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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions
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.
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.
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.
Many of the most controversial areas of reform initiated by the Lisbon Treaty were not negotiated in the Treaty itself, but left to be resolved during its implementation. Since the Treaty's entry into force, the implementation process has already had a profound impact on many areas of EU law and policy, and consolidated new areas of power, such as over foreign investment. This collection gathers leading specialists in the field to analyse the Treaty's implementation and the directions of legal reform post-Lisbon. Drawing on a range of expertise to assess and comment on the Treaty, the contributors include both academics and practitioners involved in negotiating and implementing the Treaty. Focusing on the central issues and changes resulting from the Lisbon Treaty, the contributors examine the Treaty in the broader background of how the EU, and EU law in particular, has been developing in recent years and provide a contextual understanding of the future direction of EU law in the post-Lisbon era.
The gradual legal and political evolution of the European Union has not, thus far, been accompanied by the articulation or embrace of any substantive ideal of justice going beyond the founders' intent or the economic objectives of the market integration project. This absence arguably compromises the foundations of the EU legal and political system since the relationship between law and justice-a crucial question within any constitutional system-remains largely unaddressed. This edited volume brings together a number of concise contributions by leading academics and young scholars whose work addresses both legal and philosophical aspects of justice in the European context. The aim of the volume is to appraise the existence and nature of this deficit, its implications for Europe's future, and to begin a critical discussion about how it might be addressed. There have been many accounts of the EU as a story of constitutional evolution and a system of transnational governance, but few which pay sustained attention to the implications for justice. The EU today has moved beyond its initial and primary emphasis on the establishment of an Internal Market, as the growing importance of EU citizenship and social rights suggests. Yet, most legal analyses of the EU treaties and of EU case-law remain premised broadly on the assumption that EU law still largely serves the purpose of perfecting what is fundamentally a system of economic integration. The place to be occupied by the underlying substantive ideal of justice remains significantly underspecified or even vacant, creating a tension between the market-oriented foundation of the Union and the contemporary essence of its constitutional system. The relationship of law to justice is a core dimension of constitutional systems around the world, and the EU is arguably no different in this respect. The critical assessment of justice in the EU provided by the contributions to this book will help to create a fuller picture of the justice deficit in the EU, and at the same time open up an important new avenue of legal research of immediate importance.
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.
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.
Are diplomats agents of international co-operation or transmission belts for states? Traditional theories of international relations seriously underestimate the ability of diplomats as a collective to impact outcomes in the international environment beyond initial state preferences. The European Diplomatic Corps argues that diplomats comprise a transnational network of experts or 'epistemic community' which has been critical in determining co-operation or non-co-operation among European states. The cases considered are the congresses of Westphalia (1648), Berlin (1878), Paris (1919) and Maastricht (1992).
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.
Dealing with Conflict in Africa analyzes the roles of the various organizations involved in conflict resolution in Africa. The first section of the book deals with the overall issues associated with cooperation between regional organizations and the United Nations, as well as how the United Nations has approached this issue in Africa. In the second section, six case studies examine the major conflicts in Africa, such as the Congo War. For each case study, the author looks at what responsibilities and tasks were taken on by different organizations, the relationship between the organizations, and which ones are most effective in working towards successful conflict resolution. The contributors also examine the effectiveness of coalitions or leaders in comparison to the UN and regional organizations. The contributors are an international group of scholars and consultants, all of whom are well positioned to analyze these issues.
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.
"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.
The Birth of the New Justice is a history of the attempts to instate ad hoc and permanent international criminal courts and new international criminal laws from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Cold War. The purpose of these courts was to repress aggressive war, war crimes, terrorism, and genocide. Rather than arguing that these legal projects were attempts by state governments to project a "liberal legalism" and create an international state system that limited sovereignty, Mark Lewis shows that European jurists in a variety of transnational organizations derived their motives from a range of ideological motives - liberal, conservative, utopian, humanitarian, nationalist, and particularist. European jurists at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 created a controversial new philosophy of prosecution and punishment, and during the following decades, jurists in different organizations, including the International Law Association, International Association for Criminal Law, the World Jewish Congress, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, transformed the ideas of the legitimacy of post-war trials and the concept of international crime to deal with myriad social and political problems. The concept of an international criminal court was never static, and the idea that national tribunals would form an integral part of an international system to enforce new laws was frequently advanced as a pragmatic-and politically convenient-solution. The Birth of the New Justice shows that legal organizations were not merely interested in ensuring that the guilty were punished or that international peace was assured. They hoped to instil particular moral values, represent the interests of certain social groups, and even pursue national agendas. At the same time, their projects to define new types of crimes and ensure that old ones were truly punished also sprang from hopes that a new international political and moral order would check the power of the sovereign nation-state. When jurists had to scale back their projects, it was not only because state governments opposed them; it was also because they lacked political connections, did not build public support for their ideas, or decided that compromises were better than nothing.
