Simon Bulmer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3776629 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simon Bulmer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simon |
| FAMILY NAME | Bulmer |
| SIGNATURE | BULMER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 519 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Confronting geopolitics: The EU (and EU studies) at a crossroads
Germany and the European Union: Post-Brexit Hegemon
In late-March 2019 the United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the European Union. Will Brexit lead to Germany becoming the EU’s hegemon? The commentary explores the likely impact of Brexit on policy areas and intergovernmental politics in the EU. It focuses on the sources of German hegemony: structural, ideational and diplomatic power as well as the need for Germany’s role to be legitimate amongst partner states and to have domestic support. Two sc…
Politics and Economics of Brexit
The politics and economics of Brexit
The British referendum on continuing membership of the European Union (EU) in June 2016 represented a turning point in the relationship between the United Kingdom (UK) and the EU. The result – a 51
European integration in crisis? Of supranational integration, hegemonic projects and domestic politics
The European Union is facing multiple challenges. Departing from mainstream theory, this article adopts a fresh approach to understanding integration. It does so by taking two theoretical steps. The first introduces the structure–agency debate in order to make explicit the relationship between macro-structures, the institutional arrangements at European Union level and agency. The second proposes that the state of integration should be understood…
Children's Rights, Eastern Enlargement and the EU Human Rights Regime
Germany and the Eurozone Crisis: Between Hegemony and Domestic Politics
This paper explores Germany’s centrality to the outcome of the eurozone crisis. It argues that the eurozone crisis has led Germany’s ordo-liberal principles to trump its other longstanding commitment – i.e. to European integration. These two principles are explored in order then to shed light on how they have played out during the crisis. German centrality has created high expectations for it to provide leadership. Exploring hegemony conceptually…
Managing Europe from home: The changing face of European policy making under Blair and Ahern
D avid A llen: A Tribute
European Union and Culture: Between Economic Regulation and European Cultural Policy
This book explains how and why the European Union has started to intervene in the cultural policy sector—understood here as the public policies aimed at supporting and regulating the arts and cultural industries. It is a comprehensive account of the Communitarisation process of the cultural policy sector. Before 1992, no legal basis for EU intervention in the field of culture appeared in the Treaties. Member states were, in any case, reluctant to…
Germany as the EU's reluctant hegemon? Of economic strength and political constraints
This article explores the growing perception, prompted by the eurozone crisis, of Germany as a hegemonic power in the European Union. The article explores the realignments in the power balance within the European Union (EU) by making an original application of the insights from the literature on hegemony. It reviews the evidence for Germany playing a hegemonic role, but then emphasizes three sets of constraints. First, German pre-eminence is larg…
Germany and the European Union: From ‘Tamed Power’ to Normalized Power
Germany has traditionally played a key role in promoting European Union solutions to domestic policy problems. In doing so it gained a reputation as a ‘tamed power’ (Katzenstein). This article reviews Germany's diplomacy two decades after unification. It explores the ‘tamed power’ hypothesis with reference to three policy areas: constitutional reform in the EU; Justice and Home Affairs policy; and an issue that has made German European policy ver…
Politics in Timemeets the politics of time: Historical institutionalism and the EU timescape
This article considers what light historical institutionalism (HI) may be able to shed on the European Union's (EU's) timescape. Drawing on Paul Pierson's work Politics in Time it reviews what HI has to say about the dual dynamics of path dependent incremental development and radical change (termed punctuated equilibrium or critical junctures) as well as relating to timing, sequencing and long-term processes. It then suggests three areas of EU st…
Policy Transfer in European Union Governance: Regulating the Utilities
This new book presents a clear conceptual framework for understanding the transfer of policy ideas between EU states, together with an empirical study of regulatory change within European utilities. Policy transfer is a new instrument for understanding EU policy-making. This volume shows how the nature of institutions, interdependence between trans-national and national jurisdictions and social systems, relate policy actors across geographical bo…
Germany, Britain and the European Union: Convergence through Policy Transfer
How may policy convergence between Germany and the United Kingdom come about? This contribution seeks to offer some analytical explanations. It explores the real-world pressures for convergence for two medium-sized powers which are institutionally embedded within the European Union, whilst economically integrated into the global economy. Globalisation and Europeanisation are reviewed as ways of understanding the potential for convergence. However…
