Publications
Monograph
Gastinger, M. (2024) EU Trade Agreements and European Integration: Commission Autonomy or Council Control? London: Routledge.
Abstract. EU Trade Agreements and European Integration studies 50 bilateral trade agreements negotiated by the European Commission from 1970–2008 and how they shaped European integration. The book argues that the Commission used these trade agreements, signed primarily with countries in Asia and Latin America, to advance European integration by ensuring that they became wider in scope and institutionally deeper by establishing ‘joint bodies’ – even in the face of resistance from member states in the Council of the European Union. Drawing upon principal–agent theory to explain Commission autonomy and Council control as well as extensive archival material and other sources across six in-depth case studies, it shows that the Commission primarily relied on asymmetric information to shape trade agreements in earlier negotiations. In later negotiations, the Commission harnessed its agenda-setting power to submit agreements that the Council could only accept or reject. Overall, the book argues that these 50 trade agreements significantly impacted European integration by increasing the Commission’s external action capability, transforming it into a truly global political actor – one trade agreement at a time.
Journal Articles
Peer-reviewed
Gastinger, M. and Dür, A. (2026) “The institutional design of joint bodies in trade agreements: monitoring commitments, facilitating negotiations, avoiding ratification.” Review of International Political Economy. Advance online publication.
Abstract. Nearly all preferential trade agreements (PTAs) establish ‘joint bodies’ (JBs), such as a Free Trade Commission or Joint Committee, to facilitate effective implementation. While all joint bodies foresee interactions between governments during implementation, they vary considerably in their degree of institutionalization: Some envisage frequent meetings at more senior levels once the agreement enters into force, and only some are empowered to take binding decisions. What accounts for this variation in institutionalization across joint bodies? We argue that greater institutionalization supports governments by enabling them to better monitor the faithful implementation of commitments, facilitate negotiations over outstanding issues, and reduce the need for renewed domestic ratification during implementation. We find robust support for this argument through a quantitative analysis of original data and a qualitative case study of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). Our study contributes to the literature on the design of PTAs and international institutions.
Wonka, A., Gastinger, M., and Blauberger, M. (2025) “The domestic politics of EU action against democratic backsliding: Public debates in Hungarian and Polish newspapers.” Journal of European Public Policy 32(2): 498–521.
Abstract. Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland has inspired a growing literature on EU actions to enforce the rule of law at the member state level. Some researchers have warned against possible unintended consequences of EU interference, but systematic research on the domestic politics of EU rule of law protection in target countries is largely absent. We develop a set of theoretical expectations regarding the positions of domestic political actors towards backsliding governments and EU actions. We test our hypotheses with original data from news articles in Hungary and Poland. We find that governing parties, rather than blaming ‘Brussels’ for illegitimate interventions in domestic affairs, spend considerable effort defending their own actions. Similarly, opposition parties and civil society actors focus on criticising their country’s governments instead of supporting EU actions. EU actions thus provide domestic actors opportunities to discuss democratic backsliding, but EU actions receive little support in public (newspaper) debates.
Gastinger, M. and Schmidtke, H. (2023) “Measuring precision precisely: A dictionary-based measure of imprecision.” The Review of International Organizations 18(3): 553–571.
Abstract. How can we measure and explain the precision of international organizations’ (IOs) founding treaties? We define precision by its negative – imprecision – as indeterminate language that intentionally leaves a wide margin of interpretation for actors after agreements enter into force. Compiling a “dictionary of imprecision” from almost 500 scholarly contributions and leveraging insight from linguists that a single vague word renders the whole sentence vague, we introduce a dictionary-based measure of imprecision (DIMI) that is replicable, applicable to all written documents, and yields a continuous measure bound between zero and one. To demonstrate that DIMI usefully complements existing approaches and advances the study of (im-)precision, we apply it to a sample of 76 IOs. Our descriptive results show high face validity and closely track previous characterizations of these IOs. Finally, we explore patterns in the data, expecting that imprecision in IO treaties increases with the number of states, power asymmetries, and the delegation of authority, while it decreases with the pooling of authority. In a sample of major IOs, we find robust empirical support for the power asymmetries and delegation propositions. Overall, DIMI provides exciting new avenues to study precision in International Relations and beyond.
Dür, A. and Gastinger, M. (2023) “Spinning a global web of EU external relations: How the EU establishes stronger joint bodies where they matter most.” Journal of European Public Policy 30(6): 1072–1091.
Abstract. Many international agreements of the European Union establish what we call joint bodies (JBs). Examples of such bodies include joint committees, joint sub-committees, and association and cooperation councils. Over the years, the EU has built an impressive global web of JBs, which bring together EU and third-country executive officials and play a key role in governing EU external relations. But not all of them are created equal, with some considerably stronger than others. What explains this variation in ‘JB strength’? We formulate a cost–benefit argument, where stronger JBs generate greater costs and are primarily included in agreements promising greater benefits. Benefits, in turn, are greater if implementation helps the EU attain its goals, parties are interdependent, and agreements have a broad scope. Drawing on an original dataset of 547 agreements concluded since 1992, we find support for the argument that the EU strategically establishes joint bodies ‘where they matter most’.
