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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions
The book contains a collection of high-quality academic and expert contributions dealing with the central question of whether the Lisbon Treaty needs further revision. Due to the difficulties European Union actors have encountered in implementing the Lisbon Treaty s reform and the inadequacies of the current legal framework brought to light by post-Lisbon practice, the volume focuses on possible innovations and functional approaches to improve the Union s response to the challenges confronting it. In doing so, the volume first takes a horizontal approach to the Treaty revision and considers some constitutional features showing the interaction between the EU and its Member States (namely, the parameters of constitutional developments, the allocation of competences, the principles of solidarity and loyal cooperation). Then, the focus shifts to the question of fundamental rights within the EU s constitutional framework, one of the most relevant innovations of the Lisbon Treaty being the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Union s primary law. The last part of the volume is devoted to another domain significantly reshaped by the Lisbon reform, namely, the Union s external dimension. ECJ Advocate General Paolo Mengozzi s conclusions highlight the common themes emerging from the various contributions, stressing the need for a more general supranational approach to the political crisis the Union is going through. The content of this book will be of great value to academics, students, judges, practitioners and all others interested in the legal discourse on the progressive development of the European Union legal order."
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations' competencies in eleven different policy areas, including trade, security and environment, and trace patterns in their development. For those with interests in comparative regionalism, international relations, political science and international law, this is an essential companion to some of the world's most significant organizations.
This book examines the ability of citizens across ten European countries to exercise their democratic rights to access their personal data. It presents a socio-legal research project, with the researchers acting as citizens, or data subjects, and using ethnographic data collection methods. The research presented here evidences a myriad of strategies and discourses employed by a range of public and private sector organizations as they obstruct and restrict citizens' attempts to exercise their informational rights. The book also provides an up-to-date legal analysis of legal frameworks across Europe concerning access rights and makes several policy recommendations in the area of informational rights. It provides a unique and unparalleled study of the law in action which uncovered the obstacles that citizens encounter if they try to find out what personal data public and private sector organisations collect and store about them, how they process it, and with whom they share it. These are simple questions to ask, and the right to do so is enshrined in law, but getting answers to these questions was met by a raft of strategies which effectively denied citizens their rights. The book documents in rich ethnographic detail the manner in which these discourses of denial played out in the ten countries involved, and explores in depth the implications for policy and regulatory reform.
This book collects and integrates Abbott and Snidal's influential scholarship on indirect global governance, with a new analytical introduction that probes the role of indirect governance techniques in the universe of global governance arrangements. The volume presents the Governance Triangle, a now widely-used figure that demonstrates and helps to assess the proliferation of private and public-private standard-setting organizations, along with new forms of intergovernmental institutions, over recent decades. It then analyzes how intergovernmental organizations, regulatory bodies, and other "global governors" enlist and work through those organizations as intermediaries, so as to govern more effectively and gain knowledge, influence and legitimacy. It demonstrates Abbott's and Snidal's groundbreaking concept of orchestration, a mode of indirect governance in which influential governors catalyze, support, and steer intermediary organizations through wholly voluntary relationships. It also considers their more recent innovations in the theory of indirect governance. These include additional modes of governance, such as co-optation, delegation and trusteeship, as well as the pervasive "Governor's Dilemma" trade-off between a governor's control of its intermediaries and the intermediaries' competence. This book will appeal to scholars and students in multiple disciplines, including international relations, global governance, law, and regulatory studies.
This book provides a timely evaluation of the EU's ability to act internationally and coordinate policy in a time when it also seeks to meet shifting demands of international cooperation. These include global sustainable development, the challenge of multilateralism and the changing geopolitical order. Analysing the networks of officials and policy professionals in EU development policy, the book yields theoretical insights into dominant processes that characterise EU governance in international cooperation and assesses their role for policy coordination. Overall, this book concludes that EU policy coordination evades intergovernmental control and demonstrates how the agency of EU institutions depends on efforts of member state officials to defend their priorities and identities. Finally, it shows the need to better understand the EU as a collective international actor, beyond the widespread concern with institutional adjustments, which continuously fail to produce the intended outcomes. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU politics, EU foreign policy, EU external relations and more broadly to international relations and international development.
