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The implications of European integration for national democracy and constitutionalism are well known. Nevertheless, as the events of the last decade made clear, the EU's complex system of governance has been unable to achieve a democratic or constitutional legitimacy in its own right. The author traces the roots of this paradox

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020.

Stacey explains why the EU member states actively surrender policy-making power to supranational authorities. There's general antipathy toward giving up national sovereignty so why do national governments allow the creation of any new EU laws or policies whose effects they cannot keep under their general control?

The paper tests the hypothesis that member states of the European Union have been experiencing declining share of labour income due to technological advance. In the literature, this decline is associated with inequality in the distribution of income, reduction in aggregate demand, and threats to social cohesion. In this paper, the results of an econometric test based on a labour demand equation derived from the CES production function, confirms the hypothesis that technological progress negatively affected the labour share of income in the EU, everything else remaining constant. This finding has important implications for EU Member States, including that some form of policy intervention would seem to be necessary, as left to its own devices, the capitalist system, which has brought about technological progress, could lead to a continuing fall in the share of labour income. ; peer-reviewed

Die Beziehungen zwischen der erweiterten Europäischen Union und der Russischen Föderation werden die zukünftige Entwicklung unseres Kontinentes enorm beeinflussen. Nur wenn beide Akteure ihre Kooperation fortsetzen und vertiefen sind Frieden und Stabilität in Europa gesichert. Diese Studie untersucht die Beziehungen in mehreren Bereichen. Im theoretischen Teil wird in einem ersten Schritt die Lage der internationalen Beziehungen nach dem Ende der Biopolarität und des Kalten Krieges untersucht. In einem nächsten Schritt wird eine Theorie der internationalen Kooperation und Zusammenarbeit formuliert, wobei hier die Frage warum Staaten kooperieren im Mittelpunkt steht. Im empirischen Teil werden zunächst die Rahmenbedingungen analysiert. Dies beinhaltet neben einer kurzen Darstellung der geschichtlichen Ereignisse die zum Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion führten, auch eine Analyse und Gegenüberstellung der jeweiligen aussenpolitischen Konzeptionen und Strategien der beiden Akteure. Im Hauptteil der Studie erfolgt eine umfassende Untersuchung der politischen, wirtschaftlichen, finanziellen und sicherheitspolitischen Zusammenarbeit. Hier wird unter anderem aufgezeigt wie die politische und institutionelle Zusammenarbeit organisiert ist, welche Struktur wirtschaftlichen Austauschbeziehungen ausweisen, wo es in wirtschaftlichen Angelegenheiten Abhängigkeiten und Potentiale gibt, welche finanziellen Unterstützungsmassnahmen die Europäische Union für die Russische Föderation bereit hält und wie die Zusammenarbeit im sensiblen Bereich der Sicherheitspolitik bis jetzt gestaltet wurde. Zum Abschluss wird die konkrete Zusammenarbeit am Beispiel der russischen Enklave Kaliningrad, die seit der Erweiterung vom 1. Mai 2004 vollständig von Staaten der Europäischen Union umgeben ist, untersucht.

Defence date: 5 February 2010 ; Examining Board: Donatella Della Porta (EUI) (Supervisor), Colin Crouch (University of Warwick, Business School), Klaus Eder (Humboldt-Universität Berlin), Marco Giugni (Université de Genève) ; First made available online on 26 March 2013. ; The following thesis looks at the contentious action of the unemployed in Paris and Berlin. The thesis investigates the role of local organisations of the unemployed in contentious activities. More specifically, it looks at the forms of collective action these local organisations are engaged in, and asks about which conditions lead to the disruptive activities considered crucial for poor people's actors. This is done by analysing different empirical sources: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, surveys, and expert interviews. In order to describe the forms of contentious engagement seen and the role of local organisations, the second part employs an analytical descriptive approach. In an attempt to explain the tactical choices of organisations of the unemployed I link four different conditions (access to resources, access to the field of institutionalised actors, belonging to a counter-cultural network and movement experience) to the use of disruptive activities. Combining all four conditions I then carry out a Comparative Qualitative Analysis (QCA). One important insight of the thesis is that contentious action by the poor can be stabilised over time. Further, the thesis also shows that the two fields of local organisations are characterised by different features. Some features, for example the existence of certain types of organisations - as defined by their preferred activities - can be explained by the political system and, more particularly, by the institutions of contention present in each country. However, there are also many similarities between the fields, showing that national opportunity structures explain only some aspects of contentious action. In looking at the conditions leading to the use of disruptive action, the thesis shows that political opportunities are just one of several other factors that explain types of contentious engagement. The thesis disconfirms the assumption of the central role of exclusion from centres of political and discursive power and the lack of resources in accounting for disruptive action. It is more important that organisations of the unemployed belong to a counter-cultural network, defined as a necessary, albeit not a sufficient condition for disruptive action.