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.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [286]-321).

Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 384-416).

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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.

This inter-disciplinary thesis takes an ethnographic approach to the European Parliament (EP) in order to bring actors, agency, and social context into the study of MEP behaviour. It explores how MEPs practice politics at the everyday level inside the EP. The study approaches politics as an activity performed on a daily basis by individuals within particular social spaces. It takes an individual level and holistic approach to MEP behaviour by exploring their everyday practice of politics inside this institution. The thesis attempts to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of MEP behaviour than is currently available in the literature. The thesis primarily responds to gaps in the European Studies literature which mean we lack understanding of how MEPs practice politics within European structures as active, dynamic agents. The research design includes participant observation, elite interviews, and a survey. An inter-disciplinary theoretical framework is applied which combines tools from Goffman (1959), Wenger et al (2002), and Bourdieu (1990, 1977). It sees MEPs as actors accumulating capital and preparing backstage to give credible and thus persuasive performances to different audiences in this transnational political field and its habitus. This research particularly explores the role of the national party delegations and EP groups in MEPs' everyday practice of politics and the local meanings generated around these structures. The key narrative woven throughout this thesis concerns their role from participants' perspective. This thesis finds that these structures play a vital support role and that they can be conceptualised as collegial communities of practice in which members routinely exchange knowledge with trusted colleagues to enable them to cope with the work environment they face and to pursue their chosen interests more successfully.

The thesis examines how parties in Serbia and Croatia have responded to the significant challenges brought by European integration since 2000. It seeks to identify and categorise the broad, underlying stances on the substance of the European integration as expressed by relevant, parliamentary parties across both countries. The thesis also intends to discern the most important factors that determined the formation of their attitudes. It explores the interaction and effects of five explanatory variables: party ideology, party strategy, position within the party system, relations with electoral constituencies and socio-economic groups, and transnational and bilateral party linkages. As a qualitative comparative study, it draws on a qualitative content analysis of party programmatic documents as well as interviews with senior party officials, country experts and officials of the EU and European transnational parties. The thesis makes a major empirical contribution to our knowledge on party responses to Europe by looking systematically and comparatively at two under-researched cases. It also makes a more general theoretical contribution by using a new set of cases to test, amend and develop the literature on party positions on the EU. The thesis found that party ideology and strategy were the most important drivers of parties' attitudes towards the EU. Although Serbian and Croatian parties had generally loose ideological underpinnings, a party's ideology was the single most important source of motivation for a response to Europe in the majority of these parties. This was due to the nature of European issues, closely related to identity and statehood issues, in the context of these post-communist and post-conflict societies. Additionally, due to the specific conditions pertaining to the political milieu of candidate countries, a number of former nationalist and Eurosceptic parties fundamentally shifted their long-term positions on the EU. This volte-face was a strategically driven response to internal and external incentives in the context of dynamic electoral competition and strong EU presence, and aimed at maximising their chances of securing executive office. Other factors generally proved to be of secondary importance since their effect was mostly mediated through party ideology and strategy.

This thesis presents a critical analysis of the property rights in terms of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (P1-1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to the property conflict in Cyprus. The theme that runs through the paper is whether property disputes in Cyprus have had an impact on the established case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Also addressed is the extent to which Cypriot property claims caused the Court to depart from its traditional approach concerning property rights under the ECHR and whether these cases before the Court have introduced a new aspect to the understanding and interpretation of the protection of property rights in the Convention system, specifically the application of the P1-1 to the Convention. The Court's approach, in its various precedents, in examining property rights within the remit of P1-1 will be compared with the property claims from Cyprus in order to determine the unique and significant character of the Cypriot property cases and to analyse their relationship with the right to property under P1-1 to the ECHR.