The Europeanization of UK Government: From Quiet Revolution to Explicit Step-Change
In this paper we review – from a UK perspective – how the UK government and its policy process have adapted to European integration. Has adaptation been a quiet revolution, a step-change, or both? In exploring this question we draw upon the conceptual literature of Europeanization. We employ it to shed light on the longer-term pattern of UK adaptation as well as to put into context the domestic changes currently under way. Our argument is that a …
Policy Transfer in the European Union: An Institutionalist Perspective
Although the concept of policy transfer attracts growing attention in political science, its application to the European Union remains underdeveloped. This article offers a comprehensive conceptual account of EU policy transfer. It starts from the institutionalist premise that transfer processes and outcomes will vary between differently constituted governance regimes. Three forms of EU governance are identified; hierarchy, negotiation and ‘facil…
The European policy-making machinery in the Berlin republic: Hindrance or Handmaiden
This article examines European policy-making in the Berlin Republic. The basic puzzle explored is whether the policy machinery is able to facilitate the projection of a ‘new European policy’, characterised by greater emphasis upon national interests. In order to suggest answers, the article reviews the origins of the policy machinery and the changes made in the pre-unification period. It then explores the current situation in the Berlin Republic.…
Devolution and EU Policy Making: The Territorial Challenge
This paper seeks to document the impact of structural and organisational change brought about through devolution on the UK's handling of European policy, and thereby to illustrate the nature of the new multi-level governance in the devolving UK. In the context of arrangements prior to devolution, we examine distinctive features of the new constitutional and structural framework of EU policy-making; the guidelines and conventions for the multi-lev…
Organizing For Europe: Whitehall, The British State And European Union
The article examines the adaptation of Whitehall to participation in the European Union. Following an Historical Institutionalist analysis, the article argues that the most critical juncture relating to the machinery for the handling of European business was taken in 1960–1961 well before the third, successful application to join the European Communities. Actual accession brought about an adaptation of the machinery and of the processes developed…
Research news
Germany in the European Union: Gentle Giant or Emergent Leader
The 1996 intergovernmental conference on the European Union will represent an important test of German influence in the European Union. The two preceding reforms—the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty—were undertaken under different circumstances. The Single European Act preceded German unification, whereas the Maastricht treaty negotiations were partly a response to German unification and the end of the Cold War. The IGC negotiations …
Institutions and Policy Change in the European Communities: The Case of Merger Control 1
The supranational regulation of merger and acquisition activity presents valuable evidence for examining the dynamics of policy change within the European Communities. Over the years four merger regimes can be seen to have existed. The first, restricted to the coal and steel industries, originated in the specific postwar wish to control (German) heavy industry and retains its separate character. Other industries were a matter for the later Treaty…
The European Dimension
European integration has been of central importance to the Federal Republic’s existence. The post-war division of Europe excluded the possibility of German reunification and presented the new state with the need for acceptance into the new international order. Initially, policy was heavily dependent on the attitudes of the Western allied powers, which held responsibility for the foreign affairs of the FRG. The inducement that they in effect offer…
The Ferderal Republic of Germany and the European Community
Germany as the EU's reluctant hegemon? Of economic strength and political constraints
This article explores the growing perception, prompted by the eurozone crisis, of Germany as a hegemonic power in the European Union. The article explores the realignments in the power balance within the European Union (EU) by making an original application of the insights from the literature on hegemony. It reviews the evidence for Germany playing a hegemonic role, but then emphasizes three sets of constraints. First, German pre-eminence is larg…
Germany and the Eurozone Crisis: Between Hegemony and Domestic Politics
This paper explores Germany’s centrality to the outcome of the eurozone crisis. It argues that the eurozone crisis has led Germany’s ordo-liberal principles to trump its other longstanding commitment – i.e. to European integration. These two principles are explored in order then to shed light on how they have played out during the crisis. German centrality has created high expectations for it to provide leadership. Exploring hegemony conceptually…
