EU social policy studies in China

Over last twenty years, Chinese scholars have paid growing attention to the topics of European social policy and European welfare states. These researches have been motivated less by the learning of the Europe than to learn from Europe for the sake of Chinas reform. The intrinsic inward-looking drive on the part of Chinese researchers is attributable to distinctively different research approaches between the counterparts in China and in Europe. The paper discussed the main issues discussed by the Chinese researchers on European social policy during past twenty years while casting some lights on the most recent developments as well.The Chinese version has been published in the Chinese Journal of European Studies, no.1, 2003. Translated by Ma Jisen, edited by Zhou Mu     

Dead on arrival: normative EU policy towards China

The European Union’s (EU) normative roles in global politics have in recent years been a hotly debated topic. The EU promotes its political values outside of the Union, especially with regard to prospective accession countries and small developing countries. However, a normative foreign policy approach encounters considerable challenges when confronted with major powers, such as China and Russia that do not share the political values promoted by the EU. Attempts at pursuing a normative policy towards these countries often come across as halfhearted. This article discusses EU normative policy towards China. It identifies loss of the moral high ground, conflicting positions of EU members and lack of leverage as the three main factors hampering it. It needs to be recognised that these problems are fundamental and stem from the very nature of the EU itself. The article argues that instead of a halfhearted offensive normative approach towards China or ubiquitous dialogues with partners, the EU may be better off with a more determined policy of defensive normativity. This would entail being more insistent in upholding European values within our own community rather than seeking to export them outside of the Union, and favouring demand-driven cooperation. The choice stands between altering the self-image of the EU to make it better correspond to reality, or making reality live up to the self-image.     

The potentials and limits of China–EU cooperation on climate change and energy security

Due to economic interdependency through trade and investment, economies of scale, and economic complementarities, China and the European Union (EU) have a huge potential for cooperation. Already many things have happened so far. Since 2004, the cooperation on climate change has been a key issue on the political agenda of China–EU summits. In 2005, the EU and China even endorsed a “Joint Declaration on Climate Change” which emphasizes reducing the cost of clean energy key technologies for China, first and foremost through the development and deployment of near-to-zero-emission CCS technology. Letting China gain access to clean energy technology is the key issue of climate change cooperation. Despite great efforts and potential mutual benefits, this is still a field of conflicting interests. The authors argue that currently, cooperation on the transfer of clean energy technology is very limited due to rational interests of the actors and the insecurities involved in cooperation. Professor Zhang’s research focus is on environmental issues and international organizations.     

The EU and the Mediterranean: Overhauling the status quo policy approach

Redefining sovereignty: The use of force after the end of the cold war / edited by Michael Bothe, Ellen O'Connell, Natalino Ronzitti. ‐ Ardsley : Transnational Publishers, c2005. ‐ xii, 496 p. ‐ ISBN 1–57105–324–7     

中欧关系演进的内在逻辑:基于欧盟对华援助的视角

欧盟对华援助的主要表现在援助资金呈递增趋势、援助领域由早期的农业援助转向经济和社会改革领域、援助项目要按照"标准化"要求操作等三个方面。从援助特征可以看出欧盟对华援助背后的政治经济逻辑正好吻合了新自由主义对国际政治经济生活进行必要干预的主张,把欧盟成员国和欧盟内部的社会经验在援助国得以拓展,使其经济运行和社会秩序朝着欧盟所拟定的方向发展,这也恰好表明欧盟对华援助的行为不可能偏离自利立场。但是,中国在坚持独立的外交政策和方针下,使得中欧关系逐步朝务实性方向发展,在合作基础上解决面临的共同难题,谋求长期的战略性合作伙伴关系依然符合中欧关系发展的趋势。     