This book examines a particular type of donor behavior - known as country earmarking of contributions - which occurs within the voluntary financing system of the United Nations. The research demonstrates that already during the period of the Millennium Development Goals a large share of the voluntary multilateral funding decisions was influenced by the commercial priorities of the OECD/DAC donor countries. The theoretical contribution focuses on disentangling the mix of policy advantages that can be pursued through linking of donors' commercial priorities with multi-bilateral development programs. The book considers its empirical findings within the current framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and the associated aid financing architecture. It demonstrates that, despite many negative associations of commercial aid giving, it is difficult to make an indisputably negative judgment on the practice of commercial earmarking in the specific context of the specialized UN agencies. The author argues that whether commercial earmarking proves to be a curse or a blessing for the multilateral development institutions will very much depend on the availability of parallel, flexible funding, and the creation of adequate political and operational space for supranational norm-keepers. Synthesizing the existing knowledge concerning the supply-side of multi-bi aid, this book provides an accessible, entry-level overview of the topic that will appeal to students and scholars of global governance and international organizations.
This book explores the mechanisms of political representation and accountability in the European political system, against the backdrop of multiple crises in recent years in the economic, financial, security and immigration fields, which have triggered strong tensions and centrifugal drives inside the EU and among its member states. Exploiting a rich set of new ad hoc collected data covering elite and public opinion orientations and party positions, it investigates how the current politicization of European issues and the asymmetries among member states can challenge the sustainability of the European Union. It examines how existing policy tools were found largely unable to neutralize promptly the negative effects of these crises on the populations, economies and security of the Union and how this suggests the need to reconsider overarching theoretical frameworks and a more in-depth analysis of some crucial mechanisms of the European political system and to go beyond some of the dominant scholarly debates of the past decades. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of the European Union and more broadly to comparative European politics and international relations.
This book explores the political and social dynamics of the bilateral relations between Germany and Poland at the national and subnational levels, taking into account the supranational dynamics, across such different policy areas as trade, foreign and security policy, energy, fiscal issues, health and social policy, migration and local governance. By studying the impact of the three explanatory categories - the historical legacy, interdependence and asymmetry - on the bilateral relationship, the book explores the patterns of cooperation and identifies the driving forces and hindering factors of the bilateral relationship. Covering the Polish-German relationship since 2004, it demonstrates, in a systematic way, that it does not qualify as embedded bilateralism. The relationship remains historically burdened and asymmetric, and thus it is not resilient to crises. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU Politics, German politics, East/Central European Politics, borderlands studies, and more broadly, for international relations, history and sociology.
This book examines the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in the context of internal functions performed with regard to the European Union (EU) political system and its key actors. It argues that the ENP has been formulated not only in reaction to external challenges and threats, but also in response to EU internal legitimacy needs at systemic, institutional and actor level. Looking beyond governance approaches and the power of norms, this book follows a sociological approach to the politics of legitimation. Using Bourdieu's field theory, it bridges the rationalist-constructivist divide inherent in much of ENP scholarship. While analyzing articulations of EU institutions in terms of narrative production, reproduction and reconstruction, it sheds valuable light on where the conflicting goals, ambiguity and incoherence stem from. By highlighting Developing Nations' responses and usages of ENP narratives for domestic and international legitimacy-seeking, the book calls for a more outside-in perspective on EU foreign policy. With the European integration project being increasingly contested, both internally and externally, this book provides a timely focus on the topic of legitimation and delegitimation dynamics with regard to EU foreign policy. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration and EU foreign policy, and, more broadly, EU Studies and International Relations.
