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This concluding chapter examines the use that is made in the book of institutionalist theory to address the question of European integration, a use that is described as not typical in the study of the European Union, which is usually approached via international relations and integration theory. Issues that result from taking this institutional approach (i.e. analysing European political integration as institutionalization rather than as international relations) are briefly discussed, before going on to see how the Europe of the last half of the twentieth century has provided social scientists with rich opportunities for evaluating how new political systems evolve and emerge. Some of the aspects examined are: the concept of institutions; the impact of institutions; feedback effects (feedback loops liking actors to organizations, to institutions, and back again); institutional coherence; institutions and society; and the demand for, and supply of, institutions.

This chapter presents a conceptual framework for understanding the cross-national transfer of human resource management and employment relations policies in US multinationals. The framework draws on institutionalist theory, arguing that multinationals’ embeddedness within the institutions of their parent-country business system influences how these firms operate abroad. However, weaknesses in current strands of institutionalism need to be addressed. In particular, existing theory has tended to neglect questions of power. The chapter considers how institutional and power perspectives may be integrated. It focuses on the interaction between power and institutions at multiple levels, notably at the organizational level of ‘micropolitics’ within multinationals, and at the macro-level of nation states. The cross-national transfer of HR policies and practices within multinationals is seen as the movement of practices across institutional domains by actors with divergent interests in the transfer, and with differential power resources with which to effect or inhibit it.

This chapter shows how oversimplification often results from confusion between ideal types and cases, with the latter being seen as exemplifiers of the former, rather than the former being seen as constituents of the latter. This is often combined with excessive concern with identifying national, rather than micro level, patterns of institutions. Characteristics of economies have been bundled together as coherent wholes with inadequate attention being paid to the forces which produce the bundles, and this has often been done through an account of types that has been too closely linked to the polemic between neoliberalism and social democracy.

The general process of institutionalization in the European Union is examined from a macro perspective, building on the theoretical materials developed in the earlier book European Integration and Supranational Governance, and examining the extent to which linkages between rule-making (legislation), dispute resolution, and different forms of transnational activity have created a dynamic, inherently expansionary system. The process is evaluated from the standpoint of institutionalist theory by testing specific hypotheses against relatively comprehensive quantitative measures of integration: trading, legislating, litigating, and lobbying within the context of the Treaty of Rome. The main findings are that (1) increasing economic transactions, (2) the construction of the Brussels complex, (3) the capacity of supranational authorities to produce legislation, and (4) the operation of the European Commission (EC) legal system have become linked through a complex set of feedback loops that binds them together in a self-reinforcing system that broadly determines the course of integration. Although the perspective used is a macro one, the authors emphasize actors and agency: as increasing numbers of actors learn how to be effective in the EC, they build and consolidate new arenas for political activity, thereby bolstering the centrality of supranational governance.

This chapter tests four sets of possible explanations for why countries give bilateral environmental aid, and for why they give relatively less aid with likely environmentally harmful impacts (‘dirty’ aid). First, it tests whether environmental aid as a proportion of donor portfolios reflects their broader environmental preferences, as revealed in domestic environmental policy, ratification of international environmental treaties, and their compliance with these treaties. Second, it tests theories claiming that people change their values when they have satisfied their basic human needs. Third, it explores a political economy approach to aid allocation that suggests the relative strength of environmental NGO and industry lobbies in shaping the environmental profile of aid portfolios. Fourth, it tests propositions from new institutionalist theory by examining whether environmental aid is influenced by the number of checks and balances in government and whether there is a corporatist or pluralist decision-making structure within a donor polity.

This chapter explores the linkages between water scarcity and variability and conflict and cooperation. It focuses on the scarcity-cooperation contention and then hypothesizes that, rather than a linear relationship, an inverted U-shaped constitutes the relationship between scarcity and cooperation and between water variability and cooperation. The chapter surveys a large corpus of literature (both theoretical and empirical) from various disciplines to build a theory to explain the relationship between level of water scarcity and level of cooperation over international water. While the premise that scarcity motivates cooperation (or coordination across parties) is not novel, it has been fairly rare compared to the literature that touts the relationship between scarcity, environmental change, and conflict. The model suggests that cooperation is more likely when scarcity and variability are moderate (and by extension require smaller mitigation costs). The theory also suggests that while scarcity and variability may indeed lead to cooperation, very high levels of scarcity and very low levels of scarcity (water abundance) actually reduce the incidence of cooperation.