The EU's Autonomous Sanctions Against Russia in 2014 Versus 2022: How Does the Bureaucratic Politics Model Bring in the Institutional ‘Balance of Power’ Within the EU?

The European Union (EU) has been more incensed over Russian aggression towards Ukraine in 2022, when compared to Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014. This article questions this shift by looking at the EU's sanctions towards Russia. It argues that the relative unwillingness of the European...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of common market studies Vol. 62; no. 5; pp. 1278 - 1295
Main Authors Sanus, Ekin, Akgül‐Açıkmeşe, Sinem, Karaoguz, H. Emrah
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2024
Subjects
Balance of power
Bureaucracy
bureaucratic politics model
EU sanctions
Imbalance
Politics
Russian aggression
Sanctions
Tribunals & commissions
Russia
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Summary:The European Union (EU) has been more incensed over Russian aggression towards Ukraine in 2022, when compared to Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014. This article questions this shift by looking at the EU's sanctions towards Russia. It argues that the relative unwillingness of the European Commission, and accordingly the imbalance or lopsided distribution of power within and amongst the relevant EU institutions, was one of the factors internal to the EU that prevented an effective response in 2014. Although external and contextual factors have been crucial, the EU has adopted harsher sanctions against Russia since 2022 because the Commission is not unwilling to act as it was in 2014, and dissenting members have found it difficult to obstruct the process in the Council of the EU. This article also extends the analytical repertoire of the bureaucratic politics model by demonstrating that it retains explanatory power even when the traditional parameters remain constant over time.
ISSN:0021-9886
1468-5965
DOI:10.1111/jcms.13565