Pride Marches are usually considered as the most important manifestations of LGBTI activism and politics, either as festive and commercial celebrations or protests against violations of human rights of the LGBTI population. The first BiH Pride March from September 2019 successfully took the form of the latter, under heavy security measures and without any incidents in Sarajevo. Bosnia is regarded as a highly patriarchal country with strong homophobia and structural discrimination towards its minorities and marginalized groups. In that context, the Pride March is the most visible expression of LGBTI struggles for social recognition and acceptance. It also illustrates the status of human rights in BiH and represents a form of symbolic politics concerning the EU. This study aims to examine how the event was organized, how it indicated the human rights of LGBTI persons in the country, and what was the influence of Western Embassies and international organizations in BiH on its preparation and staging. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the organizers, the attendees, activists, and members of the LGBTI community in the country; 11 in total. The analysis shows a connection between the egalitarian Organizing Committee (activists/individuals) and the March´s claim for equality of LGBTI people in BiH society, including a correlation between the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and discrimination of LGBTI persons in BiH. The analysis also shows strong cooperation between the organizers and the international community in the country. The study concludes the March being organized as a collaborative and a multi-level project, indicating the discrimination and homophobia through additional security costs imposed on the organizers. Finally, the study finds the international community´s efforts as co-decisive for March´s success.

The EU integration process has led to severe changes in policy-making. On the one hand, authority shifted from the national level to the EU. On the other hand, national level executives have gained power relative to the national legislatures. However, since the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, scholars argue for a comeback of national legislatures. In Germany, parliamentary standing committees have gained considerable power throughout these developments. Nonetheless, their traditional role as policy shaper is contested among scholars. Thus, clarification of their role is needed. While, previous analysis has mainly focused on the Bundestag as a unitary actor. This thesis investigates the role of two standing committees of the Bundestag – Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung and Ausschuss für Gesundheit – in the EU policy-making process across two different competence areas emerging due to the Lisbon Treaty. To answer the research questions, semi-structured interviews with committee members have been conducted. The results of the study show a diverging picture. The members of the Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung are considerably constrained in their ability to act as a policy shaper. The members of the Ausschuss für Gesundheit can secure their policy-shaping powers to a great extent. The former committee lacks these qualities concerning the shift of an increasing amount of policy authority in agriculture to the EU, the restricted use and abilities of the Early Warning Mechanism and the constrained ability to influence the minister’s position in the Council. The members of the latter are more successful in securing policy authority in public health at the national level by making use of the EWM. Nonetheless, the restricted ability to influence the minister’s position in the Council is present, too. We can conclude that the Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung has inherited the role of a scrutiniser and executer meanwhile the Ausschuss für Gesundheit can be described as policy shaper.

The diploma thesis deals with the phenomena of Europeanisation of the third states and its limits. The thesis is a one-case study focusing on Turkey and Europeanization of its foreign policy. Foreign Policy Analysis was chosen as the method of the paper. It focuses here on the internal changes in Turkey that came up with the AKP party government and led to the change in foreign policy in which the relations with the EU were given less room. Economy and religion are analysed as two major limits of Europeanization. Economy was one of the motives on which the change of orientation of foreign policy was based when Turkey started establishing tighter relations with states in the regions of Middle East and Africa. Turkey was building its image as the hegemon and mediator in the region to protect its foreign investments. The AKP was a pro-Islamic political party and religion plays also a role in Turkish foreign policy. Since the AKP started ruling the country it has been reducing the secularization despite it was one of the pillars of the republic since it had been established. Islam became the unofficial but important factor in orientation of Turkish foreign policy. These factors had influence on Europeanization of the country because EU was becoming less priority region and this fact divided the...

This diploma thesis deals with the Europeanisation of the third states and its limits. The thesis is a one-case study focusing on Turkey and Europeanisation of its foreign policy. Foreign Policy Analysis has been chosen as the research method. The method focuses on economic relations between Turkey and the EU and other subjects and searches for potential correlation with foreign policy making process. At first, the thesis researches the historical context of the relations of the EU and Turkey, describes the governing party AKP and analyses the changes in foreign policy. Economic relations are presented by Turkish exports and imports and inward and outward foreign direct investments. At the beginning of its government, the AKP party put a lot of effort to Europeanisation of the country in matter of reforms which brought better legislation and increase of FDI, but also mutual trade with the EU. During the years, fluctuations in mutual relations appeared but these did not have any significant influence on the political relations. As well as deterioration in political relations did not influence mutual trade. The EU is still the most important trade partner of Turkey despite the fluctuations. If a turn away the EU should have come, the motives would come most probably from internal politics...

Master thesis "The First and Second Referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon in Ireland" is a comparative case study, which - using the concept of europeanization - analyses causes, which led to the opinion shift of Irish citizens on the Treaty of Lisbon between years 2008 and 2009. Whereas during the first poll in June 2008 Irish rejected the Treaty, 16 months later it was accepted by an expressive majority, when almost half a million people more voted for it. The thesis clarifies, which elements caused a totally different course and result, explores opinions of individual players such as political parties, government, trade unions, associations of interest or significant companies, observes course of the campaign before the referendum, summarizes and analyses outcomes and subsequent reactions both on national and Union level. From the discovered facts the thesis concludes, that behind the change of attitude of the Irish stood especially external effects. On one side pressure of the other member states of the Union and even the EU as a whole to finalize the process of institutional reform and also explicit refusal of repeating the scenario from 2005, when ratification of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was terminated after disagreement of France and the Netherlands. On the other side acceptance...

