Virtuous power Turkey in sub-Saharan Africa: the ‘Neo-Ottoman’ challenge to the European Union

European officials veer towards exceptionalism in their policy communications concerning the EU’s global role, particularly in terms of African development. This article poses a rejoinder to such tendencies through examination of the rise of ‘virtuous power Turkey’ in Africa. It examines how Turkish elites constructed a moralised ‘neo-Ottoman’ foreign policy in wake of stalled EU accession. It then underscores how elites framed humanitarian interventions in sub-Saharan Africa in contrast to the perceived neo-colonialism of an EU ‘other’. In this vein, the article explores the meaning of normative ‘neo-Ottomanism’ for ostensible beneficiaries in Africa, for the EU, and for Turkey itself.     

From Third World internationalism to ‘the internationals’: the transformation of solidarity with Palestine

This paper examines the formation of the concept of ‘the internationals’ in Palestine. The post-Oslo term began to be used in the second intifada to denote white solidarity activists in the colony. In tracing the rise of the concept, the paper charts some of the ways solidarity with the Palestinian people has been domesticated under the Oslo ‘peace process’. Situating and analysing the rise of the concept of ‘the internationals’ within the assemblage of apparatuses and ideological forces inscribed during Oslo, it explains how these material structures have contributed to shifting the notion and praxis of solidarity. Taking Third World internationalist and anti-imperialist feminist practices of solidarity as its starting point, the paper historicises and theorises some of the changes that have taken place over time. It offers an anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist critique of the individualisation of solidarity and centres indigenous Palestinian perspectives. It concludes by surveying the ways Palestinians are creating alternatives and rebuilding international solidarity.     

The European Union and Upheavals in its Neighborhood: A Force for Stability?

This article explores the EU’s action in the context of revolutionary upheavals in its neighborhood, focusing on two cases where the EU’s overall influence is relatively strong: Moldova in 2009 and Tunisia in 2010–2011. It analyzes the intertwining of the normative and strategic agendas by examining the goals, instruments and impact of EU action in each case. The findings highlight a limited and reactive role of the EU, a strong emphasis on stability and a shift towards a more normative engagement in response to external changes that made it easier to merge security- and value-oriented goals.     

The Changing Organization of Multilevel Water Management in the European Union. Going with the Flow?

Regulatory networks have become an essential feature of the European administrative system. They have expanded EU administrative capacities and consolidated a pattern of multilevel implementation along sectoral cleavages. This article examines how networks develop and take effect when more crosscutting policy aims are to be implemented. It argues and demonstrates with a case study of the Common Implementation Strategy of the Water Framework Directive that vertical and cross-sectoral coordination can be institutionalized in a network, suggesting an innovative role of regulatory networks. Such coordination supplements and challenges the role of national policy coordination, both horizontally across sectors and vertically down to the domestic sub-national, river basin.     

Self-employment in post-communist Eastern Europe: a refuge from poverty or road to riches?

Researchers analyzing self-employment in post-communist Eastern Europe have frequently adopted a “dualist” model which relegates the self-employed to marginal sectors of the economy. This paper challenges the dualist approach and argues that the self-employed cannot be regarded as refugees from poverty with few resources and few opportunities to earn high incomes and accumulate wealth. Data from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia are used to show that self-employment in post-communist Eastern Europe encompasses two distinct class locations: the individually self-employed on the one hand, whose socioeconomic status differs little from that of ordinary workers, and employers on the other, who receive incomes and possess assets far in excess of that of both the individually self-employed and ordinary workers. A proper understanding of the manner in which systems of stratification have changed in Eastern Europe thus requires that one acknowledge processes of differentiation among the self-employed as well as the importance of property ownership in generating new forms of social inequality in the post-communist period.     

