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| 1 |
ID:
136939
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| Summary/Abstract |
Europe is a profoundly flexible concept and, in Ernesto Laclau’s terms, a ‘floating signifier’ which is given various meanings depending on the speaker’s political aims. The article focuses on current populist and nationalist political discourses in Finland and the articulation of Europe and European identity in the political rhetoric of The Finns Party. In the rhetoric, Europe is given contradictory meanings. On the one hand, it is perceived as a cultural and value-based community which shares a common (Christian) heritage and values. Identification with Europe and the promotion of European communality are particularly pronounced when a threat towards ‘us’ is experienced as coming from outside the imagined European borders. On the other hand, the European integration process and Europe as a political project can be articulated as threats not only to national independence, identity and cultural particularity but to European cultural identity as well.
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| 2 |
ID:
134626
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This paper compares how officials in Rousse, Bulgaria, and Transcarpathia, Ukraine, interact with ‘foreigners’: officials from agencies of the European Union (EU), other member states, and foreign consultants. The goals are: a) to compare the extent to which officials in the two communities participate in transnational networks of European bureaucracies, the so-called ‘transnational fusion bureaucracy’; b) to assess the ways in which the bottom-up actions of those officials relate to the broad, top-down policy goals of the EU; and c) to analyse the effects of those interactions on the business environments of the two communities. As a result of comparing the two regions, this paper argues that similar processes of integration in the transnational fusion bureaucracy occur in the internal periphery of the European Union (Rousse) and in areas outside the EU borders (Transcarpathia). In doing so, it questions the extent to which both regions participate in an emerging ‘transnational fusion bureaucracy’ emphasising difference in intensity of the considered processes, as well as the different responses by the two bureaucracies to inputs and opportunities provided by the EU.
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| 3 |
ID:
135078
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The existing political, socioeconomic, and spiritual-cultural contradictions and conflicts in the Southern Caucasus can only be overcome by means of efficient European integration and Eurasian reintegration of the countries that belong to this region. The South Caucasian countries have been carrying out reforms in all spheres of social life within the framework of European integration. These reforms were aimed at ensuring sustainable development and civiliarchic harmonization based on the European social model and, therefore, promoted internal and international integration. This has created prerequisites for establishing democratic institutions and rapidly forming a civil society; it has also raised government and local self-administration effectiveness, as weThe existing political, socioeconomic, and spiritual-cultural contradictions and conflicts in the Southern Caucasus can only be overcome by means of efficient European integration and Eurasian reintegration of the countries that belong to this region. The South Caucasian countries have been carrying out reforms in all spheres of social life within the framework of European integration. These reforms were aimed at ensuring sustainable development and civiliarchic harmonization based on the European social model and, therefore, promoted internal and international integration. This has created prerequisites for establishing democratic institutions and rapidly forming a civil society; it has also raised government and local self-administration effectiveness, as well as the level of public capital, legal culture, and social security of the population.
The obligations the South Caucasian countries have taken upon themselves within the framework of international (including European) organizations has helped to overcome political instability, ethnic conflicts, social differentiation, and other destructive processes. The emergence of new dividing lines indicating the huge differences between the highly incompatible European and Eurasian integration projects threatens to destabilize the Southern Caucasus.
It is also important to keep in mind that the Eurasian reintegration project, which embodies a modern development concept, is still coming to fruition. It has yet to undergo the social verification and instrumentalization so necessary in the current reality of the “knowledge society.”
ll as the level of public capital, legal culture, and social security of the population.
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| 4 |
ID:
135880
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| Summary/Abstract |
Immigration politics in Britain have been transformed by high levels of immigration, the effects of EU free movement, strong anti-immigration sentiment and UKIP's rise. All are compounded by a more general discontent with politics and politicians. In face of claims that something must be done, politicians seek tougher controls on immigration and free movement, but these may be difficult to attain because of entanglement with EU rules, while failure to achieve stated objectives can further compound the disconnect that fuels support for UKIP.
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| 5 |
ID:
135079
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Eurasian integration and the Eurasian Economic Union have attracted numerous views and opinions and ignited heated discussions: a larger part of the political and business community of the CIS countries is aware of the advantages a common economic space that has their best interests at heart will have to offer. On the other hand, the possible loss of national sovereignties and independence has stirred up apprehension that keeps politicians in two minds and slows down economic cooperation.