This dissertation analyses the europeanisation process and its impact on Spain. Its main aim is to find answers to the following questions - which Spanish institutions were mostly affected by Spain joining the European Communities/European Union and how successful was Spain in putting their political priorities on the top of the list of the European Union agenda. It analyses the main impacts and emphasizes the institutional changes that were put in place with the aim of fulfilling the European political requirements. Having done the analysis using the appropriate tools, this dissertation comes to a conclusion that the Spanish membership in the European Communities/European Union had an important impact on domestic institutional structure and the political system. It also shows that in certain aspects Spain was able to push its national interests and to influence the European integration process in the areas of its priority interests. On the other hand, this dissertation also comes to a conclusion, that with the growing number of member states and the impact of economic crisis Spain has lost its productive power that was characteristic for this country until the end of 2004. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Integration in the European Union (EU) in terms of the legal as well as economic spheres has grown in depth, scope and speed since its establishment. The EU has significantly affected various fields of policies within its member states, including the environment. This is understood as the 'Europeanisation process'. The Netherlands, considered one of the pioneering countries to establish environmental measures, has approximately 80% of its legislation in the environmental field derived from European legislation. The thesis seeks to answer how Dutch environmental policy has been affected by the EU over the past twenty years. The implementation process of three environmental directives is analysed concerning water, biodiversity and air, to understand this process. The concept of Europeanisation and the related theory of goodness of fit is applied to argue that the implementation process of European environmental directives in the Netherlands is effective if there are no major adjustments necessary in the national setting, i.e. there is no policy or institutional misfit between domestic and European legislation, and no veto players impede the process. On the other hand, the implementation process is significantly more complicated if the directive needs extensive transformations. It is concluded that...

Around 20 years ago subnational actors connected in Northern Sweden/Finland founding the Bothnian Corridor Project and lobbying successfully for support from the European Union/on the European level. This research paper will investigate the story of success from the perspective of the subnational actors. The case of the Bothnian Corridor is of interest because the Swedish subnational actors are often considered as weak or not so formalised. The Research Paper will investigate the processes which led to the activity on the European level and will review how the communication between the European level and the subnational actors is functioning.There are three driving processes. The first one is that there was a need in renewing the railroad system and the regions had a common interest. The second one is the establishment of regions as a subnational actor with a formalised responsibility for regional development. In the beginning of the 2000s the third process started where a stronger focus on regions and regional development on the European level became visible. Those driving forces are identified by this paper as the base of the Bothnian Corridor Project.The other aspect the paper is investigating is the communication between the different policy levels. There can be the picture drawn that the communication between the subnational players and the EU is cooperative; they both see the potential in this relationship. They are very open to working together which is just possible because the North Sweden European Office explained each other position to both parties and did "interest translation" and the national level is setting up limitations for the communication.

At the same time as the European Union’s (EU) influence has grown, path-breaking changes in Sweden’s social policy characteristics have appeared. Previous research gives contradictory evidence on whether and how these developments relate, and it remains unknown to what extent the EU contributed to the changes observed in Sweden.  By operationalising four theories on the mechanisms of social policy change (institutionalism, power resources approach, new politics, and new social risks), using the EU as a driving force, and two diverging policy developments as outcomes, this thesis cast the net wider than previous research and applies process tracing methods to a selection of 339 policy documents to answer: (i) How has Europeanisation affected unemployment policy and family policy in Sweden, 1990- 2019? (ii) To what extent can Europeanisation sufficiently explain the retrenchment in unemployment policy while family policies were expanded in the same period of time?  I find no support for the mechanisms of institutionalism and new politics, limited support for new social risk, and mixed support for the power resource approach explaining the Europeanisation of Swedish social policy. Although I found empirical support for parts of several, I conclude that no theory can sufficiently explain the complete causal chain of how the EU influence the two Swedish policy outcomes.

No / The study of interest representation is well established in the context of the European Union1 (EU). For more than five decades, scholars have debated the role played by interest groups (particularly business interests) in comparison to other policy actors in the 'bottom-up' process of European integration. Recently, scholarship about the EU as a political system has shifted to focus on the 'top-down' impact of the EU on national and sub-national actors, a process referred to as Europeanization. This article addresses lacunae in that literature and brings fresh evidence to light by exploring the EU effect on UK and French business interest representation. Drawing on a combination of political and management studies concepts and tools, this article compares and contrasts UK and French firms located in two industrial sectors directly affected by the EU's single market programme, namely the telecommunications and energy sectors. The research, an extensive qualitative study based on more than 50 elite semi-structured interviews, elicits the firms' and other actors' perceptions, understandings and impressions of each other and the political processes at work. Some important similarities and differences between the UK and French firms emerge from the data. Most significantly, some narrowing in the dissimilarities is apparent, which may, in part, be attributed to the process of Europeanization itself.