Challenges Of European Integration Research Articles

Design and Implementation Issues in the First Russian Master of Public Administration Program

This paper examines the design and implementation of the first working master of public administration program in Russia. This program has been in existence at the Urals Academy of Public Administration (UAPA) in Yekaterinburg since 2001 and graduated its first class in 2003. The development of the program from 2001 through 2004 was aided by a U.S. State Department Newly Independent States Colleges and Universities Partnership Program (NISCUPP) grant. The article examines why public administration education is important to Russia and how UAPA is implementing innovative public administration education through its MPA program while also meeting the national standards for such education issued by the Russian Ministry of Education. At the current time, the Urals Academy is partnering with London Metropolitan University under a British government Russian-UK Partnerships in Higher Education (BRIDGE) grant to increase the number of students in the MPA program, to build faculty expertise further, and to prepare to meet the challenges of European integration as negotiated in the Bologna Process.

South european integration watch: european parliament elections in the new south european member states: The First European Parliament Elections in Cyprus: The Challenge of European Integration in a Society Striving for Reunification

The article provides an account of the first European Parliament elections in Cyprus. It aims to address key issues pertaining to the background, campaign and results of the elections as well as to contribute to the growing literature concerned with European integration, civil participation and domestic politics. It offers a brief sketch of the party system and the way political parties relate to their counterparts in the European Parliament. It analyses how the parallel referenda on the UN Plan for a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem, held a few weeks before the European Parliament elections, overshadowed European issues and kept national considerations to the fore.

Romanian Television and the Challenges of European Integration

In the lead up to European Union accession in 2007, this newly developed Romanian media system has to be integrated into and survive within the European mass media system. It will have to accept certain rules and to renounce certain lucrative "local" practices. The media system will need to coexist and compete with more established and often financially stronger or more highly respected media partners. A new value system has to be integrated into the media system (altered either by their being associated with the communist inheritance or by the commercialist discourse), including public responsibility, cultural and education remits, and the system of state aid for the public interest media. In this context, this process of taking on board European regulation related to the mass media may appear, for many actors of the postcommunist press, as representing a loss of many of the elements of freedom gained since the fall of communism and the associated rules regarding the functioning of mass media.

Legitimate Diversity: The New Challenge of European Integration

Present debates on a European constitution should consider not only the legitimacy, but also the problem-solving effectiveness of EU decision making. The existing governing modes (supranational centralization, joint-decision making, intergovernmental agreement) are not capable of dealing with the three main challenges the European Union is currently confronted with: an improved Common Foreign and Security Policy, enlargement towards the East and safeguarding the plurality of European welfare states. Neither resorting to the principle of “subsidiarity” nor consequent majority voting would provide real solutions. Effective European decisions respecting legitimate national diversity could rather be enhanced by improving the procedures of “Enhanced Cooperation” and the “Open Method of Coordination”. Abstract Die gegenwärtige Debatte über eine europäische Verfassung sollte sich nicht nur mit der Legitimität von EU-Entscheidungen, sondern auch mit deren Problemlösungsfähigkeit befassen. Die Leistungsfähigkeit bisheriger Verfahren (hierarchische Steuerung, Gemeinschaftsmethode, intergouvernementale Zusammenarbeit) scheint begrenzt angesichts jener groβen Herausforderungen, vor denen die Europäische Union gegenwärtig steht: die Effektivierung der Gemeinsamen Auβen- und Sicherheitspolitik, der Vollzug der Osterweiterung sowie der Erhalt der nationalstaatlichen Wohlfahrtsregime. Weder eine konsequente Anwendung des Subsidiaritätsprinzips noch der Übergang zu Mehrheitsentscheidungen bieten sich als brauchbare Reformoptionen an. Eher können gleichermaβen effektive und legitime Entscheidungen im Rahmen der Europäischen Union durch eine Verbesserung der „Verstärkten Zusammenarbeit” wie der „Methode der offenen Koordinierung” erzeugt werden.

