Europe In A Global Context

Rethinking familiar frameworks and exploring new perspectives, this book provides a much-needed analysis of European culture, society and politics in a global context. With contributors from across the social sciences and thehumanities, this book highlights key topics and assesses the open ended question of Europe's place in a global age.

European Union in the Global Context explores the interplay between the state and state sovereignty, nationalism, European integration and globalisation. It provides essential foundations in these areas, while using stimulating arguments to prompt discussion and provoke interest in the relationships between these processes. It critically analyses the challenges faced by the EU from the contemporary political and economic dynamics of globalisation (IPE), including trading relationships set through the WTO and bilateral relations with emerging markets, especially the BRICS economies. Likewise, pressures from within, such as a resurgence of nationalism, localisation, anti-austerity politics, and Euroscepticism, are examined. While the Union is fundamentally challenged by pressures from above and below, and by its own internal dysfunction, it remains central to the effective management of the international political economy. European Union in the Global Context is a lively, focused and engaging text, incorporating anecdotes and contemporary arguments, and presenting different perspectives on European integration and globalisation. It will be of key interest to students of European Politics, European Studies, European Union Studies, and more broadly, global political economy, foreign and security policy and international relations.

The shape of the world economy is changing. Globalisation and regionalism have led to the development of powerful but interdependent economic blocs. Much economic potential has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific area. In view of this The European Economy argues that economists need a broader, worldwide base of information if these processes and their effect on Europe are to be fully understood. Topics discussed include: * Europe's experience of the growing trend of regionalism * the single market * plans for economic union * EU enlargement * Europe's triad rivals * EU external trade and trade relations * technology and innovation * environmental issues This fresh approach highlights the issues which will challenge European countries into the twenty-first century.

The European Union's foreign policy and its international role are increasingly being contested both globally and at home. At the global level, a growing number of states are now challenging the Western-led liberal order defended by the EU. Large as well as smaller states are vying for more leeway to act out their own communitarian principles on and approaches to sovereignty, security and economic development. At the European level, a similar battle has begun over principles, values and institutions. The most vocal critics have been anti-globalization movements, developmental NGOs, and populist political parties at both extremes of the left-right political spectrum. This book, based on ten case studies, explores some of the most important current challenges to EU foreign policy norms, whether at the global, glocal or intra-EU level. The case studies cover contestation of the EU's fundamental norms, organizing principles and standardized procedures in relation to the abolition of the death penalty, climate, Responsibility to Protect, peacebuilding, natural resource governance, the International Criminal Court, lethal autonomous weapons systems, trade, the security-development nexus and the use of consensus on foreign policy matters in the European Parliament. The book also theorizes the current norm contestation in terms of the extent to, and conditions under which, the EU foreign policy is being put to the test.

This book investigates the new challenges confronted by the EU as an international actor within the context of recent economic and political developments, with particular attention to common foreign and security policies; the appraisal of development-aid policies; EU sanctions in the post-Soviet space, as harder instruments complementing the toolbox of the EU “soft power” polity; preferential trade agreements as a key element of EU external trade policy; external relations of the EU; international aspects of the monetary policy of the ECB in the context of the financial and sovereign debt crisis; massive capital flows and the boom-bust cycle in the emerging Europe; and the macroeconomic modelling of the relationship between the EU and the rest of the world. Thoroughly up-to-date, the contributions to this volume offer analyses of recent, tense global events, including EU responses to the uprising in Arab countries and the Ukrainian conflict. The book concludes with the proposal of a unique macroeconomic model in which the EU is conceptualised as constituting a block “against” the rest of the world, but also a two country model in itself, made up of Eurozone and non-Eurozone members.

The demise of state Socialisms caused radical social, cultural and economic changes in Eastern Europe. Since then, young people have been confronted with fundamental disruptions and transformations to their daily environment, while an unsettling, globalized world substantially reshapes local belongings and conventional values. In times of multiple instabilities and uncertainties, this volume argues, young people prefer to try to adjust to given circumstances than to adopt the behaviour of potential rebellious, adolescent role models, dissident counter-cultures or artistic breakings of taboo. Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context takes this situation as a starting point for an examination of generational change, cultural belongings, political activism and everyday practices of young people in different Eastern European countries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It argues that the conditions of global change not only call for a differentiated evaluation of youth cultures, but also for a revision of our understanding of 'youth' itself – in Eastern Europe and beyond.

This book consists of a collection of essays that deal with glocalization in Europe, including the idea of Europeanization as glocalization. The contributors deal with a range of topics including migration, media, football, beauty, Christianity, democracy and the European Union.

This book puts forward an original approach to Europeanization in a global context. Following the world polity approach, the author establishes the missing link between global, European and domestic realms and reveals the multiplicity of dynamics and logics driving the reform process in European Union candidate countries. A range of other topics are investigated, including whether Europeanization is only driven by parochial strategic interests or by broader normative concerns and how we can make sense of the selectivity in domestic compliance with the EU without succumbing to binary thinking. Focusing on the critical case of Turkey, the book puts forward three varieties of Europeanization: strategic, normative and ritualized, which underlie the complex dynamics that drive the reform processes in EU candidate countries. It will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in Sociology, Political Science, International Relations, Globalization, Europeanization, European Studies and Turkish Studies.