Under Construction @ Keele 2019 summer 2019, vol 5 issue 1 | Page 21

harmonization by examining the EU’s control (external) and integration (internal) policies
since SEA to 2003.
1
Menz focuses on the period between the Tampere Council meeting in 1999 to roughly just
before 2015. 2 He restricts his focus to the communitization of control (external) policy,
whereas Givens and Luedtke look at immigration policy more broadly.
This review presents a comparison between these two articles which put forth two
separate theoretical approaches and analytical frameworks: the first by Givens and Luedtke
with a Liberal Intergovernmentalist (LIG) approach and, the second by Menz with a Rational-
Choice Institutionalist (RCI) approach. 3 This review will analyse and compare the authors’
analytical frameworks, given their explanations of EU immigration policy developments
through different theoretical ‘lenses’. Since each article has been produced in a different time
and context, a comparison will involve different levels of analysis: comparing what each
article says generally about immigration policy development, to a more focused assessment
of control policy. Comparison is still beneficial as it creates an expansive understanding of the
actors, governments and, institutions involved in the immigration policy-making process.
Both articles encompass crucial elements of a successful analytical framework to provide a
valuable and convincing contribution to immigration policy theory, in spite of the different
theoretical approaches they take. Their frameworks, for instance, consider the diversity and
complexity of the EU. They engage with the policy interactions between interpenetrating
levels of governance (local, national, cross-national, supranational) across different policy
1
Terri Givens and Adam Luedtke, “The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience
and Harmonization,” The Policy Studies Journal 32, 1 (2004): 145-165.
2
Georg Menz, “The promise of principal-agent approach for studying EU migration policy: The case of external
migration control,” Comparative European Politics 13, 3 (2015): 317-324.
3
LIG proposes an explanation for European integration based on national preferences, inter-state bargaining,
and institutional delegation. At its most basic definition, RCI assumes that actors have fixed preferences and
that they behave instrumentally to maximise their attainment of preferences.
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