This book brings together African and European experts from a variety of disciplines to examine the origins and current state of the East African Community (EAC). Over the course of the book, the authors analyse the rich tapestry of intraregional relations in East Africa, the EAC's similarities with the European Union and the future challenges faced by the organisation. Widely regarded as the most advanced and successful regional integration scheme in Africa, the EAC is an intergovernmental organisation consisting of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda and, since 2016, South Sudan. It is the oldest among Africa's regional economic communities, and among the continent's most promising growth areas, with a long history of integration, punctuated by several false starts and traumas that have profoundly affected its body politics. When initially set up, the EAC model bore a striking resemblance to the process undergone by the European Union. Now, as the EAC continues to establish its own identity, this book argues that whilst Europe's history may provide useful insights for EAC member states, the EAC experience could in turn also offer lessons for the European Union. Covering key dimensions such as integration, co-operation, development, trade and investments, this book highlights the intricate and complex relationships between East African states, and it will be of interest to researchers working on economic development, international relations, peace and security and African studies.
This book reveals why the UN is more successful than unilateral great powers in protecting civilians from violence, and focuses on the discourse, development and consequences of UN peacekeeping. Analysing statistics of state fragility and fatalities of violence, it reveals that the UN has managed to save tens of thousands of lives with its peacekeeping: a surprising statistic given the media consensus about the UN's powerlessness and inefficiency. Using computer-assisted discourse analysis of resolutions from the UN Security Council, 1993-2019, the book offers data that describe the character and development of UN approach to the protection of civilians from violence. It then links the data to the statistics of conflict fatalities and state fragility to reveal, by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, when, where, how and why the UN has been successful at protecting civilians. Two reasons for the UN's success are highlighted in the book as being statistically most significant. First, the organization offers local ownership to peaceful solutions by considering conflicting parties as the primary agents of protection. Second, the UN approach is much less power-oriented than unilateral approaches by the great powers: protection for the UN does not mean deterrence or destruction, but rather, support for local protectors of civilians. However, strong great power influence on such operations tends to weaken UN's ability to save lives. This book will be of much interest to students of humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, human rights and International Relations in general.
The book investigates migration safety, which is a central policy concern the United Nations and within public discourse in light of the recent global refugee crisis. Presenting a fresh angle within wider hostilities and ambivalences regarding migration polices worldwide, this book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration may look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorizing relating contemporary forms of governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and human geographers working on Migration studies as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies.
This book considers what is needed for fairness in the decisions of the UNFCCC. It analyses several principles of procedural fairness in order to develop practical policy measures for fair decision-making in the UNFCCC. This includes measures that determine who should have a right to participate in its decisions, how these decisions should take place and what level of equality should exist between these actors. In doing so, it proposes that procedural fairness is a fundamental feature of a multilateral response to address climate change. By showing that procedural fairness is most likely to be achieved through the inclusive process of the UNFCCC, it also shows that global efforts to address climate change should continue in this forum.
Currently, some 2,500 civilian experts work across Europe, Africa, and Asia in ten ongoing civilian missions launched under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Mandates cover a broad range of multidimensional tasks, such as rule of law support, law enforcement capacity building, or security sector reform. Numerous (recent) incidents from the field underscore that there are serious institutional as well as procedural weaknesses and irregularities tied to accountability in these EU peacebuilding missions. This title offers a comprehensive legal analysis and empirical study of accountability concerning the Union's peacebuilding endeavours, also referred to as civilian crisis management. Along with examining the governance credentials of EU peacebuilding, the monograph thoroughly scrutinizes de jure and de facto accountability arrangements of political, legal, and administrative nature existing in the domestic sphere, at EU level, and across levels. With a view to providing for a nuanced picture, the assessment further distinguishes between different accountability finalities and evaluates the appropriateness of existing accountability arrangements in civilian crisis management based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria.
This book reveals how conflicting worldviews are at the root of public controversies on policy and trade issues. It highlights the particularly controversial disputes at the level of the World Trade Organization in the case of regulating beef-hormones and GMOs, aiming to show how negotiators of international agreements, members of dispute settlement bodies, and policy makers in general could have recourse to concepts of other disciplines such as epistemology and philosophy in order to address deadlocked legal disputes. Ultimately, the book is a manifesto for independent and critical research.
