This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe. She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated perspective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.

Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around the EU. As this book demonstrates, the limits of Europe are determined by the values shared at particular moments in time by the leaders of the community's member states, regardless of their particular policy preferences. These membership norms shape the community's decisions on enlargement by empowering certain political forces and disempowering others. And contrary to conventional wisdom, these norms have changed considerably over time. The Limits of Europe: Membership Norms and the Contestation of Regional Integration uses a novel combination of normative genealogy, statistical analysis and detailed tracing of EU decision-making on Greece, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine to demonstrate that changing membership norms have had a stronger impact on the community's enlargement since the 1950s than treaty rules, the location of the states seeking membership, or even the commercial or security interests of member states.

This is a multi-method study of the European Union's decision-making on enlargement over seven decades, showing how membership norms shape decision-making on which states are considered eligible to join the EU and which are not.

This book is the first to systematically introduce and apply a social constructivist perspective to the study of European integration. Social constructivism is carefully located in terms of its philosophical and methodological origins. The wider debates and contribution of constructivist approaches to international relations are reviewed, and the insights that might then be afforded to European studies fully explored. Highlights include: new theoretical contributions to the debate by Ernst B. Haas, Andrew Moravcsik and Steve Smith; research on key aspects of European integration and EU governance applying a variety of constructivist approaches. The Social Construction of Europe provides new and important in

With the stagnation of the Doha Round of multilateral talks, trade liberalisation is increasingly undertaken through free trade agreements. Gabriel Siles-Brügge examines the EU's decision following the 2006 'Global Europe' strategy to negotiate such agreements with emerging economies. Eschewing the purely materialist explanations prominent in the field, he develops a novel constructivist argument to highlight the role of language and ideas in shaping EU trade policy. Drawing on extensive interviews and documentary analysis, Siles-Brügge shows how EU trade policymakers have privileged the interests of exporters to the detriment of import-competing groups, creating an ideational imperative for market-opening. Even during the on-going economic crisis the overriding mantra has been that the EU's future well-being depends on its ability to compete in global markets. The increasingly neoliberal orientation of EU trade policy has also had important consequences for its economic diplomacy with the developing economies of the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of states.

This is a multi-method study of the European Union's decision-making on enlargement over seven decades, showing how membership norms shape decision-making on which states are considered eligible to join the EU and which are not.

This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a 60 year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate's referendum rejection of the European Union's constitutional treaty in 2005.

A critical analysis of the idea of Europe and the limits and possibilities of a European identity in the broader perspective of history. This book argues that the crucial issue is the articulation of a new identity that is based on post-national citizenship rather than ambivalent notions of unity.

The aim of this publication is an analysis of the process of European constitutionalisation and its entanglement with relevant national discourses. Thus, national constitutional traditions in Austria, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are evaluated with regard to the positions of the respective national representatives in the European Convention. Interviews with Members of National Parliaments and of the European Parliament as well as a content analysis of the debate on the future of Europe in print media form the empirical basis of this study.

The European Union is often depicted as a cradle of judicial activism and a polity built by courts. Tommaso Pavone shows how this judge-centric narrative conceals a crucial arena for political action. Beneath the radar, Europe's political development unfolded as a struggle between judges who resisted European law and lawyers who pushed them to embrace change. Under the sheepskin of rights-conscious litigants and activist courts, these “Euro-lawyers” sought clients willing to break state laws conflicting with European law, lobbied national judges to uphold European rules, and propelled them to submit noncompliance cases to the European Union's supreme court – the European Court of Justice – by ghostwriting their referrals. By shadowing lawyers who encourage deliberate law-breaking and mobilize courts against their own governments, The Ghostwriters overturns the conventional wisdom regarding the judicial construction of Europe and illuminates how the politics of lawyers can profoundly impact institutional change and transnational governance.