Constructing the Limits of Europe

Constructing the Limits of Europe PDF Author: Rumena Filipova
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838216490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe. She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated perspective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.

Constructing the Limits of Europe

Constructing the Limits of Europe PDF Author: Rumena Filipova
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838216490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe. She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated perspective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.

The Limits of Europe

The Limits of Europe PDF Author: Daniel C. Thomas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199206716
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around the EU. As this book demonstrates, the limits of Europe are determined by the values shared at particular moments in time by the leaders of the community's member states, regardless of their particular policy preferences. These membership norms shape the community's decisions on enlargement by empowering certain political forces and disempowering others. And contrary to conventional wisdom, these norms have changed considerably over time. The Limits of Europe: Membership Norms and the Contestation of Regional Integration uses a novel combination of normative genealogy, statistical analysis and detailed tracing of EU decision-making on Greece, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine to demonstrate that changing membership norms have had a stronger impact on the community's enlargement since the 1950s than treaty rules, the location of the states seeking membership, or even the commercial or security interests of member states.

France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2007

France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2007 PDF Author: Michael Sutton
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857452908
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a 60 year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate's referendum rejection of the European Union's constitutional treaty in 2005.

Constructing European Union Trade Policy

Constructing European Union Trade Policy PDF Author: Gabriel Siles-Brügge
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137331666
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
With the stagnation of the Doha Round of multilateral talks, trade liberalisation is increasingly undertaken through free trade agreements. Gabriel Siles-Brügge 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-Brügge 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.

The Social Construction of Europe

The Social Construction of Europe PDF Author: Thomas Christiansen
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761972655
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book is the first to systematically introduce and apply a social constructivist perspective to the study of European integration. Social constructivism is carefully located in terms of its philosophical and methodological origins. The wider debates and contribution of constructivist approaches to international relations are reviewed, and the insights that might then be afforded to European studies fully explored. Highlights include: new theoretical contributions to the debate by Ernst B. Haas, Andrew Moravcsik and Steve Smith; research on key aspects of European integration and EU governance applying a variety of constructivist approaches. The Social Construction of Europe provides new and important in

The Ghostwriters

The Ghostwriters PDF Author: Tommaso Pavone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009084445
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
The European Union is often depicted as a cradle of judicial activism and a polity built by courts. Tommaso Pavone shows how this judge-centric narrative conceals a crucial arena for political action. Beneath the radar, Europe's political development unfolded as a struggle between judges who resisted European law and lawyers who pushed them to embrace change. Under the sheepskin of rights-conscious litigants and activist courts, these “Euro-lawyers” sought clients willing to break state laws conflicting with European law, lobbied national judges to uphold European rules, and propelled them to submit noncompliance cases to the European Union's supreme court – the European Court of Justice – by ghostwriting their referrals. By shadowing lawyers who encourage deliberate law-breaking and mobilize courts against their own governments, The Ghostwriters overturns the conventional wisdom regarding the judicial construction of Europe and illuminates how the politics of lawyers can profoundly impact institutional change and transnational governance.

Law, Solidarity and the Limits of Social Europe

Law, Solidarity and the Limits of Social Europe PDF Author: Ann-Christine Hartzén
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781800885509
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This thought-provoking book examines the socio-legal mechanisms that drive EU constitutional tensions, as well as the role of principles and values in re-directing EU law and policy towards a democratic Social Europe. It addresses the current limits of Social Europe in relation to different areas of EU law, offering a critical assessment of the present status of EU integration. Covering areas such as posting of workers, the right to collective bargaining, political rights and free movement for EU citizens, and asylum policy, chapters provide a cross-disciplinary and policy-oriented treatment of these subjects alongside focused legal analysis. Complementing traditional concepts and methodologies with newly emerged empirical elements, the book exposes the EU's inherent tensions while also offering new perspectives on the ways in which EU constitutional principles, rooted in solidarity, could inform a future Social Europe. Law, Solidarity and the Limits of Social Europe will be a stimulating read for scholars and students of EU law and social policy. It will also be of interest to legal practitioners, policy makers and civil society organisations working in fields related to Social Europe.

The Search for the Perfect Language

The Search for the Perfect Language PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0631205101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

"The Making of Europe"

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900431136X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
In “The Making of Europe”: Essays in Honour of Robert Bartlett, a group of distinguished contributors analyse processes of conquest, colonization and cultural change in Europe in the tenth to fourteenth centuries. They assess and develop theses presented by Robert Bartlett in his famous book of that name. The geographical scope extends from Iceland to the Islamic Mediterranean, from Spain to Poland. Themes covered range from law to salt production, from aristocratic culture in the Christian West to Islamic views of Christendom. Like the volume that it honours, the present book extends our understanding of both medieval and present day Europe. Contributors are Sverre Bagge, Piotr Górecki, John Hudson, Hugh Kennedy, Simon MacLean, William Ian Miller, Esther Pascua Echegaray, Ana Rodriguez, Matthew Strickland, John Tolan, Bjorn Weiler, and Stephen D. White. This is an excellent collection of essays that do justice to Rob Bartlett’s inexhaustible book, The Making of Europe. Rather than merely repeating and venerating Bartlett’s ideas, the essays engage creatively and critically with them and spark new ideas and insights that cast a flood of light on the culture of medieval Europe. The result is a worthy tribute that will send readers scurrying back to Bartlett to quarry yet more nuggets from The Making of Europe, still fizzing with intellectual brio some twenty years after its publication. Stuart Airlie, University of Glasgow October 2015

Inventing Europe

Inventing Europe PDF Author: G. Delanty
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230379656
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
A critical analysis of the idea of Europe and the limits and possibilities of a European identity in the broader perspective of history. This book argues that the crucial issue is the articulation of a new identity that is based on post-national citizenship rather than ambivalent notions of unity.