The European Social Fund has often been overshadowed by more visible European Union social and economic policies. It is, however, integral to the construction and development of the EU and has played a central role in the impact of the EU on individual member states.Based upon a study of the ESF and a range of social policy documents from the Treaty of Rome to the Treaty of Amsterdam, this analysis examines the connections between the ESF and other areas of EU policy. The European Social Fund and the EU will be of particular use to anyone interested in social and economic regeneration across the European Union.

This new edition covers each of the current issues concerning the development of the EU - for example, enlargement, EMU, security and defence policy, the Treaty of Nice, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and relations with countries outside Europe. Jargon-free and accessible, this substantial textbook opens with an introduction to the historical and theoretical perspectives on European integration. The book then examines the EUs institutional machinery and policy processes. The final section provides a wide-ranging review of the main EU policies, seeking to enhance understanding of the main issues and controversies surrounding development of the EU. Intended for students undertaking courses in European integration and as a supplementary book for other courses, this textbook is useful for anyone seeking a concise yet authoritative introduction to the institutions and policies of the EU. Robert Jones has drawn on his wide teaching experience to produce a text which students will find both accessible and stimulating.

This book assesses the many changes that have occurred within the European Parliament and in its external relations since the Lisbon treaty (2009) and the last European elections (2014). It is undoubtedly the institution that has evolved the most since the 1950s. Despite the many crises experienced by European integration in the last years, the Parliament is still undergoing important changes in its formal competences, its influence on policy-making, its relations with other EU institutions, its internal organisation and its internal political dynamics. Every contribution deals with the most recent aspects of these evolutions and addresses overlooked topics, providing an overview of the current state of play which challenges the mainstream intergovernmental approach of the EU. This project results from research conducted at the Department of European Political and Governance Studies of the College of Europe. Individual research of several policy analysts of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) have contributed to this endeavour.

Increasingly flexible labour markets and reforms of old-age pension systems are still ranking high on the political agenda of European countries. This volume investigates whether, and to what extent, the interplay between pension reforms and the spread of 'atypical' employment patterns and fragmented careers has a negative influence uponeconomic security in old age. The volume, therefore, analyzes the flexibility-security nexus by focusing on the post-retirement phase, thus extending the conventional narrow concept of 'flexicurity'. The book also questions whetherreforms of public and private pension schemes compensate or aggravate the risks of increasingly flexible labor markets and atypical employment careers after retirement? Around this overarching research question, the various contributions in the volume employ the same analytical framework in order to map, and then compare, the developments in seven European countries - Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and the UK - which present different labour market arrangements and various degrees of flexibility, as well as diverse pension systems.

This book examines the history of nation-building in Kosova as a model of how the theories behind nation-building, state-building and peace-building can succeed or fail. The author argues that two missing factors led to successful state-building but failed nation-building in Kosova: the balance of power and the ethnic elite. The author uses his unique expert knowledge gained over thirty years of study to present a thorough overview of international administration and nation-building in Kosova.

This book reviews Southeast Asia's National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) as part of an emerging assessment of a nascent regional human rights architecture that is facing significant challenges in protecting human rights. The book asks, can NHRIs overcome its weaknesses and provide protection, including remedies, to victims of human rights abuses? Assessing NHRIs' capacity to do so is vital as the future of human rights protection lies at the national level, and other parts of the architecture-the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), and the international mechanism of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)-though helpful, also have their limitations. The critical question the book addresses is whether NHRIs individually or collaboratively provide protection of fundamental human rights. The body of work offered in this book showcases the progress of the NHRIs in Southeast Asia where they also act as a barometer for the fluid political climate of their respective countries. Specifically, the book examines the NHRIs' capacity to provide protection, notably through the pursuit of quasi-judicial functions, and concludes that this function has either been eroded due to political developments post-establishment or has not been included in the first place. The book's findings point to the need for NHRIs to increase their effectiveness in the protection of human rights and invites readers and stakeholders to find ways of addressing this gap.

Throughout the history of European integration, economic wealth has increased to the benefit of citizens in the European Union (EU). However, inequalities in well-being persist within and between Europe's regions, undermining the legitimacy of the EU in the eyes of citizens. This book investigates how the EU can use its regional funding programmes in ways that increase citizen well-being. The book shows that while EU social investments improve labour market performance in rich regions, they exacerbate income inequality in poor regions. Based on this insight, the book presents a theory on the conditions under which EU funding will enhance well-being. Crucially, it argues the case for enhancing the inclusivity of EU growth, which yields the promise of a more legitimate and stronger union.

