‘Bringing Geopolitics Back In’: Exploring the Security Dimension of the 2004 Eastern Enlargement of the European Union

Notwithstanding the functional and technocratic basis of the European integration process, and the fact that the accession criteria hardly mentions security issues, the 2004 eastern enlargement brought to the forefront of EU politics important geopolitical and security issues. Eastern enlargement came on to the agenda of the EU in the wake of 1989's peaceful revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Security and geopolitics mattered to the decision taken by the EU to embark on expansion in the early 1990s, and thereafter security issues remained prominent in enlargement debates. This article seeks to analyse the most important geopolitical issues that eastern enlargement has brought to the fore. In exploring the geopolitical dimension of the eastern enlargement process, the article foregrounds some key issues including: the potential power realignments in Europe triggered by enlargement, the EU's relationship with Russia and its importance to the unfolding of the enlargement process, and how eastern enlargement was conceived as a mechanism for stabilising the EU's external environment. The article contrasts realist and constructivist images of post-1989 Europe and the eastern enlargement process and assesses their contribution to enlargement scholarship. It argues that constructivist imagery best explains the way in which EU actors interpreted key geopolitical issues within the enlargement framework. In particular, it presents enlargement as the expansion of the existing European security community, wherein geopolitical issues were subject to a process of securitisation and desecuritisation.     

A Multilevel Perspective on the Climate of Bullying: Discrepancies Among Students, School Staff, and Parents

Although many bullying prevention programs aim to involve multiple partners, few studies have examined perceptual differences regarding peer victimization and the broader bullying climate among students, staff, and parents. The present study utilized multilevel data from 11,674 students, 960 parents, and 1,027 staff at 44 schools to examine the association between school-level indicators of disorder, norms regarding bullying and bullies, and students, parents, and staff perceptions of safety, belonging, and witnessing bullying. Results revealed several important discrepancies between adults and youth with regard to their perceptions. Moreover, results highlight the significance of normative beliefs about bullies, retaliation, and the influence of school contextual factors on students' risk for exposure to bullying.     

The EU in the Western Balkans: Enlargement as Empire? A Response to David Chandler

This article constitutes a response to David Chandler and his conception of the European Union's role in the western Balkans as a contemporary form of empire-building which he argues has deeply compromised the process of democratic institution-building in a still fragile region. It analyses his view that the EU enlargement process is entirely asymmetric in design and process and contends that there is ample room for candidate states both to contest EU demands and shape their own paths toward membership. This is entirely consistent with the evidence from the EU's previous enlargement, its most ambitious to date, which saw ten states from Central and Eastern Europe become members in 2004 and 2007. The EU enlargement regime is thus a tried and tested one and constitutes the most successful instrument in the EU's external relations toolkit. But it is now facing a challenge in the western Balkans that is manifestly more difficult than anything encountered in previous accession contexts. In particular, the problem of first order democratisation, extending to the practice of state-building, remains cogent and, in the fallout from the Kosovan declaration of independence all the more important in regional terms.