International Relations and European Integration - OA Books

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Beyond Social Democracy: The Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies
(Cambridge University Press, 2024) Häusermann, Silja; Kitschelt, Herbert
Beyond Social Democracy examines the electoral decline of social democratic parties and how distinctive strategic moves might enable them to salvage different segments of their former electoral coalitions. Social democratic decline, however, does not imply the demise of basic tenets of the parties' programmatic appeals. Under the impact of novel twenty-first-century political-economic challenges, these concerns are also invoked and repackaged with new ideas by novel left parties. Empirically, voter movements show that social democratic parties incur net losses mostly to these other leftist parties, while sustaining a balanced, but voluminous exchange with center-right parties. Contrary to commonly held preconceptions, there is little net loss to the new extreme Right. These findings will be pertinent to anyone interested in understanding or devising party strategies in twenty-first-century democracies. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Business Freedoms and Fundamental Rights in European Union Law
(Oxford University Press, 2024) O'Connor, Niall
The recognition of the freedom to conduct a business as a fundamental right within European Union law has reignited debate as to the proper place of competing economic freedoms and fundamental social rights within the European Union legal order. In particular, the Court of Justice of the European Union has relied on freedom of contract as a component of the freedom to conduct a business in order to undermine the protection of competing employment rights. Using the employment law context as a case study, this book argues that the potential regulatory consequences of the freedom to conduct a business as a fundamental right can only properly be understood within its wider constitutional and social dimensions. A holistic assessment of the value placed on business freedoms within the legal reasoning of the Court of Justice of the European Union demonstrates that there is nothing inherently deregulatory in granting fundamental rights status to such freedoms, with the freedom to conduct a business as a fundamental right also being contoured by competing ‘social’ rights, interests, and values. The freedom to conduct a business is thereby also shown to be a malleable fundamental rights concept in that its precise reach remains dependent on the underlying constitutional context whether that be within national constitutional law, the general principles of EU law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, or in those arrangements governing the United Kingdom’s departure from—and new relationship with—the European Union.
Causal Inquiry in International Relations
(Oxford University Press, 2024) Humphreys, Adam R.C.; Suganami, Hidemi
Causal Inquiry in International Relations defends a new, philosophically informed account of the principles which must underpin any causal research in a discipline such as International Relations. Its central claim is that there is an underlying logic to all causal inquiry, at the core of which is the search for empirical evidence capable of ruling out competing accounts of how specific events were brought about. Although this crucial fact is obscured by the ‘culture of generalization’ which predominates in contemporary social science, all causal knowledge ultimately depends on the provision of empirical support for concrete claims about specific events, located in space and time. Causal Inquiry in International Relations not only explores existing philosophical debates around causation; it also provides a detailed study of some of the most fundamental methodological questions which arise in the course of causal inquiry. Using examples drawn from philosophy and from the study of international relations, it demonstrates what is problematic about established ways of thinking, brings new clarity to both philosophical and methodological questions, and seeks to enhance collective understanding of the contribution that causal inquiry can make to empirically rich and critically aware scholarship about world politics. It concludes by situating ‘causal inquiry’ in relation to other forms of inquiry employed in the study of world politics, emphasizing especially the often unnoticed dependence of causal inquiry on precisely the kind of knowledge of specific events which historians are well placed to provide
Political Parties and the Crisis of Democracy: Organization, Resilience, and Reform
(Oxford University Press, 2024) Poguntke, Thomas; Hofmeister, Wilhelm
Democracy is in decline, and the share of world’s population living in freedom under democratic government has decreased considerably as authoritarian practices proliferate. Surprisingly, most of the analyses that study these developments give little attention to the role of political parties in the decline of democracy, although there is a broad consensus about the relevance of political parties for the functioning of democracy. How parties can contribute to democracy is best understood by looking at a very diverse range of cases in different parts of the world. Instead of taking a regional approach, which dominates the literature on political parties, this book takes a global perspective. It brings together experts from four continents, which opens up fresh comparative perspectives on the role of political parties in the democratic process. It asks how parties contribute to the consolidation of democracy, why they fail today, why new parties emerge and displace old parties, and also what parties need to do in order to survive cut-throat competition, above all with new (and sometimes not so new) variants of populist parties. The book takes a unique global focus, covering old and new democracies in different regions of the world. It covers Western and Central Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa, Turkey, and Israel. This includes presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary democracies, and also some countries where democracy is seriously threatened or eroding. It offers unique comparative perspectives combined with a detailed analysis of individual countries and their party systems. The book shows that parties are central actors for the consolidation of democracy, but that organisational reforms are necessary to cope with social change such as individualisation, the decline in party membership, and the impact of new media and modern communication, thus counteracting the fragmentation of party systems and the decay of democracy.
European Blame Games: Where does the buck stop?
(Oxford University Press, 2024) Heinkelmann-Wild, Tim; Zangl, Bernhard; Rittberger, Berthold; Kriegmair, Lisa
Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plausibility assessment of blame attributions in the public domain with the effect that European blame games gravitate towards true responsibilities, targeting those political actors involved in enacting a policy that is subsequently considered a policy failure. The book distinguishes three kinds of European blame games: in scapegoat games, supranational EU institutions are held responsible for a policy failure; renegade games occur when individual member state governments are considered the culprits for a failed policy; when responsibility for a policy failure is shared between EU institutions and member states, diffusion games prevail. The book explores three conditions to explain when each of the three European blame games prevails: the type of policy failure, the type of policy making, and the type of policy implementation. To empirically probe these conditions, the book studies the blame games in ten instances of EU policy failures, including EU foreign policy, environmental policy, fiscal stabilization and migration policy.
New Perspectives on Intergovernmental Relations
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) Kuhlmann, Sabine; Laffin, Martin; Wayenberg, Ellen; Bergström, Tomas
This open access book assesses the consequences of contemporary economic and political crises for intergovernmental relations in Europe. Focusing on the crises arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, surges in migration, and the resurgence of regional nationalist movements, it explores the shifting power balances within intergovernmental relations’ systems. The book takes a comparative analytical perspective on how intergovernmental relations are changing across Europe, and how central governments have responded to coordination challenges as recent crises have disrupted established service delivery chains and their underpinning political and bureaucratic arrangements. It also examines the relationship between recent crises and the sub-national resurgence of territorial politics in many European countries. The book will appeal to those with interests in public administration, sub-national governance and European politics.
European Actorness in a Shifting Geopolitical Order: European Strategic Autonomy Through Differentiated Integration
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) Rieker, Pernille; Giske, Mathilde T. E.
This is an open access book. With the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, European security has been put on high alert. The implications of the Russian military invasion are many and difficult to grasp in full. However, the need for greater European strategic autonomy appears increasingly evident. The book argues that strategic autonomy may be reached—also in the short run—if differentiated integration is seen as an asset rather than a challenge. While the EU (together with NATO) remains the core in such a system, there is a multitude sub-regional integration processes that need to be taken into account to get the full idea of how European strategic autonomy can be achieved.
A Tale of Two Unions : The British Union and the European Union After Brexit
(Transcript Verlag, 2023) Corner, Mark
Brexit is a tale of two unions, not one: the British and the European unions. Their origins are different, but both struggle to maintain unity in diversity and both have to face the challenge of populism and claims of democratic deficit. Mark Corner suggests that the »four nations« that make up the UK can only survive as part of a single nation-state, if the country looks more sympathetically at the very European structures from which it has chosen to detach itself. This study addresses both academic and lay audiences interested in the current situation of the UK, particularly the strains raised by devolution and Brexit.

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