Negotiating the Boundaries of Equality in Europe

In 1999 the European Commission asserted that "the right to equality before the law and the protection of all persons against discrimination (. . .) is essential to the proper functioning of democratic societies. (. . .) It has never been more important to underline these principles" (Commission of the European Communities, 1999. Emphasis added). There is much to be learnt from this passage. This "forward-looking" assessment seems to dismiss the relevance of past policy experiences regarding citizenship in Europe (Flew, 1989: 166). Why is that so? My argument is that this line on equality-cum-discrimination is part of a shift from formal and state-orientated citizenship to substantial citizenship. This shift is nurtured by debates on the modern framework of the nation-state, limits of the national for embodying equality, and the liberal dilemma of diversity. In other words, European policies are now recognizing the existence of a "European Dilemma," in the same way Myrdal spoke about An American Dilemma (Myrdal, 1944), and Jim Rose applied it to late 1960s Britain (Rose, 1969). Does it mean, as Rose claimed in his time, that we are subsequently witnessing a "liberal hour" for citizenship and immigration in Europe? In short, to what extent may the development of European policies contribute to the formation of a new paradigm of citizenship? If it exists, can the latter incorporate non-EU foreigners into active citizenship? Do European national policies of citizenship converge on a mainstreamed framework? To provide some analytical elements addressing those questions, I start with a critical approach of the republican arguments that shape the formal understanding of equality and citizenship, both in public policy and scientific literature. Then I turn to the nexus of transformation regarding citizenship, namely the challenge of European integration and the emergence of the anti-discriminatory agenda. I conclude questioning whether this process can get rid of the republican paradigm characterised by a paradoxical reactive obsolescence. Republican Limits Jürgen Habermas distinguishes between two main streams of political thought. The first is liberal. It embodies citizenship in the relationship between the State of right and the capitalist market. The second is republican. It adds solidarity and collective identity as a sine qua non of the polity; cohesion is seen as the third source of citizenship (Habermas, 1996: 21). What is striking is the way by which this second paradigm has dominated debates on citizenship and immigration in Europe, both in the academic literature and public policies. Citizenship returned to this dual agenda when immigration shifted from an economical issue to a political "problem" in the mid-1980s. The promotion of national citizenship among European immigration countries entered center-stage of the political agenda when the modern nation-states started to face critical limits in terms of sovereignty and membership, the latter being challenged by increasing migratory flows, the parallel process of migrants' durable settlement and the European integration. It is clear that the concomitance between the renewal of citizenship (rights and membership) and the "problem of immigration" (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991) has enhanced republican positions. For Christian Joppke, for example, "citizenship is both a legal status and an identity, fusing the divergent legacies of territorial stateness and republicanism" (Joppke 1998: 23). In this view historical, sociological, political and normative conditions of citizenship would be necessarily embodied in the congruence between the individualist ethos and national modernity (Aron, 1991; Leca, 1990; Stinchcombe, 1975). Subsequently, the very recognition of ethno-cultural and religious diversity has been set in terms of a challenge to the congruence that exists in the Rousseauist tradition between membership, allegiance and equality of rights. Therefore, citizenship has been profoundly affected by a never-ending "war of gods" (Weber, 1978) crystallizing the opposition between identity and equality, but also homogeneity and plurality, essentialism and constructivism, structures and agency, liberalism and communitarianism, republicanism and multiculturalism (Isin and Wood, 1999). This discussion has been an end-state issue. It has also well developed as a core instrument of public policies. Adrian Favell interestingly outlines that politicians "depend...

Political citizenship in Britain and Germany

A return to the theoretical wots of the concept of political citizenship justifies extending our attention to institutions outside the strictly political sphere. Social institutions in countries with corporatist histories, like Germany, remain important not only to the attainment of social citizenship but also to the exercise of political voice. Because the means of voice in Germany and Britain, or political citizenship, are the products of unique historical trajectories, the challenge of European integration is conceptually distinct for each. Thus, path dependent processes of democratisation may affect not just the likelihood but the normative significance of future choices.

