Euroclash Fligstein, Neil
2008, 2009, 2008-04-10, 20080101
eBook, Book
A major new interpretation of European integration. Leading scholar, Neil Fligstein, provocatively argues that European integration has produced a truly transnational European society.
This book seeks to comprehend the evolving nature of the European Union following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the failure of the European Constitution. Its prime focus is the last wave of ...enlargement that has profoundly transformed the EU. Although there are many parallels between the European integration process and state building processes, the Union is nothing like a Westphalian super state. The new emerging polity resembles a kind of neo-medieval empire with a polycentric system of government, multiple and overlapping jurisdictions, striking cultural and economic heterogeneity, fuzzy borders, and divided sovereignty. The book tries to spell out the origin, the shape, and the implications of this empire. The aim of this book is to suggest a novel way of thinking about the European Union and the process of European integration. The book shows 'two Europes' coming together following the end of the cold war. It proposes a system of economic and democratic governance that meets the ever greater challenges of modernization, interdependence, and globalization. It identifies the most plausible scenario of promoting peaceful change in Europe and beyond. The author argues that mainstream thinking about European integration is based on mistaken statist assumptions and suggests more effective and legitimate ways of governing Europe than through adoption of a European Constitution, creation of a European army, or introduction of a European social model. The book covers many fields from politics, and economics to foreign affairs and security. It analyzes developments in both Eastern and Western Europe. It also gives ample room to both theoretical and empirical considerations. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/9780199292219/toc.html
The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims traces how governments across Western Europe have responded to the growing presence of Muslim immigrants in their countries over the past fifty years. Drawing on ...hundreds of in-depth interviews with government officials and religious leaders in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Morocco, and Turkey, Jonathan Laurence challenges the widespread notion that Europe's Muslim minorities represent a threat to liberal democracy.
If one lesson emerges clearly from fifty years of European integration it is that political aims should be pursued by overtly political means, and not by roundabout economic or legal strategies. The ...functionalist strategy of promoting spillovers from one economic sector to another has failed to achieve a steady progress towards a federal union, as Jean Monnet and other functionalists had hoped. On the other hand, the unanticipated results of 'integration through law' have included over-regulation and an institutional framework which is too rigid to allow significant policy and institutional innovations. Thus, integration by stealth has produced sub-optimal policies and a steady loss of legitimacy by the supranational institutions. Both the functionalist approach and the classic Community Method are becoming obsolete. This major statement from a leading European scholar provides the most thorough analysis currently available of the pitfalls and ambiguities of 50 years of European integration, without losing sight of its benefits. Majone provides a clear demonstration of how a number of European policies - including environmental protection - lack a logically defensible rationale, while showing how, in other cases, objectives may be better achieved by re-nationalizing the policy in question. He also shows how, in an information-rich environment, co-ordination by mutual adjustment becomes possible, meaning that member states are no longer as dependent on central institutions as in the past. He explains how the challenge for future research is to investigate methods-other than delegation to supranational institutions-by which member states can credibly commit themselves to collective action. Dilemmas of European Integration concludes by explaining exactly why the model of a United States of Europe is bound to fail-not just due to lack of popular support, but because it finds itself unable to deliver the public goods which Europeans expect to receive from a full fledged government. Although failing as a would-be federation, the present Union could become an effective confederation, built on the solid foundation of market integration. The new Constitutional Treaty, Majone argues, seems to point in this direction. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience//toc.html
The construction of the European Community (EC) has widely been understood as the product of either economic self-interest or dissatisfaction with the nation-state system. InEurope United, Sebastian ...Rosato challenges these conventional explanations, arguing that the Community came into being because of balance of power concerns. France and the Federal Republic of Germany-the two key protagonists in the story-established the EC at the height of the cold war as a means to balance against the Soviet Union and one another.
