This essay sets out to reflect on the prospective transformation of two Italian panoptical buildings that straddle the border between different places and times: the prison of Ventotene and the ...hospital of Gorizia. Local authorities have recently put forward a proposal to turn the former into a European school and the latter into a European prison. Both of these hermetic, unbending architectures have particular historical significance. Ventotene is the island where Altiero Spinelli was incarcerated by the Fascist regime and wrote the manifesto that paved the way for the process of European integration. Gorizia is the town where Franco Basaglia began his career, elaborating the theory of mental health that led to the closing of all Italian asylums. The proposed Europeanisation of these structures of confinement and isolation, which embody the exercise of disciplinary power in its most extreme form, speaks to the problem of opening the total institutions of modern statehood and repositioning them within the increasingly decentralised, indeterminate order of the European Union.
No como ironía de la historia, sino como resultado feliz de una estrategia diseñada en Bonn, esa despolitización de las relaciones bilaterales durante el franquismo iba a ser la clave que permitiría ...a la RFA ejercer su influencia positiva en un proceso de transición dirigido por una elite de la dictadura que, empezando por el propio monarca, había aprendido a ver en los alemanes sus más fiables y comprensivos socios en Europa. De ello da buena cuenta el artículo de Christian Salm, Limbering up Sister Parties' Europeanization: Transnational Socialist Networks in the Portuguese and Spanish Transitions to Democracy and Accession to the European Community. El autor muestra el predominio alemán en todas estas iniciativas y pone de manifiesto su importancia crucial para el PSOE de Felipe González y el PS de Mario Soares. El autor muestra cómo durante los primeros años de la transición en que el PSOE se benefició de la ayuda del SPD, Felipe González y sus compañeros fueron interiorizando las razones de los alemanes, sin por ello dejar de manifestar sus simpatías por las de los franceses.
The role of the EU in the promotion of Europeanization and the EU political identity in potential member states of Eastern Europe prior to the 2004 enlargement was important for these states’ future ...acceptation in the EU community. However, most research and literature have discounted the role of the EU and its attractiveness in the countries neighbouring with the EU that did not have a prospect of joining the EU in 2004. This article studies the process of formal and informal Europeanization in Ukraine before and after the Orange revolution, which occurred five months after the bloc’s 2004 enlargement, and Euromaidan of 2013. Despite the EU’s passive leverage in Ukraine between 2004 and 2013, and the country’s weak prospects for potential membership, the EU’s soft power of attractiveness was still an effective tool that was used by Ukrainian political elite and media in promoting informal Europeanization after the 2004 enlargement. Furthermore, confidence in the EU was associated with support for such liberal values as human rights, tolerance of minorities, and political efficacy. This article posits that notwithstanding weak incentives and support offered from the EU to implement formal Europeanization in Ukraine, the EU attractiveness was successfully applied by local elite and media to promote the informal Europeanization.
In recent years, the European Union has reactivated the “urban agenda process”. The mainstreaming of the “urban dimension” into the EU policies (2009), the explicit integration of the “urban policy” ...in the new Cohesion policy (2012) and the public consultation on the EU urban agenda (2014) are some examples which offer a new interesting framework for European urban research. Thus, this article addresses, on the one hand, the evolution of the “European urban agenda process”, based on the consolidation of the “integrated and sustainable urban development” (ISUD) approach. On the other, it analyzes the issue of the “urban Europeanization” in the frame of the new Cohesion policy 2014-2020. The cases of Italy and Spain will be addressed in order to explore this trend.
Povzetek: V prispevku se osredinjamo na vlogo Evropske unije (EU) v procesih reformiranja sistema vzgoje in izobrazevanja v Sloveniji in odgovarjamo na raziskovalno vprasanje, kako so politike EU ...uporabljene za legitimacijo nacionalnih reform od osamosvojitve leta 1991 dalje. Izhajamo iz teoretskih in raziskovalnih predpostavk o povezanosti evropeizacije in nacionalnih reformnih procesov ter njene odvisnosti od stevilnih nacionalnih dejavnikov, vkljucno z institucionalno (ne)sposobnostjo selektivnega sprejemanja agend EU. Prispevek temelji na izsledkih analize nacionalnih (javno)politicnih dokumentov, sprejetih v razlicnih obdobjih (Bela knjiga o vzgoji in izobrazevanju v Republiki Sloveniji 1995; Bela knjiga o vzgoji in izobrazevanju v Republiki Sloveniji 2011; Izhodisca za pripravo nacionalnega programa vzgoje in izobrazevanja za obdobje 2023-2033 2023). Izsledki kazejo na stabilno legitimacijo nacionalnih reformnih procesov s sklicevanjem na avtoriteto (javno)politicnih dokumentov EU, ekspertov in ekspertnih podatkov na ravni EU (vladavina znanja), dosezke in odgovornost Slovenije za doseganje ciljev EU (vladavina dosezkov), primerjavo z drugimi razvitimi in uspesnimi izobrazevalnimi sistemi v EU (vladavina primerjav) ter diskurzom krize in nujnosti sprejetja reform (vladavina krize/ problemov). Prispevek koncujemo s kriticnim razmislekom, ali v potekajoci reformi lahko govorimo o premisljeni ali pasivni evropeizaciji sistema vzgoje in izobrazevanja v Sloveniji.
