Consistency as dependent variable 22

As just indicated, the overall purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether and to which extent EU energy governance towards Morocco is consistent or not, i.e. the dependent variable is policy consistency. However, policy consistency is, as shown before, closely related or linked to other concepts just as policy coherence which often contributes to conceptual

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confusion and may also be an issue as regards the conduct of interviews (LAAKSO, KIVIMÄKI and SEPPÄNEN, 2007:43). Therefore, it is in the following necessary to provide a certain level of knowledge about the different terms which is why this Chapter, in an attempt to bring clarity to them, will provide a descriptive and critical overview of the terminological landscape.

‘Despite its over-use in the literature and in political debate, the notion of coherence is among the most frequently misinterpreted and misused concepts in EU foreign policy’ (GEBHARD, 2011:123) and thus requires some terminological clarity. In fact, ‘coherence’ is ‘both a practical and intellectual concern’ (HYDEN, 2013:58) and coming from the Latin word ‘cŏ-haerĕo’ which means ‘to be united’, is not about eradicating or removing differences (CREMONA, 2008:32), but rather about avoiding negative spillovers and consequences while exploiting positive ones in order to achieve defined objectives. It is a relatively broad concept that, despite having been under continuous development, is characterised by literary ambiguity: one reason for this terminological confusion might lie in the literature where the terms ‘coherence’ and ‘consistency’ are considered to be either identical or different (ROGGE and REICHARDT, 2015:5-7), another might have been the translation of the word coherence into various other languages of the Community (GEBHARD, 2017:108).70 _{And although in this context some scholars are still divided}

as to whether any conceptual differentiation between the two terms is an analytical necessity at all (NUTTALL, 2005:93), most of them (especially legal scholars) however do distinguish between the two concepts (DEN HERTOG and STROSS, 2013:375), generally referring to coherence as the achievement of synergies, whereas they consider consistency to be the absence of contradictions (or adverse effects) (MISSIROLI, 2001:182; GAUTTIER, 2004:23; HOFFMEISTER, 2008:161; BLOCKMANS and LAATSIT, 2012:138). This was not always the case though and initially, scholars largely attributed coherence to ‘the absence of, or a reduction in contradictions between various aspects of public policy’ (KOULAIMAH-GABRIAL and OOMEN, 1997:2). Only later did this become a minimum requirement and the concept was extended to the idea of creating a sort of added value (MISSIROLI, 2001:182) or complementarity (WESTON and PIERRE-ANTON, 2003:13) and can now be considered as ‘a policy whose objectives, strategies and mechanisms are attuned; these objectives should reinforce each other, or as a minimum not conflict with them’ (AGUIAR MOLINA, 2003:2044). Contrary to this, consistency has rather negative connotations and can be understood as a minimum condition for coherence or being subordinate to coherence (MISSIROLI, 2001:182; GAUTTIER, 2004:25; HILLION, 2008:12), focusing according to Gebhard (2011:106), very much on the outcome of policy processes (‘goal-orientation’) and not as coherence on the quality of such processes. It can be best defined as ‘coordinated […] behaviour […] where comparable and compatible methods are used in pursuit of a single objective and result in an uncontradictory (foreign) policy’ (KRENZLER and SCHNEIDER, 1997:134). Consistency is, unlike coherence, more static, i.e. it involves less interaction between actors and policies (GAUTTIER, 2004:26) and is therefore much easier to measure (MISSIROLI, 2001:4). Indeed, whether a policy is considered coherent or not largely depends on the perception of the ‘receiving end’ of a policy (KOULAIMAH-GABRIAL and OOMEN, 1997:6), whereas a policy is, as put by Missiroli (2004:1), either consistent or not.

As this suggests, coherence is about harmonisation and positively related to effectiveness, with Aggestam, Anesi, Edwards and Hill (2008:12) defining it as ‘the ability to pull together diverse

70 _{For example, whilst the German, French and Spanish respectively refer to coherence as ‘Kohärenz’, ‘cohérence’ or ‘coherencia’, the}