More generally, Rosato argues that international institutions, whether military or economic, largely reflect the balance of power. In his view, states establish institutions in order to maintain or increase their share of world power, and the shape of those institutions reflects the wishes of their most powerful members. Rosato applies this balance of power theory of cooperation to several other cooperative ventures since 1789, including various alliances and trade pacts, the unifications of Italy and Germany, and the founding of the United States. Rosato concludes by arguing that the demise of the Soviet Union has deprived the EC of its fundamental purpose. As a result, further moves toward political and military integration are improbable, and the economic community is likely to unravel to the point where it becomes a shadow of its former self.
More than half of the 41 million foreign-born individuals in the United States today are noncitizens, half have difficulty with English, a quarter are undocumented, and many are poor. As a result, ...most immigrants have few opportunities to make their voices heard in the political process. Nonprofits in many cities have stepped into this gap to promote the integration of disadvantaged immigrants. They have done so despite notable constraints on their political activities, including limits on their lobbying and partisan electioneering, limited organizational resources, and dependence on government funding. Immigrant rights advocates also operate in a national context focused on immigration enforcement rather than immigrant integration. InMaking Immigrant Rights Real, Els de Graauw examines how immigrant-serving nonprofits can make impressive policy gains despite these limitations.
Drawing on three case studies of immigrant rights policies-language access, labor rights, and municipal ID cards-in San Francisco, de Graauw develops a tripartite model of advocacy strategies that nonprofits have used to propose, enact, and implement immigrant-friendly policies: administrative advocacy, cross-sectoral and cross-organizational collaborations, and strategic issue framing. The inventive development and deployment of these strategies enabled immigrant-serving nonprofits in San Francisco to secure some remarkable new immigrant rights victories, and de Graauw explores how other cities can learn from their experiences.
An engrossing history of the century that transformed
our knowledge of the body's inner senses The years between
1833 and 1945 fundamentally transformed science's understanding of
the body's inner ...senses, revolutionizing fields like philosophy,
the social sciences, and cognitive science. In How We Became
Sensorimotor , Mark Paterson provides a systematic account of
this transformative period, while also demonstrating its
substantial implications for current explorations into
phenomenology, embodied consciousness, the extended mind, and
theories of the sensorimotor, the body, and embodiment.
Each chapter of How We Became Sensorimotor takes a
particular sense and historicizes its formation by means of recent
scientific studies, case studies, or coverage in the media. Ranging
among a diverse array of sensations, including balance, fatigue,
pain, the "muscle sense," and what Maurice Merleau-Ponty termed
"motricity," Paterson's analysis moves outward from the familiar
confines of the laboratory to those of the industrial world and
even to wild animals and their habitats. He uncovers important
stories, such as how forgotten pain-measurement schemes transformed
criminology, or how Penfield's outmoded concepts of the sensory and
motor homunculi of the brain still mar psychology textbooks.
Complete with original archival research featuring illustrations
and correspondence, How We Became Sensorimotor shows how
the shifting and sometimes contested historical background to our
understandings of the senses are being extended even today.
The concepts of cultural diversity and cultural identity are at the forefront of the political debate in many western societies. In Europe, the discussion is stimulated by the political pressures ...associated with immigration flows, which are increasing in many European countries. The imperatives that current immigration trends impose on European democracies bring to light a number of issues that need to be addressed. What are the patterns and dynamics of cultural integration? How do they differ across immigrants of different ethnic groups and religious faiths? How do they differ across host societies? What are the implications and consequences for market outcomes and public policy? Which kind of institutional contexts are more or less likely to accommodate the cultural integration of immigrants? All these questions are crucial for policy makers and await answers. This book aims to provide a stepping stone to the debate. Taking an economic perspective, this edited book presents a current, comparative picture of the process of cultural integration of immigrants across Europe. It documents the main economic debates on the causes and consequences of cultural integration of immigrants, and provides detailed descriptions of the cultural and economic integration process in seven main European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It also compares the European context with the integration of immigrants in the United States.
