This brand new textbook provides a concise and informative overview of environmental policy and politics in the European Union. It includes a thorough analysis of the traditional areas of environmental concern such as pollution and natural resources, as well as newer environmental issues, including GMOs and climate change. Throughout this clear and readable introduction, the authors emphasize the interdependence between EU environmental policy and changes at the global level, focusing in particular on the EU's role in global environmental governance. The authors' didactic approach means this text will be invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students of environmental politics, policies and governance in the EU as well as MA programmes with a global focus, including international relations and EU studies.

Bringing together research from a number of different disciplines, this volume explores the effects of European Union policy and discourses of linguistic heterogeneity and cultural diversity from a sociological/ethnographic perspective, providing an opportunity for the reader to make comparisons between developments in different ethno-linguistic revival movements within the EU.

As the EU further enlarges and deepens through rounds of treaty reforms, it is imperative to understand the dynamics of the major decisions, or big bangs, in the integration process. This book will present the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of the major rounds of treaty reform over the past two decades, in an attempt to answer whether the path from the Single European Act in 1985 to the present Constitutional Treaty has been pushed by the Franco-German tandem, or has been the result of leadership provided by other actors such as the Commission or smaller member states.

This book examines conflict resolution efforts in Latin America by the Organization of American States (OAS) over the past fifty years by exploring the relationship of the United States with other member states within the context of the OAS. The book focuses on the impact of institutional factors on the influence that member states are able to wield within the organization. This innovative theoretical approach yields general insights into organizational behaviour and interstate relations within an international organization. The examination of thirty-one cases provides a wealth of empirical data and facilitates cross case comparisons.

Chaya Arora assesses the diplomatic path of influence taken by German decision-makers during the early nineties in pursuit of their cautiously articulated interest in and commitment to the eastward enlargement of NATO."

This volume offers a timely and important study on how norms are transferred from the international into the domestic domain through processes of socialization. It seeks to understand the process of change in post-Cold War Europe from a divided continent into a community with a common identity, based on shared values and ideas. It also offers an explanation for why the process of change has occurred easily in some countries and with more difficulty or not at all in others.

Taking an historical approach, the author explores both how the UN has affected world politics and how the international political system has formed and limited the work of the Organization. He looks at why the UN was created, how it was affected by the Cold War and how successive Secretaries General struggled to find a role for themselves. The book shows how negative and even hostile views of the UN were changed by the end of the Cold War and by the UN-sponsored action in the Gulf, why the UN overreached itself in Bosnia and Somalia and how it failed to stop the genocide in Rwanda. While the main focus of this book is the role of the UN in promoting international peace and security, it also examines the work of the UN in other areas, including human rights and environmental protection.

The range of global human rights institutions which have been created over the past half century is a remarkable achievement. Yet, their establishment and proliferation raises important questions. Why do states create such institutions and what do they want them to achieve? Does this differ from what the institutions themselves seek to accomplish? Are global human rights institutions effective remedies for violations of human dignity or temples for the performance of stale bureaucratic rituals? What happens to human rights when they are being framed in global institutions?
This book is an introduction to global human rights institutions and to the challenges and paradoxes of institutionalizing human rights. Drawing on international legal scholarship and international relations literature, it examines UN institutions with a human rights mandate, the process of mainstreaming human rights, international courts which adjudicate human rights, and non-governmental human rights organizations.
In mapping the ever more complex network of global human rights institutions it asks what these institutions are and what they are for. It critically assesses and appraises the ways in which global institutions bureaucratize human rights, and reflects on how this process is changing our perception of human rights.

