The European Union and the Return of the Nation State


Book Description

This book explores the complex and ever-changing relationship between the European Union and its member states. The recent surge in tension in this relationship has been prompted by the actions of some member state governments as they question fundamental EU values and principles and refuse to implement common decisions seemingly on the basis of narrowly defined national interests. Furthermore, Brexit forces the EU for the first time to face the prospect of a major member state preparing to leave the Union. Are these developments heralding the return of the nation-state, and if so, in what form? Is the national revival a lasting phenomenon that will affect the EU for a long time to come, or is it a transitory trend? This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to answer these questions. It brings together scholars from economics, law, and political science to provide insights into the multifaceted relations between the Union and its member states from different perspectives. All chapters are based on up-to-date research findings, succinct assessments of the current state of affairs and ongoing debates about the direction of European integration. The book concludes by offering policy recommendations at European and national levels.




The European Rescue of the Nation-state


Book Description

Newly revised and updated, this second edition is the classic economic and political account of the origins of the European Community book offers a challenging interpretation of the history of the western European state and European integration.




Transforming Europe


Book Description

Does the European Union change the domestic politics and institutions of its member states? Many studies of EU decisionmaking in Brussels pay little attention to the potential domestic impact of European integration. Transforming Europe traces the effects of Europeanization on the EU member states. The various chapters, based on cutting-edge research, examine the impact of the EU on national court systems, territorial politics, societal networks, public discourse, identity, and citizenship norms.The European Union, the authors find, does indeed make a difference—even in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. In many cases EU rules and regulations incompatible with domestic institutions have created pressure for national governments to adapt. This volume examines the conditions under which this "adaptational pressure" has led to institutional change in the member states.




The Politics of Everyday Europe


Book Description

How do political authorities build support for themselves and their rule? Doing so is key to accruing power, but it can be a complicated affair. This book shows how social processes can legitimate new rulers and make their exercise of power seem natural. Historically, political authorities have used carefully crafted symbols and practices to create a cultural infrastructure for rule, most notably through nationalism and state-building. The European Union (EU), as a new governance form, faces a particularly acute set of challenges in naturalising itself.




The Oxford Handbook of the European Union


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of the European Union brings together numerous acknowledged specialists in their field to provide a comprehensive and clear assessment of the nature, evolution, workings, and impact of European integration.




The Nation, Europe, and the World


Book Description

Textbooks in history, geography and the social sciences provide important insights into the ways in which nation-states project themselves. Based on case studies of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Turkey Bulgaria, Russia, and the United States, this volume shows the role that concepts of space and time play in the narration of 'our country' and the wider world in which it is located. It explores ways in which in western European countries the nation is reinterpreted through European lenses to replace national approaches in the writing of history. On the other hand, in an effort to overcome Eurocentric views,'world history' has gained prominence in the United States. Yet again, East European countries, coming recently out of a transnational political union, have their own issues with the concept of nation to contend with. These recent developments in the field of textbooks and curricula open up new and fascinating perspectives on the changing patterns of the re-positioning process of nation-states in West as well as Eastern Europe and the United States in an age of growing importance of transnational organizations and globalization.




Challenge to the Nation-State


Book Description

This volume presents the latest research by some of the world's leading figures in the fast growing area of immigration studies. Relating the study of immigration to wider processes of social change, the book focuses on two key areas in which nation-states are being challenged by this phenomenon: sovereignty and citizenship. Bringing together the separate clusters of scholarship which have evolved around both of these areas, Challenge to the Nation-State disentangles the many contrasting views on the impact of immigration on the authority and integrity of the state. Some scholars have stressed the stubborn resistance of states to relinquish territorial control, the continued relevance of national citizenship traditions, and the `balkanizing' risks of ethnically divided societies. Others have argued that migrations are fostering a post-national world. In their view, states' immigration policies are increasingly constrained by global markets and an international human rights regime, membership as citizenship is devalued by new forms of postnational membership for migrants, and national monocultures are giving way to multicultural diversity. Focusing on the issue of sovereignty in the first section, and citizenship in the second, this compelling new study seeks to clarify the central stakes and opposing positions in this important and complex debate.




Making History


Book Description

The contributors to this volume, all leading specialists in the field of EU studies, examine the trajectory of the EU and draw on the theoretical tools of historical institutionalism to assess the central political challenges facing the EU.




Migrants and Citizens


Book Description

The Berlin Wall falls as thousands of East Germans move to the West; after the Iron Curtain lifts, West Europeans brace for mass migrations from Eastern Europe; millions of refugees flee Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, and other strife-torn nations. The shifting tides of international migration have had a profound effect on our world, from the transformation of nationality laws and European cooperation on border control to NATO intervention in Kosovo. In Migrants and Citizens, Rey Koslowski examines the impact of migration on international politics. He focuses on two related avenues of inquiry: the immediate political problems faced by the European Union, and the general issues that confront us as we try to understand the modern international system. Migration has become politically salient so quickly, Koslowski argues, because the nation-state and the political institutions associated with it developed in the centuries during which Western Europe was a net exporter of people. With the reversal of that trend less than a generation ago, many of these institutions have been ill-suited to deal with the political and policy demands brought on by the arrival of large numbers of foreigners. Koslowski discusses how restrictive citizenship laws exclude migrants and their children from political participation in some West European states, leading observers to question the legitimacy of those states as democracies. Yet when these states try to increase immigrant participation with local voting rights, European Union citizenship, and dual nationality, the principle of a singular nationality underlying the nation-state is challenged. In this way, the practical policy responses to migration gradually transform the political institutions of states as well as the international system they collectively constitute.




Restructuring Europe


Book Description

This book focuses on the historical configuration of the territorial borders and functional boundaries of the European nation state. It presents integration as a process of boundary transcendence, redefinition, shift, and change that fundamentally alters the nature of the European states. Its core concern lies in the relationship between the specific institutional design of the new Brussels centre, the boundary redefinitions that result from its political production, and, finally,the consequences of these two elements on established and developing national European political structures. Integration is examined as a new historical phase in the development of Europe, characterized by a powerful trend toward legal, economic, and cultural de-differentiation after the five-centuryprocess of differentiation that led to the European system of nation states.Considering the EU as the formation of an enlarged territorial system, this work recovers some of the classic issues of political modernization theory: Is the EU an attempt at state formation? Is it an attempt at centre formation without nation building? Is it a process of centre formation without democratization?This work also seeks to sharpen the conceptual tools currently available to deal with processes of territorial enlargement and unification. It develops a theoretical framework for political structuring beyond the nation state, capable of linking all aspects of EU integration (inter-governmentalism, definition of rights, the 'constitutionalization' of treaties, the tensions between the new territorial hierarchy and the nation states, etc.). The book adopts an 'holistic' approach to integration,in the form of a theory from which hypotheses can be generated (even if it is not possible to test all of its components). This theoretical framework has three principal aims: to overcome a rigid distinction between domestic politics and international relations; to link actors' orientations,interests, and motivations with macro outcomes; and to relate structural profiles with dynamic processes of change.