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This paper explores how Britain's and Colombia's privileged relations with the United States (U.S.) influenced their journey through the European Community (EC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The Anglo–American Special Relationship (AASR) was compatible with British participation in the European Single Market, but not with adherence to creating the EC's common currency, nor with leadership in building a European defence structure autonomous from NATO. Thus, since the start of the Iraq war, Britain played a rather obstructive role in what later was called European Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The US–Colombia Partnership (USCP), based on a longstanding military association reinforced under Plan Colombia, naturally discouraged any meaningful Colombian participation in UNASUR's South American Security Council (CDS), a regional cooperative security project, promoted by Brazil. Cherished projects of the liberal CAP – such as triangular cooperation (to export Colombian security expertise to Central America with U.S. co-financing and oversight) and NATO partnership – also distracted Colombia's interest from UNASUR, diminishing the latter's relevance collaterally. A role for UNASUR – alongside the Organization of American States (OAS) – in South American security management was compatible with the liberal CAP, but not with the neoconservative CAP. Even a lopsided complementation – such as the one between NATO and the CSDP – proved unviable between the OAS and UNASUR.

Regions and regionalism are rather flourishing in Europe. But what do regionalism and the expression "Europe of regions" exactly mean? There are three approaches to the question: first, the concept of cross-border interregionality between the Member States of the European Union; second, the effort to make regions the basic building blocks of European integration instead of states; and finally, the objective to introduce a three-tier structure to the European Union which would extend the already existing tiers of the European Union and the Member States with a third one, the territorial units within nation-states. The first approach (interregional cooperation) has long been adopted; the second approach (the vision of Europe made up of regions instead of states) is rather utopian. The third one is subject to fierce debates: a three-tier European Union with European, nation-state and regional levels. Although the form, motives and causes of movements promoting regionalism may vary greatly, 1 their purpose is the same for autonomous, federalist and separatist movements alike: to relativise the existing central nation-state. Thus, advancing European integration has become a natural ally for them as – from their perspective – it meant the disfunctionality of traditional nation-states. A supranational and therefore multinational and multicultural community promises much more room for development than a classic nation-state.

The Act XXX of 1868 regulated the public law situation of Croats and Hungarians in a uniquely subdualist way within the Monarchy, and the status quo provided an appropriate basis and guarantees for further development. Another significant step in the settlement of ethnic relations within the Monarchy was Act XLIV of 1868, a law that had an organic relationship with the Compromise Act. Both the Compromise Act and the Nationality Act were defined by the public law conception represented by Ferenc Deák, the essence of which is to focus on the terminology of the unified "political nation" for the Hungarian side, and the position and rights of other national minorities were regulated in relation to it. In Deák's understanding, the concept of the political nation was linked to the idea of the nation-state, which, as a result of domestic political changes after 1875, became increasingly nationalist and upset relations with individual nationalities, including Croats. In the long run, this process led to mutual misunderstandings between the peoples within the Habsburg Monarchy and to an explosion of ethnic and political relations as a result of several unfortunate political factors.

Introduction: Contexts of Gypsy/Roma identity and history -- On the sources of Gypsy/Roma history -- Who (what) is (was) Hungarian or Gypsy/Roma? -- "Comrades, if you have a heart" : the history of the Gypsy issue, 1945-1961 -- The construction and spread of the state socialist system -- Policy and Gypsies -- Modernization and Gypsy communities -- Disciplinary state -- The impossibility of self-organization -- Minority issue -- Discourses on social policy and equality -- "Life goes on" : the Hungarian party-state and assimilation -- Social policy and the Gypsies -- Wage work -- Housing -- Social system -- Education -- Scientific approaches -- Gypsy images -- The transformation of discourse -- Disciplinary power, disciplinary society -- Police and agents -- "Health supervisors" -- The national minority issue -- National movement -- The "ethnic interpretation" of history -- Roma policy after the regime change -- Minority issue -- Prospects for multiculturalism -- Minority (self-)government? -- Divide at Impera : the opportunities and impossibilities of self-organization -- Movement -- National minority culture, national culture -- Questions of equal treatment and equal opportunity -- Anti-discrimination -- Equal opportunity -- Roma programs -- Education -- Employment -- Social policy and the Roma -- Aid -- Segregation -- Disciplinary society -- The transformation of discourses -- Research methods -- Panopticon : Roma policy, 2010-2015 -- The Hungarian National Cooperation System -- The anti-egalitarian character of the system -- Changing minority legislation -- New social policy? -- Violence -- The shift -- Summary: Decades of exclusion

Pursuant to the First World War, Romania's territory increased, and thus it inherited a complex social, economic, and legal environment different from that of the predecessor states. The Romanian state's response to these challenges is to be found in the political goal of building a homogeneous nation-state. This political agenda has had an impact on all areas of law, not only on legislation but also on the application of the law. The use of essentially ethnically neutral legal instruments of criminal law for state policy purposes can also be seen as an element of exclusionary nationality policy. The Romanian state's actions have thus not only failed to resolve existing internal tensions but have also made the relations between the majority and minorities, as well as the possibility of consolidation impossible for the past century.

Considering the recent series of events and intensified diplomatic and economic relations, many experts envisage a new Cold War between the two superpowers of the twenty-first century. Although the Chinese-American relationship over the last half-century has experienced some great moments, it has mostly been characterised by less amicable or even hostile attitudes, as well as economically volatile competition. The pragmatic realist approach and diplomatic appeasement of the 1970s and 1980s served mutual interests for the two countries against their common foe, the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, concerning their political values and visions, the democratic US and the Marxist-Maoist People's Republic of China have proven to be two irreconcilable political and social experiments, worlds apart from each other's spheres and paradigms. Within the context of the drastically altered global political milieu of the new millennium, the two great powers have manoeuvred themselves into heated confrontational positions over the last decade, not even excluding the possibility of a severe clash of interests in the future.

This paper aims to give a comprehensive picture of the objectives and perspectives behind the creation of the Central European Initiative (CEI). It also analyzes the role of CEI in the political, economic and social transition in the post-Socialist states. The article studies how CEI helped the integration of the Central European countries to the Western institutions, especially to the European Union (EU). The cooperation was founded in 1989 by Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia. It was unique and special in the era, as it had member states from totally different political and economic blocks. There are more approaches to explain the creation of this cooperation. According to the Liberal one, the founder states wished to create a flexible platform for the cooperation of countries from different blocks. This was also a political initiative to overcome on the divisions of bipolarity and the Cold War. The laid down political objectives in the official documents included the values represented by the European institutions. These values were adopted by the post-Socialist states. At the project level, the initiatives of CEI indirectly contributed to the economic and social transition in these countries. CEI and EU progressively built their close relations, and the support of EU integration became the mission of CEI. If we study the EU accessions in the region, we can state, CEI had a successful and important role in bringing closer the post-Socialist states to the EU.