus to direct criticism of the JDP and then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Another impetus for this change was the frustration of secular civil society, including ordinary citizens, with the JDP’s domination of Turkey’s politics.

The body of this article is divided into three parts. The first is a summary of the works of Levitsky and Way, and Jacob Tolstrup, who introduces the concept of the “gatekeeper” as an intervening variable of the relations between Western linkage and democratization. The second part is an explanation of how the JDP led the EU accession process, the EU’s internal opposition to Turkey’s accession, and the development of Turkey’s civil society. The third part covers Turkey’s democratic backsliding, especially the Gezi protest. Finally, this article clarifies that the JDP’s political speculation is a definitive factor in consolidating democracy in Turkey and suggests a revised analytical framework for external links and democratization.

When we consider international relations in Europe based on the European Union, it is crucial to treat issues of political instability at the peripheral areas of the Union, as well as at the center. Taking into account the rise of exclusive nationalism in EU countries and the concern over security caused by the frequent movement of people across borders, this research on the Mediterranean region, which includes the Southern Mediterranean countries as the source of many immigrants, has a great importance for the EU studies. This article analyzes the international relations in the Mediterranean including the EU with perspectives on securitization of immigration issues in EU policies and French engagement, putting importance on the fact that France has influenced to a large degree international institutionalization in the region under the leadership of the EU after 1990s.

This study is conducted paying attention to issues and actors. Firstly, on issues, what is important is securitization, i.e. we consider what is recognized as security problems affecting the region during the process of stabilization. Not only national security protecting a state with military forces, but also problems caused by movement of peoples from North Africa (and even from Sub-Saharan Africa) and political stability and economic development in North African countries have been considered in recent years as security matters. Secondly, for actors, we think of what takes a principal role in response to changes in securitization. In the Mediterranean region, France has developed bilateral diplomacy making good use of historical and cultural linkage. The EU, however, has also taken an important role using multilateral frameworks for regional cooperation, which must not be underestimated.

Based on the above considerations, this article investigates the EU’s strategy and actions on acceptance of immigrants (border control and social integration) from the Southern Mediterranean as well as French engagement towards them, analyzing common immigration policies of the EU in particular after the Barcelona Process since 1995. Events of the Arab Spring have produced political changes in and many refugees and emigrants from several countries in the Southern Mediterranean, where we could observe movement from inside and urging of outside especially from the EU towards democratization and its establishment; it is fundamental to understand the reality of actual international relations in the Mediterranean including the EU itself through considerations on reactions of the EU and France towards immigration issues from a perspective of securitization.

This paper specifies factors to make the member states of the European Union (EU) delegate their administrative powers to the European Commission in an area of linkage between its development cooperation policy and common foreign and security policy (CFSP) from the Principal-Agent perspective. The African Peace Facility (APF) that was established in 2004 as a funding instrument to support the African peace and security initiatives is one of the most famous case of the above policy linkage.

The APF’s management mechanism has been constructed through the EU’s inter-institutional negotiations between the Council and the Commission. During the negotiations, there were two main issues in contention. One was whether the APF would be funded through the European Development Fund (EDF) managed by the Commission, or the CFSP budget disbursed on the basis of decisions of the Council. The other was to what extent the Council could be included in the APF’s decision making process.

As a result, the Council accepted the Commission’s proposal that the APF was funded through the EDF, whereas the Commission conceded to the following demands of the Council. 1) The CFSP budget would not be excluded from the APF’s future resources. 2) The APF could be disbursed with approvals of the Council bodies in general process. 3) The commission was required to submit an annual report on the use of the funds to the Council, and to undertake an evaluation reviewing the procedures of the APF.

The fact sheets of the APF funding showed that the Council exploited the Commission’s expertise in managing the aid resources such as the EDF, and that most of the APF was devoted to the military related assistance for which the Council is mainly responsible. These findings suggest that the Council, actually the governments of the member states, takes advantage of the APF to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU’s security and development policy toward Africa.

This paper concludes that the APF’s management mechanism was created as a compromise between the Commission and the Council. Through setting up it, the Commission obtained more discretion to manage the fund, whereas the Council minimised the costs of policy implementation (“the transaction costs”). Moreover, the oversight procedures were applied to the APF financing decisions made by the Commission (“control”). Because the conditions of the Council’s costs and control were satisfied, it agreed to delegate the management power of the APF to the Commission.

