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5906 results in European government, politics and policy

Page 182 of 296

  • 1 - Monetary union as a metaphor

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 20-57

  • Summary

    The rhetoric of European monetary union

    The agreement on EMU included in the 1992 Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) represents the most daring move towards fully-fledged integration undertaken by European leaders so far. However, the crisis of the euro zone, its origins and political and economic consequences, cannot be discussed only in terms of that fateful decision, but must be viewed as part of a more general crisis of the particular approach to European integration that has been followed since the 1950s. Piris (2011) distinguished three dimensions of this crisis: the risk of a collapse of monetary union; popular distrust in the European institutions and widespread disenchantment with the very idea of European integration; and dysfunctional institutions and ineffective decision processes in a Union of twenty-eight highly heterogeneous member states. The best way to understand the nature of the general crisis, I submit, is to start from EMU because monetary union, with all its gaps and fragilities, is a metaphor for the entire process of European integration as it has developed so far.

    The essence of metaphor is ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 5). In particular, structural metaphors ‘allow us. . .to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another’ (ibid.: 61). In the following pages and chapters I shall use EMU primarily as a structural metaphor.

  • Preface

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp xxix-xxxv

  • Summary

    Three guiding perspectives to EU external relations law

    The patchwork of EU external policies and instruments is the result of more than fifty years of European integration, and is in need of a strong sense of collective purpose in order to present a coherent response to challenges for Europe in the globalized world of the twenty-first century. Perhaps more than in any of its Member States, EU external relations law plays a crucial role in attaining that objective. In this introductory chapter, we wish to elaborate on what we consider the three ‘guiding perspectives’ crucial in studying this field of law.

  • First, we must naturally study the law, its functioning, interpretation and application. In substantive terms, EU external relations law is a highly complex subject matter where questions of EU law (institutional, constitutional and substantive) meet questions of international law (public, institutional, trade, etc.). This is the self-evident core of this textbook, and its starting point.

  • Second, while studying these rules, we must be fully aware that EU action in the world is then not neutral from the perspective of ‘political union’, e.g. the project of European integration. While at times the most effective option for the twenty-eight EU Member States would be to join forces and tackle international challenges through a single legal entity, that may raise questions relating to European integration itself: if the EU’s voice is heard on the international scene, what does this mean for the Member States’ individual voices? As a consequence, EU external relations law is often shaped by ‘grand’ debates on the future of European integration. Since international relations pertain to the core of state sovereignty, any legal rule organizing the EU as an international actor has the potential to raise questions as to the sort of political union the Member States desire. Furthermore, European integration itself is the consequence of developments in the global environment. Thus, developments in European and global politics will lead to shifting needs of the EU and its Member States in their global representation. This is often reflected through shaping the legal framework organizing any such action.

  • …

Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
  • Has Integration Gone Too Far?
  • Giandomenico Majone
  • Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014
  • In this important new book, Giandomenico Majone examines the crucial but often overlooked distinction between the general aim of European integration and the specific method of integration employed in designing an (ill-considered) monetary union. Written with the author's customary insight and precision, this highly topical and provocative book reviews the Union's leaders' tradition of pushing through ambitious projects without considering the serious hurdles that lie in the way of their success. Regional and European integration topics are discussed, including credibility of commitments, delegation of powers, bargaining and influence activities, adverse selection and moral hazard. The author also offers a deeper examination of the specific crisis of monetary integration, arguing that it might be more effectively achieved with inter-jurisdictional competition and suggesting how integration should be managed in the globalized world.

  • 6 - The duty of cooperation

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 189-207

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • As a consequence of the complex raft of rules pertaining to EU exclusive, shared pre-emptive, shared non-pre-emptive, parallel and retained Member State competences, there are many scenarios where the EU and the Member States will conduct external relations in a ‘mixed’ configuration.

  • This chapter revolves around Article 4(3) TEU, which contains the generally applicable duty of loyalty in EU law. Derived from that principle is the duty of cooperation, which is of paramount importance in the relationship between the EU and Member States in their external relations. It is a legal duty which applies across the scope of the EU Treaty, and which legally requires certain forms of behaviour of the EU and Member States in international contexts.