Analyses the impact of the managerial reforms of the European Commission. In 1999 the resignation of the College of Commissioners triggered the implementation of a White Paper which listed 98 measures to overhaul the way the Commission did business. Ten years later what impact have the reforms had on the European Commission and European governance?
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.
The control of corporations is a subject that will appeal to a broad readership. How are the giant corporations that affect our lives controlled? Which individuals and institutions command the vast proportion of economic resources controlled by corporations? How do patterns of corporate control differ across European countries? This book answers these questions by providing a detailed analysis of corporate control in nine European countries - Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Much more than a simple examination of EU-Asia relations, this book examines the idea that the EU may constitute a 'model' for East Asian regionalism. It challenges specialists on the EU to understand the EU's impact on Asia and Asia's impact on the EU whilst illustrating that there is a commonality of interests in both Europe and Asia.
This fresh look at the 1963 crisis in the western alliance following de Gaulle's veto of the British EEC application uses much new unpublished source material to offer a fascinating insight into the personal relationships of the western leaders. It challenges the orthodox view, showing that the ultimate breakdown came after Anglo-German and Anglo-American cooperation to ensure that de Gaulle was made the sole scapegoat, in order to isolate France within the EEC.
The project of European integration now spans Europe, but in
becoming bigger and broader the European Union has broughtry on
itself significant criticism. As the EU becomes deeper, nd wider,
and more ambitious, so opposition and scepticismnd become more
prominent for citizens and more problematic for elites. Concerns
about a 'democratic deficit' and theomestic distance between
European elites and publics have come to be a common feature of
European politics. As a consequence Euroscepticism has become a
part of the terrain of conflict between political parties across
Europe.
Since the mid-1990s, the European Union has defined the Asia Pacific as one of its key strategic targets on its ambitious road towards a global power. Over the past decades, big changes have taken place on both sides and the wider world. It's high time to evaluate the EU's performance in its Asian policy. In fact, the EU is at crossroads with its Asia Pacific policy. On several aspects, the EU is compelled to redefine its interests and roles, and rethink its strategies and policies towards the dynamic and ever important Asia Pacific region. This volume addresses this theme, by elaborating the general context, major issues and countries in the EU's Asia Pacific policy. It covers issue areas of traditional security, economy and trade, public diplomacy, and human security and focuses on the EU's relations with China, Japan, the ASEAN countries, and Australasia. -- .
The debate over the nature and future of the United Nations began before its inception in 1945, and is likely to continue far into its second half-century. The purpose of this collection is to examine something generally ignored in the debate, even in the professional literature: what the United Nations actually does. The volume consists of original, authoritative, critical analyses of a sampling of key UN activities. In addition to their credentials in their own specialties, most contributors have extensive UN experience as staff members, delegates or consultants. Most are international lawyers and the others have a wide variety of backgrounds. They come from 12 countries. Each chapter stands on its own as a significant contribution to our understanding of both the subject and the quiet, undramatic but vital worldwide work of the United Nations. Students, scholars, and other researchers involved with the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations will find this work of particular interest.
How did Europe get to monetary union in 1999 and how will EMU work out? Are the member countries starting in good shape and is the European Central Bank going to be a success? Should the UK enter EMU too, and if so when and how? This book provides a stocktaking of the process of European monetary integration as of early 1999 - at the start of European Monetary Union and twenty years after the creation of the European Monetary System. Based upon the first academic conference on the subject since the start of EMU by the Money, Macro and Finance Research Group and bringing together leading academics, researchers and policy-makers - including members of the European Central Bank - the book assesses recent experiences and evaluates likely future developments. |
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