This chapter examines the role of energy in foreign policy by focusing on Russia’s decision in 2006 to temporarily stop the flow of natural gas to the Ukraine, along with its impact on European markets. It first explains how energy contributes to national prosperity and underwrites national security, noting that states now desire energy security in the same way that they desire military and economic security. It then considers the political significance of energy during the post-Cold War years before discussing the ‘gas spat’ between Russia and Ukraine. It also explores the European energy insecurity dilemma that followed the spat and shows that much of the current tensions afflicting Europe and Russia are driven by an inability to manage energy security as a potent area of foreign policy.
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14. Energy Policy
Sharp Challenges and Rising Ambitions
David Buchan
This chapter examines three strands of the European Union’s energy policy: the internal energy market, energy security, and climate change. Energy policy has rapidly gained in importance for the EU, as it faces the challenges of creating an internal energy market, increasing energy security, and playing an active role in combating climate change. Reform of the energy market has been a constant activity since the late 1980s and has been based on liberalizing cross-border competition, but this could be increasingly undermined by member-state intervention and subsidy to promote renewable energy and to ensure adequate back-up power. Efforts to curb energy use and to develop a low-carbon economy are at the heart of Europe’s new programmes and targets to combat climate change. The chapter shows that each of the three strands of the EU’s energy policy involve different policy-making communities and illustrate a range of different policy modes.
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Sam Raphael and Doug Stokes
This chapter examines growing concerns over global energy security due to rising demand for fossil fuels by industrialized economies coupled with increasing uncertainties over future energy reserves. It considers the implications of increasing energy insecurity amongst the world’s major powers for international security by focusing on the politics of oil. After providing an overview of the problem of energy security, the chapter discusses the connection between energy security and International Relations theories such as liberalism, realism, and historical materialism. It then explores the link between energy security and human insecurity, and how the search for energy security by states in the global North affects the human security of communities in the oil-rich global South. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the role played by the United States in underpinning global energy security in the post-war era, and the impact that this has had for oil-rich regions.
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Sam Raphael and Doug Stokes
This chapter examines growing concerns over global energy security, as continuing demand for fossil fuels by industrialized economies is matched by increasing uncertainties over future energy reserves. With a particular focus on the politics of oil (which remains the key global energy source), it will assess the ways in which increasing energy insecurity amongst the world’s major powers will impact upon international security more broadly, and will discuss different understandings of the likelihood of future ‘resource wars’ and a new era of geo-political rivalry. The chapter will also examine the impact that the search for energy security by states in the Global North has upon the human security of communities in the oil-rich Global South. Finally, the chapter will examine the central role played by the USA in underpinning global energy security in the post-war era, and the impact that this has had for oil-rich regions.
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Edited by John Ravenhill
Global Political Economy presents a diverse and comprehensive selection of theories and issues. Debates are presented through a critical lens to encourage readers to unpack claims, form independent views, and challenge assumptions. This text has been updated with contemporary real word examples, including the impact of the Trump administration, Brexit, and economic nationalism. Furthermore, new analysis has been added on the international political economy of work, labour, and energy.
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Alan Collins
This chapter provides an introduction to Security Studies, the sub-discipline of International Relations that deals with the study of security. War and the threat to use force are part of the security equation, but the prevalence of threats is far-reaching for Security Studies. They encompass dangers ranging from pandemic and environmental degradation to terrorism and inter-state armed conflict. The latter is actually a sub-field of Security Studies and is known as Strategic Studies. This edition examines differing approaches to the study of security, such as realism, liberalism, social constructivism, and postcolonialism. It also investigates the deepening and broadening of security to include military security, regime security, societal security, environmental security, and economic security. Finally, it discusses a range of traditional and non-traditional issues that have emerged on the security agenda, including weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, energy security, and health.
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This chapter examines various dimensions of security and insecurity within states. It first considers different conceptualizations of security and the range of areas within which it may be applied before discussing security and insecurity in the state of nature. It then explores the impact of security and insecurity on global politics, Thomas Hobbes' ideas about security and insecurity, and collective security as embodied in the United Nations (UN). It also reviews some pressing security challenges in the post-Cold War period and the broadening of the security agenda to encompass more recent concerns such as human security, environmental security, and energy security. Finally, it analyses the ‘war on terror’ that came in response to 9/11, raising further questions concerning how best to deal with nonconventional threats.