  • Tracing the evolution in CJEU case law, this chapter shows that the Court has judicially constructed a duty of cooperation which has evolved from merely requiring duties of best effort, to now requiring duties of result. In this chapter we conceptualize the duty of cooperation in the form of a policy timeline which is subdivided into two phases: the strategy and preparation phase; and the execution and implementation phase. This conceptual framework will explain that the duty of cooperation imposes different obligations of action or inaction on the EU and Member States, depending on which phase of the policy timeline they are currently in, and on the ‘intensity’ of collaboration and state of affairs within each phase.

  • 7 - ‘More Europe’

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 208-235

  • Summary

    The crisis as opportunity

    ‘“More Europe” is a mindless slogan, not the answer to all problems’ wrote Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times (2011). The solution to problems, the noted publicist went on, is not more Europe, but less. Integrationist leaders naturally think otherwise. Some of them even see the sovereign-debt crisis of the euro zone as a blessing in disguise – a unique opportunity to complete the process started with monetary union with full political and economic union. In the words of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, as reported by the International Herald Tribune (Castle and Erlanger 2011): ‘In recent months it has become clear: the answer to the crisis can only mean more Europe. . .Without. . . further steps toward stronger European institutions, eventually Europe will lose its effectiveness. We have to look beyond the national state.’ Other members of the Berlin government, possibly including the Chancellor herself, seem to share the view that the crisis could, paradoxically, bring the EU much closer to a political union. The crisis, they argue, cannot be resolved without a much tighter coordination of the fiscal and social policies of the members of the euro zone, even if this implies additional limits on national sovereignty. Also the leader of the opposition Social-Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel, is of the opinion that the crisis calls for political union.

    Some intellectuals are even more radical than the politicians. Sociologist Ulrich Beck claimed that the euro crisis was actually a great opportunity (Beck 2009). Two years later Beck went as far as suggesting that the ‘predictable problems’ of monetary union without political union were anticipated and even intended by the fathers of monetary union as a way of forcing national governments to move towards closer political integration. In an article in The Guardian (Beck 2011) he went as far as hailing the crisis as an ‘opportunity for democracy’. Not even the worsening economic conditions of members of the euro zone like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy have dissuaded Beck from the vision of the euro crisis as the instigator of a Habermasian ‘Europe of the Citizens’.

EU External Relations Law
  • Text, Cases and Materials
  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014
  • This major new textbook for students in European law uses a text, cases and materials approach to explore the law, politics, policy and practice of EU external relations, and navigates the complex questions at the interface of these areas. The subject is explored by explaining major constitutional principles, and elaborating upon them in policy-specific chapters ranging from common commercial policy and development policy over CFSP/CSDP and AFSJ to energy and enlargement policy. Specific attention is given to the relationship between European integration, the role of law, and the EU as an effective international actor. Designed for easy navigation, chapters include key objectives, summaries and textboxes, which frame key issues and guide the reader through the functioning of legal principles. Students gain a detailed understanding of the historical development, context and present functioning of EU external relations law in a highly politicised European and international environment.

  • 3 - Politics and Religion in a Global Age

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 37-58

  • Summary

    How does globalisation change our understanding of the relationship between religion and politics – beyond the general idea that the core of globalisation is to imply greatly increasing interdependence between states and peoples, with what happens in one part of the world affecting what occurs elsewhere? Yet this is to overestimate the extent to which people agree on what globalisation is and how it affects them. One common focus is to claim that many religious people – especially in many developing countries – regard globalisation as a thoroughly malign and comprehensive Westernising process, as it brings them into sustained contact with values, ideas and norms which many find on the whole unwelcome. This perception of globalisation is to judge it inherently undesirable, a flattening process whereby Western – especially American – capitalism and culture increasingly dominate the globe, including the countries of the developing world. A second aspect of this view is that the Western world keeps itself rich at the expense of the rest of the globe, especially non-Western territories, with poor people, who are often also religious, bearing the brunt of this damaging relationship. This is possible, it is asserted, because Western interests determine trading terms, interest rates and dominance of highly mechanised production, via control of important international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  • 11 - Arab Revolutions and Political Islam: A Structural Approach

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 183-209

  • Summary

    The Middle East and the modernisation process: too rapid, too slow, or rather uneven?

