Why Go to France or Germany, if You Could as Well Go to the UK or the US? Selective Features of Immigration to the EU 'Big Three' and the United States. Wido Geis, Silke Uebelmesser, Martin Werding, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, July 2011, pp. 767–796. "Building on a new data set which is constructed from a combination of national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries – namely, France, Germany, the UK and the US – which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source country, we illustrate the important role of distance, both geographical and cultural, immigration policies and migrant networks. Differentiating immigrants by their educational attainments, we observe interesting patterns in the skill composition, employment opportunities and wages of migrants to the different destination countries. Focusing on migration between the four countries in our data set, we find that migration within western Europe is small and rather balanced in terms of skill structures, while there appears to be a brain drain from Europe to the US." READ MORE

The birth of a united Europe: on why the EU has generated a 'non-emotional' identity. Montserrat Guibernau, Nations and Nationalism, April 2011, pp. 302–315. "In several respects, the European Union (EU) represents both a novel system of quasi-supranational governance and a novel form of political community or polity. But it is also a relatively fragile construction: it remains a community still in the making with an incipient sense of identity, within which powerful forces are at work. This article has three main aims. Firstly, to analyse the reasons and key ideas that prompted a selected elite to construct a set of institutions and treaties destined to unite European nations in such a way that the mere idea of a ‘civil war’ among them would become impossible. Secondly, to examine the specific top-down processes that led to the emergence of a united Europe and the subsequent emergence of the EU, thus emphasising the constant distance between the elites and the masses in the development of the European project. Finally, to explain why the EU has generated what I call a ‘non-emotional’ identity, radically different from the emotionally charged and still prevailing national identities present in its member states." READ MORE

Balkans

Memories of a time forgotten: the myth of the perennial nation. Bratislav Panteli, Nations and Nationalism, April 2011, pp. 443-464. "This article questions the persistent view of the Balkans as a place where ethnic and national identities were sustained over centuries of Ottoman and Habsburg rule. It concentrates on the Serbian historical narrative and challenges the picture of the Serbs as an ethnic community who gathered around their bards and priests to cherish memories of their ancient kingdom. Rather, it is argued that we can speak of two competing narratives, one ecclesiastical and the other vernacular, neither of which was even remotely national or historical, and that the Serbs, as we know them today, are not the product of centuries of cultural formation but were carved out of a Slavic mass as were the Croats, relatively recently." READ MORE

A Glimmer in the Balkans. Martin Sletzinger, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2011, pp. 42-48. "From the beginning, the United States and the Europeans have seen Serbia and the Serbs generally as "the problem"- and the Serbs certainly have given them every reason to think so. Because ofthe bloody Serbian reactions to the secession of Croatia in 1991 and Bosnia a year later- both with sizable Serbian minorities- the United States and its leading NATO partners (Great Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands) immediately labeled the Serbs as criminal aggressors." READ MORE

The European Union Goes East. Bruce Pitcairn Jackson. Policy Review, Apr/May 2011, var. pages. What is the eu up to in Europe's east? TO ANSWER this question, we must look at how Europe's east and relations between Europe and Russia have been changing in the past twenty years and how incremental change has now produced a different political structure which, in turn, necessitates new policy in Brussels. Since 1989, the relatively stable geopolitical competition in and for Eastern Europe which lasted for most of the 20th century has given way to a more ambiguous geoeconomic problem. READ MORE

Future of the Euro. Will the Eurozone Survive Intact? Sarah Glazer, CQ Global Researcher, May 2011, var. pages.  Portugal has become the third eurozone government to seek a bailout loan from the European Union, which is struggling to prevent a debt crisis from crippling its poorest members and spreading to richer euro countries. Historically impoverished nations such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece experienced a surge of wealth in the 1990s after adopting the euro. But in the wake of the worldwide economic crash and recession, that wealth proved to be an illusion based on cheap credit from Germany and other stronger economies. The euro's defenders say the crisis has created a new determination to fix the eurozone's defects, particularly its lack of strong centralized governance. But the rise of nationalist parties in richer countries opposed to bailouts could hamper a solution. And despite years of rhetoric about European unity, critics say individual nations will never give up enough of their sovereignty — especially their right to tax and spend on liberal social programs — to become part of a United States of Europe. READ MORE