Domestic Politics and European Community Policy‐Making
Policy Transfer in the European Union: An Institutionalist Perspective
Although the concept of policy transfer attracts growing attention in political science, its application to the European Union remains underdeveloped. This article offers a comprehensive conceptual account of EU policy transfer. It starts from the institutionalist premise that transfer processes and outcomes will vary between differently constituted governance regimes. Three forms of EU governance are identified; hierarchy, negotiation and ‘facil…
Organizing For Europe: Whitehall, The British State And European Union
The article examines the adaptation of Whitehall to participation in the European Union. Following an Historical Institutionalist analysis, the article argues that the most critical juncture relating to the machinery for the handling of European business was taken in 1960–1961 well before the third, successful application to join the European Communities. Actual accession brought about an adaptation of the machinery and of the processes developed…
Politics in Timemeets the politics of time: Historical institutionalism and the EU timescape
This article considers what light historical institutionalism (HI) may be able to shed on the European Union's (EU's) timescape. Drawing on Paul Pierson's work Politics in Time it reviews what HI has to say about the dual dynamics of path dependent incremental development and radical change (termed punctuated equilibrium or critical junctures) as well as relating to timing, sequencing and long-term processes. It then suggests three areas of EU st…
The Europeanization of UK Government: From Quiet Revolution to Explicit Step-Change
In this paper we review – from a UK perspective – how the UK government and its policy process have adapted to European integration. Has adaptation been a quiet revolution, a step-change, or both? In exploring this question we draw upon the conceptual literature of Europeanization. We employ it to shed light on the longer-term pattern of UK adaptation as well as to put into context the domestic changes currently under way. Our argument is that a …
The politics and economics of Brexit
The British referendum on continuing membership of the European Union (EU) in June 2016 represented a turning point in the relationship between the United Kingdom (UK) and the EU. The result – a 51
Institutions and Policy Change in the European Communities: The Case of Merger Control 1
The supranational regulation of merger and acquisition activity presents valuable evidence for examining the dynamics of policy change within the European Communities. Over the years four merger regimes can be seen to have existed. The first, restricted to the coal and steel industries, originated in the specific postwar wish to control (German) heavy industry and retains its separate character. Other industries were a matter for the later Treaty…
European integration in crisis? Of supranational integration, hegemonic projects and domestic politics
The European Union is facing multiple challenges. Departing from mainstream theory, this article adopts a fresh approach to understanding integration. It does so by taking two theoretical steps. The first introduces the structure–agency debate in order to make explicit the relationship between macro-structures, the institutional arrangements at European Union level and agency. The second proposes that the state of integration should be understood…
West Germany's Role in Europe: Man‐Mountain’ or ‘Semi‐Gulliver
Germany and the European Union: From ‘Tamed Power’ to Normalized Power
Germany has traditionally played a key role in promoting European Union solutions to domestic policy problems. In doing so it gained a reputation as a ‘tamed power’ (Katzenstein). This article reviews Germany's diplomacy two decades after unification. It explores the ‘tamed power’ hypothesis with reference to three policy areas: constitutional reform in the EU; Justice and Home Affairs policy; and an issue that has made German European policy ver…
Germany in the European Union: Gentle Giant or Emergent Leader
The 1996 intergovernmental conference on the European Union will represent an important test of German influence in the European Union. The two preceding reforms—the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty—were undertaken under different circumstances. The Single European Act preceded German unification, whereas the Maastricht treaty negotiations were partly a response to German unification and the end of the Cold War. The IGC negotiations …
The European policy-making machinery in the Berlin republic: Hindrance or Handmaiden
This article examines European policy-making in the Berlin Republic. The basic puzzle explored is whether the policy machinery is able to facilitate the projection of a ‘new European policy’, characterised by greater emphasis upon national interests. In order to suggest answers, the article reviews the origins of the policy machinery and the changes made in the pre-unification period. It then explores the current situation in the Berlin Republic.…
The European Council's First Decade: Between Interdependence and Domestic Politics
Germany, Britain and the European Union: Convergence through Policy Transfer
