Theorising the Crises of the European Union

Theorising the Crises of the European Union PDF Author: Nathalie Brack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000318818
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book examines the relevance of integration theories for studying and analsing the crisis situations faced by the EU since 2009. Ten years on from the start of the ‘age of crisis’, it critically analyses the impact of the multiple crises’ context on the EU polity and questions the utility of integration theories for grasping the peculiarities of the particular crisis under study. Bringing together prominent scholars in EU studies, the volume constitutes an essential reference book on integration theories. Its contribution is twofold. First, it provides a comparative overview of classical integration theories for studying and analysing current crisis situations the EU faces. Second, the book connects theories to current debates through an in-depth discussion of recent crises that hit European integration since 2009, with a particular focus on the financial crisis, Brexit, refugee crisis, illiberal tendencies in some member states, and the Coronavirus pandemic. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European Union politics, political theory, and, more broadly, to European studies.

Theorising the Crises of the European Union

Theorising the Crises of the European Union PDF Author: Nathalie Brack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000318818
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book examines the relevance of integration theories for studying and analsing the crisis situations faced by the EU since 2009. Ten years on from the start of the ‘age of crisis’, it critically analyses the impact of the multiple crises’ context on the EU polity and questions the utility of integration theories for grasping the peculiarities of the particular crisis under study. Bringing together prominent scholars in EU studies, the volume constitutes an essential reference book on integration theories. Its contribution is twofold. First, it provides a comparative overview of classical integration theories for studying and analysing current crisis situations the EU faces. Second, the book connects theories to current debates through an in-depth discussion of recent crises that hit European integration since 2009, with a particular focus on the financial crisis, Brexit, refugee crisis, illiberal tendencies in some member states, and the Coronavirus pandemic. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European Union politics, political theory, and, more broadly, to European studies.

Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy

Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy PDF Author: Nikki Ikani
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 152615563X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
How do crises produce changes in specific European Union foreign policy areas, and how should we conceptualise these policy changes? This book provides a novel analytical framework that serves to investigate the way in which the EU changes its foreign policy after crisis. Ikani adapts the existing theorising of foreign policy change to a single framework applicable to the EU context, providing readers with a toolbox to both explain the process of change and measure the policy change that follows. The framework is developed through an investigation of two important EU foreign policy change episodes, taking place after the Arab uprisings and the Ukraine conflict, and test-driven in three recent cases of EU foreign policy change after crisis. The volume presents a novel typology of EU foreign policy change, advancing on the fields of foreign policy analysis, public policy studies and International Relations. In doing so, it explains both the decision-making process leading to policy change, and the variation in change outcomes following this process. Further to offering those researching the EU foreign policy response to crisis with timely and empirically rich accounts of five recent change episodes, this book adds to the literature by suggesting two forms of EU foreign policy change, symbolic change and constructive ambiguity, which unlike previously argued form frequent and important outcomes of the decision-making process.

Critical Theories of Crisis in Europe

Critical Theories of Crisis in Europe PDF Author: Poul F. Kjaer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 178348747X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing Europeancrisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises. The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked.

The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises

The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises PDF Author: Marianne Riddervold
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030517918
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
This handbook comprehensively explores the European Union’s institutional and policy responses to crises across policy domains and institutions – including the Euro crisis, Brexit, the Ukraine crisis, the refugee crisis, as well as the global health crisis resulting from COVID-19. It contributes to our understanding of how crisis affects institutional change and continuity, decision-making behavior and processes, and public policy-making. It offers a systematic discussion of how the existing repertoire of theories understand crisis and how well they capture times of unrest and events of disintegration. More generally, the handbook looks at how public organizations cope with crises, and thus probes how sustainable and resilient public organizations are in times of crisis and unrest.

The European Union in Crisis

The European Union in Crisis PDF Author: Desmond Dinan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137604271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
The European Union (EU) is in crisis. The crisis extends beyond Brexit, the fluctuating fortunes of the eurozone and the challenge of mass migration. It cuts to the core of the EU itself. Trust is eroding; power is shifting; politics are toxic; disillusionment is widespread; and solidarity has frayed. In this major new text leading academics come together to unpack all dimensions of the EU in crisis, and to analyse its implications for the EU, its member states and the ongoing study of European integration.

Europe's Crises

Europe's Crises PDF Author: Manuel Castells
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509524886
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Today, the European Union is facing a crisis as serious as anything it has experienced since its origins more than half a century ago. What makes this so serious is that it is not a single crisis but rather multiple crises – the euro crisis, the migration/refugee crisis, Brexit, etc. – that overlap and reinforce one another, creating a cumulative array of challenges that threatens the very survival of the EU. For the first time in its history, there is a real risk that the EU could break up. This volume brings together sociologists, economists and political scientists from around Europe to shed light on how the EU got into this predicament. It argues that the multiple crises that have plagued the European Union in the last decade stem to a large extent from flaws in its construction and that these flaws are consequences of the political processes that led to the formation of the EU – in other words, the decisions that made possible the development of the EU created the conditions for the multiple crises it experiences today. This timely and wide-ranging book on one of the most important issues of our time will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences, to politicians and policy-makers and to anyone concerned with Europe and its future.

"Europe Will be Built Through Crises..."