This open access book features various studies on democratization, transformation, political and economic development, and security issues in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) geographical region and beyond. Written by experts and academics in the fields of human rights, security, transformation and development, particularly in post-soviet and communist countries, it examines the status quo of regime development in various member states of the OSCE; their economic, security and human rights performance; institutional reforms and transformations and the challenges that these countries and their societies face, including the USA, Canada, Germany, Macedonia, Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. This is the 2019 edition of this Compilation Series of the OSCE Academy. The OSCE works to promote Minority Protection, Security, Democratic Development and Human Rights guided by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and to enhance securitization and development policies in Eurasia, Europe, Central Asia and North America. Since being founded in 1993, the OSCE and its agencies and departments have attracted a wealth of academic research in various fields and disciplines, ranging from economic development and election monitoring to enhancing global principles of human rights and securitization. About the OSCE Academy in Bishkek: Founded in 2004, the Academy offers post-Doc research fellowships and runs two Master Degrees, one in Economic Governance and Development and one in Politics and Security in Central Asia. The Academy"s regular academic programs and conference contributes to developing human professional capital in the sectors of particular importance for Central Asian states and societies. The Academy's graduates and visiting researchers contribute to economic development, governance and policy-making in Central Asia and beyond the OSCE region. Website: http://www.osce-academy.net/en/about/

This book examines the League of Nations, state-supported terrorism, and British foreign policy after the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. It argues that with strong leadership from Britain and France, the League made it possible for states to preserve the peace of Europe after terrorists aided by Italy and Hungary killed the King of Yugoslavia in 1934. This achievement represents the League at its most effective and demonstrates that the organization could carry out its peacekeeping functions. The League also made it possible to draft two international conventions to suppress and punish acts of terrorism. While both conventions were examples of productive collaboration, in the end, few governments supported the League's anti-terrorism project in itself. Still, for Britain, Geneva served the cause of peace by helping states to settle their differences by mediation and concession while promoting international cooperation, a central conviction of British "appeasement" policy in the 1930s.

In this book the authors tackle the concept of 'quality of government' (QoG) both conceptually and empirically and apply their focus to EU countries and regions. In a pioneering empirical effort, they map out regional QoG for the first time for 172 NUTS 1 and 2 regions throughout 18 countries in the EU, and provide a detailed methodology. They follow up the quantitative assessment with three case studies demonstrating the wide variation of QoG found within the countries of Italy, Belgium and Romania. The book concludes with important lessons and ideas for future research. Quality of Government and Corruption from a European Perspective will offer a unique insight to an important issue of development within the EU that speaks to students and academics in the field of comparative politics, EU politics, development, governance and corruption. With contributions from: Lewis Dijkstra, Jonas Hakansson and Oana Borcan

A study in EU legitimacy from the perspective of EU citizens. It argues that legitimacy is empirical: "legitimacy only exists if people "feel" that it does." The book points out that the EU is a unique and dynamic institution, hence legitimating factors are also evolutionary. The book shows that liberal democracy has not established EU legitimacy - hence it looks at new forms of input and performance to examine prospects for new forms of legitimating the EU.

This study explores the relationship between the European Community and one of the most important EFTA countries, Norway. The book recounts the steps leading to the signing of the European Economic Area agreement that will extend the EC's single internal market to the EFTA countries, explores the political dimension of Norway's relations with the EC, examines the economic dimension of the relationship, and considers Norwegian integration--past, present, and future.

This book unfolds an exploratory journey intended to scrutinise the suitability of entanglements and relations as a mode of thinking and seeing peacebuilding events. Through a reflection upon the UN's limited results in the endeavour towards securing lasting peace in war-torn scenarios, Torrent critically engages with three relevant debates in contemporary peacebuilding literature, including the inclusion of 'the locals', the achievement of organisational system-wide coherence and the increasingly questioned agential condition of peacebuilding actors. Inattentive to the relational vulnerability of involved stakeholders, it is suggested that the UN seeks to secure a totalising modern distory, defined in the book as a story that undoes other stories. Whilst affirming the entangled ontogenesis of actors and processes in the conflict-affected configuration, Entangled Peace also delves into a cautionary argument about what the author refers to as entanglement fetishism, namely the celebratory, normative, deterministic and exclusionary projection of a relational world. Inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, Entangled Peace is an invitation to speculate over the peacebuilding milieu, and by extension the broader theatre of the real, as radical openness, in which events emanate from the collision of an infinite multiplicity of possible worlds.