The Challenge of European Integration: Internal and External Problems of Trade and Money

Introduction - the challenge of European integration, Berhanu Abegaz et al. Part l The international economy: historical perspectives and future prospects, Barry Eichengreen. Part 2 Preferential trade arrangements: preferential trade arrangemenms and the GATT - EC 1992 as rogue or role model?, Beth V. Yarbrough regional arrangements - GATT, rules and property rights, J.Michael Finger regional blocs - policy co-ordination and trade strategy, Geza Feketekuty the new regionalism and developing economies, B. Abegaz. Part 3 Monetary integration: the macroeconomics of currency zones, Morris Goldstein and Jacob A. Frenkel some often-neglected aspects of the political economy of European monetary integration, Thomas D. Willett what went wrong with the EMS and European Monetary Union, Michele Fratianni ten days that shook the EC, Richard Sweeney. Part 4 The political dimensions of European integration: the single European act, the Maastricht accord, and the emerging European polity, Philippe C. Schmitter.

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The Challenge of European Integration: Internal and External Problems of Trade and Money. Edited by Berhanu Abegaz, Patricia Dillon, David H. Feldman, and Paul Whiteley. Boulder: Westview, 1994. 316p. $59.95.

The Challenge of European Integration: Internal and External Problems of Trade and Money. Edited by Berhanu Abegaz, Patricia Dillon, David H. Feldman, and Paul Whiteley. Boulder: Westview, 1994. 316p. $59.95. - Volume 89 Issue 2

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. by Zbigniew Brzezinski.Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent by Allan Pred and Michael J. Watts.NowHere: Space, Time and Modernity. by Roger Friedland and Deirdre Boden.Rules and Choice in Economics. by Viktor J. Vanberg.European Cites Towards 2000: Profiles, Policies and Prospects. Edited by Alan Harding, Jon Dawson, Richard Evans, and Michael Parkinson.Against All Odds: Rural Community in the Information Age. By John C. Allen and Don A. Dillman.Sustainable Development of Small Island Economies. Hiroshi Kakazu.Full Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course by Cindi Katz and Jan Monk (editors).Stemming Middle‐class Decline: The Challenges To Economic Development Planning. Nancey Green Leigh.The Other Australia: Experiences of Migration. by Brian Murphy.The Challenge of European Integration: Internal and External Problems of Trade and Money, edited by Berhanu Abegaz, Patricia Dillon, David H. Feldman, and Paul F. Whiteley.

Civic Education and Social Diversity

How can civic education in a liberal democracy give social diversity its due? Two complementary concerns have informed a lot of liberal thinking on this subject. Liberals like John Stuart Mill worry that "the plea of liberty" by parents not block "the fulfillment by the State of its duties" to children. They also worry that civic education not be conceived or conducted in such a way as to stifle "diversity in opinions and modes of conduct."' Some prominent contemporary theorists add a new and interesting twist to these common--concerns. They criticize liberals like Mill and Kant for contributing to one of the central problems, the stifling of social diversity, that they are trying to resolve.2 The comprehensive liberal aim of educating children not only for citizenship but also for individuality or autonomy, these political liberals argue, does not leave enough room for social diversity. Would a civic educational program consistent with political liberalism accommodate significantly more social diversity than one guided by comprehensive liberalism?3 Political liberals claim that it would, and some recommend political liberalism to us largely on this basis. This article shows that political liberalism need not, and often does not, accommodate more social diversity through its civic educational program than comprehensive liberalism. Section I examines the defining difference between political and comprehensive liberalism and suggests why we might expect to find a significant difference in the accommodation of social diversity by political and comprehensive liberalism through civic education.

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND SOCIO‐SPATIAL RESTRUCTURING: ACTUAL CHANGES AND THEORETICAL RESPONSE

This is an attempt to outline a sociological, and in particular a theoretical response to the challenge of European integration and its associated socio‐spatial restructuring.

The European city: does it already exist?

Europe is a region with a long tradition of urban development. From classical Greece onward, urban settlements developed in different periods all over Europe. To what degree, however, are the cities in Europe also cities of Europe and, above all, cities for Europe? This paper deals with the challenges of European integration to the many cities of this region, and with the very recent competition among several cities in Europe for status as commercial, cultural or political centre in the new, integrated Europe after 1992.