Funded projects
Research within the Administrative Governance programme is organised around a series of research projects:
Jean Monnet Research Group on EU-Asia relations (GEAR)
The project will integrate different disciplinary perspectives on the relations between the EU and East Asia, with particular focus on economic and political aspects. The project will bring together aspects around an integrated research project leading to the publication of policy papers and the Handbook of EU-Asia Relations (Palgrave, 2013). The project will pursue three distinct dimensions of EU-East Asia relations: comparative, relational and global. The academic value of this approach arises from the capacity of the research group to analyze multiple strands of the relationship between these key regions in the context of an emerging multi-polar world. The project will involve the organization of several research conferences and workshops which will facilitate the presentation of draft chapters for the handbook and the discussion of preliminary findings with selected scholars and experts in each of the two regions.
The project is led by Thomas Christiansen from Maastricht University who is working with five other Jean Monnet professors, Hiromasa Kubo (Kobe University, Japan), Philomena Murray (Melbourne University, Australia), Cillian Ryan (Birmingham University, UK), Xinning Song (Renmin University, China) and Chae-Deug Yi (Pusan National University, South Korea). This group brings together a wealth of valuable knowledge, and between them also have an extensive network among scholars and stakeholders which facilitates high-level participation at the events.
Project Leader: Thomas Christiansen
Coordinator: Youngah Guahk
The role of national parliaments in European integration is a topical issue in current political and academic debates. The Treaty of Lisbon significantly expands the influence of national parliaments in EU policy-making. Very little research has been done on the question of how institutional reforms and legal stipulations actually impact on the role of national parliaments in EU affairs. The OPAL Project addresses this gap and for the first time gathers comprehensive data on parliamentary involvement in EU affairs across all 27 Member States. This project is a response to a joint call within the Open Research Area in Europe for the Social Sciences by the Research Councils of Germany, France the UK and the Netherlands (ANR-DFG-ESRC-NWO). It is a joint endeavour of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, University of Cologne, Cambridge University and Maastricht University.
IN-COOP – Institutional Cooperation in the European Union
This interdisciplinary research project, which is financed by the European Commission (FP 7; Marie Curie Initial Training Network) focuses on the rapidly-evolving field of inter- and intra- institutional cooperation within the EU system of multi-level governance. By systematically exploring formal and informal patterns of cooperation in inter-level, inter-institutional and intra-institutional settings and by focusing on a wide variety of policy sectors, it aims at bringing new insights into the role of institutions in the EU policymaking process.
The research is implemented by 13 pre-doctoral and 2 post-doctoral researchers and is organised within a multi-disciplinary network of eight universities and three professional organisations (CEPS, Brussels; DLA Piper, Brussels; EIPA, Maastricht). The participating Universities are: Maastricht University (coordinator); Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies; Cambridge University, Fondation nationale des Sciences Politiques Paris (Science Po); University of Loughborough; Université de Luxembourg; University of Mannheim; University of Osnabrück.
Coordinators: Christine Neuhold and Sophie Vanhoonacker
Administrative Coordinator: Lidwien Hollanders
For more details, see: http://www.in-coop.eu/
The Diplomatic System of the European Union - Evolution, Change and Challenges
The Diplomatic System of the EU (DSEU) Network aims to investigate the growth and functioning of a diplomatic system centred on the European Union. It focuses on three key challenges facing this system in the coming decade: the internal challenge of institutional change and inter-institutional cooperation, and the external challenges posed by emerging powers and by the EU’s engagement in state-building in fragile societies.
The network is financed by the European Commission’s Jean Monnet Programme and involves three key project partners – Loughborough University (lead partner, UK), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (BE) and Maastricht University (NL). It will run initially from September 2009 until August 2011.
The key activities conducted by the network include the organisation of a series of workshops and conferences held at key stages, and culminating in a major conference to be held in Brussels during 2011, the editing of a series of policy papers drawing on the research conducted within the network, the production of one or more special issues and an edited volume bringing together the key findings of the research activities.
Coordinator at Maastricht: Sophie Vanhoonacker
UM team: Karolina Pomorska; Petar Petrov; Andrea Ott; Hylke Dijkstra; Heidi Maurer; Natasja Reslow
For more information, see http://dseu.lboro.ac.uk/
Transnationalism and the transfer of administrative knowledge, 1840-1940
The nineteenth century revolutions in government triggered the expansion of bureaucracies on all administrative levels. Because of the growing complexity of government functions the bureaucracies were faced with an increasing need for appropriate and up-to-date administrative knowledge. Administrative knowledge can simply be defined as knowledge necessary to perform administrative tasks. This knowledge was often not available within local or state bureaucracies, and had to be found elsewhere. The acquisition, appropriation, implementation and diffusion of administrative knowledge has mostly been studied in national contexts. One of most salient aspects, however, of the new administrative knowledge of the 19th century and early twentieth was that it was often developed within transnational communities of bureaucrats, experts and philanthropists. These epistemic communities avant la lettre were communicating by means of international congresses, institutes, associations, correspondence and different kinds publications. The officials and experts discussed (seemingly) technical issues such as the metric system, the gold standard, or national censuses, but also highly political questions such as public health, poverty, working-class housing, criminality and the like. The aim of the project is to analyse how these transnational communities were able to act between national and international levels and how (and to what extent) they influenced and reshaped policies and politics on both the national and international level, and were able to reach uniformity or standardisation.
This project is being carried out in collaboration with researchers based at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs (Paris), University of Geneva, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), University of St. Andrews, The Rothschild Archive (London), and the University of Cologne.
The project will result in a number of individual and joint publications (articles, monographs, and edited volumes). With subsidies from Maastricht University and the CNRS a database of transnational experts in social reform issues will be developed (2010-2011).
Coordinators: Chris Leonards, Nico Randeraad
The provincial administration of Zuid-Holland (1814-2014)
The province of Zuid-Holland and the Erfgoedhuis Zuid-Holland are funding a research team to write a history of the provincial administration since 1814. The envisaged book will be the first of its kind to give a comprehensive historical assessment of the activities of the provincial authorities within the administrative system of the Netherlands. It deals not only with the supervision of local authorities, but also follows the province into a wider European and global administrative arena.
Nico Randeraad is member of the scientific board of the project, and will be partially released from teaching for a period of two years to write three chapters of the book.
Conceptualising the European Union's Power in the Wider European Neighbourhood
The project investigated the sources and facets of EU power in the wider European neighbourhood. In particular, it enquired into the normative and strategic dynamics of the EU’s policies vis-à-vis neighbouring states in two policy areas – democracy support and conflict resolution. The research involved empirical work on selected case studies from the wider European neighbourhood with a view of analyzing the value-based and the interest-based logics as drivers of EU foreign policy and identifying the factors that condition the EU’s impact on countries in its immediate vicinity.
The project was funded by the European Commission in the framework of an Intra-European Marie Curie fellowship (project N 219597).
Coordinator: Gergana Noutcheva