Gastinger, M. and Heldt, E. C. (2022) “Measuring actual discretion of the European Commission: Using the discretion index to guide empirical research.” European Union Politics 23(3): 541–558.
Abstract. One key question in the study of the European Union has always been the extent of Commission discretion. We take the discretion index, typically used by principal–agent scholars to measure the Commission’s designed discretion, to measure its actual discretion. Commission designed discretion can today be computationally generated with sufficient accuracy across all secondary acts. The study of designed discretion thus reaches considerable maturity. Therefore, we argue that scholars should prioritize studying Commission actual discretion. We present a systematic and transparent investigative technique based on the discretion index, which we use as a roadmap to guide our empirical investigation. The index facilitates the accumulation of knowledge across policy areas and time by providing exact values for Commission discretion. We illustrate our approach with the Development Cooperation Instrument.
Gastinger, M. and Dür, A. (2021) “Joint bodies in the European Union’s international agreements: Delegating powers to the European Commission in EU external relations.” European Union Politics 22(4): 611–630.
Abstract. In many international agreements, the European Union sets up joint bodies such as ‘association councils’ or ‘joint committees’. These institutions bring together European Union and third-country officials for agreement implementation. To date, we know surprisingly little about how much discretion the European Commission enjoys in them. Drawing on a principal–agent framework, we hypothesise that the complexity of agreements, the voting rule, conflict within the Council, and agency losses can explain Commission discretion in these institutions. Drawing on an original dataset covering nearly 300 such joint bodies set up by the European Union since 1992, we find robust empirical support for all expectations except for the agency loss thesis. Our findings suggest that the European Commission is the primary actor in the implementation of many of the European Union’s international agreements, allowing it to influence EU external relations beyond what is currently acknowledged in the literature.
Gastinger, M. (2021) “Introducing the EU exit index measuring each member state’s propensity to leave the European Union.” European Union Politics 22(3): 566–585.
Abstract. Which member states could leave the European Union in the years ahead? To answer this question, I develop the ‘EU Exit Index’ measuring the exit propensities of all European Union member states. The index highlights that the United Kingdom was an outlier and uniquely positioned to leave the European Union. While all other states are far behind the United Kingdom, the index still reveals substantial variation among them. Moreover, the index allows monitoring the development of exit propensities over time. It shows that the European Union is in better shape today than before the Brexit referendum and that, currently, no further exits are on the horizon. Still, this could change in the future and the EU Exit Index provides systematic and reproducible measurements to track this development.
Gastinger, M. and Adriaensen, J. (2019) “Of principal(s’) interest? A disaggregated, multiple principals’ approach to Commission discretion.” Journal of Common Market Studies 57(2): 353–370.
Abstract. How much discretion does the Commission enjoy in the European Union? To address this question, we draw on principal–agent theory and propose ‘interest in a decision’ by principals as a proxy for agent discretion. This has three advantages over existing approaches. First, it overcomes the high-conflict bias of case studies. Second, it accounts for the phenomenon of rational anticipation. Third, it allows for a more fine-grained measurement than analyses of the act of delegation. Empirically, we disaggregate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) into 27 chapters and account for multiple principals. We use surveys and interviews with Commission negotiators, which we triangulate with publicly available data sources. Our findings paint a picture of a Commission that is constrained rather tightly. While the Council follows all chapters and acts as a ‘safety net’, citizens and the European Parliament act as fire alarms and focus on selected, often overlapping, chapters.
Gastinger, M. (2017) “Play it again, Sam! Teaching transferable skills through multiple repetitions of ‘simple’ simulations (with research benefits).” European Political Science 16(2): 233–245.
Abstract. The use of simulations in higher education teaching is burgeoning in political science curricula, particularly in international relations and European Union studies. This article contends that most simulations suffer from complexity bias and put too much emphasis on substantive knowledge. Drawing on the author’s experience, two ideal types of simulations are developed. ‘Complex’ simulations focusing on negotiating content and ‘simple’ simulations focusing on negotiating dynamics. It is argued that the transmission of transferable skills is facilitated by multiple repetitions of similar negotiating contexts within the same module. This suggests that instructors face a trade-off between teaching transferable skills and substantive knowledge and should locate their simulations at either end of this continuum. Where students are not native speakers, not yet familiar with specialised terminology or simply unversed in negotiating dynamics, there is a particularly strong argument to make for carrying out simple simulations first, followed by complex simulations later in the curriculum. Finally, opportunities for collaborative research are highlighted. Gathering and pooling data from simple simulations bridges pedagogy and research at minimal additional cost.
Gastinger, M. (2016) “The tables have turned on the European Commission: the changing nature of the pre-negotiation phase in EU bilateral trade agreements.” Journal of European Public Policy 23(9): 1367–1385.
