Japan and the European Union sets out to answer a number of crucial questions on the effect of Japan's international relations upon its internal affairs -- in particular how international issues, and Japan's growing relationship with the European Union, have come to penetrate the political economy and decision-making structure in Japanese industry and legislation. Japan/EU affairs have never been marked by any significant political relations, and until the past twenty years, they have been characterized by a reserved indifference. However, as a result of accelerated political and economic changes in the past decade, the two economic giants have made considerable efforts to nurture bilateral relations largely initiated by trade concerns. The author examines the development of this relationship informed by International Relations perspectives and taking into account the growing dependence of successful bilateral relations on the international political economy. Furthermore, Dr. Abe explains the attempt that has been made to resolve Japanese/EU disputes by way of a Joint Declaration. This includes an examination of the 1991 Automobile Agreement involving Japan, the EC Commission and the Japanese manufacturers; and the Liquor Tax dispute which ran from 1986-1995. Throughout this account, the concerns of the United States, and its impact on this relationship, are fully registered.

Since 1995 the world experienced a period of significant advance in international law, norms, and institutions. Progress was particularly intense in the fields of global environment, human security, cultural diversity, and human rights. This wave of multilateral activity led to milestones such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change (1997), the landmine treaty, the International Criminal Court, or the UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity. Remarkably, most of these advances were not US-led, as in the past. What caused such a burst in global institutions and who were the key founding fathers?The book reveals the crucial roles played by the European Union, Japan, and Canada (so-called 'Minervian actors') in this fascinating period. It also reveals that they acted with various partners and sub-state actors and with a variety of motivations: they sometimes sought to balance against US dominance; they engaged in normative work with global civil society; or they sought to demonstrate international leadership to their home audience.

The Euro crisis catapulted the EU into its most serious political crisis since its inception, leaving it torn between opposing demands for more sovereignty and solidarity. This volume focuses on the key themes of disunion, sovereignty and solidarity. It assesses the main EU institutions: member states, civil society actors and policy areas.

Economic growth continues to transform the economic and political landscape of Asia. Equally the policies now being adopted to promote private sector participation, re-structure state entities, and reduce the presence of the state in the provision of public goods and services, are tied to fundamental transformations in Asia's state-society relations. The global cast of contributors present a timely analysis of the impact of neo-liberalism on Asia's developmental policies and the organisation of Asian states and markets. Ironically, the "developmental state" that has historically driven Asia's rapid economic transformation is now threatened by an increasingly dominant neoliberal agenda that aims to roll back the state in the name of market fundamentalism.

This book considers some important economic issues currently facing the EU and examines its prospects. The chapters examine the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, econometric evidence of productivity convergence among the EU countries, the Growth and Stability Pact, problems of the comparison of measures of GDP between the EU and US, company taxation in the enlarged EU, the effect of an aging population on the public pensions in the EU, the CAP and the European constitution and fiscal federalism.

This book explores whether the co-existence of (partially) overlapping and sometimes competing layers of authority, which characterizes today's global order, undermines or rather strengthens efforts to promote the rule of law on a global scale. Heupel and Reinold argue that whether multi-level governance and global legal pluralism have beneficial or detrimental effects on the international rule of law depends on specific scope conditions. Among these are the mobilization of powerful states and courts, as well as the fit between soft law and hard law arrangements. The volume comprises seven case studies written by International Relations and International Law scholars. Bridging the gap between political science and legal scholarship, the volume enables an interdisciplinary perspective on the emergence of an international rule of law. It also provides much needed empirical research on the implications of multi-level governance and global legal pluralism for the rule of law beyond the nation state.

This book is an authoritative account of Poland's emerging foreign and security policies and will contribute to an understanding of the foreign policy preferences of an enlarged EU.
Evaluation of Poland as by far the largest and most vocal of all the countries joining the EU
Exploration of Poland's strong support for US policy over Iraq, its military potential, its proven capacity to use armed force and its de facto role as a regional leader
Argues that Poland will have a defining influence not only on the nature of transatlantic relations, but also on the EU's emerging international identity

Northern Ireland's Belfast Agreement has faced continual crises of implementation over a variety of security related issues. Too frequently analyses have neglected to study the wider changes that have occurred inside and outside Northern Ireland. These have had profound effects in changing attitudes towards violence, paramilitaries, the position of women and ideas of nationalism and sovereignty. This book places the implementation of the Belfast Agreement in a wider context to provide an analysis of why implementation has been so difficult.

An empirical assessment of whether participatory governance reforms within the EU enhance or endanger democracy. Many consider allowing civil society to take an active role in EU policy-making to offer the most effective means of enhancing democracy in the EU, whereas others argue that such attempts deepen the EU's democratic deficit.

Contributors offer new approaches to the study of the European Neighbourhood Policy. While the main emphasis is on the empirical assessment of the impact that the ENP has had to-date and on the factors that have shaped its implementation, it also provides new theoretical and methodological perspectives on how to study this policy area.

This study combines an account of Blair, Chirac, Schroeder and their attitudes towards European integration. It analyzes political discourses on 'national interests' and the EU, the frequently debated role of political discourse, the concept of national interest, and offers an alternative point of view on intergovernmental interaction.

Behavioural sciences help refine our understanding of human decision-making. Their insights are immensely relevant for policy-making since public intervention works much better when it targets real people rather than imaginary beings assumed to be perfectly rational. Increasingly, governments around the world are keen to rely on those insights for reshaping public interventions in a wide range of policy areas such as energy, health, financial services and data protection. When policy-making meets behavioural sciences, effective and low-cost regulations can emerge in the form of default rules, smart disclosure and simplification requirements. While behaviourally-informed intervention has a huge potential for policymaking, it also attracts legitimacy and practicability concerns. Nudge and the Law takes a European perspective on those issues and explores the legal implications of the emergent phenomenon of behavioural regulation by focusing on the challenges and opportunities it may offer to EU policy-making and beyond.