Security governance in the maritime commons: The case for a transatlantic partnership. Jean-Loup Samaan, Orbis, Spring 2011, pp. 314-324. Power distribution in the maritime commons is changing. The inevitable relative decline of U.S. sea power provides an opening not only for China as a rising challenger but also for the European Union as a cooperative security provider. Although such a claim may have seemed farfetched a few years ago, the performance of the European Union in the counter-piracy Operation Atalanta off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, illustrates the possibility that the European Union will prove to be an unexpected player in the maritime commons in the twenty-first century. This possibility suggests a renewed transatlantic dialog over the governance of the maritime commons. READ MORE

Rival Universalisms in Transatlantic Relations: Obama's Exceptionalism Meets Europe's Low Profile. Cristina Barrios, European Political Science, 2011, PP.  11–19. "This article offers the central argument that universalisms – defined as narratives of identity and role-playing in International Relations (IR) – depict different roles and identities for the United States and the European Union (EU). On the one hand, America's universalism depicts the democratic city upon a hill that leads in the world by example and with power, hard and soft. On the other, Europe's universalism is a utopia (an ideal plan) and a fragile balance between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism, putting forward consensual but ambiguous notions of ‘civilian’ and ‘normative’ power. Despite ample evidence of its international primacy and potential, the EU insists on keeping a low profile in IR. As a result of these trends, the rhetoric of the West and common values on the basis of transatlantic relations are clearly undermined." READ MORE

Europe’s Last Word. David A. Andelman, World Policy Journal, April 2011, var. pp. "A hot best seller in France is a curious little work that likely says more than the deepest political commentary about the state of mind in today’s Europe, especially this nation that still considers itself—reality perhaps notwithstanding—the heart and soul of the continent. The book is titled Vous N’aurez Pas le Dernier Mot (You Won’t Have the Last Word), and its authors are the writer-actor Jean Piat, of the Comédie Française, and Patrick Wajsman, the founding editor of Politique Internationale. Subtitled “a lighthearted anthology of the sweetest repartées,” it seems to have touched a chord this year in a Europe swept by discord, where repartée has taken to the streets—often quite violently—and parliaments are debating how best to reduce expectations. The fact is that Europe is very much going its own way—at times, it seems, a host of different ways. European military forces, even those nations who are members of NATO, still won’t jump whole-hog into Afghanistan. The European Union is thinking quite seriously of lifting the embargo on the sale of arms to China—and a Brit is actually spearheading the effort, with the endorsement of the president of France. The decades-long effort to bind Europeans together into an economic, social, diplomatic, political or military compact is facing perhaps its most critical test." READ MORE

Europe is a State of Mind: Identity and Europeanization in the Balkans. Jelena Subotic, International Studies Quarterly, March 2011, var. pp. 1–22. Why does Europeanization—the process of adopting European rules—advance in some countries, while it stalls in others? What explains different European trajectories of otherwise similar candidate states? This article explains foreign policy choices of EU candidate states with an identity-based theoretical framework. In states where European identity is a widely shared social value, the inevitable short-term costs of Europeanization—economic, social, and political—will still be worth the price of admission because becoming “European” trumps other domestic political concerns. In contrast, in countries where the European idea is not broadly shared, pro-European groups will find it hard to forge crosscutting coalitions needed to successfully promote Europeanization with all its associated costs. To illustrate these theoretical insights, I compare Europeanization in Croatia and Serbia, the two Balkan states with similar regional status, shared legacies of communism, and ethnic war, yet quite different European trajectories. I argue that the process of identity convergence explains Croatia’s rapid compliance with controversial EU requirements, while in neighboring Serbia, identity divergence has derailed Serbia’s EU candidacy. READ MORE

Keep Calm and Carry on: Appraising the Transatlantic Relationship from Iraq to Obama. John Robert Kelley, European Political Science, published online 14 January 2011, pp. 20–26. It is believed in some quarters that the transatlantic relationship has never endured a more trying decade than the last, and yet the ‘Obama effect’ seems to have resurrected it from beyond the ‘tipping point’. Can we conclude then that the crisis was not as damaging as feared? Or are we erroneously subscribing to inflated expectations of America's ability to change in the age of Obama? Without a reliable measure of what constitutes an exceedingly good or bad period in the relationship, any narrative that tells us we have ventured into the extreme seems inconclusive. America and Europe need each other, and contrary to far-reaching theories of demise or rebirth, this vital relationship will evolve not on the fringes but instead in moderation and into something more complete. READ MORE

