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EU sanctioning behavior in the post-Lisbon era
Wood, Catherine ; Gawthorpe, Andrew (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
Despite a long history of scholarship about economic sanctions, research about European Union sanctions, specifically EU sanction threats, is more nascent. The institutional changes in the EU changes since the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, which gave the European Parliament some increased powers whilst maintaining an intergovernmental Common Foreign and Security Policy, add to this research gap. This thesis thus attempts to answer the question, "What are the effects of the Treaty of Lisbon on the European Parliament's role in sanctions decision-making?" Due to the EP's significant role in the Magnitsky case and its high salience and implications for EU relations with third countries, this study uses the Magnitsky case in the EU to answer this question. It uses an explaining-outcome process-tracing method and finds that some legal changes did not make the EP more assertive in sanctions policy in the Magnitsky case. It does find that the EP 'tested the waters' by forging a greater connection between human rights and external relations. It also finds that the augmentation of the HRVP role led to a more difficult relationship between the EP and the Council in the Magnitsky case.
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Mitigating Greenwashing Practices in the Fashion Industry: Assessing the Effectiveness of the New EU Green Claims Directive A Case Study of Primark
Obadia, Lucy ; Fiřtová, Magdalena (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
Greenwashing, a prevalent phenomenon within the fashion industry, continues to pose significant challenges. Recognising the severity of this problem, the European Union (EU) has emphasised the need to safeguard consumers against misleading practices. This thesis critically analyses the impact of the EU's initiative to regulate greenwashing practices and evaluate the effectiveness of the New Green Claims Directive in the context of the fashion industry. By adopting a consumer perspective, this research explores the Directive's coverage of greenwashing practices and assesses its real-world efficacy. Employing a comprehensive approach, this study examines the implementation of the Directive through a case study of Primark's sustainability claims. Scrutinising the company's practices, it sheds light on the greenwashing tactics that the Directive may have overlooked. Through this examination, the research seeks to contribute to the existing literature by assessing the effectiveness of green claims and the potential impact of the EU Green Claims Directives. The findings of this study underscore the significance of the fashion industry's lack of stable regulations in combatting greenwashing. The analysis reveals the complexities associated with regulating misleading practices and highlights the need for...
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Nationality Matters: How Members of the European Parliament Decide on Citizens' Petitions
Schüppel, Carl Felix ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (vedoucí práce) ; Váška, Jan (oponent)
Recent studies have suggested that MEPs give higher priority to their national parties and voters when making decisions than previously thought. To test this finding, this paper investigated whether and why MEPs' decisions on citizens' petitions in the petitions committee were influenced by petitioners' nationality. It employed a mixed-methods design combining statistical analysis of a new dataset of petitions from the 8th and 9th parliamentary term and thematic analysis of interviews with MEPs and administrative staff. The results show that MEPs favoured petitions from their own countries and that petitioners from countries that were overrepresented in the committee had a higher chance of success. The study identified three conditions at member state level that led to national overrepresentation: the possibility to achieve outcomes that can be "sold" to voters, a highly polarised party system, and media reporting on petitions. The paper thus supports the recent findings while also pointing to an unfair handling of petitions that could undermine citizens' trust in the process.
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Past, memory and politics of culture. Colonial heritage in Portugal
Coutinho Machado, Ísis Helena ; Sadecka, Agnieszka (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
This Master's thesis explores the representations of the colonial past in Portugal's heritage landscape and investigates how this past is portrayed in a postcolonial context. The study focuses on the mainstream narrative of Portuguese history and aims to understand why the history of colonialism in Portugal still privileges the colonizer's efforts and silence the voice of the colonized. By examining cultural institutions such as museums and monuments, which serve as important symbols of national identity and memory, the research maps out the presence and treatment of colonial symbolism in Portugal's cultural and public spaces. Drawing on the theories of postcolonialism and critical heritage studies, the study examines the representations of the colonial past in the official public narrative. It analyzes selected case studies, including the Monument to the Discoveries and the Monument to the Colonial Empire in Porto, as well as the World of Discoveries museum in Porto and the Museum of the Geographical Society of Lisbon. These sites are situated in significant tourist and historical cities, offering insights into how the difficult past of the "Golden Age of Discoveries" and the 19th-century Colonial Empire is explored within the official national narrative.
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Fact-Insensitiveness and Electoral Alignment Across WEIRD Societies
Mandujano Manriquez, Mauricio ; Oude Nijhuis, Dennie (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
The central claim that justifies this research stems from the existing gap in the comparative politics literature linking the alignment approach and the rising spread of misinformation, conceptualized as fact-insensitiveness. Additionally, three other factors play a significant role in carrying out this specific research project. Firstly, although there are comprehensive datasets on electoral systems and other country-relevant variables for democracy studies, such as Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), or The Electoral Knowledge Network (ACE), they lack the instrumental variables necessary to measure fact-insensitiveness or electoral alignment. Additionally, these datasets are agnostic to recent scholarship, pointing to the existence of psychological differences across populations derived from their distinct historical trajectories. Secondly, the exceptional nature of the COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to assess fact-insensitiveness through proxies of high fidelity that correspond to individual decision-making. Instead of deploying surveys or experimental designs, the nature of the pandemic has left every individual with the individual capacity to make a personal choice around a specific topic: vaccinations and COVID-19 restrictions. Thirdly, the empirical findings derived from this research will...
