This book presents an in-depth analysis of the role played by the EU accession process in Turkey’s democratic evolution and in the empowerment of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the early 2000s. Often moving against the grain of consolidated analytical positions, the author finds that the accession process can have a critical impact on the political evolution and institutional setting of an aspiring member state that goes well beyond the simple Europeanization process (or EU accession conditionality). In the case of Turkey, that process created the essential conditions and environment for the country’s political modernization by helping the emergence of a “periphery” (including Kurds, “conservative” Muslims and non-Muslims) that secularism had pushed into a marginal, secondary status in Turkish society. Turkey’s gradual evolution in an authoritarian direction, following the stalling of the EU accession process, offers further proof of the decisive role that the EU accession can play in a country’s democratic advancement. The book additionally indicates how Turkey’s EU-driven democratic evolution for a number of years had important implications in terms of regional and global order.

The European Union’s (EU) membership conditionality has been perceived as a highly effective means of influence on non-member states in the run-up to the 2004 and 2007 enlargements. According to the incentive-based explanation that dominates the literature, conditionality has been particularly effective when the EU offered a credible membership incentive and when governments did not consider the domestic costs of compliance threatening to their hold on power. This volume challenges much of the existing work on EU enlargement and postcommunist transition, however, by testing the conditionality thesis in the post-accession setting. Whereas a conditionality hypothesis would predict deteriorating compliance among the newest member states, several contributions here actually find the opposite. Enduring compliance among postcommunist states with the acquis, as well as with less formally institutionalized EU preferences for economic liberalization and minority protection, calls into question the role that conditionality plays in eliciting conformity. Simultaneously, support for the conditionality hypothesis in areas such as political party development and EU relations with Turkey and the western Balkans suggests conditionality’s effects vary across countries and issues. As the first study to systematically examine the relationship between international institutions and postcommunist states after enlargement, this volume provides new insights into how external actors exercise their power in domestic politics. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Enlargement has been an almost constant part of European integration history – going from an improvised exercise to the EU’s most developed foreign policy tool. However, neither the longevity nor the complexity of enlargement has been properly historicised. European Enlargement across Rounds and Beyond Borders offers three interdisciplinary, innovative, and indeed radical, new ways of understanding and analysing EC/EU enlargements: first, tracing Longue Durée developments; second, investigating enlargement Beyond the Road to Membership; and third, exploring the Entangled Exchanges and synergies between the EC/EU and its outside. This edited volume will provide fresh perspectives on enlargement as one of the defining processes in Europe in the second half of the 20th century: How are we to understand enlargement as a policy? How has it changed the EU? What is the historical role of the British press in shaping the UK’s visions of Europe? How has enlargement played into Russia’s relationship with today’s EU? Giving answers to these questions, and many more, this volume wishes to spark a broad debate about the roots, range, and repercussions of enlargement, and how historians, and other scholars, should engage with it. This publication will be of key interest to scholars and students of modern European history and politics, the European integration process, EU studies, and more broadly multilateral international institutions, history, law and the social sciences.

A lively debate on the constitutionalisation of the international legal order has emerged in recent years. A similar debate has also taken place within the European Union. This book complements that debate, exploring the underlying realities that the moves towards constitutionalism seek to address. It does this by focusing on the substantive interconnections that the EU has developed over the years with the rest of the world, and assesses the practical impact these have both in the development of its legal order as well as in the international community. Based on papers delivered at the bi-annual EU/International Law Forum organised by the University of Bristol in March 2009, this collection of essays examines policy areas of economic governance (trade, financial services, migration, environment), political governance (human rights, criminal law, responses to financing terrorism), security governance (counter-terrorism, use of force, non-proliferation), and the issue of the emergence of European and global values. How are these areas shaped by the interaction between EU law and other legal orders and polities? In what ways does the EU impact on other transnational legal systems? And how are its own rules and principles shaped by such systems? These questions are addressed in the light of the specific legal and political context within which the EU pursues its policies by interacting with the rest of the world.

Policy Experiments, Failures and Innovations takes a policy studies perspective in considering post-communist EU member states’ experiences since accession. The book analyses policy transfer processes and expands the new and growing sub-field of policy failure by interrogating the binary ideas of ‘failure’ and ‘success’ in the context of the Central Eastern European (CEE) transition, democratic consolidation and European Union membership.

Reconfiguring EU Peripheries explores the diverse nature of the European Union’s interactions with its peripheries. Focusing on a period of rising regional tensions marked most recently by the war in Ukraine, the volume casts new empirical and conceptual light on the diverse motivations that underpin the political elites’ attitudes towards the EU in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania, Türkiye and Ukraine. The volume engages with various understandings of the EU’s interactions with its different peripheries and shows how these dynamics are closely related to the self-perceived nature of the societies in question in relation to the EU. The impact of recent crises and conflicts underscore in some cases the need for strengthening solidarity and for ‘more EU’, whereas others highlight the doubts and disappointment over the challenges these societies have faced over recent years. The empirically rich case studies enable both interpretations of and debates on the EU integration processes. A comparative exploration of countries at different stages in the EU accession process and the various political elites’ attitudes towards the EU outlines the essentially constructed nature of peripherality. By challenging the conventional understanding of contestation and peripherality, this volume is a worthwhile first step towards looking at the EU and the peripheries it creates from an alternative, and sometimes ignored, point of view.

'The European Union: How does it work?' is the perfect introduction to the EU's structure and operations for those coming to the subject for the first time. An expert team of scholars and practitioners cut through the complexity to explain how the EU works in practice, and equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to master the subject. The fourth edition of this successful textbook reflects the ongoing changes in the EU in the aftermath of the Eurozone crises, and the global context in which the EU exists. It also features expanded coverage of theories of European integration and policy making, and considers the hugely topical debate about the UK's future in the EU. Students' understanding of the main actors, policies, and developments in the EU is aided by the inclusion of helpful learning features throughout the text. 'How it really works' boxes challenge students to contrast the theory with how the EU actuallly works in practice, while 'Compared to what?' features encourage them to think broadly and critically about the reality of politics in the EU.--

This book is the first in a dedicated series that explores questions of cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations. Drawing on a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, it throws new light on the function and operation of policies that seek to change attitudes, values and behaviours across national boundaries and in diverse geocultural contexts. The specific policies explored relate to ways in which sites of past violence and atrocity are deployed in strategies of soft power; to the contribution of culture to EU enlargement; to the use of the Russian language as a soft power resource; to the singularities of the Indian cultural diplomacy; to cultural diplomacy as elite legitimation; to the role of diaspora relations in European cultural diplomacy; to the use of film in post-war cultural diplomacy; and to the role assigned to culture in the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement. Scholars interested in how cultural and foreign policy intersect in widely differing national contexts will find this book an invaluable resource. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Policy.

The eighth edition of Policy-Making in the European Union provides students and scholars with a strong understanding of the processes and institutions involved in EU policy-making. In particular, it assesses policy-making in a more politicized context and in light of Brexit.