Suchergebnisse

Individuals self-categorize within an international context, and this supranational identity shapes expectations for their own political system. Those individuals in postCommunist countries who believe that their country's primary international orientation should be towards the European Union have a more participatory view of politics and are more politically active. This study develops a social identity explanation of political behavior, and tests the explanation utilizing maximum likelihood and non-parametric matching methods in a 2004 survey of political attitudes in Moldova. Moldova's patchwork of identities, mixed historical legacy, and salience of supranational association make it an excellent case for study. The analysis finds strong support for the effect of supranational identity across a wide range of attitudes and activities.

Enlargement has been fundamental to the idea of European unification from the start, & between 1957 & 1965 the EU grew from six to 15 members. But it was not necessarily ready to welcome others when communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in 1989. For their part, the newly liberated countries were too pleased to have regained their independence to be prepared to surrender it to what they saw as another possible overlord. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 & the realization of the mutual advantages that might flow from the enlarged EU changed attitudes on both sides & terms were set out at Copenhagen in 1993. Since then, this meeting of minds has been strained by problems & suspicions in both East & West & by the disintegration of Yugoslavia. However, the recurring crises over Yugoslavia have brought the EU to the point of considering eventual enlargement to the whole of Eastern Europe, & extensive negotiations are in train with a view to the first new members joining in 2003. But a real meeting of minds depends on the outcome of the Inter-Governmental Conference already meeting. It needs to ensure that the terms of entry for the new East European members do not involve any greater loss of precious sovereignty than for the present 15. Adapted from the source document.

This A-Z guide will explain the key concepts and institutions linked to the European Union, along with brief biographies of the leading figures related to the foundation and development of the EU. This will allow students to relate some of the theoretical concepts with the people who introduced them

The European Monetary Union (EMU) has generated a variety of changes, including the loss of national monetary policy autonomy and the creation of deeper integrated intra-European markets for goods, services, and financial instruments. This article explores the extent to which EMU has changed the ways in which and the extent to which international financial markets influence national policy choices. There are important reasons to expect that financial markets exert greater influence on governments after EMU; for instance, governments now borrow in what is essentially a foreign currency. This change might serve to heighten the perceived danger of default in Europe. At the same time, however, financial markets appear to reward governments for the fiscal consolidation and increased market liquidity that flow from the single currency. I argue that, as a result of these offsetting trends, there have thus far been no dramatic changes in financial market–government relations. Although governments continue to face external pressures on domestic policy-making, these pressures may be only slightly more severe for EMU than for non-EMU countries. As in the past, domestic politics and institutions will be as important as, if not more important than, financial market pressures in EU governments' policy decisions.

The phenomenon of climate change is very complex one. Climate change and problems of its causes and eff ects are being reserched and analyzed by many researchers, scholars, authors and by representatives of other sciences. A number of books and articles have been written on the climate change process. This is determined by the specifi city of the researched problem, which is requiring to analyze it through an interdisciplinary approach, more specifi c through geopolitical perspective. Since the late 1990s, the European Union (EU) has racked up a series of apparently impressive climate policy achievements which lend substance to the oft-heard claim that it is a global leader in the fi eld. In this context, novel ways to share the eff orts required to reduce emissions between its Member States and across diff erent economic sectors have been developed.

Public attitudes towards the European Union (EU) are at the heart of a growing body of research. The nature, structure and antecedents of these attitudes, however, are in need of conceptual and empirical refinement. With growing diversification of the policies of the Union, a one-dimensional approach to attitudes towards the EU may be insufficient. This study reviews existing approaches towards theorizing EU public opinion. Based on this inventory, originally collected public opinion survey data (n = 1394) indicate the presence of five dimensions of EU attitudes: performance, identity, affection, utilitarianism and strengthening. The study furthermore shows that different predictors of EU public opinion matter to differing extents when explaining these dimensions. In light of these findings, we suggest tightening the link, conceptually and empirically, between attitudinal dimensions and their antecedents.

This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, which is discussed in the jurisprudential literature as another source of democratic deficit. Directives must be transposed into national law, but lengthy deadlines raise normative questions about the extent to which governments of today can politically and reliably commit domestic majorities of tomorrow. The potential for discontinuity is analysed using transposition data in 15 member states and preference indicators over the last 20 years. The findings reveal that parliaments are largely excluded from this process and that the preferences of the previous and the newly elected representatives often differ considerably, particularly in countries where public support for European integration has declined in recent years. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2007.]

Large variation exists in the extent to which national interest groups focus on European Union (EU) legislation and carry out their political activities in Brussels and Strasbourg. What explains this variation? We propose a series of hypotheses that suggest that business groups, and groups active in policy areas with high EU competence, are more Europeanized than other groups. The effect of group type, moreover, is conditional on the material resources a group possesses: we expect the difference between business and non-business groups to be largest for actors that are well endowed with material resources. Using novel data on 880 national associations, gained from a survey of interest groups in five European countries, we find support for these hypotheses. The article has implications for the literatures on lobbying, Europeanization, and theories of European integration. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

Based on the research of the EU-6th framework funded research consortium on 'New Modes of Governance in the European Union', this volume explores the roots, execution and applications of new forms of governance and evaluates their success.