Emphasizing Poland and its relations with Ukraine, this paper applies a Europeanization framework to examine the uploading of external relations policies by EU members. It argues that as enlargement ...has shortened the list of countries to which the EU has made membership commitments, normative entrapment will not be at work in its external relations, nor address the more fractious nature of EU decision-making brought on by a larger and more diverse membership. This results in strategic behaviour by EU members and more laboured decision making, which can be expected, in general, to complicate the EU's external relations. Simply put, the coalition building that is so central to EU policymaking is more difficult following the eastward enlargement. However, because the new members vote, collaborate, and build coalitions in favour of closer ties to these eastern neighbours, complications from enlargement should be far less pronounced in the eastern policy than with other ENP countries. This comes despite striking shortcomings by Poland in the administrative capacity and elite socialization that normally characterize those member states who often succeed at projecting their preferences onto EU policy. All of this means that one can expect an eastward shift in the focus of the EU's external relations, and a deepening of its differentiated approach to external relations.
The aim of the article is to analyze the impact of referenda on the increase in the popularity of anti-European sentiments in Switzerland on the example of the activity, in particular during selected ...referendum campaigns, of the Swiss People's Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP). Two research hypotheses will be examined in the article: leading - H1: The Swiss People's Party uses anti-European slogans to build its position on the political scene; and auxiliary - H2: the Swiss anti-European narrative is primarily related to migration issues. In order to verify or falsify the hypotheses, the following research questions were posed: Q1: Which dimensions of Europeanization arouse the greatest controversy and political disputes in Switzerland?; Q2: What are the programmatic and organizational specifics of the Swiss People's Party?; Q3: What means does the Swiss People's Party use in referendum campaigns ?; Q4: Are there, and if so, what, specific features of the Swiss anti-European narrative ? The answers to the research questions will be contained in the following parts of the text. In the summary, research hypotheses will be resolved and conclusions will be presented.
This thesis is an exploration of the EL, one of the pan-European party federations, which is concurrently one of the most recently-launched transnational parties. The work explores the theoretical ...literature on Europeanisation of parties and applies a three-pronged theoretical framework, involving the theoretical insights of Johansson and Raunio, Charalambous’ ‘communist dilemma’, as well as discourse analysis to the EL and some of its most important national components. These are constituted by the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left, the French Communist Party, the Spanish United Left, and the Italian Rifondazione Comunista. The analysis covers the pan- European level, seeking to reconstruct the EL’s vision of the European Union, as well as its organisational and ideological capacity to influence the Union’s direction, and its degree of institutionalisation and Europeanisation. Concurrently, it addresses the national level, involving the aforementioned case studies of Greece, France, Spain, and Italy, as well as the internal party dimension by seeking to evaluate the importance of the parties’ long-standing factions with regards to the parties’ stance towards the process of European integration. Its most salient findings relate to the high degree of convergence between the parties under analysis, both with regards to their ideological core, as well as their policy proposals, something that could initially verify the argument of policy transfer between national and European level. Moreover, the thesis findings suggest that the financial crisis that has been affecting the whole of the EU ever since 2008 has strengthened the parties’ distinct left Europeanism. Finally, the thesis’ findings suggest that there is indeed a unified political discourse of the European radical left that has been fighting for hegemony inside the EU for the last decade and that at the moment of the drafting of the present thesis has been able to create a growing consensus inside the EL with regards to the party’s future direction and to the means of bringing about the radical changes that it professes with regards to the Union’s alternative future.
Despite a growing interest in the relationship between populism and foreign policy, we know little about how populists in power engage with Europeanized foreign policy institutions. Bridging between ...research on populism and foreign policy (de‐)Europeanization, this article develops a theoretical framework for examining the impact of PRR parties in government on core features of national foreign policy institutions. First, it identifies three dimensions – organizational priorities, the allocation of authority, and organizational culture – and related indicators for the assessment of foreign policy de‐Europeanization. Second, it argues that the impact of PRR parties in government on national foreign policy institutions depends on two main factors: their ‘foreign policy preferences’ and their ‘action capacity’. Whilst the article demonstrates substantial de‐Europeanization in Hungary's foreign policy institutions under successive Orbán governments, it also shows that the possession of a strong action capacity alone is not enough for institutional changes to take place.