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strands of policy, and those responsible for managing them, into a single efficient whole, capable of action, and resistant to third parties’ attempts to exploit internal division’. And whilst Missiroli (2001:4) explains that ’by acting unitarily and with a common purpose, the EU becomes more efficient and effective’, with respect to the EU’s external actions, so Gebhard (2017:103), coherence can be understood as ‘the ambition and necessity to bring the various parts of the EU’s external relations together to increase strategic convergence and ensure procedural efficiency’ (GEBHARD, 2017:103). This coherence-effectiveness argument was examined more empirically by Thomas (2012:25) and Van Vooren (2012:287) who conclude that coherence does not automatically entail efficiency. On the contrary, as stated by Missiroli (2001:4), in the past, the EU was able to achieve unanimity at the expense of effectiveness and with respect to the widespread assumption that more coherence would enable the EU to better ‘pull its weight internationally’, Thomas claims that coherence is no guarantee for this. In order words, coherence and effectiveness may be positively correlated, but the occurrence of coherence is not sufficient per se for the EU to act effectively in international affairs. Other scholars like Natorski (2016:663) go even further, claiming that the requirement for effectiveness may even hamper policy innovation, something that according to him could have been observed in the case of the 2011 Revision of the ENP. In fact, so Natorski, the review did not fundamentally change the objectives of the ENP because its authors thought too much in terms of coherence. Indeed, regarding the EU’s translation of the policy coherence objective into concrete legal obligations, Den Hertog and Stross (2013:378) point out that it ‘is not straightforward’ and in the case of conflict often ‘legally framed in the context of other principles.’ At this point, based on Nuttall’s idea of three-level conceptualisation with the banal understanding of coherence referring to the absence of contradictions (and so to consistency), the malign understanding to the function of internal power struggles and the benign understanding to the desirable way of interacting (GEBHARD, 2011:111), Cremona (2008:14-16) identifies three groups of legal principles, namely rules of hierarchy, rules of delimitation and rules of cooperation and complementarity. The rules of hierarchy are particularly important for the establishment of vertical coherence (DEN HERTOG and STROSS, 2013:383) and refer to the banal understanding of coherence. The rules of delimitation are particularly important to horizontal coherence but are also applicable to vertical coherence and concern the malign definition of coherence, referring to the principles of conferral and subsidiarity. Finally, the rules of cooperation and complementarity correspond most closely to the benign interpretation of coherence, i.e. to the creation of synergies, although as highlighted by Cremona (2008:16), real efforts towards synergy are rather promoted by the idea of complementarity than by the idea of cooperation. The rules of cooperation and complementarity are important for both horizontal and vertical coherence (DEN HERTOG and STROSS, 2013:382). Whilst the malign facet has a negative connotation and comprehends coherence as ‘a function of internal power struggles’, i.e. relates to turf battles between competing institutions, the benign facet has a positive connotation, reflecting ‘an effective and desirable way of interacting’. According to Den Hertog and Stross (2013:376), coherence in this sense requires ‘the active promotion of mutually reinforcing government actions on the basis of agreed overarching policy goals’. Conversely, and in the absence of any definition of ‘incoherence’, it can be concluded that an ‘incoherent’ policy is characterised by at least one of these faces, i.e. is either contradictory, suffers from internal power struggles or has an ineffective and undesirable way of interaction. Despite the terminological distinctions between coherence and consistency, there is still ambiguity in the use of the two concepts, be it within the academic or professional literature and this although as pointed out by Duke (1999:3), from a political perspective, they

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both ‘point in the direction of coordinated activities’. One reason for this is that they link to a variety of other concepts such as policy integration which in turn is synonymous with holistic government or joined-up government (ROGGE and REICHARDT, 2015:6-7). Here, it must be admitted that there is no real clear-cut dichotomy between them and integration in the literature, however, what can be kept in mind is that coherence and consistency do not lead per se to integration. As this suggest, amongst all these concepts, integration is by far the most holistic (ROGGE and REICHARDT, 2015:17) and demanding one – indeed, whilst coherence and consistency can be both cross- and uni-sectoral, integration exclusively concerns the management of cross-cutting policies (MEIJERS and STEAD, 2004:2), covering both decision- making and governance processes. As stated by Tosun and Lang (2013:8), it is ‘about policy making in certain policy domains that take policy goals of other – arguably adjacent – policy domains into account.’ It is thus a rather sophisticated concept and can be defined as a ‘process either of coordinating and blending policies into a unified whole…or of incorporating concerns of one policy into another’ (BRIASSOULIS, 2005:82) with the aim of harmonising the different objectives of these policies71 _{(its focus is thus rather on policy outcomes than on policy}

processes). According to Underdal (1980:10-12), one of the pioneers in this domain, a policy is integrated when ‘all significant consequences of policy decisions are recognized as decision premises, where policy options are evaluated on the basis of their effects on some aggregate measure of utility, and where the different policy elements are in accord with each other.’ For Underal, in order to achieve policy integration, three conditions must be met: comprehensiveness (the recognition of a broader scope of policy consequences), aggregation (the evaluation of policy alternatives from all perspectives) and consistency (the penetration of the policy in all policy levels and agencies) (UNDERDAL, 1980:162). According to this definition, policy integration is achieved when the objectives, goals, actors, procedures and instruments of policy A are in accordance with those of policy B.