Theorising the Crises of the European Union PDF Download

Author: Nathalie Brack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000318818
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book examines the relevance of integration theories for studying and analsing the crisis situations faced by the EU since 2009. Ten years on from the start of the ‘age of crisis’, it critically analyses the impact of the multiple crises’ context on the EU polity and questions the utility of integration theories for grasping the peculiarities of the particular crisis under study. Bringing together prominent scholars in EU studies, the volume constitutes an essential reference book on integration theories. Its contribution is twofold. First, it provides a comparative overview of classical integration theories for studying and analysing current crisis situations the EU faces. Second, the book connects theories to current debates through an in-depth discussion of recent crises that hit European integration since 2009, with a particular focus on the financial crisis, Brexit, refugee crisis, illiberal tendencies in some member states, and the Coronavirus pandemic. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European Union politics, political theory, and, more broadly, to European studies.

Author: Desmond Dinan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350312738
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The European Union (EU) is in crisis. The crisis extends beyond Brexit, the fluctuating fortunes of the eurozone and the challenge of mass migration. It cuts to the core of the EU itself. Trust is eroding; power is shifting; politics are toxic; disillusionment is widespread; and solidarity has frayed. In this major new text leading academics come together to unpack all dimensions of the EU in crisis, and to analyse its implications for the EU, its member states and the ongoing study of European integration.

Author: Marianne Riddervold
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030517918
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
This handbook comprehensively explores the European Union’s institutional and policy responses to crises across policy domains and institutions – including the Euro crisis, Brexit, the Ukraine crisis, the refugee crisis, as well as the global health crisis resulting from COVID-19. It contributes to our understanding of how crisis affects institutional change and continuity, decision-making behavior and processes, and public policy-making. It offers a systematic discussion of how the existing repertoire of theories understand crisis and how well they capture times of unrest and events of disintegration. More generally, the handbook looks at how public organizations cope with crises, and thus probes how sustainable and resilient public organizations are in times of crisis and unrest.

Author: Marek Loužek
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527564002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
European integration is not a priori positive or negative: it results from the interaction between various interests. During the past few years, however, it has been impossible to ignore increasingly strident claims that the European Union is in the midst of a crisis. According to this perspective, European institutions do not function well, democracy in the Union is flawed, eurozone problems have reached a critical point, and inward migration, which European institutions seem incapable of handling, is escalating. This book demonstrates that public choice theory can be a suitable analytical tool to examine the European integration process. It is based on the assumption that consumers, politicians and even nations are similarly concerned with their own interests (economic, political, and so on). Public choice theory enables us to ‘de-idealize’ the European integration process and see the interests of individual actors in the process more realistically. European integration does not occur because the actors are altruistic; rather, it comes about due to their rational pursuit of individual or group self-interests. European integration and other forms of globalization are not irreversible. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It remains a possibility that, after several decades of European integration, we are now entering an era of disintegration. This book will serve as a source of edification for academics, politicians, students, and experts, as well as the general public. It is designed to capture the interest of both graduate and postgraduate students of economics, political science and international relations.

Author: Lucas Schramm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This thesis analyzes major political crises and their outcomes throughout the entire process of European integration. Its objective is to provide a theoretically informed and empirically grounded explanation to the main research question: why has there been such variation in crisis outcomes? It finds that the nature of the crisis origin, the level of member-state interdependence, and the presence or absence of French-German leadership determine a crisis outcome. Overall, this thesis compiles a systematic and comparative analysis of major crises and crisis outcomes that so far has been missing in the scholarly literature. The findings show that crises vary greatly in their outcomes and the impact they have on European integration and the polity of what today is the European Union (EU). Other than conventional wisdom might have it, crises have been an inherent part of European integration since the beginning. Moreover, only a few crises led to 'more' European integration, notably to an increase in the power of supranational institutions and procedures, while the majority did not. This thesis follows a political understanding of crises and assesses change to the system, that is, to European integration and the EU polity. It scrutinizes why and how crises of European integration came about; how they were dealt with and resolved; and in which way they affected the system. This thesis introduces and tests four possible outcome categories as the result of a crisis, namely 'transformation', 'adaptation', 'stagnation', and 'regression'. Transformation implies a fundamental restructuring of the system. Adaptation means a confirmation and some smaller adjustments to the system. Stagnation implies that no new system replaces the former system. Finally, regression means a reduction in the functions that the system fulfills. These outcome categories capture and reflect changes to the EU system in the aftermath and as a result of a crisis. They represent shifts in political competences between the European and the national level, in member-state relations, and in the overall dynamics of the integration process. As such, they go beyond the usual, oftentimes strictly institutionalist or legalist understanding of crisis and crisis outcomes that are expressed in terms of 'more' or 'less' integration. Moreover, this thesis argues that three explanatory factors reflecting the three temporal stages of a crisis (origin, management, and resolution), determine a crisis outcome. First, the type of origin (exogenous or endogenous) has important implications for the further course of a crisis and the scale of change it provokes to the EU system. Second, the level of interdependence between the EU member states, that a crisis reveals or reinforces, makes a common European response more or less likely. Third, the presence or absence of political leadership on the part of France and Germany, as the EU's two largest and potentially most influential member states, is crucial for the crisis resolution. Jointly, interdependence and French-German leadership decide on the convergence or divergence of member states' positions and stances on the crisis and the prospects of a common European crisis response. To test these propositions, this thesis analyzes eight major crises of European integration and their outcomes. These crises all threatened key features and principles of European integration and ultimately put the EU as a polity at risk. They are thus considered quasi-constitutional crises. The eight crises to be examined are: the crisis of the European Defence Community; the empty chair crisis; the (1973) oil crisis; the (British) budgetary rebate crisis; the end of the Cold War (and German unification) crisis; the Constitutional Treaty crisis; the Euro crisis; and the migration crisis. Strikingly, these crises show a great variation in their outcomes, with two crises each representing one of the four possible outcome categories. In methodological terms, this thesis conducts both within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons. For each crisis, it puts its theoretical framework and propositions to a congruence test with the empirical record, combined with a careful tracing of important events. This thesis builds on several and diverse primary sources, including archival material, European Council Conclusions, national policy documents, the memoires of leading policymakers and civil servants, and press reports. These, it triangulates and complements with specialized secondary literature available on the individual crises. This thesis contributes to the scholarly literature on European integration history and theory, EU crisis politics, and France-Germany in Europe. Theoretically, it explains variation in crisis outcomes with a small number of explanatory factors. Empirically, it shows that, despite the variation, some crises follow similar patterns. This is because of the values that the theorized explanatory factors take. The individual and comparative findings from the various case studies provide a more nuanced picture of the relationship between crises and European integration than most other scholarly accounts.

