In this fresh and timely account, Michael Calingaert explores the successes and failures of European economic and political integration, analyzes the factors that will determine its future course, and outlines the directions the European Union is moving in as it approaches the 21st century. Assessing U.S. interests affected by European integration, Calingaert recommends policies for the United States to consider in the face of an increasingly consolidated Europe. With its broad coverage and readable synthesis of a wealth of detailed information, this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and policymakers alike.
It has been argued that the emergence of a European collective identity would help overcome growing disparity caused by the increasing diversity of today’s European Union, with 28 member states and more than 500 million people. Research on European integration is facing the pressing question of what holds ‘Europe’ together in times of crisis, growing distributional conflict and instability in its neighbourhood. This book departs from the ideas of group cohesion in the EU, and reflects on the newest dynamics and practices of European identity. Whilst applying innovative qualitative, quantitative and experimental research methods and an interdisciplinary approach, this volume looks at a variety of issues such as European citizenship, mobility of European citizens, space-based identities, dual identities, student identity and value-sharing. In doing so, this volume presents new perspectives on this complex and dynamic subject and points to potential solutions both in the academic discourse and the political practice of the EU. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European studies, international relations, citizenship studies, political sociology as well as more broadly in the social sciences.
Over the last twenty years, processes of pluralization, differentiation and trans-nationalization in the European Union have arguably challenged the centrality of law to European integration. Yet these developments also present opportunities to investigate new understandings of law triggered by European integration. The contributors to this book revisit one of the first academic projects to conceptualise and study European legal integration - the early 'Integration through Law' School. On this basis, they consider continuities and discontinuities in the underlying social and political landscape which the law is to integrate (the 'object' of integration), the forms and capacities of the law itself (the 'agent' of integration), and the way these two dimensions reflect on each other. Displaying different normative concerns and varied theoretical starting points, all contributors maintain that 'integration through law' remains of enduring significance to the European integration process. The volume provides a valuable reference for scholars in the field of European integration studies and European legal and political theory.
In this fresh and timely account, Michael Calingaert explores the successes and failures of European economic and political integration, analyzes the factors that will determine its future course, and outlines the directions the European Union is moving in as it approaches the 21st century. Assessing U.S. interests affected by European integration, Calingaert recommends policies for the United States to consider in the face of an increasingly consolidated Europe. With its broad coverage and readable synthesis of a wealth of detailed information, this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and policymakers alike.
More than 30 years after their momentous book "Projekt Mitteleuropa", which had been written before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Emil Brix and Erhard Busek revisit the political space between Germany, Russia and the Mediterranean. The volume explores the role of Central Europe in the 21st century, the importance of the European Union, the significance of a transforming Central Europe for European unity, and what happens when we marginalise Central Europe. The view of the authors is unequivocal: European integration will only succeed when the Central European countries from Poland to North Macedonia, from the Czech Republic to Romania and Moldova, will be seen as being at the heart of Europe. The European Union needs to build more common and fair ground between "old" and "new" member states. According to the authors, any further move towards a "Europe of two speeds" would lead to a break-up of the EU.
This text explores the ways in which the European Union frames and conducts its international relations. Each chapter deals with the three key themes of the volume - the EU as a sub-system of international relations, the EU and the processes of international relations, and the EU as a power.
The current crisis in Europe is being labelled, in mainstream media and politics, as a ‘public debt crisis’. The present book draws a markedly different picture. What is happening now is rooted, in a variety of different ways, in the destabilisation of national models of capitalism due to the predominance of neoliberalism since the demise of the post-war ‘golden age’. Ten country analyses provide insights into national ways of coping – or failing to cope – with the ongoing crisis. They reveal the extent to which the respective socio-economic development models are unsustainable, either for the country in question, or for other countries. The bottom-line of the book is twofold. First, there will be no European reform agenda at all unless each country does its own homework. Second, and equally urgent, is a new European reform agenda without which alternative approaches in individual countries will inevitably be suffocated. This message, delivered by the country chapters, is underscored by more general chapters on the prospects of trade union policy in Europe and on current austerity policies and how they interact with the new approaches to economic governance at the EU level. These insights are aimed at providing a better understanding across borders at a time when European rhetoric is being used as a smokescreen for national egoism.
Politicising Europe presents the most comprehensive contribution to empirical research on politicisation to date. The study is innovative in both conceptual and empirical terms. Conceptually, the contributors develop and apply a new index and typology of politicisation. Empirically, the volume presents a huge amount of original data, tracing politicisation in a comparative perspective over more than forty years. Focusing on six European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) from the 1970s to the current euro crisis, the book examines conflicts over Europe in election campaigns, street protests, and public debates on every major step in the integration process. It shows that European integration has indeed become politicised. However, the patterns and developments differ markedly across countries and arenas, and many of the key hypotheses on the driving forces of change need to be revisited in view of new findings.
Sixty years after its invention, the operational system of the European Union remains little-understood. The 'Community Method' provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the functioning and achievements of the EU.
Mediterranean Capitalism Revisited brings together leading experts on the political economies of southern Europe—specifically Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal—to closely analyze and explain the primary socioeconomic and institutional features that define "Mediterranean capitalism" within the wider European context. These economies share a number of features, most notably their difficulties to provide viable answers to the challenge of globalization. By examining and comparing such components as welfare, education and innovation policies, cultural dimensions, and labor market regulation, Mediterranean Capitalism Revisited attends to both commonalities and divergences between the four countries, identifying the main reasons behind the poor performance of their economies and slow recovery from the Great Recession of 2007–2008. This volume also sheds light on the process of diversification among the four countries and addresses whether it did and still does make sense to speak of a uniquely Mediterranean model of capitalism. Contributors: Alexandre Afonso, Leiden University; Lucio Baccaro, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies; Rui Branco, NOVA University of Lisbon; Fabio Bulfone, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies; Giliberto Capano, University of Bologna; Sabrina Colombo, University of Milan; Lisa Dorigatti, University of Milan; Ana M. Guillén, University of Oviedo; Matteo Jessoula, University of Milan; Andrea Lippi, University of Florence; Manos Matsaganis, Polytechnic University of Milan; Oscar Molina, Autonomous University of Barcelona; Manuela Moschella, Scuola Normale Superiore; Sofia A. Pérez, Boston University; Gemma Scalise, University of Bergamo; Arianna Tassinari, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