Today, it seems that the relationship between the European Union (EU) and Asia is at a turning point. During the Cold War era, the status gap between the European Community (EC) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was quite large. In fact, the EC was considered to be highly institutionalised and the most developed region, while ASEAN was considered as an association of developing countries. However, in the post-Cold War era, the status of Asia as compared to that of Europe has significantly risen. The establishment of Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) in 1996 among heads of states as ‘equal partners’ is a striking example. In addition, ASEAN will have a community in place by the end of 2015, while Europe has struggled from its sovereign debt crisis to such an extent that it showed its eagerness to learn even from Asian countries. Finally, the EU is now expected to play a role as a ‘soft power’ally with ASEAN.

Based on multiple archives (French, German, and EC archives), this article retraces the course of EC/EU–ASEAN relations, from the origins of ASEAN until the establishment of the Joint Study Group (JSG) of 1975, considered as a formal institutionalisation of EC–ASEAN relations. It aims to clarify why and how this formal institutionalisation occurred. Actually, in 1972, an informal dialogue between the EC and ASEAN began. Thereafter, in June 1975 the regional organisations established JSG between the European Commission and the ASEAN member states. It can be interpreted as a precursor to the EEC-ASEAN cooperation agreement signed in 1980, in that this event is in certain times considered as a ‘turning point’.

EC/EU–ASEAN relations have been widely discussed. The existing research derives mainly from political scientists. Most early research has stressed ASEAN as a ‘stepping stone’ to the ‘Asia-Pacific’ region, in other words, an economic valuation of ASEAN as the reason why the EC deepened its relationship with ASEAN. Other studies have underlined ASEAN’s value as a reliable partner to break an impasse in the North-South negotiations. However, existing literature ignores a strategic aspect. This article establishes the decisive strategic reason for the EC to have chosen a formal relation with ASEAN: to have a substantial presence in a region where US presence declined after the Vietnam War. This viewpoint is especially supported by Sir Christopher Soames, British Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for External Relations. Focusing on this strategic aspect, based on the method of diplomatic history, this article also tries to analyse the impact of international contexts such as the Asian Cold War and North–South affairs on the EC’s decision-making process.

This article examines why and how the United Nations (UN) Security Council (SC) introduced due process into targeted sanctions. The focus is on the relations between different international organizations, namely “inter-organizational relations”. Particular attention is paid to the relations between European regional organizations (ROs), such as the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE), and the UN. The UN SC introduced some procedures for delisting individuals or entities from the terrorists list in reaction to the political and legal resistance by the ROs against the possibility of the infringement of fundamental rights of those who are listed.

Recently, international organizations have increasingly contact with each other. This trend began to be reflected in academic literature, but studies in inter-organizational relations are still embryonic. In order to contribute to this field, this article analyzes the case study on targeted sanctions, for, inter-organizational relations between the UN and the ROs are vertical ones, both politically and legally (Section 1). Nevertheless, existing literature has largely ignored, or at least underestimated, this vertical aspect. Thus,this article elaborates and presupposes vertical relations between the UN and the ROs and counters some existing researches on inter-organizational relations. Based upon the review of existing literature, the article suggests using the concept of resistance in the analysis of targeted sanctions, and hypothesizes that the political and legal resistance by the ROs urged the SC to introduce due process (Section 2). In order to prove this, the case study on targeted sanctions focuses on: (1) how did the ROs resist the SC? (2) how did the SC identify and accept the resistance? (Section 3)

As for the first question, although the ROs have cooperated on the implementation of targeted sanctions, there are some instances of resistance against the SC. For instance, the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights criticized the problems on the protection of human rights and raised the possibility of annulling the laws implementing targeted sanctions. As well, the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE passed the resolutions on the problem. As for the second question, this article reveals that the SC became aware of the resistance through its subsidiary organs and member states. As a result, the procedures for delisting such as the “focal point” or the “Office of the Ombudsperson”were established and the wording of the resolutions was modified in favor of human rights protection.

This study implies that the ROs may influence the decision-making of the UN that is legally superior to the ROs, and contribute to correcting the global injustice although they are only “regional” organizations.