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Negotiations between the EU and Mercosur: motivations behind the relaunch in 2010
Ellis de Lucía, Martina ; Broad, Matthew (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
This thesis examines the relaunch of the negotiations for an Association Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) in order to understand new trends towards interregionalism after the failure of the Doha Round and the motivations of the EU in resuming the talks. The research question leading this work is: What explains the decision of the EU to relaunch negotiations with Mercosur in 2010? Moreover, two hypotheses are presented related to need of EU to re- think their economic integration strategies after the stagnation in Doha and the aim of the bloc of maintaining and strengthening its commercial and regulatory power vis-à-vis China and the United States in Latin America. Knowing the fact that in 2010 negotiations between the two blocs were relaunched, this thesis aims to prove the plausibility of the two hypotheses presented vis-à-vis other possible factors by means of process tracing. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Delegations of the European Union and representation of power in communication towards the Southern Neighbourhood countries
Gera, Kristina ; Young, Mitchell (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
The thesis is devoted to analysing the EU's communication with Southern Neighbours (SNs), namely Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. The purpose of the study is to identify what the EU's communications disclose about its role as Hard, Soft, Normative or Transformative Power in the region. The literature describes the actorness of the EU in the world by all four forms of power. However, the competition between these concepts inside the official discourse of the EU Delegations (EUDs) has been less investigated. Data for the current research comes from the content of the country-specific statements and press releases that appeared on the EUDs' websites from June 2016 to March 2021. The methodology is a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The work reveals that the EU appeals to its Transformative Power more often in comparison to the other concepts of power in its communications to the three SNs in focus. Moreover, the thesis critically assesses external perceptions of the EU based on 2016 and 2020 opinion polls. It unfolds the problems of the current communication strategy of the EU with SNs. This review is followed by recommendations for possible improvement of the efficiency of the EU's power representation on the international stage. The thesis attempts to add to the discussion...
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Cooperating or bypassing the member state? Paradiplomacy of the Visegrád regions in Brussels.
Poloczek, Łukasz Ignacy ; Šlosarčík, Ivo (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
More and more attention is paid in the academic debate to the issue of sub-state entities, represented by regional governments, as partially independent actors of international politics. This phenomenon, referred to as paradiplomacy, is particularly visible in the European Union, where since 1980s regional governments have been mobilising to gain direct influence on the shape of European politics. A regional government that acts as an agent of European politics may or may not be actively supported by its central government. This thesis tries to investigate the relationship between the direct representations of the Visegrád Group regions in Brussels and their respective national Permanent Representations. In the first chapter, I discuss the theoretical issues related to regional mobilisation in Brussels by referring to the work of researchers who deal with multi- level governance in the context of the European Union. In the second chapter, I present and justify the choice of research design, case studies, and semi-structured interviews as the main source of obtaining data necessary to answer the research question. In the third chapter, I included the analysis of the obtained information, and in the fourth chapter, the conclusions drawn from it. This research shows that direct regional...
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Deliberative democracy: exploring new forms of legitimacy?
Van Luijk, Jeff Izaak Wëllem ; Stepanovic, Vera (vedoucí práce) ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (oponent)
Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs), as political decision-making mechanisms, are often referred to as legitimising devices. Considering that DMPs are in contradiction with deliberative democratic ideals of legitimation through large scale deliberation, they are often labeled as experiments and can be seen as shortcuts towards legitimate decisions. Studies are showing, however, that this shortcuts approach does not necessarily increase the legitimacy of resulting decisions as perceived by the wider public. Why are they continuing to be replicated and institutionalised in western democracies? What are the motivations behind this proliferation of DMPs? The present thesis attempts to answer these questions through the analysis of a combination of long-form and short-form qualitative data collected around DMPs in Brussels. Findings include insights on process design that can lead to increased emotions legitimacy.
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Understanding Party Positions on European Integration amidst Crises: The impact of national and regional crises on political party behavior in Spain and Ireland
Mikava, Giorgi ; Arregui Moreno, Francisco Javier (vedoucí práce) ; Styczyńska, Natasza (oponent)
Does Brexit cause other national parties in EU member states to change their positions on European integration? Can the effect of Brexit be explained by its exceptional nature or do all crises affect political party positioning on European integration one way or another? By treating Brexit crisis as an independent variable of this study and controlling the results by comparing it to Spanish constitutional crisis and its influence on party positions, one of two things are bound to happen: political parties in other member states affected by the crises will rally behind their government stance and EU institutions, or will respond by shifting policy positions depending on success vs failure story of Brexit outcome. In an attempt to determine, how do crises affect national parties' policy positioning on European integration, it is expected that mainstream parties will remain pro-integrationists as they traditionally have, while Eurosceptic parties will choose to shift their positions on integration depending on EU's handling of the crises.
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