Suchergebnisse

German Unification and the Union of Europe explores the effects of Germany's unification in 1990 on its policies toward the European Union. Jeffrey Anderson examines the interplay between the domestic politics of unification and the supranational politics of integration, utilising leading theories of political economy, detailed archival research and numerous interviews

The Territorial Imperative explores an area of interest in comparative political economy - the interaction of politics and economics at the mesolevel of the polity. Noting the ubiquity of regional economic disparities within advanced industrial democracies, Jeffrey Anderson undertakes a sophisticated analysis of the complex political conflicts such disparities generate. In this study of political responses to regional crisis, the principal theoretical focus centres on the impact of constitutional orders as bona fide political institutions. On the basis of a carefully constructed comparison of four declining industrial regions within a broader cross-national comparison of unitary Britain and federal Germany, Anderson concludes that constitutional orders as institutions do in fact matter. The territorial distribution of power, encapsulated in the federal-unitary distinction of interests and resources among sub-national and national actors and on the strategies of cooperation and conflict available to them

Twenty years after all the excitement, Germans seem to be genuinely of two conflicting minds about unification. One is characterized by awe over the accomplishments of 1989-1990, the other by disappointment and even bitterness over unfulfilled ambitions and promises. These contrasting interpretations and assessments of unification are fluid, but surface repeatedly in the quality print media. This chapter examines the recurring themes, interpretations, and narratives about unification twenty years on, and seeks to trace the interconnections between the social, economic, and political dimensions of unification. As such, these contemporary printed narratives can tell us a great deal about how a people views its recent past, what its priorities are, and how it is facing the future. The analysis reveals that public discourse on unification twenty years after the fact resembles a blind spot—look straight at it, and it disappears, replaced by blank spot—a seemingly irreducible gap between East and West. Avert one's gaze, and the spot fills in, almost seamlessly.

"This chapter explores challenges associated with the use of Europeanization as an explanatory variable in accounting for domestic institutional and policy developments. It covers a range of issues, including the conceptual and empirical relationship between Europeanization and globalization. This is an important and in many ways analytically prior task, for no other reason than that one cannot hope to assess accurately the extent of Europeanization and its implications if one cannot distinguish it from other large-scale processes at work in contemporary Europe. Domestic systems are subject to a vast range of causal forces both endogenous and exogenous, and selecting one out-in this case, Europeanization-for close, careful examination presupposes an ability to differentiate it conceptually and empirically. The chapter also presents a set of arguments supporting the basic methodological approach adopted by the contributors to this volume, which shuns a macro or aggregate perspective in favour of one premised on the wisdom and logic of parsing: specifically, taking articulated components of the domestic system-typically policies and/or institutions-and devising rigorous searches for the presence or absence of Europeanization." (author's abstract)