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Tracing the Politicisation of the EU
Departing from the idea that political controversies are embedded in the very framework of European integration, this volume focuses on the relationship between politicisation and European democracy. The contributors to this edited volume trace the various ways of understanding ‘politicisation’ before and beyond the 2019 European elections. The aim is to offer constructive reinterpretations of the concept for further research in the field. Encompassing different approaches, the book shows a plurality of perspectives and provides innovative analytical tools to make sense of the phenomenon of politicisation in the EU context. Assuming that EU politicisation can be seen both as vice and vir...
Crisis and Ontological Insecurity
This book develops a novel way of thinking about crises in world politics. By building on ontological security theory, this work conceptualises critical situations as radical disjunctions that challenge the ability of collective agents to ‘go on’. These ontological crises bring into the realm of discursive consciousness four fundamental questions related to existence, finitude, relations and autobiography. In times of crisis, collective agents such as states are particularly attached to their ontic spaces, or spatial extensions of the self that cause collective identities to appear more firm and continuous. These theoretical arguments are illustrated in a case study looking at Serbia’s anxiety over the secession of Kosovo. The author argues that Serbia’s seemingly irrational and self-harming policy vis-à-vis Kosovo can be understood as a form of ontological self-help. It is a rational pursuit of biographical continuity and a healthy sense of self in the face of an ontological crisis triggered by the secession of a province that has been constructed as the ontic space of the Serbian nation since the late 19th century.
The Colour Revolutions in the Former Soviet Republics
This book explores the origins and effects, successes and failures of "colour revolutions" in the former Soviet Republics - the non-violent protests which succeeded in overthrowing post-communist authoritarian regimes, for example in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005.
Russia and the Former Soviet Space
This book represents a fresh contribution to the contemporary academic debate regarding the determinants of current Russian foreign policy assertiveness. More precisely, it addresses the ways in which perceived security threats have been used by Russia to legitimize its interventions in the former Soviet Space. It is argued here that the security dimension has been successfully used by the Kremlin for the domestic justification of its aggressive actions in neighbouring countries, and that the narrative of the ‘besieged fortress’ was applied to both the war in Georgia and the intervention in Ukraine. Bringing together a number of authors from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Romania, Germany and the UK, the volume presents both local, regional and Western European perspectives on the various events analysed here. It will appeal to a wide range of students and professors specialized in Russia and the former Soviet space in the fields of international relations, international law, foreign policy analysis and security studies, as well as to think tanks and policy makers.
Life in Post-communist Eastern Europe After EU Membership
This book examines how membership of the European Union has affected life in the ten former communist countries of Eastern Europe that are now members of the European Union. For each country, political, economic and social changes are described and discussed, together with people's perceptions of the effects of EU membership. Overall, the book shows how the benefits of EU membership have differed between different countries, and how perceptions about the benefits also differ and have changed over time.
The Return of the Cold War
This book examines the crisis in Ukraine, tracing its development and analysing the factors which lie behind it. It discusses above all how the two sides have engaged in political posturing, accusations, escalating sanctions and further escalating threats, arguing that the ease with which both sides have reverted to a Cold War mentality demonstrates that the Cold War belief systems never really disappeared, and that the hopes raised in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union for a new era in East-West relations were misplaced. The book pays special attention to the often ignored origins of the crisis within Ukraine itself, and the permanent damage caused by the fact that Ukrainians are killing Ukrainians in the eastern parts of the country. It also assesses why Cold War belief systems have re-emerged so easily, and concludes by considering the likely long-term ramifications of the crisis, arguing that the deep-rooted lack of trust makes the possibility of compromise even harder than in the original Cold War.
Ukraine
Ukraine has been wracked by a year of unprecedented political, economic, and military turmoil. Russian military aggression in the east and a legacy of destructive policies and corruption have created an imminent existential crisis for this young democracy. Yet Ukraine also has a great opportunity to break out of economic underperformance. In this study, Anders Åslund, one of the world's leading experts on Ukraine, traces Ukraine's evolution as a market economy starting with the fall of communism and examines the economic impact of its recent difficulties. Åslund argues that Ukraine must undertake sweeping political, economic, social, and government reforms to achieve prosperity and independence. For its part, the West must abandon its hesitant approach and provide broad economic assistance to help Ukraine transform itself.
Translation and the Reconfiguration of Power Relations
This volume presents translation as a powerful activity by revisiting the roles of translators and interpreters and the contexts of translation and interpreting in societies affected by globalization and migration. The articles cover topics such as the impact languages have on translation, the institutional constraints in the context of translation, and the challenges within the framework of multimodal translation. In recent years, questions of power in translation have emerged. In such a context, the book presents new research paths that can be related to some of the most discussed issues of recent years in Translation Studies. The contributors are 14 PhD students who investigate the power relations in the context of censorship, ideology, localization, multimodal translation, English as a lingua franca in translation, mandatory genres, and translation by non-professional subject-matter translators. (Series: Representation - Transformation. Translating across Cultures and Societies - Vol. 7)
Post-Imperium
The war in Georgia. Tensions with Ukraine and other nearby countries. Moscow's bid to consolidate its "zone of privileged interests" among the Commonwealth of Independent States. These volatile situations all raise questions about the nature of and prospects for Russia's relations with its neighbors. In this book, Carnegie scholar Dmitri Trenin argues that Moscow needs to drop the notion of creating an exclusive power center out of the post-Soviet space. Like other former European empires, Russia will need to reinvent itself as a global player and as part of a wider community. Trenin's vision of Russia is an open Euro-Pacific country that is savvy in its use of soft power and fully reconciled with its former borderlands and dependents. He acknowledges that this scenario may sound too optimistic but warns that the alternative is not a new version of the historic empire but instead is the ultimate marginalization of Russia.
The Russian Project of Eurasian Integration
Modern trends in geopolitics have raised serious questions about the future global and regional architecture of the world system. In the case of the Eurasian Economic Union, these questions bring up important issues for debate: What is the Eurasian Economic Union? What theoretical concepts could be applied for modern Eurasian integration? Why is the Eurasian Economic Union forming? Most importantly, what prospects does this Union have in the framework of the modern geopolitical situation? This book explores the process of Eurasian integration in the modern global world. The creation of the Eurasian Economic Union has become a topical issue in modern Russian foreign policy. Neo-Eurasianist id...
