Slovakia in European Differentiated Governance Regime

Project summary
The proposed project contributes to the growing literature concerned with the DI and identifies analytical lacuna in the literature that has been the lack of focus on the consequences that the DI has on the level of the member state. Furthermore, it links the increasing willingness of some member states to integrate their core state powers directly to DI.
Starting point of the SKEUDIFGOVRE project is to conceive of the EU as a political order with inherited system of differentiation. First step in understanding the current state of affairs is to disentangle conceptual variances in EU’s post-crises institutional order. While answer to diversity among the Member States was an attempt to homogenize policies and polities across the EU, now differentiation is often understood as a tool increasing the heterogeneity of commitments vis -à-vis the Member States and the EU institutions and in some instances might even be considered democratically problematic. Recent comprehensive analysis of differentiation in European integration shows that it follows two main logics: instrumental differentiation and constitutional differentiation (Schimmelfennig and Winzen, 2020). While the former “adjusts integration to the heterogeneity of economic preferences and capacities, particularly in the context of enlargement” the later offers nationally oriented governments in member sates opt-outs from the integration of core state powers, by which it accommodates concerns about national self-determination (ibid. 2020). These dynamics influence creation and maintainability of European multilevel political order and has eventually important effects on the nation states. Proposed project will seek to answer following questions: which processes contribute to / refrain from channelling organizational and institutional change; how is the stability/change of institutions maintained/achieved and eventually, in what ways the EU’s DI governance regime shape Slovakia’s position in EU's political order.

Coordinator:
Institute of European Studies and International Relations, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava (from 01/2023 to 06/2026)
Institute of Political Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences (from 07/2022 to 12/2022)

Members of the project team:
Institute of Political Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences
Mgr. Michael Augustín, PhD., MPA;
Mgr. Juraj Marušiak, PhD.;

Institute of European Studies and International Relations, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava
Mgr. Danijela Čanji;
Dr. Karen Henderson, PhD.;
Mgr. Matej Navrátil, PhD.;
Ing. Jakub Szabó, PhD;
Mgr. Clarissa Do Nascimento Tabosa, PhD.;

Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
Max Steuer, M.A., LL.M., PhD.;
Mgr. Zsolt Gál, PhD.;