This is a comparative study which asked the central research question of whether domestic conditions or the European Union's policy approach best explained whether the EU was able to engage with potential new member states. Three cases of post-Communist states in the EU's immediate neighbourhood were studied: Poland, Croatia and Ukraine, over the time period 1990 to 2013. The interplay between external and domestic factors was studied in terms of the policy approach employed by the EU, the receptiveness of political elites to EU influence, and the level of pro-EU civil society activity. The evidence from this study seems to suggest that the EU policy approach was successful with potential member states in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Poland, although the problem of democratic backsliding post-accession later emerged, to which the EU had no immediate policy approach. The EU's policy approach in the Western Balkans appears to have had some success, seen in the case of Croatia, but it is unclear whether this success will be replicated in the more problematic cases, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. The EU's policy approach through its European Neighbourhood Policy has not been successful in the East, exemplified in the case of Ukraine. Domestic factors, and in particular the receptivity of the political elite to EU influence, appear to remain the most important in explaining whether the EU is able to engage with potential new member states. The EU's policy approach to engaging with pro-EU civil society does not appear to be successful, at least in the short to medium term. It is argued that the EU needs to develop a more flexible policy approach in order to be better able to take advantage of ‘windows of opportunity' that arise. In addition, the EU should enhance its policy approach to co-ordinate its efforts more closely with other relevant external actors.

European national party systems have reflected in different ways the major influence of the Eurozone crisis on individual countries. The focus of my project concerns this exact diversity and the main research question is formed as follows: How have European national party systems responded to the Eurozone crisis? In particular, I looked at the degree of party system fragmentation and polarisation, the degree of salience of the EU issue, and government composition in four European countries: Germany, the UK, Ireland, and Greece, during the years 2008-early 2016. Although the main causal condition of the project is the Eurozone crisis (economic conditions), several cross-case and country-specific intervening factors were examined in order to identify possible reasons behind the responses of national party systems to the crisis. Data were gathered through expert surveys and interviews with experts and political actors. The results showed the new era of the national party systems in Europe, which started in 2008 and transformed massively national politics by revealing the power of combined long-term trends and a sudden turmoil. The changes were of different degrees at the various systems depending on their structural characteristics. Old and new minor parties gained ground in all the four cases by promoting their anti-mainstream profile and by activating a pro-/anti-establishment divide. The results revealed some intriguing patterns in the party system response, among mostly diverse cases and confirmed how domestic conditions and issues had the lead over international events, even if the latter are as significant as the Eurozone crisis. The Eurozone crisis played a massive role in party system structures. Although that was the case mainly with the countries with poor economic performance during the recession years, the crisis had a significant impact on the way parties related and competed in all of the cases, as it exposed underlying transformations and simmering issues in the national party systems. This showed that we need to link short- and long-term transitions with national political structures and international events in order to understand party system change. An underlying establishment/anti-establishment cleavage, which found a channel of expression during the crisis, cut across traditional lines of competition and appeared likely to determine future developments in the national party systems. Finally, the EU issue was operationalised in different ways in each system and by each party, but in any case it needed to be highlighted through the discussions over salient domestic issues.

One of the most striking aspects of the eurozone crisis is its asymmetric impact. Detrimental economic and political consequences have resonated across Europe, but peripheral countries have been most severely affected. Individual peripheral countries have followed dramatically different paths to crisis, making it difficult to speak of the crisis as a single phenomenon. Bringing literature from Comparative Political Economy (CPE) on capitalist diversity into dialogue with scholarship on Europeanisation, this thesis develops the concept of modernisation via Europeanisation in order to explore the much overlooked ways in which the negotiation of European integration has been generative of divergence of the European periphery. To capture this asymmetry, I investigate the origins of the eurozone crisis across three cases – Greece, Portugal and Ireland. I study the active attempt by these countries to negotiate and adapt to a ‘one-size-fits-all' model of European integration. This approach sheds light on how adaptation to Europe inadvertently resulted in the generation of fragile, hybrid, models of growth in each of the three countries. These findings have significant implications for how we understand the origins of the crisis. They suggest that it has been the European periphery's attempt to ‘follow the rules' of European Integration, rather than their failure or inability to do so, that explains their current difficulties. This novel reading of the origins of the eurozone crisis directly challenges settled common-senses in existing literature. The eurozone crisis cannot be explained by narratives which stress the ‘immaturity' of the countries of the European Periphery. Neither can it be explained by more critical narratives which understand the periphery as a victim of German ‘economic domination'. Instead, the relative severity of the crisis in the periphery can be explained by the EU's obstinate promotion of a single model of convergence which has generated a variety of different European economic trajectories.