How is the United States able to control the IMF with only 17 per cent of the votes? How are the rules of the global economy made? This book shows how a combination of formal and informal rules explains how international organizations really work. Randall W. Stone argues that formal rules apply in ordinary times, while informal power allows leading states to exert control when the stakes are high. International organizations are therefore best understood as equilibrium outcomes that balance the power and interests of the leading state and the member countries. Presenting a new model of institutional design and comparing the IMF, WTO, and EU, Stone argues that institutional variations reflect the distribution of power and interests. He shows that US interests influence the size, terms, and enforcement of IMF programs, and new data, archival documents, and interviews reveal the shortcomings of IMF programs in Mexico, Russia, Korea, Indonesia, and Argentina.

Formulating a military strategy is a complex interaction between politicians, strategic commanders and generals. Formulating such a strategy within a multinational organization is even more complex. In this book, Edstrom and Gyllensporre explore a range of case studies, based on UN documents, and individually analyse their de facto military strategy in terms of ends, ways, means, and the interaction between the political strategic level (UN Security Council) and the military strategic level (UN Secretary General). Some 100,000 UN soldiers deployed all over the world not only deserve but need to be properly directed. Military strategy is hence a necessity, not an option. Moreover the military strategy should be percieved as a complementary effort to a robust integrated mission concept, including other instruments than the military."

The Handbook of Swedish Politics provides a state of the art analysis of political development in Sweden. Covering all essential aspects of politics in Sweden, this volume provides detailed accounts of policy making, governance, institutional arrangements, foreign relations, electoral behavior, the party system, the public administration, the constitutional framework, and the welfare state. The Handbook shows how many of the features that once were exceptional to Sweden, for example, the welfare state, the consensual policy making, the historical compromise between capital and labor, and the dominance of social democracy, are less prominent today compared to a few decades ago although they are still certainly present. Global forces, increasing affluence, and an ideological shift towards neo-liberalism have contributed to making Sweden more of an average European industrialized democracy. The Handbook is divided into ten thematic Sections with four chapters and an Introduction in each Section. Thus, each theme is studied from different perspectives in order to provide the reader with a more multi-faceted picture of the political development in each theme.

With the stagnation of the Doha Round of multilateral talks, trade liberalisation is increasingly undertaken through free trade agreements. Gabriel Siles-Brugge examines the EU's decision following the 2006 'Global Europe' strategy to negotiate such agreements with emerging economies. Eschewing the purely materialist explanations prominent in the field, he develops a novel constructivist argument to highlight the role of language and ideas in shaping EU trade policy. Drawing on extensive interviews and documentary analysis, Siles-Brugge shows how EU trade policymakers have privileged the interests of exporters to the detriment of import-competing groups, creating an ideational imperative for market-opening. Even during the on-going economic crisis the overriding mantra has been that the EU's future well-being depends on its ability to compete in global markets. The increasingly neoliberal orientation of EU trade policy has also had important consequences for its economic diplomacy with the developing economies of the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of states.

Explores how the framing of issues on the EU agenda affects policy-making. In a study that traces the highly contested developments in biotechnology policy over twenty years, the book introduces the conceptual and theoretical tenets of policy framing and shows how this analytical lens offers a unique perspective on issues in EU policy-making.

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.

In every system aimed at trade liberalisation, it is necessary to balance this goal with the protection of (other) values. Not only does this have economic implications, but it also strikes at the heart of regulatory autonomy, sovereignty, division of power between levels and branches of government and constitutionalism. The optimal balance necessarily depends on the system's aims, structure, membership and level of homogeneity. This book explores this broad idea in the specific context of the EU and WTO rules on non-pecuniary restrictions on the free movement of goods and seeks to establish how to optimally interpret them. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the EU internal market rules have strong external effects which can be felt within the WTO.

This book shows how France and Britain are leaders in EU security and defence policy, and explains why both states need each other in this policy area. The lack of relevant military capacity in Europe today implies that the US favours a strong EU in this field.

Drawing upon a series of elite interviews, focus groups and representative surveys, "Identity and Foreign Policy Perceptions in the Other Europe" maps changing definitions of statehood in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova as a result of their exclusion from an expanding Europe. The authors examine the perceptions of the place of each state in the international political system and its foreign policy choices. They conclude by drawing comparisons across the region and considering what the implications are both for the rest of Europe and for the Atlantic community.

The world of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has dramatically changed during the last two decades. The author critically analyses the engagement of INGOs within the contemporary international development landscape, enabling readers to further understand INGOs involvement in the politics of social change.

A constantly evolving security agenda has become a vital part of US-EU relations. Contemporary security challenges such as the rise of international terrorism and the threat from 'states of concern' have - in recent years - forced the US and the EU to adapt their relationship and work together in new ways. Written by a leading authority, this incisive and wide-ranging book systematically examines the development of the transatlantic security relationship in the post-Cold War era. It assesses the nature of the US and EU as international actors and considers how they cooperate together. Rees argues that - despite divergences of interest after the end of the Cold War - the complex nature of contemporary challenges is driving both sides of the Atlantic towards increased cooperation. In addition, the book looks in detail at how global and European issues such as EU defence and enlargement policies, nuclear non-proliferation, and the war on terror have affected security relations.

Opposite pages bear duplicate numbering

How should political community be seen in the context of European integration? This book combines a theoretical treatment of political allegiance with a study of ordinary citizens, examining how taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic talk politics and situate themselves relative to political institutions and other citizens.