Beyond Economic Partnership Agreements: the European Union and the trade–development nexus

Without disregarding them, this volume seeks to go beyond the controversial and extensively researched Economic Partnership Agreements to offer new perspectives on the evolution of the trade–development nexus in the European Union against dramatic changes in the international context. In particular, it focuses on the reform of the Generalised System of Preferences, the negotiation of various Preferential Trade Agreements, the application of trade sanctions, the allegedly ambitious agendas on decent work, Aid for Trade and aid untying, and the implications of the changing balance of power in global economic relations. Taking diverse approaches and, at times, reaching different conclusions, contributors directly or indirectly address one or more of the three general themes that are discussed in this introduction: differentiation, coherence, and norms.     

The Changing Faces of Europeanisation: How Did the European Union Influence Corruption in Slovakia Before and After Accession?

The paper looks at the European Union's impact on corruption in Slovakia, both before and after the country's accession to the European Union. It shows that even though pre-accession channels of influence diminish or disappear, membership brings new means of influence. Our methodology looks beyond institutional changes and explicit anti-corruption mechanisms. Before 1999, the European Union's influence on corruption was close to zero, and between 1999 and 2004, its influence was strong and positive. Post-accession developments are more ambiguous, but despite an apparent worsening of corruption after 2004, we observe a transformation rather than a loss of European Union influence.     

Dismantling,disintegration or continuing stealthy integration in European Union environmental policy?

This symposium assesses the trajectory of European Union (EU) environmental policy and integration in light of the rising pressure for policy dismantling and disintegration. This introductory article discusses the literature and the mixed evidence of EU environmental policy dismantling. Building on the three symposium articles, we investigate the role of the European Commission in this process, evaluating its role as a general ‘motor of integration’ and more specifically as an environmental policy entrepreneur. We find that the current political context does push the Commission to reconsider its entrepreneurial role and adopt the role of a ‘normalized bureaucracy’. Nonetheless, organizational features, such as new hierarchies and presidential leadership, and ideas that frame policy initiatives explain continued policy evolution and resistance to outright dismantling. Scholars should also pay close attention to implementing measures and patterns of enforcement to detect the more subtle policy shifts.     

National Environmental Ministries: Managers or Ciphers of European Union Environmental Policy?

European political integration has added a new and exciting dimension to the study of national political and administrative systems. However, comparatively little is know about the precise role of national ministries of state in either facilitating or retarding the shift towards joint rule making at the European level. Taking as an example the UK Department of the Environment's (DoE) involvement in the cumulative development of EU environmental policy since 1970, this paper examines the extent to which national environmental departments manage the process of integration or whether they are dragged along by it. It concentrates on the DoE's role in negotiating the 1987 Single European Act. It suggests that integration in the environmental sector since the Act has proceeded significantly further and faster than British negotiators originally expected, though through little conscious effort by the DoE. In fact, the DoE strongly opposed the introduction of majority voting, but was overruled by the core executive. These findings are examined against two theoretical approaches to European integration in order to reach a fuller understanding of what motivates (parts of) the British state to limit national autonomy in the process of developing European environmental rules.     

From Crisis to Opportunity:the Rise of a Global Middle Class?

<正>In a live webcast before this month’s National People’s Congress, Premier Wen predicted that while last year was the most difficult year for China’s economic development…this year will be the most complicated.     

Much ado about nothing? The European Union and the global politics of untying aid

This article has two main purposes. The first is that of providing a longitudinal analysis of the global politics of untying aid, by looking at a number of debates that have occurred within the Development Assistance Committee and in the context of a number of high-level forums on aid effectiveness. The second is that of proposing some explanations for the lack of significant progress in these contexts. The focus is on the European Union (EU), which has been widely perceived as one of the most fervent supporters of promoting the aid untying agenda. In all these debates, the EU's leadership aspirations have remained largely unfulfilled. Thus, the EU has failed to adopt a EU-wide vision on aid untying; persuade non-EU donors to untie their aid, even when it has played the reciprocity card; and promote a pro-poor use of foreign aid, by supporting local ownership and facilitating greater access of developing country firms to aid contracts.     

