Search results

This book proposes a new institutional constructivist model, for social scientific and legal enquiries, based on the interrelations within the social and political world and the application of change in EU laws and politics. Much of the research conducted in social sciences and law examines the diverse activities of individuals and collectivities and the role of institutions in the social and political world. Although there exist many vantage points from which one can gain entry into understanding how agents in the world act, interact, shape and bear the world, socio-legal scientific epistemology has found monism and dualism to be convincing models. This book argues that current models do not capture the complexity of our micro-worlds, macro-worlds and meso-worlds. Nor can they account for the forms and patterns of socio-legal change. Mind, time and change are brought together in an attempt to contribute to socio-legal epistemology and to enhance its toolkit.

In much of the citizenship literature it is often considered, if not simply assumed, that citizenship is integral to the character of a self-determining community and that this process, by definition, involves the exclusion of resident 'foreigners'. Dora Kostakopoulou calls this assumption into question, arguing that 'aliens' are by definition outside the bounds of the community by virtue of a circular reasoning which takes for granted the existence of bounded national communities, and that this process of collective self-definition is deeply political and historically dated. Although national citizenship has enjoyed a privileged position in both theory and practice, its remarkable elasticity has reached its limit, thereby making it more important to find an alternative model. Kostakopoulou develops a new institutional framework for anational citizenship, which can be grafted onto the existing state system, defends it against objections and proposes institutional reform based on an innovative approach to citizenship

The partial Communautarization of the Third Pillar of the Treaty on European Union will enable the Community to expand its so far modest acquis in migration-related issues, but it has also opened the way for the installation of exclusive categories and the security paradigm which characterized the Third Pillar within the body of Community law. Unless active interventions by the Commission and the European Court of Justice subvert structural determinants and the logic of securitization, Communautarization offers the Member States the opportunity to reinforce their restrictive and law-enforcement approach to migration flows, and to construct new forms of power which do not only increase their regulatory capacity within a geographically contained structure, but also enable them to impose their security agenda beyond the confines of the Union. (Journal of Common Market Studies / FUB)