The book explores the role of new modes of governance in helping future member states to cope with their accession to the EU. It examines the extent to which civil society and business have assisted the governments of Southern, Central and Eastern European accession countries in taking on the ever more comprehensive body of EU laws and regulations.

In the last three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a vast amount of study looking at transforming the planned economy to a market economy from both theoretical and empirical aspects. This book provides an overview and insight into transition economies in the recent decades and looks at key economics topics from the so-called “transition strategy debate” to environmental reform. The book also includes an analytical review and meta-analysis of the existing literature. By integrating theoretical discussions and synthesizing empirical findings in a systematic manner, this book may help to enlighten the debate on the timing, speed, and policy sequence of economic transition. The book will particularly appeal to researchers, policy makers, other practitioners, and under- and post-graduate students who are interested in transition economies in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, and China. It aims to be read as an advanced reader.

Download PDF for free from: http://martenscentre.eu/publications/dealing-rising-power-turkeys-transformation-and-its-implications-eu Turkey's growing assertiveness on the international stage, difficulties with EU accession, rapidly rising economy, and the long and controversial reign of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) are all necessitating a need for analysis. The present study of the Centre for European Studies presents two papers which look at Turkey and the AKP from different perspectives. Svante Cornell's paper argues that AKP has moved away from democratic reforms and that Turkey's 'zero problems with the neighbours' approach to international relations has failed. Gerald Knaus maintains that the AKP and the EU's influence on Turkey have effected radical changes in the balance of power between the military and civilian actors, thus bringing Turkey somewhat closer to Western democratic standards. Both authors advocate continued EU engagement with Turkey, irrespective of the progress of accession negotiations.

For the positive experience with tying progress in negotiations with progress in reform in Central and Eastern Europe, the European Union made its membership offer to the Western Balkans countries conditional on specific democratic principles, most notably (full) cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Yet, although EU membership is regarded as highly attractive both for political elites and the general public in the region, the erratic record of compliance with ICTY-related EU conditionality in Croatia since 2000 raises questions about the EU’s ability to provide for ‘rule transfer’ and ‘norm diffusion’ in the current enlargement round and poses a puzzle to scholars of international relations and EU enlargement alike. My findings suggest that EU conditionality was rather inconsistently applied toward Croatia. Two main conclusions can be made from this. First, individual member states have gained in influence over enlargement policy that leads to a more politicized use of the conditionality tool undermining its effectiveness. Second, it illustrates the need to place politics in time and to go beyond purely rationalist explanations.

Dealing with a Juggernaut: Analyzing Poland's Policy towards Russia, 1989D2009, by Joanna A. Gorska, is the first substantial study of Poland's foreign policy interaction with its more powerful eastern neighbor, Russia. This study is essential to understanding the prospects for order and peace in Central and Eastern Europe towards Russia during the past twenty years. Gorska challenges widely established interpretations of Poland's post-1989 foreign policy by arguing that consecutive Polish governments pursued a largely cooperative policy towards Russia and did so because of material power considerations, namely Poland's strengthened power position after the Cold War and moderate security pressures from Russia. In analyzing Polish foreign policy, Dealing with a Juggernaut draws on leading theories in the field of International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis and develops a comprehensive theoretical framework to guide empirical research. Representing a cross-section of politically important areas in Poland's most recent Russia policy, the analysis is delineated along four case studies: the Soviet military withdrawal from Poland in the early 1990s, the NATO issue in Polish policy towards Russia, Polish energy policy towards Moscow, and the Katyn question in Polish foreign policy. This book uses previously unpublished archival material, interviews with leading Polish officials, and a wealth of Polish publications to provide an insight into Warsaw's foreign policy behavior. Gorska points to a departure from hostility and imposition_a significant change in Poland's policy towards Russia after 1989. As such, Dealing with a Juggernaut, by Joanna A. Gorska, uncovers important mechanisms of regional cooperation between states with a checkered past.

