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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > EU & European institutions
Europeanization has become a key topic in analysis of the politics of the new Europe both in terms of increasing influence of the EU as a decision-making body and in terms of policy convergence between European states. This broad-ranging new text focuses centrally on the impact of the EU on its member states but also on the way in which states 'up-load' their policy priorities to the European level.
In twenty years, there could be a European Federation, a United States of Europe, of which Britain would be a part, with Brussels as the capital. There will be a President of Europe and a European Government; the European Parliament will make laws and the European Court will give rulings. Britain will be a province of Europe, as it was in Roman times long ago. It is therefore vital to understand the nature and characteristics of the EU, to know what sort of entity it is. The purpose of this book is to contribute towards such an understanding by scrutinizing the Union from the constitutional and legal angle. It looks, for instance, at whether the European Court behaves as a court ought to behave; at the problems caused by the vague and elastic nature of Community law; at whether the division of power between the Union and the Member States is based on any sort of principle, and, if so, whether that principle is consistently applied; at me enforcement of Community law and the problems caused by the different levels of compliance in different Member States; and, finally, at the issue of whether Member States have ceded their sovereignty. These issues raise questions which we must ask, and try to answer. This book will be of interest not only to experts in Community law, but to all lawyers -- indeed, to non-lawyers as well -- who want to understand the Community. To make this possible, an introductory chapter has been added to provide the necessary background.
A critical examination of the origins of today's anti-Islamic rhetoric in Europe, this book focuses specifically on representations of Turkey. Applying a novel theoretical framework that understands collective identities as dramaturgical achievements, it shows that stereotypes of Turks continue to provide an important "Other" against which a supposed European "Self" is contrasted. The book identifies two competing meta-narratives that have long vied for the right to define Christendom and later Europe, and argues that the struggle over these narratives--one tragic, the other comic--have come to a head in Turkey's current bid for EU membership.
It is universally accepted that there has been a huge growth in EU
lobbying over the past few decades. There is now a dense EU
interest group system. This entirely new volume, inspired by Mazey
& Richardson's 1993 book Lobbying in the European Community,
seeks to understand the role of interest groups in the policy
process from agenda-setting to implementation. Specifically, the
book is interested in observing how interest groups organize to
influence the EU institutions and how they select different
coalitions along the policy process and in different policy
domains.
Providing a picture of the processes of economic change in Europe, of which EU harmonization policies and transition policies form an integral part, the editors present a collection of articles on current issues in central and east European countries. Perhaps the most dramatic phenomenon to impact on Europe in the next two decades will be the economic integration of central and east European countries with the rest of Europe. Consequently, significant impacts should be seen in regional and international patterns of trade, demography, employment, and financial flows. The editors discuss the problems transitional economies will face and the strategies they may adopt in the context of the European economic integration process and these sectoral issues. Bringing together novel research by those within the emerging market economies, this book will be of great interest to researchers and policymakers and planners in organizations dealing with economic integration and transitional economy issues.
After two decades of research into the impact of the EU on domestic politics and policies, this book explores the relationship between Europeanization and EU integration. It argues that Europeanization should be considered as a stage in the development of EU integration as well as questioning the notion of incremental Europeanization.
"Euro on Trial looks back - to the aspirations of the founders -
and forward - to the possibility of reform or splitting up. After
five years of experience with the new currency, new insights are
possible into the old arguments for and against union. Monetary
union is reversible in part or in whole and this book assesses the
costs and benefits. Brown examines several mainstream scenarios for
the future of the euro in these essential readings for market
practitioners as well as academics. For example, how long will the
euro survive? The author shows that the answer depends principally
on Germany. Any of the small or medium-sized economies could leave
monetary union without threatening its existence. But were Germany
to pull out it is highly doubtful whether there would be a core of
countries that would perserve inside. Germany's membership so far
has brought much disappointment. How many more years of disillusion
are required before the question of EMU reform or break-up enters
the mainstream of German political debate?
Trade theories predict and explain the consequences of economic
integration. Generally, they show that freer international trade
leads to specialisation, technological convergence and faster
economic growth. This study compares the conclusions of the trade
theories with empirical observations of economic changes in the
European Union. These empirical analyses show that the main
conclusions also hold empirically. However, many detailed empirical
observations often contrast the theoretical expectation. Hence,
although the trade theories do predict the general changes
correctly, they are not capable of predicting the more specific
empirical outcomes.
During its first fifteen years, the EU's merger control system, unlike most others in the world, offered only minimal possibilities for taking efficiency gains into account as a mitigating factor that might offset the anti-competitive effects of a merger. This book examines the background to a change in the legal framework which occurred in May 2004 with the entry into force of a new Merger Regulation that for the first time explicitly recognises the possibility of an efficiency defence. European Merger Control assesses the likely impact of this new regulation, and discusses the pros and cons of the efficiency defence, how other merger control systems deal with efficiencies, how the investigation process can be organised to accommodate the analysis of efficiency gains and the main theoretical and practical problems which arise when anti-competitive effects have to be weighed against efficiency gains. With contributions from distinguished academics in the field of industrial economics and officials with practical experience of merger control, this book will be of interest to consulting economists practising in the field of competition policy, competition lawyers, micro-economists and officials of competition authorities.