How may policy convergence between Germany and the United Kingdom come about? This contribution seeks to offer some analytical explanations. It explores the real-world pressures for convergence for two medium-sized powers which are institutionally embedded within the European Union, whilst economically integrated into the global economy. Globalisation and Europeanisation are reviewed as ways of understanding the potential for convergence. However…
Devolution and EU Policy Making: The Territorial Challenge
This paper seeks to document the impact of structural and organisational change brought about through devolution on the UK's handling of European policy, and thereby to illustrate the nature of the new multi-level governance in the devolving UK. In the context of arrangements prior to devolution, we examine distinctive features of the new constitutional and structural framework of EU policy-making; the guidelines and conventions for the multi-lev…
West German Political Parties and the European Community: Structures without Function
The German party debate concerning European Community policy-making is a low key affair which contrasts greatly with the situation in Britain. This paper examines the form of the debate in the Federal Republic and argues that the nature of the European institutions, of the German party system and, particularly, of internal party policy-making account for this situation. Three short case histories are used to show the operation of the ‘German mode…
West German Political Parties and the European Community: Structures without Function
The German party debate concerning European Community policy-making is a low key affair which contrasts greatly with the situation in Britain. This paper examines the form of the debate in the Federal Republic and argues that the nature of the European institutions, of the German party system and, particularly, of internal party policy-making account for this situation. Three short case histories are used to show the operation of the ‘German mode…
Domestic Politics and European Community Policy‐Making
The Change of Government in West Germany
The European Council's First Decade: Between Interdependence and Domestic Politics
The Federal Republic of Germany
The second election to the EP was held in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) on 17 June 1984. The date has a political significance in the FRG as the ‘day of national unity’ although this played no role in the election. As in 1979 the election was only held in the FRG for 78 MEPs, while the remaining one SPD and two CDU MEPs were selected from the Berlin Chamber of Deputies. The main distinction from 1979 lay in the intervening change of power…
The European Dimension
European integration has been of central importance to the Federal Republic’s existence. The post-war division of Europe excluded the possibility of German reunification and presented the new state with the need for acceptance into the new international order. Initially, policy was heavily dependent on the attitudes of the Western allied powers, which held responsibility for the foreign affairs of the FRG. The inducement that they in effect offer…
The Ferderal Republic of Germany and the European Community
West Germany's Role in Europe: Man‐Mountain’ or ‘Semi‐Gulliver
Institutions and Policy Change in the European Communities: The Case of Merger Control 1
The supranational regulation of merger and acquisition activity presents valuable evidence for examining the dynamics of policy change within the European Communities. Over the years four merger regimes can be seen to have existed. The first, restricted to the coal and steel industries, originated in the specific postwar wish to control (German) heavy industry and retains its separate character. Other industries were a matter for the later Treaty…
Research news
Germany in the European Union: Gentle Giant or Emergent Leader
The 1996 intergovernmental conference on the European Union will represent an important test of German influence in the European Union. The two preceding reforms—the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty—were undertaken under different circumstances. The Single European Act preceded German unification, whereas the Maastricht treaty negotiations were partly a response to German unification and the end of the Cold War. The IGC negotiations …
Organizing For Europe: Whitehall, The British State And European Union
The article examines the adaptation of Whitehall to participation in the European Union. Following an Historical Institutionalist analysis, the article argues that the most critical juncture relating to the machinery for the handling of European business was taken in 1960–1961 well before the third, successful application to join the European Communities. Actual accession brought about an adaptation of the machinery and of the processes developed…
Devolution and EU Policy Making: The Territorial Challenge
This paper seeks to document the impact of structural and organisational change brought about through devolution on the UK's handling of European policy, and thereby to illustrate the nature of the new multi-level governance in the devolving UK. In the context of arrangements prior to devolution, we examine distinctive features of the new constitutional and structural framework of EU policy-making; the guidelines and conventions for the multi-lev…
The European policy-making machinery in the Berlin republic: Hindrance or Handmaiden
