EU Induced Institutional Change in Post-Soviet Space
EU Induced Institutional Change in Post-Soviet Space

Author: Ryhor Nizhnikau

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-24

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1351337173

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This book analyses the role of the European Union in the process of institutional change in its Eastern neighbourhood and explains why EU policies arrive at contradictory outcomes at the sectoral level. Combining EU studies approaches with insights from the fields of new institutionalism, international development studies and transnationalisation, it explains how the EU policies contribute to rule persistence or lead to institutional change. Highlighting the importance of investigating how the policies of external intervention interact with domestic institutions, the book also provides a coherent presentation of the political and economic problems of Ukraine and Moldova and a comparative analysis in key areas at critical junctures of their development. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics and more broadly to International Relations, post-Soviet and Russian studies.

Sustainable Development, Regional Governance, and International Organizations
Sustainable Development, Regional Governance, and International Organizations

Author: Anastassia Obydenkova

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-28

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1040086810

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This book aspires to establish a dialogue among the studies of sustainable development, global environmental politics, comparative regionalism, and area studies of Eurasia. The chapters in this book reflect deep knowledge of the authors of the main trends in environmental politics at global, international, and national levels before the invasion in Ukraine in 2022. First, the book looks into the role and impact of international organizations such as the European Union (EU), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Arctic Council (AC,) and Global Forums on Climate Action on post-Communist states, but also the role of nation-states (e.g., Russia, Kazakhstan, and China). Second, the book explores relatively new international organizations, such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Eurasian Development Bank, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). How do the EAEU, EDB, and the SCO matter, if at all, in promoting an environmental agenda? How do the EU, EBRD, and the AC advance the environmental agenda across the post-Communist region? This book aspires to answer these questions and to shed more light on the challenges to sustainable development in post-Communist Europe, Central Asia, and Eurasia. With a new foreword and afterword, this book will appeal to students, scholars and researchers of political science, international relations, area-studies as well as practitioners and policymakers working in international organizations and dealing with challenges of sustainable development. The other chapters were originally published as a special issue of Problems of Post-Communism.

Reconfiguring EU Peripheries
Reconfiguring EU Peripheries

Author: Miruna Butnaru Troncotă

Publisher: Helsinki University Press

Published: 2024-06-19

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 952369104X

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Reconfiguring EU Peripheries explores the diverse nature of the European Union’s interactions with its peripheries. Focusing on a period of rising regional tensions marked most recently by the war in Ukraine, the volume casts new empirical and conceptual light on the diverse motivations that underpin the political elites’ attitudes towards the EU in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania, Türkiye and Ukraine. The volume engages with various understandings of the EU’s interactions with its different peripheries and shows how these dynamics are closely related to the self-perceived nature of the societies in question in relation to the EU. The impact of recent crises and conflicts underscore in some cases the need for strengthening solidarity and for ‘more EU’, whereas others highlight the doubts and disappointment over the challenges these societies have faced over recent years. The empirically rich case studies enable both interpretations of and debates on the EU integration processes. A comparative exploration of countries at different stages in the EU accession process and the various political elites’ attitudes towards the EU outlines the essentially constructed nature of peripherality. By challenging the conventional understanding of contestation and peripherality, this volume is a worthwhile first step towards looking at the EU and the peripheries it creates from an alternative, and sometimes ignored, point of view.

The Proliferation of Privileged Partnerships between the European Union and its Neighbours
The Proliferation of Privileged Partnerships between the European Union and its Neighbours

Author: Sieglinde Gstöhl

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-26

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0429788908

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This edited volume provides a timely analysis of the European Union’s ‘privileged’ partnerships with neighbouring countries, identifying key points of comparison. It analyses which policy areas are covered and why, the reasons why a specific institutional arrangement has been chosen, the major advantages and shortcomings for both sides and how effectively the privileged partnerships have worked in practice. Drawing on a number of case studies, the book highlights critical junctures and path dependence in the EU’s external relations and examines what general lessons can be drawn regarding privileged partnerships, in particular with a view to the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU affairs, European politics, diplomacy studies, and more broadly to international relations and law.

The European Union and Its Eastern Neighbourhood
The European Union and Its Eastern Neighbourhood

Author: Andriy Tyushka

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1000483657

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This edited volume brings together some of the most important scholarly perspectives – in the form of both journal article reprints and original contributions – on the structure and dynamics of the EU’s multi-layered relations with its Eastern neighbours within the Eastern Partnership (EaP) framework and beyond. In May 2019, the EU’s EaP – an ambitious and sophisticated policy framework, conjoining elements of cooperation and integration, with the EU’s six eastern neighbours, i.e. Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – turned ten years. This anniversary, in conjunction with repeatedly voiced critique by scholars and policy-makers alike regarding the framework’s effectiveness and utility, led the EU to submit the EaP to a fundamental auditing and revision. Structured around both enduring and emerging issues in the broader EU-Eastern neighbourhood framework, this book provides a retrospective analysis of key structural and relational challenges, unfolding regional dynamics, distinctive forms of bilateral/multilateral engagement, whilst also offering a critical perspective on the contested future relations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours. Looking backwards and providing a critical and thorough assessment of the first ten years of the EaP in practice, this book thinks forward and gauges its many potential future avenues. This comes at a crucial moment, as the EU and its six Eastern neighbours are in search of new and mutually acceptable forms of association.