The project includes almost 30 contributions from prominent worldwide scholars assessing the state of EU US relations after the war in Iraq. These articles were commissioned at the meeting of the 25 EU Foreign Ministers at Rhodes in May 2003, during the EU Greek Presidency. EU US Relations offers answers to the major questions and thorny problem of the future of transatlantic relations. The book presents viewpoints from both sides of the Atlantic, from academics and politicians. It also offers the potential solutions as to the future of EU US relations and the strengthening and organization of the common foreign policy of the EU after the war in Iraq. GILLES ADREANNI DAVID ANDREWS EMILIOS AVGOULEAS SCOTT BARRETT DICK BENSCHOP TOM BENTLEY CHRISTOPH BERTRAM JAN DIRK BLAAUW ELMAR BROK JOHN BRUTON TED GALEN CARPENTER THEODORE A. COULOMBIS KEMAL DERVIS A.A. FATOUROS TIMOTHY GARTON ASH BRONISLAW GEREMEK MISHA GLENNY ALAN K. HENRIKSON CHRISTOPHER HILL STANLEY HOFFMANN DIMITRIS KONSTAS F. STEPHEN LARRABEE JONATHAN LIPKIN ANAND MENON KALYPSO NICOLAIDIS JOSEPH NYE GEORGE A. PAPANDREOU Greek Foreign Minister GEORGIOS PAPASTAMKOS WILLIAM PFAFF FRIEDBERT PFLGER POTSDAM CENTRE FOR TRANSATLANTIC

This book examines the recent changes in strategic stability, caused by the collapse of the international security architecture. Against the background of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, international experts discuss topics and critical issues such as the revanchist strategy of Russia and the readiness of the United States (US) and Europe to give an adequate response; the influence of new technologies in the future of nuclear deterrence; and the crumbling of the arms control and nonproliferation system under the new challenges. The book explains how the combination of these factors lead to a crucial change of strategic stability and the international security landscape, the first such change since the end of the Cold War. Divided into three parts, the book presents timely analyses on (1) US, Russia: New Challenges and Strategic Stability in Europe; (2) Extended Deterrence and Arms Control in Europe; and (3) Regional Dimensions of Strategic Stability in Europe. It further offers perspectives from and case studies on different countries, such as Ukraine, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the USA, Turkey, Poland, and Romania. This book is a must-read for scholars for international relations, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of the changing international security architecture, Russia's strategy, arms control, nonproliferation, and the future of nuclear deterrence.

This book is about the distinctive features of Scandinavian democracy, the state of Scandinavian democracy and the classification of the Scandinavian democracies. It breaks new ground in challenging the established status of the Scandinavian countries as 'consensus model democracies'. The book poses three main questions. First, what are the distinctive features of the five Scandinavian political systems when compared with the Westminster model of democracy? Next, how well does the evidence from recent commissions suggest that Scandinavian democracy is working in practice? Finally, is Scandinavian democracy consensual, majoritarian or mixed? The nature of legislative-executive relations is explored, with a particular focus on the role of the parliamentary opposition and its involvement in policy-making. The central conclusion is that all the Nordic states are majoritarian democracies, albeit with varying amounts of consensual legislative behaviour. -- .

"The United States of Europe" considers the post-WWII transition of Europe from a diverse and disparate continent to the economically integrated European Union of today. Initiated by the Benelux Customs Union, and later the European Coal and Steel Cooperation, the six-member European Economic Community was formed in 1957, becoming the EC in 1967, and finally the EU in 1992. This process of Europeanization reached its zenith in 1987 with the approval of the Single European act, creating a single market economy. This was followed in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty, defining the intra-EU macro- and micro-economic parameters. The inauguration of a single common currency, the euro, on 1st January 1999 was a further innovative step, a process that has enabled the EU-27 to enjoy a competitive share of the world GDP and trade.