The Routledge Handbook on the European Neighbourhood Policy provides a comprehensive overview of the EU's most important foreign policy instrument, provided by leading experts in the field. Coherently structured and adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this handbook covers the most important themes, developments and dynamics in the EU's neighbourhood policy framework through a series of cutting-edge contributions. With chapters from a substantial number of scholars who have been influential in shaping the study of the ENP, this handbook serves to encourage debates which will hopefully produce more conceptual as well as neighbourhood-specific perspectives leading to enriching future studies on the EU's policies towards its neighbourhood. It will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students, scholars and professionals developing knowledge in the fields of EU/European Studies, European Foreign Policy Analysis, Area studies, EU law, and more broadly in political economy, political science, comparative politics and international relations.

"If one wants to understand why, from its modest beginnings, the European Parliament has become a major player in EU decision-making, look no further than this book. It presents, to date, the theoretically most compelling, methodologically disciplined and empirically richest account of parliamentary self-empowerment over time, across key functions and policy areas. This volume will be a main point of reference for work on the European Parliament, the dynamics of inter-institutional politics, and EU integration more generally for years to come."-Berthold Rittberger, Professor of International Relations, University of Munich, Germany "Anyone interested in the rise of the European Parliament as a significant actor in the EU should read this book. It offers a fascinating insight into the strategies used by the Parliament to achieve its aims and the conditions for its success or failure. It ranges widely across time and policy areas to give a comprehensive analysis of the Parliament's changing institutional position."-Michael Shackleton, Professor of European Institutions, Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and former EP official This book analyses the European Parliament's strategies of self-empowerment over time stretching across cases of new institutional prerogatives as well as substantive policy areas. It considers why and how the Parliament has managed to gain formal and informal powers in this wide variety of cases. The book provides a systematic and comparative analysis of the European Parliament's formal and informal empowerment in two broad sets of cases: on the one hand, it examines the EP's empowerment since the Treaty of Rome in three areas that are characteristic of parliamentary democracies, namely legislation, the budget, and the investiture of the executive. On the other hand, it analyses the European Parliament's role in highly politicised policy areas, namely Economic and Monetary Governance and the shaping of EU trade agreements.

The UN has suffered from its earliest days as a result of persistent financial problems, which left it on the edge of apparent bankruptcy. This book looks at the history of the regular and peace keeping budgets. It focuses on the role of the US, simultaneously the UN's biggest contributor of funds and its largest debtor. It examines possible solutions against the background today of the UN attempting to reform itself to meet the challenges posed by globalization and an increasing number of civil wars.

Recent years have seen the rise of EU State aid law as a crucial component of the European economic constitution. To date, however, the literature has neglected the contribution of this area of EU law to the internal market. This book fills the gap in understanding the economic constitution by exploring the significance of State aid law in addressing questions that go to the core of the internal market project. It does so by examining the case law relating to three different activities that Member States engage in: market participation, market regulation, and funding for Services of General Economic Interest. Each of these areas offers insights into fundamental questions surrounding the economic constitution, such as the separation between the State and the market, the scope for Member States to engage in regulatory competition, and the tension between market and non-market concerns. (Series: Hart Studies in Competition Law - Vol. 2)

Among Jews in the Diaspora, recent years and especially recent months have seen a growing disenchantment with Israeli politics and with Israel's claim as the only legitimate basis for Jewish existence. At the same time, European Jews have begun to reassert their own traditions in contrast to both America and Israel. As the case of German Jewry makes clear, much of this return of Diaspora comes from the Jewish periphery: women, Russian Jewish immigrants, Jews not recognised by Jewish law and Gays and Lesbians. But German Jews are also facing the involvement of non-Jewish Germans in Jewish culture, as both a boost and as an irritant. Ten internationally distinguished scholars are addressing these and other issues.