Making European Citizens examines the forms of transnational citizenship developing in Europe. Previous discussions have focused on the construction of a European identity and the granting of common European rights, but rarely explore whether citizens have developed the capacity for self-rule. Active citizenship involves more than simply voting. Citizens must be able to organize socially and politically as well. Achieving such mobilization at a transnational level may involve new democratic techniques and skills. The volume explores how far European citizens have acquired the requisite methods and qualities.
Advancing a constructivist conceptual approach, this book explains the surprising outcome of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union and developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (the ACP countries). Despite the EU's huge market power, it had limited success with the EPAs; an outcome that confounds materialist narratives equating trade power with market size. Why was the EU unable to fully realise its prospectus for trade and regulatory liberalisation through the EPA negotiations? Emphasising the role of social legitimacy in asymmetrical North-South trade negotiations, Murray-Evans sets the EPAs within the broader context of an institutionally complex global trade regime and stresses the agency of both weak and strong actors in contesting trade rules and practices across multilateral, regional and bilateral negotiating settings. Empirical chapters approach the EPA process from different institutional angles to explain and map the genesis, design, promotion and ultimately limited impact of the EU's ambitious prospectus for the EPAs. This volume will be particularly relevant to students and scholars of international trade and development and the EU as an international actor, as well as those researching international political economy, African politics and international trade law.
This book investigates the EU's regional growth dynamics and, in particular, the reasons why peripheral and socio-economically disadvantaged areas have persistently failed to catch up with the rest of the Union. It shows that the capability of the knowledge-based growth model to deliver its expected benefits to these areas crucially depends on tackling a specific set of socio-institutional factors which prevents innovation from being effectively translated into economic growth. The book takes an eclectic approach to the territorial genesis of innovation and regional growth by combining different theoretical strands into one model of empirical analysis covering the whole EU-25. An in-depth comparative analysis with the United States is also included, providing significant insights into the distinctive features of the European process of innovation and its territorial determinants. The evidence produced in the book is extensively applied to the analysis of EU development policies.
Karen Alter's work on the European Court of Justice (ECJ) heralded
a new level of sophistication in the political analysis of the
controversial institution, through its combination of legal
understanding and active engagement with theoretical questions. The
European Court's Political Power assembles the most important of
Alter's articles written over a fourteen year span, adding an
original new introduction and conclusion taking an overview of the
Court's development and current concerns.
Thoroughly updated, this extensive reference source provides in-depth information on all matters relating to the European Union (EU): the events surrounding the United Kingdom's planned departure from the EU are covered in depth, including discussion and analysis of the potential implications for the future of the EU; the EU's migration policy is evaluated, together with the EU's legal and social frameworks; enlargement policy and environmental issues are discussed; and external relations and current security challenges are addressed. Key Features: an up-to date chronology of the EU from 1947 to present an A-Z section contains definitions and explanations of organizations, acronyms and terms, and articles on each member state. Comprising over 1,000 entries, terms listed include: Brexit; the European Institute for Gender Equality; Erasmus+; the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund; and the European System of Financial Supervision articles written by experts on the EU provide an overview of its policies and activities. a directory of principal names, addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail and internet addresses of all major European Union institutions and their official bodies. This information is supplemented by summaries of important treaties, and details of EU-level trade and professional associations. Users will also find details of MEPs and the political groups and national parties contributing to the European Parliament a statistical survey gives tables covering: population, employment, agriculture, energy and mining, industry, the environment, finance, trade, transport and communications, tourism, health and welfare, and education across the EU This title will prove valuable to academic and public libraries, politicians and government agencies and the media, as well as to all those in need of accurate and reliable information on the European Union.
The problem-solving capacity, and hence the democratic legitimacy, of national governments is being weakened by the dual processes of legal and economic integration in Europe; and the loss is not fully compensated by the development of effective and legitimate problem-solving capabilities at the European level. Professor Scharpf supports his position by examining the normative underpinnings of democratic legitimacy and by a detailed analysis of the structural asymmetry between the effectiveness of the legal instruments of `negative integration' which prevents governments from interfering with the free movements of goods, services, capital, and persons and the political constraints impeding positive political action at the European level. This is particularly true for policies pertaining to the welfare state. Governing in Europe explores strategies at the national level that could succeed in maintaining welfare state goals even under conditions of international economic competition, and it also discusses the conditions under which European policy could play a protective and enabling role with regard to these national solutions. The author suggests that if these opportunities should be used, multi-level governance in Europe could indeed regain both effectiveness and legitimacy.
A freshly provocative look at the nexus linking EU security, trans-Turkey energy supply routes to Europe and Turkey's EU membership negotiations, this book argues that Europe's collective energy security prospects have become increasingly tied to Turkey's progress towards joining the EU.