Abstract. We argue that one prime source of Commission autonomy in bilateral trade negotiations was the informational advantage that it acquired during the pre-negotiations, which is the phase preceding the adoption of negotiating directives by the Council. Initially, the Commission was entirely unmonitored owing to the lack of Treaty provisions applying to this stage in the negotiations. The Commission used this information asymmetry strategically vis-à-vis the Council to move outcomes closer to its ideal point. Later, member states have stepped up police-patrol monitoring manifesting itself empirically through two different channels. First, they have shifted the institutional arena for more political aspects to annual ministerial meetings. Second, preparatory works on a technical level are today followed by national experts. We examine this argument by adopting a principal–agent perspective and against the backdrop of EU–India relations.
Other
Gastinger, M. (2026) Review of Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing Across Time, by Thomas Hale. Perspectives on Politics. Advance online publication.
Gastinger, M. and Jürgens, G. (2012) “Fraternité 2020 – Mobilität. Fortschritt. Europa.” Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen (4): 65–68.
Parkes, R. and Gastinger, M. (2008) “Die Öffnung des Arbeitsmarktes für Bürger der EU8. Lehren aus Großbritannien.” GWP – Gesellschaft. Wirtschaft. Politik 57(4): 479–486.
Book Chapter
Gastinger, M. (2017) “Effects of contestation within a collective agent in EU trade policy-making.” In T. Delreux and J. Adriaensen (eds), The Principal Agent Model and the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 181–202.
Abstract. This chapter argues that conceiving the Commission as a unitary actor is a legitimate simplification of empirical reality for most research purposes. Recently, the principal–agent literature has started examining collective-actor features of agents and suggested that internal conflict is as disadvantageous to agents as it is to principals. By contrast, I argue that intra-agent conflict occurs less frequently and with a lower intensity than is typically the case for collective principals. The Commission-as-agent can overcome conflict quickly due to its hierarchical setup and less stringent decision-making procedures. It may even harness conflict through inter-service consultations to draft better initial proposals. On the political level, open conflict among Commissioners can earn it the reputation of credibly defending controversial sectoral interests in the eyes of affected stakeholders. I develop my argument by focusing on five bilateral trade agreements negotiated from 1970–2007. Generalizing it beyond the case of EU trade policy-making, I focus on empirical, theoretical and methodological reasons justifying many scholars’ choice to model agents such as the Commission as unitary actors.
Other Publications
Policy papers
Gastinger, M. (2019) Brexit! Grexit? Frexit? Considerations on how to explain and measure the propensities of member states to leave the European Union. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) Working Paper 2019/85.
Gastinger, M., Lieb, J., Maurer, A., and McGinley, M. (2008) “Das irische Nein zum Lissabonner Vertrag: Kampagnen, Abstimmungsmotive und Perspektiven des Reformvertrages.” SWP Diskussionspapier.
Mirela, N., Czerniak, M., Gastinger, M., Hueter, H., and Jodoin, A. (2003) Continuing Coverage: “Out-Biggin’ the Smalls and Out-Smallin’ the Bigs”. Investment Research Report on MidSouth Bancorp (MSL-AMEX), Tulane University: Burkenroad Reports.
Scholarly blogs
Dür, A. and Gastinger, M. (2022) “Understanding the role of joint bodies in EU external relations.” LSE EUROPP.
Gastinger, M. (2020) “Wird ein anderes Land Großbritannien aus der EU folgen?” DER STANDARD Politikwissenschaftsblog.
Gastinger, M. (2019) “Will another country follow the UK out of the EU? This is why it’s unlikely.” LSE Brexit.
Gastinger, M. (2018) “Don’t shoot the messenger: The European Commission’s role in the Brexit negotiations.” The UK in a Changing Europe.
Gastinger, M. (2017) “Donald Trump’s flawed plan to strong-arm other countries into ‘one-on-one’ trade deals.” LSE American Politics and Policy.
Gastinger, M. (2016) “Teaching the value of replicability.” Active Learning in Political Science.
Commentary
Gastinger, M. (2021) “MEPs have one last chance to save Erasmus from Brexit.” EUobserver, 15 February.
Gastinger, M. (2015) “Time for Plan C on the refugee crisis.” EUobserver, 29 October.
Gastinger, M. (2014) “Wider den Wanderzirkus – ein ‘olympisches Europaparlament’?” EurActiv.de, 19 May.
Gastinger, M. (2014) “Students should vote for pro-Erasmus MEPs.” EUobserver, 23 April.
Gastinger, M. (2011) “Der Euro-Stabilitätspakt: An inconvenient truth.” derStandard.at, 8 June.
Additional outputs
Dür, A. and Gastinger, M. (2022) Executive Summary: Joint Bodies in International Agreements of the EU. University of Salzburg.
Gastinger, M. (2021) The EU Exit Index: Could any other countries leave the EU in the future? PLUS Dossier.
Gastinger, M. (2017) Donald J. Trump – Free to (f)act? A short introduction to international relations (IR) theories. YouTube, 13 January.