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Norwegen rühmt sich gern seiner „offenen Gesellschaft“: Migranten sind willkommen, vor allem qualifizierte Facharbeiter. Nach den jüngsten Wahlen im Sommer 2013, aus denen die Konservativen als Sieger hervorgingen, könnten nun die Einwanderungsgesetze verschärft werden. Schon jetzt bedient sich Norwegen europäischer Regelungen, die seinem Wunsch nach „effektiver Einwanderung“ entgegenkommen.

This thesis asks ‘what does Europeanisation mean for the strategies and practices of grassroots green groups in Europe?’ and aims to identify the conditions under which these groups become ‘europeanised’. I identify three process of europeanisation: direct europeanisation – when an actor connects directly to the EU, indirect europeanisation – when an actor connects to a europeanised member state and passive europeanisation – when actors europeanise outside of state mechanisms. The grassroots green movement has largely evaded studies of europeanisation and so it is through examining europeanisation at this ‘base’ level, closest to the citizens, that this research makes an original contribution to our understanding of the variables that mediate the process of europeanisation and to our understanding of grassroots green activism in Europe. This thesis takes its analytical framework from social movement theory and uses political opportunity structures and frames as domains in which it looks for evidence of europeanisation. Within these domains I distinguish between European and europeanised activity, teasing out the role of the nation state in mediating europeanisation at a grassroots level. Two cases are examined: anti-road protest and anti-GM protest in Britain, France and Italy between the period 2007-2010. This thesis demonstrates that there is some evidence of europeanisation within grassroots green groups. It encourages a more nuanced understanding of europeanisation as a process that can occur outside the state and amongst actors who do not seek to impact the EU. It finds that both strategic and ideological considerations shape the political opportunity structures to which movements direct themselves. It also finds that the fit between the frames used in protest and the national masterframes is a powerful variable in explaining the extent of social movement europeanisation.

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For a meaningful discussion of the effectiveness of ecological objectives and ecological quality standards, their terms and purposes must be examined and clarified. This study explores the terms and content of ecological quality objectives and ecological quality standards, based on the Water Framework Directive’s legal conceptualization of ‘ecological status’. This exploration is accomplished by analysing and describing the Water Framework Directive’s ‘ecological status’ aspect from a legal-ecological perspective. The analysis of ‘ecological status’ and its main constructs forms the basis for a possible alternative form of regulation, which addresses the shortcomings identified in the analysis.

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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the procedural democratic legitimacy of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Court of Justice has been instrumental in the construction of the European Union. Through its interpretation of the Treaty of Rome since the 1960s, it has constituted a legal system distinctive in kind. In contrast to orthodox instances of the political community – international organisations and the nation-state – the EU exemplifies no general type. Its legal, constitutional, political, economic and social infrastructures are part of a complex and pervasive web of overlapping jurisdictions that goes some way beyond the ordinary international organisation (by virtue of constitutional principles such as direct effect and citizenship), but not quite as far as the nation-state (e.g. sovereignty contestation). This being the case, its interlocutors have long since understood that the EU is in a state of transformation – it is itself a project and a process, the end result of which (finalité) is unknown. As such, many questions have been asked about the legitimacy of this process; and, given the Court of Justice’s (in)famous generative role within this process, the Court also finds itself the subject of such scrutiny. The legitimacy of the Court of Justice has been the focus of attention from both academics and practitioners. Most of that attention has been on the Court’s jurisprudence and jurisdiction – scrutinising the legal reasoning of cases; or questioning the limits of its constitutional functions according to axiomatic conceptions of, for example, the separation of powers doctrine. By contrast, less attention has been paid to the democratic legitimacy of the Court of Justice, and much less in relation to the Court’s institutional design. The subject-matter of the analysis in this thesis is the Court’s structures and processes, such as: the composition and appointments processes for members of the Court; the mechanisms that give access to various kinds of participants (such as locus standi and third-party intervention); and the use of judicial chambers. Procedural democratic legitimacy, moreover, has two dimensions: intrinsic and instrumental. The intrinsic is a measure of the democratic credentials of the Court as a discrete decision-making authority (such as representativeness and democratic participation); whereas the instrumental is concerned with the ways in which the Court contributes to the overall democratic legitimacy of the EU. In this thesis, the structures and processes of the Court of Justice are examined in light of both of those criteria. In contrast to prevailing approaches of constitutional theorists – who tend to treat these criteria as functions that are quite discrete, and their performance as mutually exclusive – an important theoretical contribution of this thesis is to develop an analytical framework that allows for the inherent synergies and tensions that exist between intrinsic and instrumental criteria to be factored into analyses of the democratic legitimacy of constitutional courts.