The increasing exchange of people from different countries enforce around the world judges to produce legal instruments to found, granting and defend ongoing contracts. Therefore, the discussion of historically diverse juridical concepts, such as the group of Law from the European Community and the Mercosul, request the immediate creation of respectful international regulations. This necessary act among Law officers of distinct cultural background and needs is subject to crucial debate, which will have the English language as the official communication instrument. As so, it is critical the understanding of the English Law, which is the origin of many juridical systems. Yet, there is a trend not only for the English language but for the English culture as whole. Therefore, the increasing number of procedures that require knowledge of this juridical system and the integration of several economic blocks around the world, mainly the European Community and the Mercosul, imply the need for a juridical confluence of the common law and the civil law / O intercâmbio, crescente a cada minuto, entre sujeitos de diferentes nacionalidades, pressiona juristas do mundo inteiro para que produzam os instrumentos legais necessários para alicerçar, garantir e balizar os contratos que se vão formando. É nesse sentido que o embate de concepções jurídicas historicamente diversas, como o são as duas grandes famílias do direito que regem a União Européia e o Mercosul, acirrado pela premência da solução de conflitos muitas vezes pioneiros, impõe urgência na criação de regulamentações internacionalmente respeitadas. Essa necessária regulamentação jurídica entre atores de diferentes caracteres, de culturas e interesses está, ainda uma vez, sujeita à mediação inescapável das palavras e terá como veículo privilegiado nesse final de século, a língua inglesa. Isto porque a tendência é que não somente a língua se imponha, mas igualmente a cultura que a sustenta. Assim, o aumento dos processos cujos elementos de conexão remetem à necessidade de conhecer os dispositivos daquele sistema jurídico e, de outro lado, a necessidade de forjar uma nova cultura jurídica comum dentro dos blocos econômicos, em especial da UE, a qual possui embutida no seio de seus integrantes os dois sistemas de direito, e do Mercosul, através do direito internacional, aí incluídas as formas extrajudiciais de solução de litígios que é base da própria cultura jurídica inglesa, visando a responder à crescente complexidade do mundo contemporâneo e a evolução das relações jurídicas internacionais, não deixam dúvidas de que ocorrerá uma confluência também jurídica entre a common law e a civil law

Law of corporate groups deals with legal issues arising from the economic unity of the corporate group as a whole and the separate legal personalities of its individual members. This leads to a conflict between the interests of a parent company and the interests of its subsidiary. By using a comparative method, I analyzed in this thesis the laws of Germany, France, Great Britain and the U.S. to see how these countries regulate corporate groups and how they deal with the problems associated with them. Generally, legal approaches to the regulation of corporate groups can be divided into two groups - the German model that creates a complex system of special rules regulating corporate groups, and a model that regulates only specific aspects of corporate groups and leaves the solution of all other problems to the general regulation of corporations and judicial decisions. In the German model, it is possible to prefer the interests of the whole group at the expenses of the interests of a subsidiary under certain conditions, whereas the majority of legal systems adhere to the duty of loyalty. Moreover, the majority of legal systems prefer to provide instruments for the direct protection of subjects endangered by the creation of a corporate group, while German law focuses mainly on protection of the subsidiary....

Thesis advisor: James Cronin / In 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed by six West European states to create the European Economic Community (EEC). Designed to foster a common internal market for a limited amount of industrial goods and to define a customs union within the Six, it did not at the time particularly stand out among contemporary international organizations. However, by 1992, within the space of a single generation, this initially limited trade zone had been dramatically expanded into the world's largest trade bloc and had pooled substantial sovereignty among its member states on a range of core state responsibilities. Most remarkably, this transformation resulted from a thoroughly novel political experiment that combined traditional interstate cooperation among its growing membership with an unprecedented transfer of sovereignty to centralized institutions. Though still lacking the traditional institutions and legitimacy of a fully-fledged state, in many policy areas, the European Union (EU) that emerged in 1992 was nonetheless collectively a global force. My dissertation argues that the organization's unprecedented transfer of national sovereignty challenged the very definition of the modern European state and its function. In structure and ambition, it represented far more than just a regional trade bloc among independent states: it became a unique political entity that effectively remodelled the fundamental blueprint of the conventional European state structure familiar to scholars for generations. How did such a dramatic transformation happen so quickly? I argue that three forces in particular were at play: the external pressures of globalization, the search for a new Western European and German identity within the Cold War world and the often unintended consequences of the interaction between member state governments and the Community's supranational institutions. In particular, I examine the history of the EEC's monetary union, common foreign policy, common social policy and the single market to explain the impact of the above forces of change on the EEC's rapid transformation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

No description available.

