Suchergebnisse

In a divided world and one in which there is no peace, a nation's military power fixes the extent to which it can hope to influence its own destiny. Only a few years ago, Europe west of the Stettin-Trieste line encompassed four out of seven Great Powers. Today it is militarily and economically prostrate and sapped by political dissent and moral incertitude. The unexampled accumulation of power across the Atlantic and beyond the Iron Curtain turns this weakness into relative impotence. No wonder that many western Europeans have reacted against this striking change in their fortunes by demanding that their several countries recapture jointly what as individual nations they have irretrievably lost.The problem before us is a formidable one but its elements are simple. Many years ago Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw the day when each of the European nations, caught between the mass of Americans and the mass of Russians, would feel itself tragically weak, indeed powerless.

AbstractThis paper applies categories developed in the classic literature on political opposition to the developing European Union. It is clear that the EU has never developed the third great milestone identified by Dahl in his analysis of the path to democratic institutions. That is, we still lack the capacity to organize opposition within the European polity. This failure to allow for opposition within the polity is likely to lead either (a) to the elimination of opposition altogether, or (b) to the mobilization of an opposition of principle against the EU polity. This problem is also beginning to reach down into the domestic sphere, in that the growing weight of the EU, through its indirect impact on national politics, helps to encourage domestic democratic deficits, hence limiting the scope for classical opposition at the national level. Here too, then, we might expect to see either the elimination of opposition or the mobilization of a new – perhaps populist – opposition of principle.

Desmond Dinan (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the European Union.Pierre‐Henri Lament and Marc Maresceau (Eds.), The State of the European UnionJohn McCormick, The European Union: Politics and Policies.Stelios Stavridis, Elias Mossialos, Roger Morgan, and Howard Machin (Eds.), New Challenges to the European Union: Policies and Policy‐Making.Helen Wallace and William Wallace (Eds.), Policy‐Making in the European Union.

AbstractThis article examines the role of the European Union in multilateral diplomacy. By means of synthesizing and summarizing research on seven selected policy fields, the article aims to make more general claims than single policy or single case studies allow. The analysis focuses on five analytical dimensions: governance (that is, how the EU handles multilateral diplomacy in different international institutions); the role of EU domestic politics; negotiation style(s); outreach; and impact. As the seven policy fields comprise some very diverse issue-areas, it would not be wise to expect any uniform approach or general findings. However, the analysis does show that the EU is increasingly engaged in multilateral diplomacy, actually playing a leadership role in some policy fields. Findings do not correspond to traditional expectations concerning the EU's engagement in politico-economic and security issues, as the EU plays a limited role in financial and macro-economic diplomacy and a fairly significant role in non-proliferation and crisis management. The article suggests that an extension to more policy fields and more analytical dimensions would provide the comprehensive understanding of the European Union's role in multilateral diplomacy that the engagement deserves.

The purpose of the paper is to study the European Union - Turkey customs union (CU) of 1995 covering trade in industrial goods. The customs union decision of 1995 extending to rules and disciplines on various regulatory border and behind-the-border policies covers in particular customs reform, technical barriers to trade, competition policy, intellectual property rights, and administrative procedures. The paper after assessing in each case the status quo at the time of the entry of the CU into force evaluates the commitments undertaken under the CU, and assesses the degree of implementation of the CU requirements as well as the administrative costs of implementation of the CU. Finally, the paper shows how the CU has successfully moved the Turkish economy from a government-controlled regime to a market based one.

The relationship between Turkey and Islam is a hotly debated issue that dominates discussion over the country's bid to join the European Union. The European Union, Turkey and Islam examines here the role of religion in Turkey and the EU and offers arguments on why Turkish Islam will not be an obstacle to Turkey's EU membership. The distinguished contributors analyze Turkish Islam and attempt to determine how significant a factor it is in Turkey's compatibility with the democratic and humanitarian aims of EU member states. Their incisive essays argue that Islamic religious forces will not undermine the autonomy of the secular Turkish state. They also contend that Islam-inspired political parties actually support the secular government. Included in the volume is the thought-provoking study "Searching for the Fault-Line" by E. J. Zürcher and H. van der Linden that examines Turkey's current religious landscape and ultimately dismisses the notion of an inevitable clash between Turkish Islam and European cultures. A valuable study for political scientists, European scholars, and interested observers, The European Union, Turkey and Islam offers a timely and masterfully argued case for why Islam as practiced in Turkey should not be an impediment to the nation's membership in the European Union.