The Balkan countries have responded differently to the EU’s conditional offer of membership. This book examines the diverging compliance patterns of the Balkan accession states and asks why some of them have complied substantially, some only partially and others have defied the EU. The book examines the compliance of the Balkan states with the EU accession conditionality, arguing that the variation in the compliance behavior of Balkan governments hinges on three main factors – the legitimacy of the EU conditions as seen domestically in the accession states, the costs of compliance and the EU’s ability and willingness to use its superior power resources to impose compliance when faced with domestic defiance. Placing important events from the most recent political history of the Balkans in a broader historical perspective, the author evaluates the successes and failures of the EU’s state building policies in the Balkans, a geographical area of the highest priority for the EU’s foreign policy and a test case for the EU’s capacity and willingness for foreign policy action. Based on detailed empirical data, European Foreign Policy and the Challenges of Balkan Accession will be of interest to scholars and students of EU and comparative politics, and those focusing on policy impact in EU integration.

This book is a timely and solid portrait of modern China from the First Opium War to the Xi Jinping era. Unlike the handful of existing textbooks that only provide narratives, this textbook fashions a new and practical way to study modern China. Written exclusively for university students, A-level or high school teachers and students, it uses primary sources to tell the story of China and introduces them to existing scholarship and academic debate so they can conduct independent research for their essays and dissertations. This book will be required reading for students who embark on the study of Chinese history, politics, economics, diaspora, sociology, literature, cultural, urban and women's studies. It would be essential reading to journalists, NGO workers, diplomats, government officials, businessmen and travellers.

Turkey’s accession to the European Union is undoubtedly one of the Union’s most contested potential enlargements. The narrative that dominates the debate surrounding this issue primarily relates to problems such as a lack of respect for fundamental human rights in Turkey, the Kurdish question and the continuing stalemate concerning northern Cyprus. This book looks at these issues, but also proposes that a review of Turkey’s experience with the EU in its numerous incarnations suggests that these concerns may mask a deeper disquiet. Whilst there are several questions that Turkey must address, particularly in the area of human rights guarantees, the concerns which raise debates regarding Turkish membership are not issues that are unique to Turkey. Turkey’s EU experience also raises fundamental questions about religion and the EU project that have greater implication than simply Turkish accession. Through the lens of the Turkish example, this book addresses these broader questions, such as the nature of European ‘identity’, Europe’s Christian past, the limits of pluralism and the fundamental question of religion in the European public sphere. This book will be of great interest to those engaged in research on European law and politics at undergraduate or postgraduate level. It is also aimed at academics with an interest in human rights and the European Union and with a regional interest in Turkey.

Member States of the European Union combines geographic and thematic coverage to provide a comprehensive and nuanced overview of the building blocks of the European Union - its member states. The third edition explores the key concepts of statehood and Europeanization, analysing the wide-ranging impact of Europeanization on member state institutions, political parties, social movements, public policy and the European political economy. New coverage includes state responses to the refugee and climate crises and two new chapters dedicated to Bulgaria and Greece. A fully-updated chapter on the United Kingdom illustrates the tensions between Europeanization and member statehood, exploring the implications of the UK's vote to leave the EU. It is the ideal text for all those studying EU Politics with an interest in the member states of the European Union and how they work together.

This book seeks to offer a better understanding of the strategic responses to Brexit from ten small European Union (EU) member states: Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia. Inspired in an intersection of different streams of research, it examines the extent and the ways Brexit has impacted these countries, analysing their coping strategies to deal with the challenges raised by such a disruptive development, as well as considering the implications of their reactions to Brexit for patterns of national foreign policy Europeanization. In so doing, this volume enhances the comprehension of smaller EU member states’ foreign and security policies, offering a systematic and comparative analysis of how political and diplomatic elites in ten countries positioned themselves domestically and within the EU vis-à-vis the Brexit process. A combination of conceptual insights, valuable empirical accounts and updated knowledge on contemporary issues from such interesting set of case studies provides room for debate on the comparability of the way(s) in which different small countries have approached their Brexit strategies. All these aspects are explored with respect to states that have been relatively neglected and underexplored in the small states literature. This edited volume will be of great value to upper-level students, academics, and researchers interested in European politics, foreign policy and international relations. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Contemporary European Studies.