This thesis investigates the EU policy-making process concerning the external dimension of migration focusing on the EU's eastern neighbourhood. In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on integrating a comprehensive migration dimension into the broader external policies of the EU. In 2004, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was developed as an overarching foreign policy tool integrating the EU's existing policies towards its southern and eastern neighbourhood under a single framework with the objective of ensuring security and stability in the EU's neighbourhood. The management of cross-border movements along the EU's new eastern frontiers in particular has moved up on the EU agenda with the eastern shift of the EU borders following the 2004/2007 eastern enlargements. With the increasing integration of migration policy objectives into the EU's broader neighbourhood policy, the EU has progressively established a more streamlined form of cooperation with its immediate eastern neighbours concerning different dimensions of migration policy. The thesis examines the EU policy-making process with the aim of answering the question of how the EU policy has been shaped in the view of diverging national preferences and institutional roles and influence concerning the external dimension of migration policy. As a salient policy area central to national sovereignty and interest, the EU member states traditionally seek to control the impact of institutional constraints in the area of migration policy and support mechanisms by which they could exert national control over the policy outcomes. On the other hand, the increasing ‘communitarisation' of the policy area since the Amsterdam Treaty has enhanced the role of the EU institutions. Drawing on the new-institututionalist approaches to EU policy-making, the thesis questions a purely intergovernmental understanding of policy-making dominated by the preferences of the member states in the external dimension of EU migration policy.

This thesis seeks to develop an under-researched area of Europeanisation theory, namely the link between the ‘export' dimension of Europeanisation and the European Union's (EU) external crisis response instruments, and specifically the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). It examines the theory of Europeanisation and its relevant dimensions for this thesis, defining ‘Europeanisation' in this context as the export of European values, principles, structures, ideas and norms beyond the geographical borders of the EU. The thesis sets out to test whether ESDP operations can provide a vehicle for Europeanisation in the countries in which they are deployed. It examines the evolution of European Union security and defence policy and the evolution of the EU's operational military and civilian mission instrument, and employs case studies of operations in a specific country context in order to test whether ESDP operations can indeed be a practical mechanism with the potential to export the EU's norms and principles. The thesis employs case studies of three ESDP missions conducted in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYROM) - the military operation Concordia, and police missions Proxima and EUPAT. It explores whether these EU external instruments had a Europeanisation dimension, and whether and how in practice they contributed to Europeanisation. fYROM makes a germane case study as a new country emerging from crisis, on the EU's border, and in line for prospective future EU membership. The case studies show that the primary effect of the military operation Concordia, in contributing to the country's security and political stabilization and providing a visible and symbolic EU presence, was to provide a platform for subsequent Europeanisation. The follow-on Proxima and EUPAT civilian operations carried a more direct Europeanisation agenda and effect, playing an important role in transferring the EU's approach to addressing causes of conflict and contributing as part of the EU's wider efforts to promoting the integration of fYROM in the EU. The thesis concludes that ESDP operations can be a vehicle for exporting European values, principles and norms, and as such, a promoter of Europeanisation beyond the EU's borders. This research can contribute to deepening the area of Europeanisation theory concerned with export dimensions of the theory, and suggests there is academic value in examining the Europeanisation aspects of EU external instruments, including civilian and military operations in other case study contexts, including in countries well beyond the EU's neighbourhood. The research also highlights the value for the EU of conceptualising the ESDP mission instrument through a Europeanisation lens, in terms of maximising the transformative potential of the instrument as part of wider EU strategy to pursue normative, security and political objectives in its neighbourhood and the wider international sphere.

This thesis examines the potential impacts of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It provides a quantitative assessment of the prospective implications for welfare, output and trade structures, resource allocation, prices and fiscal revenue. The thesis undertakes country- and sector-specific analyses using the multi-region, multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) GLOBE model. The model is calibrated to the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Database- version 7 for 2004. Different scenarios are implemented in order to simulate the alternative EU-SADC EPA scenarios in addition to their WTO-compatible alternatives. The thesis aims to contribute novel insights to the ongoing debate on the EU-SADC EPAs. It provides detailed country- and sector-specific impact projections within an internally consistent modelling framework. Furthermore, it contemplates the other WTO-compatible arrangements for SADC-EU trade in the case of not signing final EPAs. The simulation results inform answers for several research questions, as follows. Who gains and who loses from the EU-SADC EPAs? Do the agreements help SADC to effectively integrate into the world economy? What type of structural change might SADC experience under the EU-SADC EPA scenarios? How significant are potential adjustment costs for the SADC members likely to be? Are the WTO-compatible alternatives preferable for SADC members compared to the EU-SADC EPAs scenario? The simulation results suggest that a comprehensive EPA scenario is welfare-improving for many SADC members. The agreements, however, do not serve as a stumbling block towards more integration for SADC members into the world markets. Overall, SADC production structures become more concentrated in export-oriented sectors. These structural changes are accompanied by a high degree of adjustment in factor markets and substantial fiscal losses. A comprehensive EPA scenario is the best option vis-à-vis the WTO-compatible alternatives for SADC non-LDCs, whereas the results for SADC LDCs are mixed.