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Europe and the Management of Globalization

Princeton University

February 23, 2007

A workshop organized by Sophie Meunier and Wade Jacoby

Sponsored by the Brigham Young Center for the Study of Europe, the Council for European Studies, the Princeton Center for Globalization and Governance, and the EU Program at Princeton

Conference Administrator: Nancy Barthelemy

Globalization – loosely defined as the increased flows of goods, services, capital, people, and information across borders – has been the source of many worries in Europe. In several countries, especially those in “old Europe,” globalization is more often perceived as a threat than as an opportunity. Some see a threat to their jobs, others to their social welfare, and yet others to their way of life. The European Union (EU) often has been vilified as a Trojan Horse that helps bring globalization into the heart of Europe. However, others have heralded the EU as Europe’s best defense against the negative effects of globalization. Over the past decade, European voters and politicians have increasingly demanded that the EU “manage” globalization instead of just passively receiving it.

Characterizing the EU as a system of management is nothing new. Original practical aspirations for European integration have often emphasized the management of intra-European foreign policy tensions. Conceptually, European integration has been seen as an effort to manage the eroding powers of national states, to manage the creation of an integrated market, and to manage the “pooling” of national sovereignty. But what all of these different “management” approaches have in common is a focus on tensions and challenges with an intra-European origin. More recently, the concept of “managed globalization,” articulated explicitly as the central doctrine of EU trade policy since 1999, suggests that order and control should be restored to the process of globalization by framing it with rules, obeying these rules, and empowering international organizations to make and implement these rules. The EU is particularly well placed to provide the institutional foundations for this management of globalization, since economic liberalization has been such a fundamental part of the experience of European integration.

This workshop will explore how over the past fifteen years European policy-makers have tried to manage globalization, both inside and outside Europe, in a variety of policy areas. We argue that this concept of managed globalization, originally and explicitly developed with respect to trade and finance, has become the underlying driver of almost all the major policy initiatives undertaken by the EU in the past decade. Whether the euro, immigration, or the constitutional treaty, all these policies have been designed, at least in part, to restore order and control in the face of challenges posed by globalization. While most of these policies operate inside EU borders, some go well beyond them or indeed have expanded those borders. In this sense, enlargement has been the management tool par excellence, a mechanism both for socializing Central Europe, the Baltics, and the part of the Balkans into the EU sphere but also for stabilizing a zone of lower wages, lower tax rates, and lower levels of market regulation. Moreover, the enlargement mechanisms have had a powerfully path-dependent effect on the EU’s Neighborhood Policy towards states that, while not candidates for membership, are certainly candidates for EU efforts at socialization and institutional reform.

Through analytical memos written in advance of the meeting and the discussion during the day, the workshop participants will analyze how “managed globalization” has become a central component – sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly – of the EU’s major policy initiatives in recent years.

Workshop Program

February 23, 2007

Corwin Hall 127

9:00-10:30