Energy security in China–European Union relations: framing further efforts of collaboration

The aim of this article is to help frame the China–EU dialogue on energy security, formally established in 2012, yet in reality adding to decades of sustained dialogue and collaboration to address energy development and policy-making in China. The paper begins by noting that the lack of mutual energy dependence between the EU and China can place a limit to the attractiveness of the security dimension of energy as a topic for further dialogue. China's energy challenges require fast delivery of industry-level results, against ideational aspects associated with search for energy security on the global scale. Then, the article proceeds in four parts: (1) a review and analysis of European and Chinese energy security concepts; (2) an explanation of the rationale for EU–China energy security cooperation and policy coordination; (3) an overview of the past and current undertakings in the energy field between China and the EU; and (4) a set of ideas to consider in making this new layer of formal dialogue effectual.     

The post-communist left and the European Union: The Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) and the German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS)

This article traces the development of two post-communist parties—the Czech KSČM and the German PDS—illustrating how they may continue to shape hard left policy in an expanded European Union (EU). It analyses three policy areas in detail (security and defense policy, employment policy and policies towards the institutional reform of the EU) and argues that, providing the parties avoid internal ideological conflict, they may come to play significant roles in influencing hard left policy in future years. The PDS is likely to act as a bridge for other hard left groups with more conservative agendas while the much larger KSČM may attempt to shift the ideological balance back towards more structurally conservative anti-capitalist policies.     

Postnational Relations to the Past: A “European Ethics of Memory”?

In nation-building processes, the construction of a common past and references to a shared founding moment have played a well-documented role in fostering notions of a collective political actor. While notions of unreflective national collective memories no longer hold in an age of a postheroic “politics of regret”, the preferred subject of collective memories nevertheless often remains the nation, both in academic literature and in public debates. In this paper, my aim is to establish the role of collective memory in self-proclaimed “postnational” approaches—specifically in the context of European integration—and to assess in how far these approaches can claim to go beyond notions of memory handed down to us from earlier accounts of nation-building processes. I start by laying out two different approaches to a postnational collective memory as they emerge from the literature. The first approach aims at overcoming national subjectivities by focusing on a specific content: a shared, albeit negative, legacy for all Europeans. The Holocaust plays a particularly prominent role in this discourse. The second approach sees and seeks commonalities not so much on the level of memory content but rather on the level of specific memory practices (a “European ethics of memory”). While it is not aimed at dismantling the nation as a political subject per se, it also creates a European self-understanding that makes the symbolic borders of Europe look more porous: potentially everyone can employ these memory practices. However, as I will show, this approach knows its own attempts to define a postnational “essence”, most notably by tying the ethics of memory to a specifically European cultural repertoire.     

Evolving countystate relations: From servant to partner?

The relationship between counties and states is central to county wellbeing. This article examines contemporary countystate relations within a framework of institutions and processes where the most critical interactions occur: state associations of counties, state legislatures, governors, state agencies and state high courts. Countystate relations are further described through perceptual data gathered in interviews with county association directors during the Summer of 1991.

County officials favorably view their relations with state legislatures but perceive their treatment to be more like that of special interest group rather than valued partner. Even so, the vast majority of state legislatures is granting new powers to counties, expanding old ones, or extending some kind of relief in fiscal matters. Gubernatorial relations are also viewed favorably, but perceptions of state agency relations vary according to type of agency and personnel. A majority of counties also indicates that state high courts have handed down rulings with significant impact on counties, mostly in funding matters. Courts seem to have broadened their traditionally restrictive view of local powers, partly because county officials have been more willing to challenge burdensome rulings aggressively.

Though states retain ultimate authority over county governments, counties have been whittling away at state supremacy and asserting themselves through a variety of strategies and institutional arrangements. The old subserviency model of countystate relations appears outdated. Actual legislative outcomes indicate that the relationship is moving toward that of valued partner, and both the fiscal crises of states and the growing trend of counties to deliver services regionally have created an opportunity for counties to propel such a shift. However, this positive development is tempered by the trend in states to mandate without funds, making illusory any real gains in powers.