For years the European Union has been looked on as a potential model for cosmopolitan governance, and enjoyed considerable influence on the global stage. The EU has a uniquely strong and legally binding mission statement to pursue international relations on a multilateral basis, founded on the progressive development of international law. The political vision was for the EU to export its values of the rule of law and sophisticated governance mechanisms to the international sphere. Globalization and the financial crisis have starkly illustrated the limits of this vision, and the EU's dependence on global forces partially beyond the control of traditional provinces of law. This book takes stock of the EU's role in global governance. It asks: to what extent can and does the EU shape and influence the on-going re-ordering of legal processes, principles, and institutions of global governance, in line with its optimistic mission statement? With this ambitious remit it covers the legal-institutional and substantive aspects of global security, trade, environmental, financial, and social governance. Across these topics 23 contributors have taken the central question of the extent of the EU's influence on global governance, providing a broad view across the key areas as well as a detailed analysis of each. Through comparison and direct engagement with each other, the different chapters provide a distinctive contribution to legal scholarship on global governance, from a European perspective.
"A Democratic Audit of the European Union" provides a systematic
assessment of democracy in the EU against clearly defined criteria.
Christopher Lord offers a double challenge to generalizations about
a democratic deficit in the EU. On the one hand, it shows that
standards of democratic performance in the EU may vary across Union
institutions and decision-making processes. On the other hand, it
shows that they can vary across key dimensions of democratic
governance, including citizenship, rights, participation,
representation, responsiveness, transparency and
accountability.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. It has been widely acknowledged that the process of European integration and unification was started and is still pursued as an elite project, designed to put an end to debilitating conflicts and rivalries by consolidating a common power base and by pooling Europe's economic resources. Nevertheless elites have remained the known unknowns of the European integration process. The present volume is designed to change this. Based on surveys of political and economic elites in 18 European countries, it is a comprehensive study of the visions, fears, cognitions and values of members of national parliaments and top business leaders underlying their attitudes towards European integration. It also investigates political and economic elites' embeddedness in transnational networks and their ability to communicate in multicultural settings. The book strongly supports the view of an elitist character of the process of European integration on the one hand, while challenging the idea that European national elites have merged or are even merging into a coherent Eurelite on the other. As the 11 chapters of this book show the process of European integration is much more colourful and even contradictory than concepts of a straight forward normative and structural integration suggest. In particular this process is deeply rooted in, and conditional on, the social and political settings in national contexts. The empirical basis for this book is provided by the data of the international IntUne project, which has for the first time created a comprehensive database combining coordinated surveys of Europe-related attitudes at the elite and general population level.
This book provides an innovative account of how the globalization of production and the emergence of global value chains impacts on trade preferences, lobby strategies and the political influence of EU firms. It sheds new light on the complex EU-China trade relations.
Interpreting Convergence in the European Union introduces the idea of collective action as a prerequisite for achieving convergence and cohesion in the European Union. Institutional networks and social capital play a crucial role in influencing actors' preferences and shaping institutional interactions through the process of political exchange and socialization. Although the main focus of the book is on policy-making processes and governance structures in EU regional policy, its core theoretical hypotheses and conclusion are drawn from empirical research into the response of Greek regions to the challenges of Europeanization. This framework is applicable to almost all areas of EU public policy-making.
The book uses an innovative theoretical framework to explain how the EU social dimension has taken its present form. It presents and applies a political economic framework to the European labour market integration process and offers new tools for analysing the dynamics of regional integration. The theory is applied to case studies of the EU's approach to social protection, health and safety protection at the workplace, and maternity leave. The topical issues around the future of welfare provision in Europe, how a 'Social Europe' may develop and the political and economic consequences of this are discussed.
The book provides the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the development of EU enlargement conditionality across four different enlargement waves - the first (2004) and the second (2007) phase of the Eastern enlargement, the EU enlargement to Croatia (2013), and the ongoing enlargement round involving Turkey and the Western Balkans.
This is a distinctive new textbook on the political dynamics of the
EU which offers a refreshing alternative to the traditional
history-policy-institutions model. Assuming no prior knowledge, it
introduces a wide range of key debates with a central focus on how
the need to accommodate a range of state interests shapes the EU
political system and on the implications this has for its
democratic functionality and the process of Europeanization and
integration.
This thought-provoking book examines the socio-legal mechanisms that drive EU constitutional tensions, as well as the role of principles and values in re-directing EU law and policy towards a democratic Social Europe. It addresses the current limits of Social Europe in relation to different areas of EU law, offering a critical assessment of the present status of EU integration. Covering areas such as posting of workers, the right to collective bargaining, political rights and free movement for EU citizens, and asylum policy, chapters provide a cross-disciplinary and policy-oriented treatment of these subjects alongside focused legal analysis. Complementing traditional concepts and methodologies with newly emerged empirical elements, the book exposes the EU's inherent tensions while also offering new perspectives on the ways in which EU constitutional principles, rooted in solidarity, could inform a future Social Europe. Law, Solidarity and the Limits of Social Europe will be a stimulating read for scholars and students of EU law and social policy. It will also be of interest to legal practitioners, policy makers and civil society organisations working in fields related to Social Europe. |
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