From the beginnings of the Cold War to efforts to control Saddam Hussein's weapons program, this indispensable guide to the history and workings of the UN system shows how this widely misunderstood organization has helped to make the world a safer place and what its future prospects are likely to be. Rising from the ashes of World War II, the UN's birth was announced on October 24, 1945. Its military arm began in 1948 with the deployment of just 36 soldiers, tasked with supervising a fragile cease-fire in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since then it has undertaken more than 50 peacekeeping missions and concluded 500 multilateral conventions on human rights, arms control, environment, terrorism, and many other subjects. The United Nations System examines the continuing controversy that surrounds this organization. Whereas conservatives accuse the UN of wavering in the face of gross violations of its own resolutions by Saddam Hussein, many liberals have lambasted it for failing to take decisive action against genocide in the Balkans and in Rwanda. Highly readable and packed with useful facts and illustrations, this book is essential reading for those who wish to make up their own minds. Features the original texts of key UN documents such as the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Details the chronology of the UN system and the changes that have occurred since its founding in 1945
The authors examine how far internal policies in the European Union move towards the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 80-95 per cent by 2050, and how or whether the EU's 2050 objective to 'decarbonise' could affect the EU's relations with a number of external energy partners.
This book provides a practice-based analysis of European Union (EU) diplomacy and community-building. Unlike studies focusing on how EU community-building proceeds centrally in Brussels, this book turns to EU diplomacy in its bordering state of Ukraine. At a time when the EU's internal cohesion is being put to the test, this book provides novel insights into how feelings of belonging are produced amongst its members in the absence of a homogenous 'we'. Transcending the traditional dichotomy between macro-structures and micro-processes of interaction, the book demonstrates that the EU's large-scale community depends for its existence on practical instantiations of community-building in distinct 'communities of practice'. Using the case of an EU diplomatic 'community of practice' in Kyiv, Ukraine, takes these questions to the EU's margins, highlighting that the boundaries of community are key sites in which community materialises. The in-depth case study identifies diplomats' 'boundary work' as the constitutive rule that makes the local 'community of practice' cohere and create feelings of belonging to the large-scale polity of the EU. This book will be of interest to researchers of European studies, as well as to those working on global cooperation and international relations more broadly.
This book brings together the expertise of economists, legal scholars, political scientists, and sociologists in order to integrate diverse perspectives and a broad range of analytical tools in the conceptualisation of labour mobility. It examines how variably the question of labour mobility has translated into the policies, laws, and norms through which the EU as a whole is governed. The contributions focus on the actors - European and national officials, experts, trade union and employers' organisations - and on instruments implemented by institutions and political organisations - European Agency, coordination systems, European Job Mobility Portal (EURES) - to increase and support mobility within the European Union. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European/EU studies, migration studies, labour studies, political sociology, and more broadly to comparative politics.