    This chapter builds upon an alternative notion of a modernization process which stresses the uneven character of social change in the Middle East and its political consequences in the second half of the twentieth century. From this perspective, the proposed chapter deals with (1) the root causes of the rise of social and political tensions leading to the so-called ‘Arab revolutions’ and with (2) the origins of the rise of mainstream political Islam. That is, it addresses the roots of the conflict between a corrupt and highly unpopular political and economic elite and its challengers recruited from various social and political groups, first of all mainstream Islamic movements.

    Regarding the root causes of the growth of political Islam and the rise of social and political tensions in the Middle East, at least three different explanations related to the modernisation process, its character and consequences can be identified: that they are (1) the unintended consequence of rather too rapid social change and modernization (see for example Arjomand 1986, 1995, 2006), (2) the result of unsuccessful and failed modernisation projects or development strategies usually pushed from above by secular governments (for example Lewis 2003a, 2003b), or (3) that they are the result of rather too slow modernisation, and thus the persistence of problematic religious traditions and old-fashioned ways of thinking (for example Lerner 1964, AHDR 2002).

  • 6 - The European Union's Civil Religion in the Making?

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 97-114

  • Summary

    Introduction

    There has been a long debate over the role of religion in the public sphere (for instance Bellah 1967; Coleman 1970; Casanova 1994; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Habermas 2006) as well as over the secularisation and (de)privatisation of religion in Western societies (for instance, Taylor 2007; Calhoun et al. 2011; Putnam and Campbell 2012). In this and other debates, the relationship between religion and politics has been often conceptualised as a dichotomous one, whereby these two spheres (the sacral and the political) are viewed as easily distinguished and analysed as separate sectors of a modern society, whereby only their configurations are subject to change. Against this background, scholars explore for instance the impact of organised religion on nation-building and national identity (Jakelic 2010) or develop normative ideas about religious incorporation into the political life of democratic societies (Bader 2011).

    In contrast, this chapter argues in tune with S. N. Eisenstadt's perspective (2005: 161) that religion should not be equated with the sacral, since many central dimensions of modern states are deeply rooted in the religious components of modern civilisation, even though in a modified form and frequently with a different appeal to legitimacy and ethos. In this sense, basic social functions of religion (such as strengthening of collective bonds, promotion of collective solidarity and social control through participation in collective rituals) are transformed and can function in secular terms, as they are often constitutive of political ideologies and without straightforward religious references.

  • 12 - Beyond Post-secularism: Religion in Political Analysis (Review Article)

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 210-216

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The 1960s initiated the era of the secularisation paradigm in the social sciences. It was on a presumption that was close to certainty that religion will gradually lose its social significance, as an effect of the process of modernisation. The most famous example of this paradigm is the seminal book by Peter L. Berger The Sacred Canopy (Berger 1967), that was strongly influenced by Max Weber's notion of modernisation and disenchantment. The popularity of the secularisation paradigm is no surprise in the light of the recent book by Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960's (McLeod 2007), which is the thorough analysis of a dramatic decrease in religious practices and beliefs in God among the West European and North American societies in the 1960s. This trend has been reflected by political and social scientists who relegated religion from the scholarly debate. However, the secularisation paradigm itself came under attack and has been repeatedly revised by social scientists during the last two decades. Interestingly, also Peter L. Berger has changed his position entirely.

    After years of neglect, the study of religion moved to the forefront of the research agenda in political science. This shift in attention has been, in part, a reaction to the changes in social reality, including the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the subsequent resurgence of religious conflicts, the rise of religiously motivated neoconservative politics in the USA, and the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe as a policy aiming at integration of immigrants with different cultural and religious backgrounds.