The thesis examines European legitimacy and regulatory governance. The research analyzes the link between regulatory governance and legitimacy in EU regulation and evaluates whether governance tools in the form of qualitative administrative criteria can contribute to European regulatory legitimacy. Governance here refers to the exercise of delegated regulatory powers by the European Commission. The question of whether the adoption of qualitative regulatory governance practices can enhance the supranational regulatory legitimacy of the European Commission has been underexamined in the literature typically without distinguishing the analysis from the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU. Using a case study from the telecommunications sector, the thesis conducts such an examination using a documentary method. To create the analytical context, the thesis distinguishes the theoretical concept of legitimacy for a transnational regulator from that of a national regulator of a sovereign state. The choice is made to use a form of normative regulatory legitimacy drawn from the scholarship on regulatory governance theory. An analytical model is constructed that reflects criteria and values that bear upon legitimacy so as to constitute a meaningful alternative to democratic forms of regulatory accountability. Regulation was defined in the research to cover policy instruments, in the form of measures of positive and negative integration, adopted for the EU single market under Article 106(3) and Article 114 TFEU. The analysis evaluates the regulatory governance used by the European Commission over a twenty-three year time period in which the telecommunications sector was entirely liberalized and harmonized. Analysis revealed that, while the Commission has improved the quality of its regulatory governance in principle, its use of normative regulatory governance in practice requires further attention, notably in respect of improving the evidence base for policy proposals and in creating a meaningful form of empirical feedback in evaluating regulatory outcomes, corresponding to an ex post accountability mechanism. On the other hand, the research validated the premise that a transnational regulator could purposively use regulatory governance as a tool with which to construct a defensible form of regulatory legitimacy.

The effects of global change in the nature of production are most acutely felt at the local level. Local authorities have been quick to respond to these changes with a flurry of policy measures. An important debate has surfaced as to whether local initiatives can indeed mediate global restructuring in order to sustain the economic well-being of the locality. My thesis is a contribution to this debate. The organizing hypothesis is that, under certain conditions, local activity can help to moderate the restructuring process. In particular, a locality is most effective when it possesses thick institutional networks between public and private actors that supply a wide range of services to aid industrial adjustment. Specifically, certain types of institutional networks can provide the essential infrastructure for learning, which refers to the ability of institutions to habitually adapt both these support services and their institutional relationships to meet the new politico-economic conditions engendered by the restructuring process. My research compares how two proactive localities (Nottingham in the East Midlands and Prato in Tuscany), both historic centres of textile and clothing production but with different institutional architecture, have assisted their industry to restructure away from the mass production of low-priced goods toward the more flexible production of high value products. Chapter one critically reviews the debate on the role of local institutions in economic development. Chapter two then discusses how different institutional networks emerge and establishes the methodology for recognizing networks, measuring thickness and assessing institutional learning capacity. Chapters three and four present an institutional map of each locality, identifying the key institutions and the types of networks that have developed. Chapters five and six examine the evolution of both the support services provided to the industry and the institutional relations during the restructuring period to assess each locality's institutional learning capacity. Chapter seven looks specifically at the growing, albeit recent, influence of the European Union on local institution-building in the two cases. Finally, chapter eight directly compares the two localities to draw general conclusions regarding the role of institutional networks in the industrial restructuring process and in economic development more generally.