This article aims at reconsidering the decision making process of the Eisenhower administration on the revisions to the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 as part of the policy for the U.S. oversea bases. The previous studies have argued the treaty revisions as part of American policy toward Japan with a motive to prevent her from neutralization. But so-called “New Look”, the cold war strategy of the Eisenhower’s administration which depended on nuclear weapon capability, built in the presence of oversea bases all over the world. Therefore, the U.S. government addressed lessening the complaint of the host nations to maintain the oversea bases. This article discusses the treaty revisions from the point of its relations with the Nash Report, the survey and recommendation on the situation and issues surrounding U.S. oversea bases, to point out how the treaty revisions have a close link with the comprehensive U.S. oversea-bases policy. Furthermore, my analysis focuses on the attitude of the U.S. military including the Pentagon. The previous studies have ignored the role of the U.S. military in terms of the treaty revisions, but they are a key actor as well as the Department of State and the American embassy in Japan because the U.S. military has a veto of security policies.

During the period of the Eisenhower’s administration, the USSR’s success in hydrogen-bomb test and appeal for change for peace after death of Stalin escalated fear of entrapment and demand of reducing U.S.-Soviet tension among the U.S. allies. In addition, the success of the USSR in development of ICBM missiles and Sputnik I launching in 1957, persuaded the host nations to limit their alliance commitment to the United States. Furthermore, the presence of U.S. military forces for a long time and criminal jurisdiction procedures involving U.S. military personnel unfair to the host nations also led to public protest against the security policy of their government. As for Japan in 1950s, the presence of U.S. military bases was considered as an ongoing symbol of the “U.S. occupation”. What is more, the strong anti-nuclear sentiment everywhere in Japan strengthened the public’s fear of entrapment. The neutralists in Japan succeeded in propagating the idea that the U.S. military presence would increase the risk of entrapping Japan into unwanted nuclear wars after so-called “Sputnik shock”.

Reflecting such a situation, the Nash Report recommended that the U.S. should examine alternatives to their base system in Far East. This recommendation became discussed seriously by the Operation Coordinating Board in spite of the opposition by the U.S. military. These altered the negative attitude of the U.S. military toward the treaty revisions.

In the late 1960s, the Japanese government’s Cabinet Research Office secretly investigated Japan’s nuclear weapons capability and then produced a report in 1968. From a technological and financial standpoint, the report concluded that Japan could build a small number of nuclear bombs without difficulty. Meanwhile Prime Minister Eisaku Sato had announced the “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” in December 1967, but the Japanese government policy did not explicitly prohibit Japan from possessing a nuclear weapons capability. Relying on the 1968 report and other materials, some published works insisted that the Sato government sought to maintain Japan’s nuclear weapons capability. This article questions the validity of this argument by reexamining the 1968 report and Japan’s atomic energy development in comparison with a U.S. government study from the mid-1960s on nuclear non-proliferation policy toward Japan.

Comparison of the analyses of the 1968 report and the U.S. study on Japan’s fissile material production capability reveals that the latter was based on a more realistic scenario of Japan’s nuclear armament than the former. The 1968 report assessed that Japan could build nuclear bombs by using the plutonium produced by a modified Calder Hall reactor purchased from the U.K. because Japan would obtain reprocessing capability in the early 1970s. To do so, however, required Japan to refuse the safeguards stipulated in the 1958 Japan—U.K. atomic energy agreement. The 1968 report found that it would be damaging and unlikely for Japan to consider such a course of action. In contrast, the U.S. study, which also concluded that Japan had the ability to manufacture plutonium bombs, assumed that Japan would construct a heavy-water moderated reactor using safeguards-free natural uranium to evade international safeguards. Unlike the U.S. study, the 1968 report did not explore feasible measures for Japan to build nuclear bombs.

This article also argues that the Sato government lacked political determination to develop and maintain Japan’s nuclear weapons capability. In the late 1960s, Japan was acquiring a nuclear weapons capability as a result of its atomic energy development, which did not follow the scenario in the aforementioned U.S. study. The delay in the construction of a reprocessing plant in Tokai Mura illustrated that the Japanese government did not prioritize the development of Japan’s nuclear weapons capability. Moreover, it became more difficult for Japan to go nuclear against the will of the U.S. because in the late 1960s the former deepened its dependence on the latter for atomic energy development. Nevertheless, Japan’s atomic energy complex and national security circles had a common interest in promoting Japan’s atomic energy development as a national policy, and consequently Japan retained its nuclear weapons capability.