Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (CRIS)

This paper will explore the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE's) understanding of the security concept and its application to the Organisation's activities. It also evaluates the effectiveness and limitations of the OSCE within the framework of cooperation with other international organisations, namely the UN and other European regional organisations. Like many other international organisations in the world, the OSCE is currently facing a two-fold challenge. The first element stems from the Organisation's challenge adapting to an increasingly complex security environment. It now includes not only the management and prevention of intra- and inter-state conflicts but also trans-national threats. The second element is related to the OSCE's need to respond to the changing political constellation in Europe, namely the enlargement of the EU and NATO. This has influenced relations among the participating states and the place they give to the OS...

This paper seeks to assess the coherence of the EU's external environmental policy by applying Gebhard's multi-faceted conceptualisation of coherence. It concludes that the The balance sheet of the EU’s external environmental policy is mixed; while a considerable degree of coherence has been achieved, there is still work to do in the vertical, internal, and external dimensions.

The Democrazia Cristiana (DC) was never simply Italy’s conservative party; indeed, it it was much more. Its ideological ambiguity – manifest in its high degree of factionalisation – frustrates easy categorisation. The party demonstrated little preference between coalition partners from its left (PSI, PSDI, PRI) or its right (PLI), while only its social policy displayed any particularly conservative proclivities. Its most conservative aspect was perhaps its dominating position at the centre of the Italian party system, which inhibited genuine alternation in government for over forty years.

The potential advantages and disadvantages of a deliberative democratic body have been the subject of a number of works of political theory. Its likely rationalising influence has been referenced as the possible solution to deep social disputes, while the inclusion of  regular citizens in the deliberative process could potentially help re-enfranchise those disillusioned with purely representative politics. Nevertheless, a number of possible obstacles to such a body have been identified, from impracticalities of scale, to the distorting effect of the media, the commitment required by citizens, and the possible domination of deliberation by rhetoric.

This paper assesses why the European Defence Community - which would have established a sort of European army - foundered in 1954 while the Petersberg Tasks were readily accepted by the member states of the EU in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997.

At the time of its signing in November 2002, the EU-Chile Association Agreement was hailed as the most extensive trade agreement ever concluded by the European Union, a ‘fourth generation plus’ deal that extends into services, intellectual property, competition, trade facilitation, and public procurement.  To explain the trade-related content of the agreement, which was hardly foreseen only a few years before, Putnam’s two-level game approach provides a useful analytic framework.  Central to Putnam’s hypothesis is the two-way interaction between interests at the domestic level and activities and events at the international level.  This paper will adopt a three-level adaptation of Putnam’s model to conceptualise the EU.  It will argue that, although domestic interests did affect the final content of the agreement, as did the reverberation of international events, the asymmetric win-sets of the EU and Chile and the coincidence of their trade preferences were of greater importance in determining its scope.

The European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur) is a flagship initiative chiefly oriented towards the combating and prevention of illegal immigration into the EU through increased coordination of national border surveillance services, better information-exchange, and common surveillance. However, the regulation setting up Eurosur also contains explicit and repeated references to the fight against cross-border crime.  Here we ask what value added this could bring.

Remontant au célèbre ouvrage de Michael Porter, le concept de la ‘la chaîne de valeur’ (CV) traite du découpage en étapes du processus par lequel de la valeur est ajoutée à un produit
Dans l’économie mondiale d’aujourd’hui, des chaînes de valeur, jadis nationales, sont devenues régionales. Ces  chaîne de valeur régionales (CVRs) avaient assumé une place quasi centrale dans l’économie européenne même avant la fin de la guerre froide. Depuis, les pays de l’Europe centrale et orientale (PECO) se sont efforcés d’y s’intégrer en offrant aux UE-15 des salaires plus bas, de la main-d'œuvre formée et instruite et une proximité géographique. Cela dit, la situation des PECO est complexe. Ils sont hétérogène, et leur place dans les chaînes de valeur européennes (CVEs) est remise en cause. Notre étude cherche à réfléchir à la place présente et future des PECO en tant que participants aux CVs de l’UE.

By analysing the effects of the three engines of contemporary capitalism; incentive to profit, consumerism and competition, this paper argues that it can be demonstrated that globalisation is largely rooted in the natural development of capitalism.

This paper includes a fact sheet and an analysis of the EU's Security Sector Reform (SSR) mission in Guinea-Bissau. Specifically, it asks to what extent the EU's declaratory foreign policy objectives - both generally and towards the region - were matched by the EU's operational policy towards the country. In addition, the paper seeks to account for the failure of the mission.

This paper will consider whether so-called 'humanitarian diplomacy' can be considered a diplomatic activity, given that it is often undertaken by non-state actors. It will draw especially on the account of the functions of diplomacy furnished by Jönsson and Hall: communication, representation, and the reproduction of international society. The paper will focus only on the local and field levels - rather than on higher, political levels - and is therefore most concerned with the practice of negotiating access to populations in need. The paper concludes by arguing that negotiating access cannot really be classified as a diplomatic activity.

This paper proposes normative institutionalism as the most convincing approach to the study of politics today. As a theory, normative institutionalism has largely solved the problems of traditional institutionalism, holding promise as a unifying method and possessing a firm logical foundation while utilising a solid deductive method. Nevertheless, the paper recognises that the existence of alternative new institutionalisms and the difficulty in defining institutions continue to challenge the authority of the normative institutionalist approach.

This paper considers whether the two impact assessment processes operated by the European Commission - the integrated impact assessment (IA) and the sustainability impact assessment (SIA) - can be regarded as 'discrete'. The similarities and differences between the two methods will be outlined. The paper concludes by arguing that the two processes are distinct - more even than their guidelines suggest they ought to be - but that there are sound reasons for keeping the two procedures separate.

This paper addresses two questions. The first: Was the Italian Student Movement Inspired by Anti-Capitalist Values? The second: How did the Students’ Political Agenda differ from that of the Partito Comunista Italiano? The paper argues that the Italian student was driven less by anti-capitalism than by a generalised form of anti-authoritarianism, in contrast to the Partito Comunista Italiano, which sought to attain power through the ballot box and therefrom to effect revolutionary change.