The EU,regional cooperation,and the North Korean nuclear crisis

North Korea poses a security threat by developing nuclear weapons. To address this source of regional insecurity, institutionalized frameworks of regional cooperation have been employed. Despite its usefulness as an alternative route to deal with the North Korean case, controversies still remain in terms of its relevance and effectiveness. Even so, the regional integration, consistently promoted by the EU as an integral part of its Asian policy, still requires systematic evaluation. This paper thus examines how and under which conditions regional integration can make a contribution to the transformation of the current crisis. In answering this question, it concludes that a long-term model-setting effect is hard to disregard, in spite of the mixed view of substantial compulsory and social learning effects. The underlying reasons are the ontological-seeking activities of North Korea, along with regional and global actors’ reservations about the contributions of the EU as a key security provider in Asian affairs and in its promotion of the regional integration scheme.     

ASEAN cooperation: the legacy of the economic crisis

This article examines the implications of domestic politicalchanges in the post-1997 era for ASEAN's regional cooperationand institutionalization. The conceptual framework traces regionalrelations to the makeup and grand strategies of domestic coalitions(internationalizing, hybrid, backlash). Had some predictionsin the immediate aftermath of the crisis been fulfilled, theadvent of domestic backlash coalitions would have portendedlower levels of regional cooperation. Alternatively, in theabsence of changes in the fundamental nature of most rulingcoalitions after the crisis, ASEAN's cooperative thrust wasexpected to be maintained. The article explores the extent towhich ASEAN's activities in the post-crisis era supports eitherof these two propositions. It finds that a shock of major proportionsin Southeast Asia led to some immediate challenges to bilateralrelations. At the same time, the aftermath of the crisis ledto considerable multilateral and bilateral cooperation on economicissues, expansion, intervention, and security. Furthermore,cooperation may have indeed improved despite subsequent crises,including 9/11 and its aftermath. Yet no linear progressionor irrevocable process towards internationalization or regionalcooperation can be assumed. Alternative coalitions, and theirpotential for changing regional trajectories, must be reckonedwith.     

The external EU immigration policy: the need to move beyond the orthodoxy

"Anti-immigration sentiments have recently engrossed the European Union (EU).... This article will, first, give an overall picture on immigration in the Union; secondly, show that the...justifications for barring EU bound immigrants are flawed and generate negative repercussions on the EU's foreign policy and external relations with third states; thirdly, propose an alternative paradigm within which to conduct the discourse on the EU immigration policy."     

The EU and China in a Polycentric World:The Case of Afghanistan

A Polycentric Post-Hegemonic World The world is becoming polycentric.The unipolar moment is fading,as the U.S.President himself has recognized.The relative decline of the U.S.and the EU is not the consequence of the current financial crisis but of the rise of China,India and Brazil and of a number of middle powers.As the EUISS ESPAS Report on Global Trends 2030 predicts,there will be a plurality of actors,and no single world power will play a hegemonic role.Polycentrism will be accompanied by an economic power shift toward Asia,where over half of the world's population will be concentrated by 2030.     

Politics of differentiation: enhanced cooperation in the EU and the pathfinder in APEC

A large majority of studies on differentiated integration focus their attention on closer or enhanced cooperation in the EU, neglecting similar developments in other regions, for example, the pathfinder in APEC. In comparing enhanced cooperation in the EU with the pathfinder in APEC, this article aims to discover conditions under which ideas of differentiation can emerge and then be transformed into common policies endorsed by all member states in regional integration. It shall also make clear the reasons why the pathfinder has been applied in APEC while enhanced cooperation has never been used in the EU. It will begin with a detailed categorization of sub-integrations. Then, the author comparatively analyzes the developments of enhanced cooperation in the EU and the pathfinder in APEC, and as a conclusion, evaluates the contribution of this analysis to better understanding of differentiation.

