This article investigates the role of the Swedish, Finnish, and German banks during Latvia's accession into the European Union from 1995 until 2004. It claims that private foreign banks with EU ...origins used their conditionality and socialization capacities to Europeanize Latvia. In the capital-scarce Latvian economy banks were able to project conditionality and influence the implementation of structural reforms in the legal and political system. Private foreign banks were important also due to their capacity to outcompete the domestic economic actors; they established meaningful social interaction with decision-makers in Latvia, and actively used persuasion and socialization strategies on Latvian institutions.
The Baltic states historically have overlapping geopolitical, economic and security interests. Relying on interviews with officials and document analysis, this article examines how Estonia, Latvia ...and Lithuania reasoned and behaved during the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union (Brexit). Our research used a triple-core conceptual approach. First, based on Wivel and Thorhallsson's conceptualization of small state strategies, we demonstrate that the three countries followed shelter seeking and hiding strategies as they sought to be neutral on issues not in their immediate interests for the sake of EU-27 unity, while simultaneously coordinating and aligning their positions with the other EU countries on the issues that were their primary concerns. Second, to explain Baltic choices, the article uses March and Olsen's conceptualizations and concludes that they were bound by the logic of appropriateness - conformed with the EU approach, because of the commonality of problems with the other EU-27 member states and the European Commission's style of leadership. Third, the research revealed that Brexit reinforced the Europeanization process, but there was little evidence of continued Europeanization in foreign policy after Brexit.
The paper seeks to develop and explain the concept of small state foreign policy specialization, using the example of the Republic of Latvia and its engagement with the Central Asian countries. ...Latvia’s foreign policy development for the past few years demonstrates an increasing self-assertiveness of the small Baltic state. Since leaving the Soviet Union, Latvia has been seeking to consolidate its position in the Western community of countries, demonstrating that it is a trustworthy partner. Most recent developments in Latvia’s foreign policy demonstrate the country’s willingness to share the responsibilities within the international system, support its EU and NATO partners, as well as advance its own diplomatic goals. The analysis demonstrates that the European Union is interested in economic, security and political collaboration with the five Central Asian countries, and Latvia has natural advantages in its expertise, know-how and historical positioning towards the region. Unlike larger EU member states, Latvia can be viewed as more understandable and an equal partner in bilateral relations. Latvia has chosen its engagement and support for the Central Asian countries at the EU level because of both a fair solidarity and the efficient use of the limited financial and diplomatic resources that the small country has in its arsenal.
This article assesses the top-down Europeanization of national political parties by the political groups of the European Parliament. Based on the premise that the national political parties alter ...their agendas and argumentation because of ties to their respective European Parliament political groups, the paper presents a case study of Latvia in the period from 2004 to 2019. The analysis focuses on the agendas of three political parties whose continuity can be clearly traced during the fifteen years – the “New Unity”, the “National Alliance” and the “Latvian Russian Union”. It concludes that the small number of members of the European Parliament elected from Latvia, migration of individual politicians from party to party, and low durability of Latvian parties themselves has limited the sustainability of Europeanization and impeded downloading of EU topics and principles to the national party level. Meanwhile, party programs of all three observed parties have Europeanized since 2004 in terms of the number and depth of the EU issues addressed.
The Baltic states have been seeking economic, social and political convergence with the Western World since they regained independence in 1991. While their primary motivation was to regain their ...nation-state status, their secondary hope was to achieve the income and prosperity levels of OECD countries. After 25 years of independence, EU and NATO membership in 2004, the introduction of the euro currency in 2014 and OECD membership scheduled for 2016, Latvia's population has still not abandoned its initial hopes and economic expectations. Its society is still struggling with income discrepancies within the country, relatively low salaries, the middle income trap, inefficient social policies, and a decline in the working age population due to demographics and emigration, and slow productivity growth, which are often cited as modern Latvia's key macroeconomic problems.
The article highlights the shift in lending policy towards instruments without ex post conditionality by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The objectives of ...the article are two-fold: Firstly, it aims to clearly indicate the shift of IMF lending policy towards instruments without conditionality in 2020; secondly, it complements the existing academic literature on changes in conditionality by testing three factors that contribute to the shift. It is concluded that similarly to the global financial crisis in 2008, more discretion was given to IMF staff to rapidly respond to the crisis and that the IMF staff increased the Fund's power position in the global financial safety net through expanded lending. A novelty around the COVID-19 crisis is the change in the normative debate around conditionality, which intensified in the years before the pandemic, suggesting that a more permanent change in IMF conditionality policy is taking shape.
The aim of the research is to deconstruct communicative narratives within speeches of China’s President Xi Jinping thus identifying notions for common ground in cooperation with the European Union, ...as well as notions that contradicts the spirit of law of Europe. The scope of research materials includes speeches of Xi Jinping addressed in a particular format – cooperation platform with Central and Eastern European countries “17 + 1”. This cooperation platform has been chosen as a discourse frame because of its rich content (China addresses 17 countries with various themes and focuses of importance). Research method utilised is cognitive discourse analysis (CODA) which focuses on those properties of discourse that are accounted for in terms of cognitive concepts. CODA allows to identify models of perceptions how cooperation and attitude toward common agreements should be formed. Several communicative narratives were identified that directly contradicts to common sense of Europe how cooperation and agreements should be maintained. Most important to mention are: 1) narrative of visible hand – as a counter argument on liberal economics – ability to interrupt free market at any situation; 2) narrative of silver bullet – a twin narrative of visible hand only in domain of political decisions; it includes an assumption that effective cooperation with China as a leader within community implies quick solutions to any decision-making problems via political intervention in business; 3) narrative of inclusive globalisation – includes expectation from all partners to respect deviations from democratic norms and western liberal values.
PDF