This book focuses on one of the two G20 tracks, the finance track. It examines the evolution of the finance track in G20, the organizational structure of the finance track, and the role of international organizations in reforming the financial architecture. It discusses how the agenda is formed and driven by the political economy of the host country as well as the imperative of the time. It also documents the finance track themes taken up by different G20 presidencies over the years. Some of the common threads between the G20 emerging economies' presidencies in terms of the finance track themes that the G20 leaders have considered include financial sector regulation and reform, reform of international financial institutions, global growth and macroeconomic policies, international taxation, and financial inclusion. The book is an excellent resource for the researchers of international economics as well as for policymakers.

This book offers a comprehensive practitioner's guide to negotiating at the United Nations. Although much of the content can be applied broadly, the guide focuses on navigating multilateral negotiations at the UN. The book is a tool to help new UN negotiators, explaining basic negotiation concepts and offering insight into the complexities of the UN system. It also offers a playbook for cooperation for negotiators at any level, exploring the dynamics of relationships and alliances, the art of chairing a negotiation, and the importance of balancing the power asymmetries present in any multilateral discussion. The book proposes improvements to the UN negotiation process and looks at the impact of information technologies on negotiation dynamics; it also shares stories from women UN delegates, illustrating what it means to be a female negotiator at the UN. This book is an exploration of the power of the individual in any negotiation, and of the responsibility all negotiators have in wielding that power to speak for a better world. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy, global governance, foreign policy, and International Relations, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

"A firsthand account of the perils of American diplomacy at the UN during Jeane Kirkpatrick's tenure, written from Gerson's position as her expert in international law." - Kirkus Reviews Allan Gerson, legal counsel to former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, elaborates on the crucial role Kirkpatrick played in re-establishing the USA's prestige in world affairs. Additionally, Gerson argues that Kirkpatrick had key influence in frustrating Soviet expansionism, thereby contributing to the liberation of Eastern Europe.

This book explores the work of the European Ombudsman and her or his contribution to holding the EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies to account, through examination of complaints on maladministration, own-initiative inquiries and other proactive efforts. It considers the Ombudsman's current institutional and constitutional position and her or his 'method' of dealing with complaints, and unravels the depth of subject matters that fall under the Ombudsman's remit. A separate chapter focuses on transparency and access to documents. The last part of the book critically reflects upon the present mandate and practice of the Ombudsman, and discusses a number of possible proposals for improvement. This work has interdisciplinary appeal and will engage scholars in law, political science and public administration, as well as EU and national policy-makers.

We are told again and again that the world has become increasingly complex and indecipherable. However, this book reminds us that we are no longer alone in the world, that it is time to move away from the mental categories of the Cold War and stop treating all those who challenge our vision of the international order as guilty "deviants" or "Barbarians." The author challenges the diplomacy of Western states, who want to continue to rule the world against history, and in particular that of France, which too often oscillates between arrogance, indecision, and ambiguity. The power play is stuck. The international order can no longer be regulated by a small club of oligarchs who exclude the weaker ones, ignore the demands of societies, and ignore the demands for justice that emerge from a new world where the actors are more numerous, more diverse and more restive to arbitrary disciplines. For this reason, this book also offers ways to think an international order that would be, if not fair, at least less unfair.

"European Foreign Policy in an Evolving International System" provides the reader with an updated assessment of European Foreign Policy 15 years after Maastricht. The contributions analyse the level of policy convergence achieved by EU member states in crucial areas and regions of the world. The book comprises 14 chapters, organised in four sections: (1) The EU in the International System; (2) The EU and the Great Powers; (3) The EU and the Management of Conflicts in the Near Abroad; (4) The EU's Regional Policies.

This book addresses a timely, yet largely overlooked, issue in political science: the integration of migrants in a multilevel polity. In a context characterised by the increasing salience of migration-related questions, and despite the gradual construction of a European Union immigration policy over the past two decades, no competence was ever created on integration matters. The emergence of a consistent ensemble of soft instruments in this policy realm in the 2000s unveiled an original pattern of EU policy formation. Can there be Europeanization without an EU competence? That is the question this original piece of research tackles. It shows how the way in which the policy emerged at EU level affected policy outputs adopted thereafter throughout the policy cycle. Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods, it explains the development of the EU integration policy and examines its main policy device, the European Integration Fund, from negotiation to implementation.