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10991. And Never the Twain Shall Meet ? The EU's Quest for Legitimacy and Enlargement

Author:
Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy
Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The European Union in the 1990s is a contested, open-ended polity. It regulates almost as many policy-issues as nation-states and has been accepted by politicians, interest groups and many parts of the public as an appropriate framework for policy-making. Despite the increasing importance of the EU there is however no consensus about what the EU actually is, yet alone where it is heading. The ever-expanding agenda of integration in the 1990s has also led to considerable public scepticism towards the EU-project. Indeed, legitimacy crisis and democratic deficit have become the codewords in the literature and practice of European integration in the 1990s.
Topic:
Politics and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Europe

10992. EU and Legitimacy - The Challenge of Compatibility: A Danish Case Study

Author:
Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy
Publication Date:
07-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Since the difficulties of ratifying the Maastricht Treaty legitimacy has topped the EU's agenda. Departing from the dominating trend in the literature that the EU's legitimacy problems are largely due to the EU's inability to develop a common identity, which can compete or even replace national identities, this article shifts the focus to compatibility. The core legitimacy test is whether the EU and its member states – as a multidimensional governance system, in which nation states persist alongside supranational institutions – can develop identities, which are compatible. Based on this approach the article analyses the ratification debate on the Treaty of Amsterdam in one Member State, namely Denmark. Its core conclusion is that it is indeed important to abandon the traditional conceptualisation of EU legitimacy. As the Danish case shows legitimacy can be enhanced if member states are able to (re)construe the EU as being compatible with national identity.
Topic:
Nationalism and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Europe

10993. Overcoming Obstacles to Private Sector Investment in Macedonia and Albania

Publication Date:
11-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
South Eastern Europe remains one of the most volatile regions in Europe today. The conflict in Yugoslavia has wide-reaching political, social and economic implications not only for the immediate region, but also for Europe as a whole. It is, hopefully, the last chapter of military conflicts that had previously engulfed Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. It has added a new dimension to the already unfavorable external environment for many transition economies, worsening further their short-term economic outlook. The conflict-related economic damage already incurred is quite substantial.
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Albania, and Slovenia

10994. Border and Ethnic Disputes in Russia's Western Borderlands: Crises Averted and Postponed

Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
The current crisis in and around Yugoslavia demonstrates the importance of ethnicity as a source of tension and armed conflict in post-Cold War Europe. Unsettled ethnic and border issues have been important characteristics of the European security environment after the collapse of the Soviet Union and have been the cause of much tension on the European continent.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia

10995. Chemical Weapons Destruction in Russia: Opportunities for Regional Development, Civil Society and Business

Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
Lack of funding represents the most important factor behind the slow pace of destruction of the 45,000 tons of stockpiled chemical weapons in Russia, already reportedly 2-5 years behind schedule. Further delays of the process will not only endanger the environmental and health situation around the seven storage sites in Russia but may also severely undermine the Chemical Weapons Convention as a whole and thus have serious global implications.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

10996. Building Subregional Relations In and Around the CIS space: Prospects and Challenges

Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
The EastWest Institute (EWI) is currently running a one year project (July 1998-July 1999) project entitled 'Boundaries Without Barriers: The Role of Sub-Regional Relations in the Eurasian Space'. This is part of a highly successful research and policy-oriented project on the role of subregional relations in the new Europe that the EWI has been running since 1996. The project identifies emerging patterns of (principally) intergovernmental relations between groups of states within the OSCE space; assesses the contribution these subregional relations make to comprehensive security building; and promotes greater recognition of subregionalism in the policies and practices of wider international organization.
Topic:
Government and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

10997. Russia's Shrinking Role in the South

Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
The perception that the disintegration of the Soviet Union constituted a major challenge to Russia's security is of a political and psychological, rather than an economic nature. The countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia—Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—are neither an irreplaceable resource base for the Russian economy nor the only available market for its non-competitive products. Any efforts to see it otherwise will induce the region to strengthen its economic and military security with the help of outside powers as a buffer against Russia's ambitions for greater control.
Topic:
Security and Economics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Kazakhstan, Asia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Angola

10998. Ideas on Bosnia for the Bush Administration

Author:
Mark Edmond Clark
Publication Date:
04-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia International Affairs Online
Abstract:
Bosnia has been an international challenge that after five years may appear intractable. However, it too has a handle. In the new Bush Administration, policymakers and analysts must recognize that Bosnia is not a Western state, and that the country's bewildering social, economic, and political structures cannot be understood by viewing them through a Western prism. Only after these are examined and delineated can the new Administration get the business of rebuilding Bosnia underway guided by a policy more suited for its society and more coherent than that of the previous Administration.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, NATO, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Europe and Bosnia

10999. Interview with Mark Edmond Clark

Author:
Sean Costigan and Mark Edmond Clark
Publication Date:
04-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia International Affairs Online
Abstract:
What are the short-term effects of the bombing campaign? While I was in Belgrade and Pristina in the beginning of March, the officials of the Yugoslav and Serbian Governments, with whom I spoke, made it clear that once the bombing campaign began, they would initiate a full blown counter-terrorist campaign in Kosovo. Efforts of the Yugoslav Army and Ministry of Interior forces would be directed against the KLA and its infrastructure. The campaign would be focused on the area that was part of the KLA's "Strategic Trapezoid" in the center of Kosovo, which the KLA had declared to be their area of strongest influence. They also informed me that they would strike at KLA positions in Albania and possibly Macedonia. This is precisely what those forces have been doing.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, NATO, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Europe

11000. CIAO: The Imposition of Governance: Transforming Foreign Policy through EU Enlargement

Author:
Thomas Diez
Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Driving me through Ankara only a couple of hours after I disembarked the plane, my Turkish colleague points to the latest apartment buildings and a hypermodern shopping mall further down the road. These places, he points out, would be ready for the EU. If only all of Turkey would already look like them - but eventually, it will. Only give us some time. And indeed, the economic change over the past decade seems remarkable. Then Prime Minister Turgut Özal's final abandonment of statism, one of the six pillars of Kemalism, in favour of a widespread, although still restricted, liberalisation strategy, looks like bearing visible fruits. Despite the Turkish economy nonetheless still experiencing a great deal of difficulties (inflation in 1999 was still above 60%, and that already was a huge improvement on previous years), my conversations in the following week centre on a different issue - Turkey's foreign policy. With its 40,000 soldiers in northern Cyprus, its continually problematic relationship with Greece, its ventures into northern Iraq and threatenings towards Syria, Turkey's foreign policy is, together with human rights issues, one of the central stumbling blocs for starting membership negotiations after the acknowledgement of candidate status in Helsinki. In Cyprus's southern part, the economic problem of the day is its overheated stockmarket. My friend multiplied his assets within half a year. More and more villas are mushrooming in beautiful settings, and the younger generation in particular is very well off. Accordingly, Cyprus is the forerunner in the enlargement negotiations, with a GNP per capita above some of the current EU member states (Pace 2000: 122). No wonder then that my conversation again focus on what most Cypriot politicians regard a domestic issue, but which at least has a strong foreign policy aspect to it: its policy towards the northern part of the island, 'under Turkish occupation' as the official labelling goes, and thereby also to Turkey. Despite Cyprus's status in the negotiations, its probable future membership is thus overshadowed by the conflict on the island.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Government, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Ankara