Suchergebnisse

This book explores the positions of small EU members in approaching external energy security, using Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as case studies. It examines when small EU members support and when they oppose further development of cooperation at the European level in external energy security and argues that their preferences depend on their perceived ability to deal with the challenges of their energy policies. It finds that small EU members whose decision-makers believe that their states can successfully deal with these challenges do not support the deepening of European integration in external energy security as this would mean a loss of competences (and vice-versa), concluding that European integration is considered to be a response to perceived vulnerability. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and professionals in EU politics and foreign policy, energy policy and security, and more broadly to security studies, European politics and international relations.

1. Introduction / Philippe De Lombaerde and Michael Schulz -- 2. Supporting regional integration and cooperation worldwide : an overview of the European Union approach / Giulia Pietrangeli -- 3. Exporting the European model of regional integration : the case of agriculture / Sebastian Zaleski and Felix Mittermayer -- 4. EU trade strategy and regionalism : assessing the impact on Europe's developing country partners / Clive George, Tomasz Iwanow and Colin Kirkpatrick -- 5. Toes in the water : the 'makability' of ASEAN and European commission support to economic integration in Southeast Asia under the ASEAN-EU Programme for Regional Integration Support (APRIS) / David Martin -- 6. The European Union and the 'making' of South American regionalism / Jose Briceno Ruiz and Andres Rivarola Puntigliano -- 7. NAFTA parity in real time and the 'making' of the EU-Mexico partnership / Rosalba Icaza Garza -- 8. Normative Europe : changing values and attitudes in Central America / Jose Caballero -- 9. An assessment of European Union cooperation towards the Andean Community (1992-2007) / Marleny Bustamante and Rita Giacalone -- 10. The role of epistemic communities in the 'makability' of MERCOSUR / Mercedes Isabel Botto -- 11. An evaluation of the EU-Mediterranean region-building from the perspective of the regionalization process in the Mediterranean / Ana Bojinovic Fenko -- 12. The EU's ambitious regionalization of the South Caucasus / Syuzanna Vasilyan -- 13. The EU and (sub-) regional organizations in North-Eastern Europe : impact on (sub-) regional cooperation and integration / Tobias Etzold -- 14. The making of the East African Community : a case study / Karel van Hoestenberghe, Hein Roelfsema and Swabiri Khalidi -- 15. The EU and regional integration in Central Africa : promoting inter-regionalism as an incentive to the regionalist scheme? / Firmin Mbala -- 16. Commonwealth(s) of regions extra-EU? Anglophone globalization and new regionalisms / Timothy M. Shaw -- 17. EU support to regional integration worldwide and the 'makability' of regions : conclusions / Philippe De Lombaerde and Michael Schulz.

Defence date: 2 July 2019 ; Examining Board: Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Elias Dinas, European University Institute; Professor Liesbet Hooghe, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Professor Kai Arzheimer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz ; Does European integration contribute to the rise of the radical right? This dissertation offers three empirical contributions that aid understanding the interplay between political integration within the European Union (EU) and the surge of the populist radical right across Europe. The first account studies the impact that the European Parliament (EP) elections have for the national fortune of the populist right. The findings of a country fixed-effects model leveraging variation in the European electoral cycle demonstrate that EP elections foster the domestic prospects of the radical right when national and EP elections are close in time. The second study demonstrates that the populist radical right cannot use the EP elections as a platform to socialise the most impressionable voters. The results of a regression discontinuity analysis highlight that the EP contest does not instil partisan ties to the political antagonists of the European idea. The third study shows that anti-European integration sentiments that existed prior to accession to the EU cast a long shadow in the present by contributing to the success of contemporary populist right actors. Relying on an original dataset entailing data on all EU accession referenda on the level of municipalities and exploiting variation within regions, the study demonstrates that those localities that were most hostile to the European project before even becoming part of the Union, today, vote in the largest numbers for the radical right. In synthesis, the dissertation approaches the relationship between two major current transformations of social reality: European integration and the surge of the radical right. The results highlight that contention around the issue of European integration provides a fertile ground for the populist radical right, helping to activate nationalistic and EU-hostile sentiments among parts of the European public.

1. Introduction : the main issues -- 2. Problem defined : policy errors -- 3. A bit of a theory -- 4. Anatomy of errors -- 5. Avoidable errors -- 6. Can organizations make mistakes? -- 7. Developing organizational capacity for error avoidance -- 8. Rules and norms in policy implementation -- 9. Incentives for error avoidance -- 10. Capacity for policy implementation -- 11. Obligations of EU membership -- 12. Synthesis and recommendations : policy experimentation and 'nudging' public administrations -- 13. Concluding remarks.