Author: Lucas Schramm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This thesis analyzes major political crises and their outcomes throughout the entire process of European integration. Its objective is to provide a theoretically informed and empirically grounded explanation to the main research question: why has there been such variation in crisis outcomes? It finds that the nature of the crisis origin, the level of member-state interdependence, and the presence or absence of French-German leadership determine a crisis outcome. Overall, this thesis compiles a systematic and comparative analysis of major crises and crisis outcomes that so far has been missing in the scholarly literature. The findings show that crises vary greatly in their outcomes and the impact they have on European integration and the polity of what today is the European Union (EU). Other than conventional wisdom might have it, crises have been an inherent part of European integration since the beginning. Moreover, only a few crises led to 'more' European integration, notably to an increase in the power of supranational institutions and procedures, while the majority did not. This thesis follows a political understanding of crises and assesses change to the system, that is, to European integration and the EU polity. It scrutinizes why and how crises of European integration came about; how they were dealt with and resolved; and in which way they affected the system. This thesis introduces and tests four possible outcome categories as the result of a crisis, namely 'transformation', 'adaptation', 'stagnation', and 'regression'. Transformation implies a fundamental restructuring of the system. Adaptation means a confirmation and some smaller adjustments to the system. Stagnation implies that no new system replaces the former system. Finally, regression means a reduction in the functions that the system fulfills. These outcome categories capture and reflect changes to the EU system in the aftermath and as a result of a crisis. They represent shifts in political competences between the European and the national level, in member-state relations, and in the overall dynamics of the integration process. As such, they go beyond the usual, oftentimes strictly institutionalist or legalist understanding of crisis and crisis outcomes that are expressed in terms of 'more' or 'less' integration. Moreover, this thesis argues that three explanatory factors reflecting the three temporal stages of a crisis (origin, management, and resolution), determine a crisis outcome. First, the type of origin (exogenous or endogenous) has important implications for the further course of a crisis and the scale of change it provokes to the EU system. Second, the level of interdependence between the EU member states, that a crisis reveals or reinforces, makes a common European response more or less likely. Third, the presence or absence of political leadership on the part of France and Germany, as the EU's two largest and potentially most influential member states, is crucial for the crisis resolution. Jointly, interdependence and French-German leadership decide on the convergence or divergence of member states' positions and stances on the crisis and the prospects of a common European crisis response. To test these propositions, this thesis analyzes eight major crises of European integration and their outcomes. These crises all threatened key features and principles of European integration and ultimately put the EU as a polity at risk. They are thus considered quasi-constitutional crises. The eight crises to be examined are: the crisis of the European Defence Community; the empty chair crisis; the (1973) oil crisis; the (British) budgetary rebate crisis; the end of the Cold War (and German unification) crisis; the Constitutional Treaty crisis; the Euro crisis; and the migration crisis. Strikingly, these crises show a great variation in their outcomes, with two crises each representing one of the four possible outcome categories. In methodological terms, this thesis conducts both within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons. For each crisis, it puts its theoretical framework and propositions to a congruence test with the empirical record, combined with a careful tracing of important events. This thesis builds on several and diverse primary sources, including archival material, European Council Conclusions, national policy documents, the memoires of leading policymakers and civil servants, and press reports. These, it triangulates and complements with specialized secondary literature available on the individual crises. This thesis contributes to the scholarly literature on European integration history and theory, EU crisis politics, and France-Germany in Europe. Theoretically, it explains variation in crisis outcomes with a small number of explanatory factors. Empirically, it shows that, despite the variation, some crises follow similar patterns. This is because of the values that the theorized explanatory factors take. The individual and comparative findings from the various case studies provide a more nuanced picture of the relationship between crises and European integration than most other scholarly accounts.

European Disintegration?

European Disintegration? PDF Author: Douglas Webber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350311502
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
This new book provides a comprehensive analysis of Europe on the brink of political disintegration. Observers of the European Union (EU) could be forgiven for thinking that it is in a state of permanent crisis. The Union has been beset with high levels of Eurozone debt, Russian intervention and armed conflict in Ukraine, refugees fleeing conflict zones in North Africa and the Middle East, and the decision of Britain to leave the European Union. This text offers a concise and readable assessment of the dynamics, character and consequences of these four crises and the increasingly real possibility of European disintegration. High levels of socio-economic interdependence and institutionalization have failed to result in an ever closer union, and yet the proposed theories of disintegration also fall short. Webber instead shows that it is only by looking at the role of the EU's dominant member, Germany, in each crisis that the potential for an increasingly fragmented Europe becomes clear. Until now, Germany has been the EU's stabilizing force but this is no longer guaranteed. The fate of the integration process will depend on whether other, more inclusive forms of stabilizing leadership may emerge to fill the vacuum created by Berlin's incapacity. This text is the ideal companion for upper undergraduate and postgraduate students of the European Union, as part of degrees in politics, international relations or European studies, or for anyone interested in the crises of the European Union.

EU Policies in Times of Crisis

EU Policies in Times of Crisis PDF Author: Gerda Falkner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351980106
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
European integration is in a time of multiple crises, which has a profound impact on different EU policies. This book presents a major collaborative research project uniting international colleagues in the quest for developing a theory: when and how will crisis induce policy breakthrough as opposed to stalemate? In this volume, a team of renowned authors compare the effects of the recent financial, economic and neighbourhood crises on the EU’s main policy domains, including financial market integration, trade, health, migration, research, energy, foreign and state aid policies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

Europe's Union in Crisis

Europe's Union in Crisis PDF Author: Brigid Laffan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351706837
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
The European Union faces a set of inter-related crises that it struggles to contain and address. By exploring how the EU responds to crises and conflict, this volume addresses both its resilience and vulnerability. The EU faces significant challenges: European integration is increasingly politicised; democratic politics within member states are increasingly volatile; challenger parties threaten the status quo; and party systems are shifting throughout Europe. These crises test both the EU and individual states, especially those that had to exchange interdependence in the Union for dependence on the Troika. Despite the tension of hard times, this volume points to patterns of continuity and change as the single market, somewhat side-lined and forgotten in the heat of crises, retains its role as the hard core of the Union and the EU’s most significant achievement. This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.