While the major trends in European integration have been well researched and constitute key elements of narratives about its value and purpose, the crises of integration and their effects have not yet attracted sufficient attention. This volume, with original contributions by leading German scholars, suggests that crises of integration should be seen as engines of progress throughout the history of European integration rather than as expressions of failure and regression, a widely held assumption. It therefore throws new light on the current crises in European integration and provides a fascinating panorama of how challenges and responses were guiding the process during its first five decades.

This book analyses emerging trends in the politicisation of EU conflicts in Western Europe between 2006 and 2019, evaluating the transformative effects arising from multiple crises – the Euro crisis, the migration crisis and the Brexit Referendum. It describes how EU issues have been increasingly emphasised and polarised by various political parties – both the mainstream pro-EU and anti-EU protest parties – and have been transformed into more meaningful determinants of voting. The respective chapters investigate the fluctuations in EU issue entrepreneurship and EU issue voting, identifying which party types have been more likely to benefit from their EU issue proximity to voters, and assessing the growing politicisation of the EU conflict in both South European and North-Western countries. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political parties, European politics, Euroscepticism and voting behaviour.

The book examines the economic crisis in the European Union and its consequences for European integration and the member states. Discussing the provisions introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, from the effects of macroeconomic monitoring to the restraints produced by the Fiscal Compact, it offers an analysis of the European Union’s current situation and the effects of the measures adopted to manage the crisis, also making reference to how Europe is perceived by its citizens. Moreover, the chapters offer thoughts on the European integration process, in particular the effects that the policies adopted to tackle the crisis have had on the economic and financial sovereignty of the member states. This detailed examination of the situation of the EU between the Treaty of Lisbon and the Fiscal Compact is characterized by an original multidisciplinary approach that offers an articulate reflection on the criticalities that affect the actions of both European and national institutions.

This handbook comprehensively explores the European Union’s institutional and policy responses to crises across policy domains and institutions – including the Euro crisis, Brexit, the Ukraine crisis, the refugee crisis, as well as the global health crisis resulting from COVID-19. It contributes to our understanding of how crisis affects institutional change and continuity, decision-making behavior and processes, and public policy-making. It offers a systematic discussion of how the existing repertoire of theories understand crisis and how well they capture times of unrest and events of disintegration. More generally, the handbook looks at how public organizations cope with crises, and thus probes how sustainable and resilient public organizations are in times of crisis and unrest.

The year 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of Croatia’s membership of the European Union, the last acceding country to the EU, and thus represents a fitting opportunity to explore the political, economic and social dimensions of this tremendous transformation. This book examines how Croatia has changed over the last ten years and looks at the driving forces as well as the obstacles on its post-accession path of Europeanisation. The book argues that the Croatian case has special importance given that the last decade of European integration has arguably been the most challenging one yet. It started with the Eurozone-wide sovereign debt crisis and ended with the economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. Such demanding circumstances where agenda was often defined in an ad hoc way posed a huge test for Croatia’s governmental capacity. The book provides answers to the question of how successful Croatian policymakers were in dealing with the crises-related challanges and other needed adaptations. The book explores how EU membership has affected the design and implementation of selected national public policies, the functioning of governing institutions and patterns of cooperation between main social actors. Expert contributors analyse the impact of the EU membership in two principal areas: political and economic, with individual chapters addressing relevant topics. The book is intended for researchers, academics and students interested in these issues, as well as policymakers, entrepreneurs and lobbyists concerned with European integration.

This book examines the relevance of integration theories for studying and analsing the crisis situations faced by the EU since 2009. Ten years on from the start of the ‘age of crisis’, it critically analyses the impact of the multiple crises’ context on the EU polity and questions the utility of integration theories for grasping the peculiarities of the particular crisis under study. Bringing together prominent scholars in EU studies, the volume constitutes an essential reference book on integration theories. Its contribution is twofold. First, it provides a comparative overview of classical integration theories for studying and analysing current crisis situations the EU faces. Second, the book connects theories to current debates through an in-depth discussion of recent crises that hit European integration since 2009, with a particular focus on the financial crisis, Brexit, refugee crisis, illiberal tendencies in some member states, and the Coronavirus pandemic. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European Union politics, political theory, and, more broadly, to European studies.

With coverage of both traditional and critical theories and approaches to European integration and their application, this is the most comprehensive textbook on European integration theory and an essential guide for all students and scholars interested in the subject. Throughout the text, a team of leading international scholars demonstrate the current relevance of integration theory as they apply these approaches to real-world developments and crises in the contemporary European Union.

When EU member states signed the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, they did not anticipate the manifold crises in store for them over the following years. Instead of the intended consolidation of a Union which had just gone through its most profound modernisation and biggest round of enlargements, the EU has since then had to weather a wide range of political, economic, social, legal, health and even military crises with major repercussions within and beyond its own territory. Indeed, this time of polycrisis has induced change on many levels: Across the continent and its many fora of European supra-, trans- and international collaboration, established institutions, rule systems and normative frameworks have been put into question and power balances have been shifting. Against this background, actors from social, political, economic and cultural life have sought new ways to overcome the manifold pressing problems of their time, be it through intensified collaboration or attempts to increasingly resolve issues at the national level. This volume offers a compilation of case studies on EU crisis responses, covering the most impactful of the various crises the EU has had to face in recent years. It provides theoretical and conceptual guidelines for the study of political actors’ responses to crisis at all levels of the EU multilevel governance system and beyond.

This special issue of the German Political Science Quarterly addresses the transformation and the sustainability of European party democracies, both at the level of party organization as well as party systems and competition. The contributions in this volume are dedicated to these areas of change of European party democracies from different perspectives. It shows which new dynamics of change can be stated and how they can be explained.