In this book, Andrzej Sitkowski confronts two basic peacekeeping myths. First, the belief that peacekeeping is separate from peace enforcement blurs this difference and undermines the viability of peacekeeping operations. Secondly, it is widely believed that the peacekeepers are allowed to apply force only in self-defense and lack the authorization to use it in defending UN Security Councils mandates. Solidly anchored in official primary sources originating from the UN, national governments, parliamentary inquiries (Dutch, French, and Belgian) and from the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, this book integrates the most recent recommendations related to peacekeeping. It exposes how the UN peacekeeping syndrome of soldiers safety first crept into the NATO's strategy and compromises its missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. The peacekeeping system has largely outlived its usefulness and is bound to fail when applied to currently predominant violent and messy conflagrations. Lacking radical changes in that system, the UN should disarm, restricting the peacekeeping to military observers' missions and to subcontracting other operations out to military alliances and regional organizations. The widely lamented massacres of innocent civilians under UN Peacekeeper eyes in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and the Congo influenced neither the UN's approach nor the analysis of the methods. In this book, Andrzej Sitkowski confronts two basic peacekeeping myths. First, the belief that peacekeeping is distinct from peace enforcement blurs this distinction and undermines the viability of peacekeeping operations. In fact, it is the UN's definition of self-defense, which is understood to include actions of troops against forceful obstructions to discharging their mandates, that confuses the issue. Nevertheless, that distinction remains a cornerstone of the UN doctrine. Secondly, it is widely believed that the peacekeepers are allowed to apply force only in self-defense and lack the authorization to use it in defending UN Security Councils mandates. This myth persists, even in cases when the UN Security Council undertakes explicit authorization to enforce specific goals of the mandate. Sitkowski offers a critical re-appraisal of the fundamental principles of peacekeeping, including both the largest successes (Namibia) and worst disasters (Rwanda). Drawing heavily on personal accounts, the book is solidly anchored in official primary sources originating from the UN, national governments, parliamentary inquiries (Dutch, French and Belgian) and from the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. It integrates the most recent recommendations related to peacekeeping originating from High-Level Panels and endorsed by Kofi Annan. Finally it exposes how the UN peacekeeping syndrome of soldiers safety first crept into the NATO's strategy and compromises its missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Mainstream economists have given insufficient attention to regional and urban economics and economic geography. Comparing nations in the European Union and North America, this book examines government activities aimed specifically at regional economic development. It provides a wide ranging consideration of numerous facets of regional economic development, encompassing both national and subnational levels. Proposing that a period of economic prosperity is the best time to invest in regional development, the author indicates the need for a direct role by the federal government.

The study is based on a review of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, the European Union, and supranational organizations, such as NAFTA and the WTO, and their internal impact on regions. The comparison shows that the U.S. lags dramatically behind the European Union. The EU, particularly the Western European countries, has long been in the forefront of regional policy and is actively formulating policy, whereas the U.S. has no semblance of a federal regional policy.

The United Nations is in a time of major crisis in the history of the organization. The product of many leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, this work examines whether out of the crisis of mulitlateralism engulfing the organization in the late 1980s there could arise a renewed and strengthened global body. Pursuing the theme of the dynamics of international cooperation, thirteen authors look at three principal issue-areas: the principal UN organs, leading economic subjects, and leading social subjects. Two distinguished American scholars provide concluding commentaries. Running throughout the book is an emphasis on the economic dimension to international politics.

This book analyzes changing national preferences towards the EU CFSP and ESDP by providing detailed accounts of British, French and German crisis decision-making in FYROM, Afghanistan, Lebanon and DR Congo. While transatlantic relations remain important, crisis management under the EU label is increasingly accepted in national capitals.

This book examines how the European environmental movement, as part of an emerging European civil society, has impinged on the problem definitions and solution strategies in the European politics of the environment. Examining core case studies in European environmental policy - biodiversity politics (Natura 2000), the politics of genetically modified organisms, Trans-European Transport Networks, and the European politics of climate change - this study, written at the crossroads of social movement, public sphere and political discourse theory, argues that a social movement's most important feature is its 'cognitive praxis', its ability to successfully challenge dominant conceptions of realty and to create new green public spheres. It examines whether 'ecological modernization' is able to solve the tension between economic growth and environmental protection, and to what extent European environmentalism has contributed to the emergence of a green 'normative power Europe'.

European agriculture is on the brink of a financial and ecological crisis. The European Community, individual governments, and the industry itself have precipitated this crisis. Controversy follows controversy -- in the areas of pollution, use of chemicals, land degradation, and overproduction. "The Diversion of Land" assesses the conservation challenge at the end of a long period of agricultural expansion. The book draws on the experience of continental Europe and North America to contextualize a case study analysis of the U.K. Incorporating new research and a new methodology for the targeting of land diversion, the emphasis throughout is on the agricultural adjustment process. This process, the authors argue, must be informed not only by an ecological awareness, but also by the anticipation of economic and social change.