Author: Douglas Webber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137529482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This new book provides a comprehensive analysis of Europe on the brink of political disintegration. Observers of the European Union (EU) could be forgiven for thinking that it is in a state of permanent crisis. The Union has been beset with high levels of Eurozone debt, Russian intervention and armed conflict in Ukraine, refugees fleeing conflict zones in North Africa and the Middle East, and the decision of Britain to leave the European Union. This text offers a concise and readable assessment of the dynamics, character and consequences of these four crises and the increasingly real possibility of European disintegration. High levels of socio-economic interdependence and institutionalization have failed to result in an ever closer union, and yet the proposed theories of disintegration also fall short. Webber instead shows that it is only by looking at the role of the EU's dominant member, Germany, in each crisis that the potential for an increasingly fragmented Europe becomes clear. Until now, Germany has been the EU's stabilizing force but this is no longer guaranteed. The fate of the integration process will depend on whether other, more inclusive forms of stabilizing leadership may emerge to fill the vacuum created by Berlin's incapacity. This text is the ideal companion for upper undergraduate and postgraduate students of the European Union, as part of degrees in politics, international relations or European studies, or for anyone interested in the crises of the European Union.

Author: Demosthenes Ioannou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317388518
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Few events over the past few decades have given rise to an amount of debate and speculation concerning the state of the European Union (EU) and the future of European integration as the economic and financial crisis that began in 2007. In spite of substantial media, policy-making and academic attention, the fundamental questions of why and how the euro area (EA) has remained not only intact but also expanded and integrated further during the crisis require deeper theoretical investigation. One needs to understand not only the economics but also the politics and institutions of the crisis. A lack of such an understanding is the reason why a number of observers, at least initially, had a hard time making sense of policy-makers’ decisions (and pace thereof), including why the EA did not implode as some predicted. Economic theories provide a certain perspective for why the crisis occurred and what economic policies were and are needed to resolve it; however, they fail to capture the deeper roots and management of the crisis. In order to improve our understanding of a discussion that has oscillated between fears of EA disintegration on the one hand and the concrete advancement of integration during the crisis on the other, this special collection brings together leading scholars of European integration who apply key theoretical approaches – from liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism to other prominent theoretical accounts that have been applied to European integration such as historical institutionalism, critical political economy, normative theory, and a public opinion approach – to the economic and financial crisis. The contributions seek to analyse, understand and/or explain the events that occurred and the (re)actions to them in order to draw conclusions concerning the applicability and usefulness of their respective theoretical perspectives. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Author: Olivier Costa
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351249215
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The European Union is facing a profound crisis and is confronted with multiple challenges. Over the last two decades, it has experienced a series of dramatic changes to its powers, its institutional design, its constitutional framework and its borders. The current political, economic and financial crisis puts the EU’s legitimacy further under pressure and creates the impression of a turning point. This book provides a concise analysis of the EU and its dynamics by paying particular attention to its day-to-day operation. It aims to help students and scholars understand its evolution, its institutions, its decision-making and the interactions between the EU and various actors. Avoiding abstract theorizing, the authors propose an easy to read analysis of how the Union works while recognizing the complexity of the situation. Throughout the book, the key issues of European integration are addressed: democratic deficit, politicization, the role of member states, institutional crisis and citizen involvement. This edition has been fully updated to include: Brexit, the migration crisis as well as the consequences of the 2014 EP elections for all the EU institutions; An in-depth analysis of the 2014 EU elections; More empirical data across the board; New developments in EU decision-making such as the trialogues, and differentiated integration; More in-depth discussion of the role of interest groups in EU policy-making. This text is of key interest to students, scholars and readers interested in European Union politics and studies.

Author: Ms Nathalie Brack
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472414659
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This book provides a concise analysis of the EU and its dynamics by paying particular attention to its day to day operation. It proposes to help students and scholars understand its evolution, its institutions, its decision-making and the interactions between the EU and various actors. Avoiding abstract theorizing, the authors propose an easy to read analysis of how the Union works while recognizing the complexity of the situation. Throughout the book, the key issues of European integration are addressed: democratic deficit, politicization, the role of member states, institutional crisis and citizen involvement.

Author: Desmond King
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192511874
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Reconfiguring European States in Crisis offers a ground-breaking analysis by some of Europe's leading political scientists, examining how the European national state and the European Union state have dealt with two sorts of changes in the last two decades. Firstly, the volume analyses the growth of performance measurement in government, the rise of new sorts of policy delivery agencies, the devolution of power to regions and cities, and the spread of neoliberal ideas in economic policy. The volume demonstrates how the rise of non-state controlled organizations and norms combine with Europeanization to reconfigure European states. Secondly, the volume focuses on how the current crises in fiscal policy, Brexit, security and terrorism, and migration through a borderless European Union have had dramatic effects on European states and will continue to do so.