Political competition and foreign policy power sharing

In this essay I examine the intersection of domestic and international politics in the formation and conduct of foreign policy. 1 develop a three‐actor model that allows us to specify the incentives for power sharing under different assumptions about the distribution of preferences and capabilities between a government, a domestic opposition, and a foreign state. The model generates several interesting hypotheses about the interaction of policy goals and the willingness of actors to share power. In particular, I show that under certain conditions there are important asymmetries whereby doves may be more willing to share power than hawks. Importantly, this willingness is endogenous to the model and comes from the alignment of preferences in the policy space, rather than from an a priori value for the democratization of foreign policy making. The model also suggests several hypotheses about the circumstances under which states have incentives to meddle in the foreign policy processes of other states.     

Understanding EU crisis diplomacy in the European neighbourhood: strategic narratives and perceptions of the EU in Ukraine,Israel and Palestine

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue seeks to better understand the role of communication and perception in EU crisis diplomacy. In a recent Special Issue in this journal, Catarina Kinnvall, Ian Manners and Jennifer Mitzen argue that, “?…?the greatest security challenge facing people across Europe is not physical, despite the threats of Putin and ISIS, but is a sense of fear and anxiety over their daily lives” [2018. Introduction to 2018 Special Issue of European Security: “Ontological (in)security in the European Union”. European security, 27 (3), 249–265]. We take an interdisciplinary approach to widen the scope of studies on European security and offer new avenues for further research into how citizens in the EU’s neighbourhood understand the security challenges they face and the role the EU plays in addressing these. Through this, we aim to bring theoretical and methodological innovation to understanding the role of the EU as an external actor.     

Environmental and economic cooperation in the Mekong region

Greater Mekong Subregional Integration has been promoted quite remarkably in the past decade with the support from key international and regional actors. Hard and soft infrastructure has been developed extensively. The road connection development in the Greater Mekong Subregion under the framework of East–West Corridor and North–South Corridor encourages more human and goods exchanges. The policy coordination and harmonization among the countries in the region have been upgraded but at a very slow pace. The future of the regional integration in the region is realizable through hard and soft infrastructure integration. As this article attempts to demonstrate, the main concern, though, still surrounds the issue of political willingness and real cooperation.     

Arms transfer and recipient cooperation with supplier policy references: The case of the Middle East

The principal hypothesis of this paper is that the utility of arms transfers as an instrument of supplier influence is highly dependent upon two sets of variables over which the supplier has little control. This is partly because the recipeints’ demand for arms rests largely on forces outside the major power suppliers’ control. The relative impact of arms transfers is evaluated in conjunction with 1) the arms transfers to the recipients's principal local adversary; 2) the intensity of the recipient's conflict involvement; 3) the amount of political support it receives from its major power supplier/patron; and 4) the identity of the supplier country itself. Recipient countries are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Supplier countries are France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States for the years 1947–1973.

Combat aircraft weighted by their performance characteristics and treated as the dominant weapon system are used as the “arms transfers” variable. Conflict, cooperation and political support variables include both verbal and non‐verbal actions weighted for their relative intensity by a 13 point interval scale.

Multiple regression using standardized (beta) coefficients is used in a time series analysis to determine the relative impact of arms transfers and other salient influences on the intensity of recipient cooperation to its principal major power supplier.

The findings in general support the main hypothesis. They suggest that arms transfers may be one useful instrument for extracting additional increments of cooperation from Egypt and Israel, (particularly in the context of Egyptian‐Israeli peace negotiations) but not for any of the other recipients in the study. However, this inference is valid only so long as those two countries continue to be engaged in an arms race with each other, heavily involved in conflict with their neighbors, and economically dependent upon outside powers. Cooperation of the Arab states with their respective major power suppliers is more strongly affected by the quantity of arms transferred to their respective regional adversaries and the intensity of political support from their suppliers than by their own arms transfers. Given the differential impact that the identity of the supplier had on cooperation intensity one conclusion is that the major power suppliers may not be equally successful in using arms as an instrument of political influence. Another is that the development of a “special relationship” between supplier and recipient in conjunction with supplier support for the recipient is probably a prerequisite for effectively using arms transfers as an instrument of supplier influence or coercion.