Until the Amsterdam Treaty,law and policymaking in the field of immigration remained a national function, though in practice there was much co-operation (the so-called Third Pillar). Now these powers have been transferred to the European Community as First Pillar powers. Only Denmark, Ireland and the UK have opted out. This book looks at the likely effects of this substantial transfer of powers to the Community. How will the powers and responsibilities be divided? How should the powers be exercised? Will there be input from the public into policymaking? What role will Parliaments play? Will migrants suffer? The foremost scholars from many European countries try to answer these and other questions, offering a variety of legal and social viewpoints. Contributors: Pieter Boeles (Amsterdam and Leiden), Antje Weiner (Hannover), Cristina Gortazar (Madrid), Guy Goodwin-Gill (Oxford), Nicholas Blake QC (London), Johannes van der Klaauw (UNHCR Brussels), Jens Vedsted Hansen (Aahus), Elspeth Guild (Nijmegen and London), Kees Groenendijk (Nijmegen), Gisbert Brinkmann (Bonn), John Crowley (CERI, Paris), Deirdre Curtin (Utrecht), Roger Errera (Paris), Steve Peers (Essex), Carol Harlow (LSE), Gregor Noll (Lund).

Rethinking the European Union draws together contributors from across Europe to reflect upon methods of conceptualising the European Union within both changing global and European contexts. Rethinking takes the themes of institutions, interests and identities as its organising framework within which each contributor offering a distinctive commentary on the EU. The outcome is a text that goes beyond an exploration of the existing methods of conceptualising the European integration process and reflects upon the nature of the EU itself.

We have known for many decades that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 "failed", in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the Paris Peace Conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking the world. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on "justice" produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference sought to unmix lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. The conference sought not so much to oppose revolution as to instrumentalize it in the new international system. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the failure of the conference, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

This volume studies the effects of alternative exchange rate regimes on accession countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The study uses different types of macro models and studies the sustainability and robustness of monetary policy practices.

In 1999, ten years of heated debate about the EU's role in defense policy came to an end, when the EU decided to establish an autonomous security and defense policy. Germany and Britain had been key players in the years leading to this decision. But they played markedly different roles -- the former endorsing the idea from the beginning, the latter dragging its heels and only reluctantly becoming a supporter. Nonetheless both British and German policies can be understood as responses to impulses from the international system. The end of the Cold War prompted both states to pursue a policy of balancing US power. Yet international institutions constrained their balancing efforts differently. To demonstrate this, this study builds on the theories of neo-realism and historical institutionalism and develops the approach of structure-based foreign policy analysis: a new mode of analyzing security policies as responses to the international environment.

Populism is a concept that is currently in vogue among political commentators and, more often than not, used pejoratively. The phenomenon of populism is typically seen as something adverse and, in the European context routinely related to xenophobic politics. What populism exactly is and who its main representatives are, however, often remains unclear. This text has two main aims: to identify populist parties in 21st century Europe and to explain their electoral performance. It argues that populist parties should not be dismissed as dangerous pariahs out of hand but rather that their rise tells us something about the state of representative democracy. The study has a broad scope, including populist parties of various ideological kinds - thus moving beyond examples of the 'right' - and covering long-established Western European countries as well as post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. It presents the results of an innovative mixed-methods research project, combining a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of populist parties in 31 European countries with three in-depth case studies of the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom.

Smart Cities and the UN's SDGs explores how smart cities initiatives intersect with the global goal of making urbanization inclusive, resilient, and sustainable. Topics explored include digital governance, e-democracy, health care access, public-private partnerships, well-being, and more. Examining smart cities concepts, tools, strategies, and obstacles and their applicability to sustainability, the book exposes key structural problems that cities face and how the imperative of sustainability can bypass them. It shows how smart city technological innovation can boost citizens' well-being, serving as a key reference for those seeking to make sense of the issues and challenges of smart cities and SDGs.