  • 10 - Religion and the State in Contemporary Japan

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 168-182

  • Summary

    The relationship between religion and the state in Japan has been the object of investigation in an increasing number of scholarly works in the last decades (for example, Hardacre 1989, 2006; Kisala 1994; Nakano 1996; Forfar 1996; Mullins 2010; the contributions in Porcu and Watt 2012; Isomae 2012; Klein 2012; Fisker-Nielsen 2012; Kleine 2013; Dessì 2013). One of the most intriguing and debated issues in this regard has been the separation of religion and state (Jp. seikyō bunri) as legally sanctioned by the Japanese Constitution (1947), in particular by Articles 20 and 89. Article 20 sanctions freedom of religion for all, prohibits state privileges for religious organisations, and specifies the non-interference of the state into religious education or other religious activities. Article 89 is more related to the financial aspect of this matter and states that no public money should be used for religious activities. Both articles are included in the post-war Constitution of Japan, which was strongly influenced and demanded by the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) after the defeat of Japan in World War II. Historically, it was preceded by the Shintō Directives in 1945 issued by SCAP and was conceived as a way to bring an end to what is known as State Shintō, that is, a system where state support was granted for Shintō from the beginning of the Meiji period until the end of World War II (1868–1945).

  • 4 - Comparative Secularisms and the Politics of Modernity

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 59-81

  • Summary

    In mid-nineteenth-century england, George Holyoake coined the term ‘secularism’ to name an orientation to life designed to attract both theists and atheists under its banner. Impatient with positions defined in opposition to traditional Christian belief, such as atheist, infidel, or dissenter, Holyoake dreamed of a new formation, rallying around the ‘work of human improvement’, that would not be splintered by these older divisions. He sought a positive philosophy, one that was not parasitic on what was being rejected. His 1854 Principles of Secularism aspired to give voice to such an alternate vision. Its signature features were its appeal to reason, nature and experience and its passionate commitment to the amelioration of human life. Although clearly differing from forms of traditional Christianity that invoked clerical or scriptural authorities or focused on supernatural means and otherworldly ends, secularism, as Holyoake fashioned it, was not the antithesis of religion or one side of a religion–secularism binary. It was a canopy large enough to house some forms of religion as it excluded others. Its relative capaciousness was one of its defining virtues.

    For Holyoake a strategic advantage of his newly coined label was the way it riffed on the term ‘secular’ in the Western Christian imaginary. Within a Christian theological framework the secular identifies the temporal and worldly in distinction from, though in relationship to, the eternal and spiritual. By appropriating a term ‘found and respected in the dictionaries of opponents’ Holyoake hoped to underscore the shared resonances.

  • 9 - Religion and Politics, Church and State in Chinese History

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 157-167

  • Summary

    When I began to study Chinese history in 1968, the standard understanding was that China had no native religion, that Confucianism was not a religion, and that Buddhism, a religion of foreign origin, had long since gone into terminal decline. Studies over the last half century have demonstrated that, on the contrary, there was a native religion, Daoism, Confucianism was a religion, and Buddhism has continued to thrive right down to the present. Together, these ‘three teachings’ (sanjiao) as they were called in Chinese received ongoing state support throughout imperial history (220 BCE–1911 CE). Often, moreover, they would band together to oppose a fourth form of religion, one founded on mediums (wu) who spoke for the gods enshrined in local temples. To be complete, a history of Chinese religion must therefore describe these four religions and their interactions. What such a description would lead us to discover is that the ultimate arbiter between these four religions was the state itself. Headed by a Son of Heaven who possessed the Mandate of Heaven to rule, the state in fact functioned like a church. That is, there is nothing really comparable in Chinese history to a conflict between church and state because the Chinese state was a church-state.

    To explain what this affirmation means in concrete historical terms, we must begin with Confucianism, for it is chronologically speaking the first of the three teachings to emerge. Confucius (551–479 BCE) himself had no intention of founding a religion.

Page 182 of 296