This article examines European policy-making in the Berlin Republic. The basic puzzle explored is whether the policy machinery is able to facilitate the projection of a ‘new European policy’, characterised by greater emphasis upon national interests. In order to suggest answers, the article reviews the origins of the policy machinery and the changes made in the pre-unification period. It then explores the current situation in the Berlin Republic.…
The Europeanization of UK Government: From Quiet Revolution to Explicit Step-Change
In this paper we review – from a UK perspective – how the UK government and its policy process have adapted to European integration. Has adaptation been a quiet revolution, a step-change, or both? In exploring this question we draw upon the conceptual literature of Europeanization. We employ it to shed light on the longer-term pattern of UK adaptation as well as to put into context the domestic changes currently under way. Our argument is that a …
Policy Transfer in the European Union: An Institutionalist Perspective
Although the concept of policy transfer attracts growing attention in political science, its application to the European Union remains underdeveloped. This article offers a comprehensive conceptual account of EU policy transfer. It starts from the institutionalist premise that transfer processes and outcomes will vary between differently constituted governance regimes. Three forms of EU governance are identified; hierarchy, negotiation and ‘facil…
Policy Transfer in European Union Governance: Regulating the Utilities
This new book presents a clear conceptual framework for understanding the transfer of policy ideas between EU states, together with an empirical study of regulatory change within European utilities. Policy transfer is a new instrument for understanding EU policy-making. This volume shows how the nature of institutions, interdependence between trans-national and national jurisdictions and social systems, relate policy actors across geographical bo…
Germany, Britain and the European Union: Convergence through Policy Transfer
How may policy convergence between Germany and the United Kingdom come about? This contribution seeks to offer some analytical explanations. It explores the real-world pressures for convergence for two medium-sized powers which are institutionally embedded within the European Union, whilst economically integrated into the global economy. Globalisation and Europeanisation are reviewed as ways of understanding the potential for convergence. However…
Politics in Timemeets the politics of time: Historical institutionalism and the EU timescape
This article considers what light historical institutionalism (HI) may be able to shed on the European Union's (EU's) timescape. Drawing on Paul Pierson's work Politics in Time it reviews what HI has to say about the dual dynamics of path dependent incremental development and radical change (termed punctuated equilibrium or critical junctures) as well as relating to timing, sequencing and long-term processes. It then suggests three areas of EU st…
Germany and the European Union: From ‘Tamed Power’ to Normalized Power
Germany has traditionally played a key role in promoting European Union solutions to domestic policy problems. In doing so it gained a reputation as a ‘tamed power’ (Katzenstein). This article reviews Germany's diplomacy two decades after unification. It explores the ‘tamed power’ hypothesis with reference to three policy areas: constitutional reform in the EU; Justice and Home Affairs policy; and an issue that has made German European policy ver…
Managing Europe from home: The changing face of European policy making under Blair and Ahern
D avid A llen: A Tribute
European Union and Culture: Between Economic Regulation and European Cultural Policy
This book explains how and why the European Union has started to intervene in the cultural policy sector—understood here as the public policies aimed at supporting and regulating the arts and cultural industries. It is a comprehensive account of the Communitarisation process of the cultural policy sector. Before 1992, no legal basis for EU intervention in the field of culture appeared in the Treaties. Member states were, in any case, reluctant to…
Germany as the EU's reluctant hegemon? Of economic strength and political constraints
This article explores the growing perception, prompted by the eurozone crisis, of Germany as a hegemonic power in the European Union. The article explores the realignments in the power balance within the European Union (EU) by making an original application of the insights from the literature on hegemony. It reviews the evidence for Germany playing a hegemonic role, but then emphasizes three sets of constraints. First, German pre-eminence is larg…
Germany and the Eurozone Crisis: Between Hegemony and Domestic Politics
This paper explores Germany’s centrality to the outcome of the eurozone crisis. It argues that the eurozone crisis has led Germany’s ordo-liberal principles to trump its other longstanding commitment – i.e. to European integration. These two principles are explored in order then to shed light on how they have played out during the crisis. German centrality has created high expectations for it to provide leadership. Exploring hegemony conceptually…
Political science (24 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (21 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (16 works) · European union (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Sociology (12 works) · International trade (11 works) · Public Administration (10 works)