How can we approach the complex United Nations system, a family of principal organs, subsidiary organs and specialized agencies? Where do we get summarizing information on the large number of reform concepts developed and implemented since the late 1990s, in particular in connection with the UN World Summit 2005? The present book provides orientation and information: It is the second updated English edition of the German ""Lexikon der Vereinten Nationen"." The book provides in addition to concise and comprehensive information on the UN system insight into recent UN developments and reform efforts in the face of global opportunities and challenges, such as the Millennium Summit 2000 and World Summit 2005, and the establishment of important new UN organs, the Human Rights Council and the Peacebuilding Commission, in 2006. The contributing authors are academic scholars of international law, economics and political sciences; active and former diplomats and UN officials; journalists and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and offer a variety of interesting perspectives. The entries are provided with bibliographies and with Internet addresses for further information and are supplemented in the annex by an informative text on the UN document numbering system and by a list of information facilities concerning the UN. This title was reviewed as essential (highest category of recommendation) by "Choice Current Reviews for Academic Libraries" in October 2010. 'A new edition of a mammoth, 900-page-plus encyclopedia covering every aspect of the United Nations and its work is now available in English in the United States Among its many useful features are exhaustive lists of those bewildering UN acronyms, a key to decoding (and thus knowing how to look for) UN documents and a complete copy of the UN Charter. The easy-to-use alphabetical order of entries makes it easy for schoolchildren and adults to navigate.' "Barbara Crossette in: The InterDependent, 4 October 2010 (www.theinterdependent.com)." 'This multidirectional compass is extraordinarily well researched and written. It is a veritable research dream, without which no international collection could possibly be complete'. " American Society of International Law, Newsletter of the UN21 Interest Group, January 2011" 'This is an update... of the 2002 edition], with articles contributed by a number of experts on the United Nations and international relations. Entries are either wholly updated or the original article is updated with a signed addendum, making the information current as of the end of 2008. Articles are very detailed and include copious references to other parts of the volume, indicated with an arrow. Most entries conclude with a bibliography of works useful for further research, many of which are extensive reviews of the literature on a particular topic in multiple languages. Entries range from overviews of the workings of the United Nations (including budget, membership rules, and organization) to more theoretical discussions of international law. The book] will be indispensable for any research university with faculty in international relations or law. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students and researchers/faculty. "T. Miller, Michigan State University, Review in October 2010 in Choice Current Reviews for Academic Libraries."'
This book comprehensively presents the current practice and further development paths of public sector accounting, auditing and control systems in 7 South Eastern European countries based on the contributions of highly-respected researchers. Each chapter is a study of the territorial organisation, public sector scope, formulation and execution of central government and local and regional self-government budgets, accounting and financial reporting reforms and practice, audit and other oversight (supervision) in the public sector, and challenges in the further development of public sector accounting and auditing of each country. It also provides insights into the challenges that SEE countries are faced with as they move towards the adoption of accrual accounting and the implementation of IPSAS and/or EPSAS, and offers a valuable reference resource for academics, researchers, students, auditors, public administrators, policy makers and standard setters.
Originally published in 1967, though with an enduring relevance as Britain once again navigates its role outside the EU, this book is a selection of documents which illustrate how the former European Economic Community came into being. The reader is invited to make up their mind about the arguments for and against British participation in the Common Market. The author introduces his evidence with an historical interpretation of the situation and concludes with an assessment of the significance of the Community concept in the world as well as in Europe.
The future of Europe and the role it will play in the 21st century are among the most important political questions of our time. The optimism of a decade ago has now faded but the stakes are higher than ever. The way these questions are answered will have enormous implications not only for all Europeans but also for the citizens of Europe's closest and oldest ally - the USA. In this new book, one of Europe's leading intellectuals examines the political alternatives facing Europe today and outlines a course of action for the future. Habermas advocates a policy of gradual integration of Europe in which key decisions about Europe's future are put in the hands of its peoples, and a "bipolar commonality" of the West in which a more unified Europe is able to work closely with the United States to build a more stable and equitable international order. This book includes Habermas's portraits of three long-time philosophical companions, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida and Ronald Dworkin. It also includes several important new texts by Habermas on the impact of the media on the public sphere, on the enduring importance religion in "post-secular" societies, and on the design of a democratic constitutional order for the emergent world society.
Has globalization led to a convergence in policy-making across nations and, if so, what are the causal mechanisms? This book analyses the extent to which the environmental policies of nation states have converged over the last thirty years and whether this convergence has led to a strengthening or weakening of environmental standards (a race to the top, or a race to the bottom). It also analyses the factors that account for these developments. Based on a unique empirical data set, the study covers the development of a wide range of environmental policies in twenty-four OECD countries, including EU member states as well as Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico and the USA, with particular emphasis on the impact of institutional and economic interlinkages among these countries.
This book analyzes the failure of the EU's peace-through-trade policy in Iraq and Iran between 1979 and 2009 from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The author adds to the trade-peace theory debate and provides evidence supporting the need to review the EU's peace-through-trade-policy towards Iraq and Iran, and in general. |
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