Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2002. / AD-A407 155. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-265). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-265). Also available on the Internet.

No description available.

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.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia Southern University, 2009. / "A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts." Directed by Emilia Justyna Powell. ETD. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-58)

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2005. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

As institutionalists have assumed, institutions are supposed to shape the behaviours of actors towards collective objectives and better prospects. For this purpose, the EU has established an institutionalised framework for developing security and defence integration. This institutionalised framework not only provides ‘rules of games’ for conducting common security and defence affairs, but is supposed to make member states become socialised and embedded in European integration. However, the role of member states cannot be ignored. In fact, the institutionalisation process from the EPC to the CSDP is affected by institutionalism and intergovernmentalism. In other words, although the CSDP has an institutionalised framework which offers rules and procedures for member states and EU institutions to implement a common security and defence policy, it also operates on the basis of intergovernmental co-operation. The different effect of institutionalism and intergovernmentalism can also be discovered through analysing the very distinct attitudes of Britain and Germany in this institutionalisation process. This thesis aims to investigate the institutional development and practice of the security and defence integration of the EU, and examine the role of member states in the process. Britain and Germany are chosen as comparative cases because these two countries have presented quite different preferences and attitudes towards the developments of European integration. This thesis concludes that although the institutionalisation process can affect member states in structuring behaviours and national interests, their political will is nevertheless the most important key to determining whether an institutionalised CSDP can fulfil the collective end of security and defence integration in the EU.