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Over the last two decades, the world has witnessed the economic resurgence of Asia and the region is now a top priority in all global players’ agenda. In 2011, the US made official their strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific, and decided to strengthen their trade relationships and their diplomatic presence with a heightened security presence. […]
The owls at the European Parliamentary Research Service have recently compiled an excellent list of ‘100 Books on Europe to be Remembered’. The list includes a summary of each book, a biography of the author and in some cases, access to the full text. You’ll see many familiar names there, including a number of current […]
The study of the European Union (EU), as we all know, is a commitment to a particular set of theoretical attachments as much as it is an interest in the institutions within the region of Europe. Terms such as ‘multi-level governance’, ‘supranationalism’, ‘neofunctionalism’ and ‘liberal intergovernmentalism’ are seldom deployed outside of European Studies, or even […]
In this article, Soeren Keil looks at the EU’s more active role in the process of state (and nation) building in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. He argues that the EU’s technical approach to highly political issues has led to misconceptions between the EU and elites in these countries, and has in turn alienated citizens. He lastly offers some ideas as to how the EU might change its approach to enlargement to meet these challenges.
Over the past two decades preferential and free trade agreements (FTAs) have proliferated around the globe. FTAs differ in the level of liberalization they commit to, and the scope of economic sectors brought into the agreement. Asian FTAs tend to be ‘shallow’, that is, they reinforce commitments already taken at the WTO and lower tariffs […]
When they joined the EU Central and East European states committed themselves to meet EU norms on international development aid. Small budgets, weak social support and limited political commitment have so far limited the impact of aid from CEE. However, it is too early to dismiss them as ‘premature donors’ argue Simon Lightfoot and Balazs Szent-Ivanyi.
The idea to promote familiarity, mutual trust, a collective European identity and support for European integration by giving citizens the possibility to interact across borders is at the heart of a wide array of EU policies, such as the Erasmus student exchange or town twinning projects. This idea goes back to Karl W. Deutsch’s transactionalist […]
Academics studying the EU should be the real eurosceptics. Not only can we translate the greek word skepsis as “enquiry”, modern science owes much to philosophical and methodological scepticism. However, it seems that academics interested in the EU have struggled to come to grips with a the phenomenon of political euroscepticism which appears to be quite a different thing compared the philosophical notions of skepticism.
The opening plenary session started on the same impressive multi-disciplinary note as the first day of the conference. Headline contributors included EU legal scholar Dagmar Schiek and economist Malcolm Sawyer – both from the University of Leeds – as well as Dermot Hodson and Fabian Amtembrink.
UACES 43rd Annual Conference takes place at the University of Leeds between 2-4 September 2013. In this post, Simon Usherwood (University of Surrey), reflects on the first plenary which looked at euroscepticism and its consequences for European integration.
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