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This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of EU-Azerbaijan relations. It examines the current state of Azerbaijan and its regime, charts the development of EU-Azerbaijan relations over time and discusses the dynamics at work in the relationship. It details the nature of the Azerbaijani regime, including its authoritarian character and allegations of corruption, explores the differences between European values and the values of the Azerbaijani government, and explains the difficulties that have arisen in the relationship, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution process, media suppression and human rights violations. The book includes a comparison with EU relations with other states in the region.
The Special Issue consolidates new approaches to the study of the EU’s role in the eastern neighbourhood and beyond, informed by post-structuralist traditions in international relations. More specifically, by revisiting the European Neighbourhood Policy’s agenda from the conceptual perspective of ‘the political’ and redefining the notions of ‘othering’, ‘differentiation’ and ‘normalisation’, this volume renders a new and much-needed theoretical and empirical outlook onto the policy developments and their practices. By unpacking and connecting security, regional, institutional, normative and sector-thematic policy dimensions, the book seeks to re-politicise the agenda and ...
Despite growing scholarly interest in the EU’s flagship policy towards its Eastern and Southern neighbours, serious attempts at theory-building on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have been largely absent from the academic debate. This book aims at contributing to fill this research gap in a three-fold manner: first and foremost it aims at theorizing the ENP as such, explaining the origins, development and effectiveness of this policy. Building on this effort, it also pursues the broader objective of addressing certain shortcomings in EU external relations theory, and even beyond, in International Relations theory. Finally, it aspires to provide new insights for European policy-makers. It is one of the first volumes to provide different theoretical perspectives on the ENP by revisiting and building bridges between mainstream and critical theories, stimulating academic and policy debates and thus setting a novel, less EU-centric research agenda. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU external relations, EU foreign policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy, and more broadly in European Union Politics and International Relations.
Intergovernmental councils have emerged as the main structures through which the governments of a federation coordinate public policy making. In a globalized and complex world, federal actors are increasingly interdependent. This mutual dependence in the delivery of public services has important implications for the stability of a federal system: policy problems concerning more than one government can destabilize a federation, unless governments coordinate their policies. This book argues that intergovernmental councils enhance federal stability by incentivizing governments to coordinate, which makes them a federal safeguard. By comparing reforms of fiscal and education policy in Australia, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland, this book shows that councils’ effectiveness as one of federalism’s safeguards depends on their institutional design and the interplay with other political institutions and mechanisms. Federal stability is maintained if councils process contentious policy problems, are highly institutionalized, are not dominated by the federal government, and are embedded in a political system that facilitates intergovernmental compromising and consensus-building.
The Russia-Europe relationship is deteriorating, signaling the darkest era yet in security on the continent since the end of the Cold War. In addition, the growing influence of the Trump administration has destabilized the transatlantic security community, compelling Europe—especially the European Union—to rethink its relations with Russia. The volume editors’ primary goal is to illuminate the nature of the deteriorating security relationship between Europe and Russia, and the key implications for its future. While the book is timely, the editors and contributors also draw out long-term lessons from this era of diplomatic degeneration to show how increasing cooperation between two regi...
Resilience has emerged as a key concept in EU foreign policy. The policy debate around this concept has been vigorous, but theoretical attempts to develop the concept are few. Covering fields of strategical importance, such as economic governance; growth and sustainable development; energy, environment and climate action; education, the labour market, and foreign affairs, this book is one of the first attempts to profoundly theorise the concept of ‘resilience’ in international relations by looking at several policy areas and countries. Faced with multiple crises (the economic crisis, the Brexit referendum, the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, geopolitics such as events in the Ukraine),...
In The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey, author Erdem Yörük provides a politics-based explanation for the post-1980 transformation of the Turkish welfare system, in which poor relief policies have replaced employment-based social security. This book is one of the results of Yörük’s European Research Council-funded project, which compares the political dynamics in several emerging markets in order to develop a new political theory of welfare in the global south. As such, this book is an ambitious analytical and empirical contribution to understanding the causes of a sweeping shift in the nature of state welfare provision in Turkey during the recent decades—part of a global tren...
Europe faces an increasingly unstable and dangerous neighbourhood. The continuing war in Syria, a humanitarian crisis in the region and the weakening of state structures have created a combustible environment, which has contributed to the refugee and migration crisis and the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Meanwhile, the conflict in eastern Ukraine appears to have become frozen, and relations with Russia are dominated by sanctions. In such a moment of uncertainty and upheaval, the discipline of developing a new strategy is welcome. First and foremost, a new EU foreign and security strategy must be underpinned by the recognition that the driving force in for...
In recent years, the Russian government has dramatically expanded its restrictions on the internet, while simultaneously consolidating its grip on traditional media. The internet, however, because of its transnational configuration, continues to evade comprehensive state control and offers ever new opportunities for disseminating and consuming dissenting opinions. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including media law, human rights, political science, media and cultural studies, and the study of religion, this book examines the current state of the freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and media freedom in Russia, focusing on digital media and cross-media initiatives that bridge tra...
This book argues that the Russian thinker Petr Kropotkin’s anarchism was a bio-political revolutionary project. It shows how Kropotkin drew on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European and Russian bio-social-medical scientific thought to the extent that ideas about health, sickness, insanity, degeneration, and hygiene were for him not metaphors but rather key political concerns. It goes on to discuss how for Kropotkin's bio-political anarchism, the state, capitalism, and revolution were medical concerns whose effects on the individual and society were measurable by social statistics and explainable by bio-social-medical knowledge. Overall, the book provides a refreshing, innovative approach to understanding Kropotkin’s anarchism.