The European Union’s Approach to Conflict Resolution
The European Union’s Approach to Conflict Resolution

Author: Laurence Cooley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1351043463

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This book investigates and explains the European Union’s approach to conflict resolution in three countries of the Western Balkans: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo. In doing so, it critically interrogates claims that the EU acts as an agent of conflict transformation in its engagement with conflict-affected states. The book argues, contrary to the assumptions of much of the existing literature, that rather than seeking the transformation of conflicts, the EU pursues a more conservative strategy based on the regulation of conflict through the promotion of institutional mechanisms such as consociational power sharing and decentralisation. Drawing on discourse analysis of documents, speeches, and interviews conducted by the author with European Union officials and policy-makers in Brussels and the case-study countries, the book offers a theoretically grounded, methodologically rigorous and empirically detailed analysis of EU policy preferences, of the ideas that underpin them, and of how those preferences are legitimised. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners interested in ethnic conflict and conflict resolution, the politics of the Balkans, and the external and foreign policies of the EU.

European Identities and Foreign Policy Discourses on Russia
European Identities and Foreign Policy Discourses on Russia

Author: Marco Siddi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1315315149

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This book examines the relationship between national identity construction and current foreign policy discourses on Russia in selected European Union member states in 2014–2018. It shows that divergent national discourses on Russia derive from the different ways in which the country was constructed in national identity. The book develops an interpretive theoretical framework and argues that policy makers’ agency can profoundly influence the contestation between different identity narratives. It includes case studies in policy areas that are of primary importance for EU–Russia relations, such as energy security (the Nord Stream 2 controversy), the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s military intervention in Syria. Focusing on EU member states that have traditionally taken different stances vis-à-vis Russia (Germany, Poland and Finland), it shows that at the peak of the Ukraine crisis national discourses converged towards a pragmatic, but critical narrative. As the Ukraine crisis subsided and new events took centre stage in foreign policy discussions (i.e. the Syrian civil war, international terrorism), long-standing and identity-based divergences partly re-emerged in the discourses of policy makers. This became particularly evident during the Nord Stream 2 controversy. Deep-rooted and different perceptions of the Russian Other in EU member states are still influential and lead to divergent national agendas for foreign policy towards Russia. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in European and EU politics, Russian and Soviet politics, and International Relations.

EU–Turkey Relations
EU–Turkey Relations

Author: Özge Zihnioğlu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 135122784X

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This book focuses on the hidden but ever-present civil society dimension of the EU’s policies towards Turkey and uncovers the pitfall of EU–Turkey relations. It establishes the growing depoliticization of Turkish civil society (in contrast to what the EU’s policies aimed for) and engages with the questions of why and how Turkish civil society depoliticized. It discusses how Turkey’s retreating democracy, and the intense polarization in Turkish political and social life make rights-based activism more difficult. Finally, this book investigates what implications Turkish civil society’s depoliticization bears for EU–Turkey relations, reveals the diminishing leverage of the EU’s policies and discusses how this reflects on Turkey’s already closing civic space. It explains why and how EU-Turkey relations deteriorated over the last decade, examines the current stalemate, and discusses why civil society matters. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students in the field of EU–Turkey relations, Turkish studies and civil society studies as well as more broadly to NGOs, European studies and politics, and International Relations.

The Politics of the European Neighbourhood Policy
The Politics of the European Neighbourhood Policy

Author: Agnieszka K. Cianciara

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1000069958

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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.

The Political Economy of Climate Finance Effectiveness in Developing Countries
The Political Economy of Climate Finance Effectiveness in Developing Countries

Author: Mark Purdon

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-01-01

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0197756859

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There is ample evidence that engaging developing countries on climate change mitigation would have significant, positive impacts on global climate efforts. There is much debate, however, on the most effective strategy for unlocking these low-cost mitigation opportunities. While the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) emerged as the main climate finance instrument for engaging developing countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the carbon market approach it embodied would largely be replaced by a new array of climate finance instruments based on climate funds. In The Political Economy of Climate Finance Effectiveness in Developing Countries, Mark Purdon shows that the effectiveness of climate finance instruments to reduce emissions under either strategy has depended on the interaction between prevailing ideas about how to develop a nation's economy, as well as state interests in various economic sectors. Based on multiple field visits over a decade in three countries, the author demonstrates that climate finance instruments have been more effectively implemented when the state treats them as vehicles for addressing priority development issues. Climate finance instruments were more consistently and effectively implemented in Uganda and Moldova than Tanzania, despite differences in state capacity between countries. This pattern held for the CDM, as well as subsequent instruments largely based on climate funds, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and other national mitigation actions. Contributing to broader debates on international climate cooperation, Purdon's findings inform international efforts to support national climate plans and catalyze low-carbon development by emphasizing the importance of domestic politics and the state.