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This chapter examines ecological modernization, a discourse that addresses the restructuring of the capitalist political economy along more environmentally defensible lines. At one level ecological modernization is about the search for green production technology, and especially clean energy. However, this search also opens the door to intriguing possibilities for more intensive transformation, involving political change as well as technological change. So although at first sight ecological modernization looks like a rescue mission for industrial society, albeit an imaginative one, it also points to political and economic possibilities beyond industrial society. The central assumption of ecological modernization is that the capitalist political economy needs conscious reconfiguring and far-sighted action so that economic development and environmental protection can proceed hand-in-hand and reinforce one another. The chapter first explains the idea of ecological modernization before discussing its discourse analysis. It concludes with some remarks on the future of ecological modernization.
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This text provides an introduction to Security Studies, the sub-discipline of International Relations that deals with the study of security. War and the threat to use force are part of the security equation, but the prevalence of threats is far-reaching for Security Studies. They encompass dangers ranging from pandemic and environmental degradation to terrorism and inter-state armed conflict. The latter is actually a sub-field of Security Studies and is known as Strategic Studies. This edition examines differing approaches to the study of security such as realism, liberalism, social constructivism, and postcolonialism. It also investigates the deepening and broadening of security to include military security, regime security, societal security, environmental security, and economic security. Finally, it discusses a range of traditional and non-traditional issues that have emerged on the security agenda, including weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, energy security, and health.
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This chapter examines the European Union's external environmental policy, with particular emphasis on the challenge faced by the EU in exercising leadership in global environmental governance and in the development of the climate change regime. It first considers the international dimension of the EU environmental policy as well as the issue of sustainable development before discussing the EU's efforts to lead the negotiation of an international climate regime up until the 2015 Paris conference. It then explores how the different energy interests of the member states have been accommodated in order to sustain European credibility. It also looks at the question of climate and energy security in the EU and concludes with an assessment of the factors that determine the success or failure of the EU in climate diplomacy, including those that relate to coordination and competence problems peculiar to the EU as a climate negotiator.
Book
Edited by Helen Wallace, Mark A. Pollack, Christilla Roederer-Rynning, and Alasdair R. Young
Policy-Making in the European Union explores the link between the modes and mechanisms of EU policy-making and its implementation at the national level. From defining the processes, institutions and modes through which policy-making operates, the text moves on to situate individual policies within these modes, detail their content, and analyse how they are implemented, navigating policy in all its complexities. The first part of the text examines processes, institutions, and the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of policy-making, while the second part considers a wide range of policy areas, from economics to the environment, and security to the single market. Throughout the text, theoretical approaches sit side by side with the reality of key events in the EU, including enlargement, the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, and the financial crisis and resulting Eurozone crisis, focusing on what determines how policies are made and implemented. This includes major developments such as the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and new initiatives to promote EU energy security. In the final part, the chapters consider trends in EU policy-making and the challenges facing the EU.
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This chapter examines the European Union’s (EU’s) external environmental policy, with particular emphasis on the challenge faced by the EU in exercising leadership in global environmental governance and in the development of the climate change regime. It first considers the international dimension of the EU environmental policy as well as the issue of sustainable development before discussing the EU’s efforts to lead the negotiation of an international climate regime up until the 2015 Paris conference. It then explores how the different energy interests of the member states have been accommodated in order to sustain European credibility. It also looks at the question of climate and energy security in the EU and concludes with an assessment of the factors that determine the success or failure of the EU in climate diplomacy, including those that relate to coordination and competence problems peculiar to the EU as a climate negotiator.
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This chapter focuses on the ‘other’ European communities and the origins of the European Economic Community (EEC). Negotiations over a plan for a European Defence Community (EDC) ran parallel to those over the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Connected with the EDC was a proposal to create a European Political Community (EPC) to provide democratic European structures for co-ordinating foreign policies. This chapter first considers the Pleven Plan for an EDC, before discussing the development of the EDC/EPC plan and the ultimate failure to reach agreement in 1954. It also analyses the Messina negotiations and the road to the Treaties of Rome. Finally, it looks at the experience of the other organization that was created at the same time as the EEC, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), which, like the ECSC, was institutionally merged with the EEC in 1967.
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Mark A. Pollack, Christilla Roederer-Rynning, and Alasdair R. Young
The European Union represents a remarkable, ongoing experiment in the collective governance of a multinational continent of nearly 450 million citizens and 27 member states. The key aim of this volume is to understand the processes that produce EU policies: that is, the decisions (or non-decisions) by EU public authorities facing choices between alternative courses of public action. We do not advance any single theory of EU policy-making, although we do draw extensively on theories of European integration, international cooperation, comparative politics, and contemporary governance; and we identify five ‘policy modes’ operating across the 15 case study chapters in the volume. This chapter introduces the volume by summarizing our collective approach to understanding policy-making in the EU, identifying the significant developments that have impacted EU policy-making since the seventh edition of this volume, and previewing the case studies and their central findings.
