The European Union and Greece: Political Acceptability and Financial Transfers

In this paper a conceptual model is developed that relates loyalty to a community of countries to the material benefits derived from it, measured by the transfer of extra income. We argue that the extent of a country's welfare, and consequently its acceptance to participate in a community increase together with the latter's scope for influence on the former. We use the paradigm of Greece, which is one of the main recipient countries in the EU. It was found that financial transfers concerning regional policy affect in the long-run 'the acceptance of European integration' by the public in Greece while social policy funds appear to have short-run positive effects on public opinion.     

The Enlargement of the UN Security Council: Reflections from the Current Debate

In this article an attempt is made to take stock of recent developments (1997–2000) regarding the ongoing debate on the UN Security Council enlargement. The comprehensive plan for reform, known as the 'Razali Plan', its repercussions on the debate as well as the attitude of the membership of the UN are among the issues discussed here. We argue that the only realistic proposition for the time being is an expansion of the non-permanent membership of the Security Council, which could give some impetus to the process of comprehensive reform.     

Trade,non-state actors and conflict: evidence from Greece and Turkey

Abstract

To what extent does growing trade lessen the probability of inter-state conflict? This paper addresses this question by using the curiously under-studied dyadic relationship between Greece and Turkey. Measuring trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) volumes as well as tourism flows and by use of elite interviews with key actors from both countries, we find that economic relations have become stronger and more diverse over time, non-state actors now featuring prominently in deepening interaction. Such developments, however, fail to translate into conflict resolution at the political level. To account for these findings, we use a New Liberal approach, arguing that this helps us explain both enhanced plurality in bilateral economic exchange and the incompatibility of the two countries' respective conceptions regarding legitimate national borders.     

After citizenship: autonomy of migration,organisational ontology and mobile commons

This paper explores the relevance of the autonomy of migration approach for understanding the role of citizenship in the sovereign control of mobility. There is an insurgent configuration of ordinary experiences of mobility emerging against this regime of control. At its core is the sharing of knowledge and infrastructures of connectivity, affective cooperation, mutual support and care among people on the move. The sovereign regime of mobility control is displaced on the level on which it attempts to take hold: the everyday movements of migrants. The frenetic fixation with security is challenged by the creation of common worlds of existence; the obsession with governance is replaced by inhabiting social spaces below the radar of existing political structures. This paper attempts to contribute to a reconstruction of this mundane ontology of transmigration, an ontology which we will describe as the mobile commons of migration.     

Media discourse and pathos: sketching a critical and integrationist approach – Greek and French headlines before the Greek referendum of 2015

This paper examines media discourse and emotions in discourse (pathos) during the week before the Greek Referendum of 2015. Drawing on the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, we study the interrelation between macro-level (dominant) values and views, and the micro-level of media positioning, as retrieved from newspaper headlines. The headlines come from three Greek and two French newspapers of differing political, economic, and ideological standpoints. Focusing on the micro-level, we sketch an integrationist framework of analysis: We conduct a systemic functional analysis to scrutinize the transitivity structures of headlines, and an analysis of pathos in order to track constructed emotions. Among our main findings is that the newspapers, despite their different positionings and interests, converge on a dense discursive and emotional construction that favours the dominant values of a free market and the doctrine of austerity.     

Commodity production and price formation before capitalism: A value theoretic approach

This article uses a historically‐specific approach to simple commodity production in order to analyse its functioning in precapitalist conditions. Through the use of value theory, the mechanism of the formation of prices in these undeveloped market conditions is examined, and the alterations in the operation of the law of value brought about by changes in historical conditions of existence (pre‐capitalistlcapitalist) are investigated. The theoretical background is provided by Marx's theory of value and recent debates on the working of simple commodity production, while the historical context is set by the evolution of commodity production in England at the dawn of modern era.     

Europe's could‐be demos: Recasting the debate

‘A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst. ... Some think it a new thing and, supposing it an accident, hope that they can still check it; others think it irresistible, because it seems to them the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history’.1 Thus wrote de Tocqueville in his much‐celebrated Democracy in America on the extension of democratic ideas across borders. This article is about a similar revolution which unfolds against the background of an ever‐more complex and sophisticated framework of political interactions: the European Union. Both processes point to the same desirable state of affairs ‐ democracy. The difference now is that we are witnessing the qualitative transformation of a system of democracies into a democratic system. Or, alternatively, of a plurality of detnoi into a pluralistic demos. It is to Europe's could‐be demos that we now turn, in an attempt to recast the debate of democracy and integration in the European Union of the 1990s.     

Unintended Consequences of State-building Projects in Contested States: The EU in Palestine

ABSTRACT

The existing literature on state-building has focused mainly on post-conflict cases and ‘conventional’ examples of statehood, without taking into consideration the particularities of states that remain internally and/or externally contested. The EU’s engagement in Palestinian state-building through the deployment of EUPOL COPPS and EUBAM Rafah has generated various types of unintended consequences: anticipated and unanticipated, positive and negative, desirable and undesirable, some of which fulfill and some of which frustrate the initial intention. These have important reverberations for the EU’s conflict resolution strategies in Israel and Palestine, the most important being the strengthening of power imbalances and the enforcement of the status quo.     

A study into the layers of automated decision-making: emergent normative and legal aspects of deep learning

ABSTRACT

The paper dissects the intricacies of automated decision making (ADM) and urges for refining the current legal definition of artificial intelligence (AI) when pinpointing the role of algorithms in the advent of ubiquitous computing, data analytics and deep learning. Whilst coming up with a toolkit to measure algorithmic determination in automated/semi-automated tasks might be proven to be a tedious task for the legislator, our main aim here is to explain how a thorough understanding of the layers of ADM could be a first good step towards this direction: AI operates on a formula based on several degrees of automation employed in the interaction between the programmer, the user, and the algorithm. The paper offers a fresh look at AI, which exposes certain vulnerabilities in its current legal interpretation. To highlight this argument, analysis proceeds in two parts: Part 1 strives to provide a taxonomy of the various levels of automation that reflects distinct degrees of human–machine interaction. Part 2 further discusses the intricate nature of AI algorithms and considers how one can utilize observed patterns in acquired data. Finally, the paper explores the legal challenges that result from user empowerment and the requirement for data transparency.