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| 6 |
ID:
136505
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In 1982, The Economist marked the 25th anniversary of the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union, by featuring a tombstone dedicated to the organization on its cover. “Born March 25, 1957. Moribund March 25, 1982,” it read. Then came an epitaph courtesy of the ancient Roman historian Tacitus: Capax imperii nisi imperasset, “It seemed capable of being a power, until it tried to be one.” Inside, the magazine pilloried the community for its institutional weakness, bemoaned its citizens’ growing disenchantment with European integration, and warned of a possible British exit.
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| 7 |
ID:
134268
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Europe is facing both a political crisis of democracy and legitimacy and an economic crisis of debt and competitiveness. These crises seem to point in two distinct directions, growing social unrest over the Europeanized mechanisms of economic adjustment, and increasing efforts at strengthening those same institutions that regulate the adjustment process. Recent analyses have suggested that this failure of democracy will prove decisive; legitimacy for crisis management efforts requires a redemocratization of the European polity. Instead, drawing on an analysis of ordo- and neo-liberal traditions, the article explains how European integration was itself a response to the perceived threat of democratic demands at the domestic level. The body of the article then traces the crisis through three phases, arguing that efforts by state managers reflect a deliberate attempt to depoliticize policy-making processes. Yet the selective intervention—to restore accumulation whilst withdrawing social spending—has only fuelled the politicization of segments of European society. This threatens to test the limits of depoliticization as a governing strategy.
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| 8 |
ID:
136473
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Europe’s social and electoral map is in period of tremendous flux as a resurgent, Eurosceptic right-wing populism accompanies disenchantment with European integration. Josse de Voogd examines how European politicians are navigating an increasingly complex political landscape sewn together by a patchwork of class loyalties, old traditions, and historical and religious affinities. We follow his overview with individual snapshots from four corners of Europe—Sweden, Italy, Scotland, and Russia.
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| 9 |
ID:
134469
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Karl Deutsch focused in his work on many social, political and technical aspects of building political community which can enrich our understanding of international cooperation and European integration. It is especially his concept of the political community that helps us to explain current problems of the European integration: namely, the current pre-occupation with the market and institutions leads to the neglect of the common redistribution and of the horizontal ties among the state institutions and among the peoples. This article also points to the tension between Deutsch’s awareness that the study of political communities requires the examination of values, love and spirituality, and his positivist, quantitative methods which do not allow for such an examination. This tension invites to a re-reading of Deutsch, which can enrich the liberal tradition of international relations (IR).
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| 10 |
ID:
135298
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The Lisbon Treaty fundamentally changed the presidency regime of the European Union at the expense of one of the oldest and most central institutions of European integration: the rotating presidency. The chair positions of the European Council, the Foreign Affairs Council and the Eurogroup have been decoupled from the rotating presidency. Understanding the reduced role of the rotating presidency requires attention for the changing dynamics of EU policymaking, especially for the new intergovernmentalism which implies decision-making outside the classic community method and for the rise of the European Council to the status of a lead institution.
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| 11 |
ID:
134253
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the relevance of discourse in the analysis of EU foreign policy. Instead of using discourse as a structure, the discursive struggles in meaning production are emphasised. The article argues that the literature trying to make a contribution to the explanation of EU foreign policy has so far overemphasised the positive function of discourses in influencing policies in their substance. In contrast, the article focuses on the delimiting function of discourses in providing the boundaries of the kinds of policies which can be legitimately pursued. From this point of view, important discursive struggles take place exactly about these limits, and it is only through the setting of these limits that identities and norms are provided with clearer meanings. The article illustrates this framework by focusing on the debate about normative power Europe. It argues that an important aspect of this debate which has been missing from the literature so far is that it is indeed engaging in a struggle over what is acceptable as a policy of a normative power and is what not, and that it is therefore engaged in setting the limits of legitimate EU foreign policy.
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| 12 |
ID:
134624
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| Summary/Abstract |
Against the backdrop of the international political and economic system’s increasing fragmentation, this article attempts to analyse the geopolitical ambitions of the EU. Currently, the EU strives to become an independent global power. For this purpose, the EU tries to establish greater independence from the US and, to a certain degree, from its Member states. This is closely linked to (a) the emergence of the Euro as a currency competing with the US dollar for the status of the ‘global reserve currency’ and (b) the construction of a common foreign and ‘security’ policy. Taking the German literature on the political economy of the state and on the European Integration, insights from neo-Gramscian International Political Economy, and the ‘scale debate’ in Anglophone geography as point of departure, I analyse the European ensemble of state apparatuses and demonstrate that these ambitions have failed, due to the status quo of a fragmented Europe.
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