The Road to Anatolia. James Kitfield, National Journal, April 2011, var. pp. Democracy movements across the Arab world are looking to Turkey for guidance and inspiration, but Ankara is still working through its own democratic transformation. READ MORE

How to Save the Euro -- and the EU. Henry Farrell and John Quiggin, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011, var. pp.  European politicians are worried about managing fiscal stabilization, but strict spending limits could destroy what little is left of the EU’s political legitimacy. READ MORE

Maastricht and the Death of Social Democracy: The Creation of a Consumer Culture. Petros Vamvakas. Mediterranean Quarterly, Fall 2010, pp. 77-92. "The global financial crisis of 2009 and the eurozone crisis of 2010 have raised central questions regarding the relationship between markets and democracy. The classic liberal democratic model of economic liberalization leading to political self-determination and protection of social rights has been greatly undermined. The European project that began with the Single European Act in 1986 and materialized after the 1992 Maastricht Treaty was meant as the celebration of liberal democracy over the implosion of the Soviet command-economy model. In this essay I argue that the elections of Angela Merkel in Germany in 2005, Nicholas Sarkozy in France in 2007, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy in 2008 completed a circle of European party realignment, marking not only a shift to the right but, more importantly, the near extinction of social democratic parties within Europe. The coming to force of the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) in November 1993 marked the symbolic and practical death of the European Left — an outcome I would argue to be as profound as the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The social transformation of perceived affluence and the subsequent consumer culture that emerged significantly affected ideological and interest articulation structures. Social democratic political and conservative parties converged to the center, as meeting the Maastricht criteria became a widely accepted goal leading to the monetary union." READ MORE

Security Co-operation beyond the Nation-State: The EU's Common Security and Defence Policy. Chris J. Bickerton, Bastien Irondelle, Anand Menon, Journal of Common Market Studies, January 2011, pp. 1–21. "The security policies of the European Union have in recent years become a central concern for researchers and policy-makers alike. A senior EU official has commented wryly that, whilst only around 200 officials actually ‘do’ the EU’s common security and defence policy (CSDP), there appear to be many thousands of academics and students all over the world who engage in its study (Howorth, 2007, p. 4). Leading European officials regularly cite security policy as central to the role and purpose of contemporary European integration. In Javier Solana’s words, in the past the EU was intended to secure peace in Europe; today, it is about being a peace-builder in the rest of the world (Solana, 2007). Several factors explain this burgeoning interest." READ MORE

Why Institutional Overlap Matters: CSDP in the European Security Architecture. Stephanie C. Hoffmann, Journal of Common Market Studies, January 2011, pp. 101-120. "The creation and continued existence of CSDP cannot be understood without reference to the institutional environment within which it is located. To explain its emergence and design, one needs to study the institutional architecture into which this additional institution emerged. Once institutional overlap exists, it becomes a crucial independent variable explaining not only the strategies that member states have at their disposal, but also the development of international institutions occupying the same policy domain as well as the impact on the policy field at large." READ MORE

A More Perfect Union. Henry Farrell, Democracy, Fall 2010, pp. 43- 55. Americans are writing Europe off—and apparently for good reason. The last several months have seen the European Union stagger from one crisis to another. After barely passing the Lisbon Treaty—which amended the EU’s fundamental texts in order to streamline its institutional structures—the EU soon found itself in the throes of its current crisis over the economic governance of the euro, while simultaneously confronting the failure of its ten-year effort to modernize the European economy. American pundits seem almost to take pleasure in Europe’s problems. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, claims that the European project is “foundering” and that Europe’s days as a world power are over. Officials in the Obama Administration are less consumed by schadenfreude, but are nonetheless irritated with Europe’s navel gazing. READ MORE

The European Union's Evolving Engagement with Iran. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, The Nonproliferation Review, Johan Bergenäs, pp. 491 – 512. In 2003, the ‘‘E3’’*Germany, France, and the United Kingdom*engaged Iran in talks over Tehran’s nuclear program and were joined in negotiations the next year by the European Union (EU). Given the dim prospects of success for these talks, why did the E3/EU pursue nuclear negotiations with Iran? This article’s three-track analysis attempts to answer that question by examining the emergence of the EU nonproliferation policy prior to the E3/EU-Iran talks, analyzing the European-Iranian relationship as it pertains to cooperation and negotiations over nonproliferation and other issues, and considering contemporary influences on the E3/EU. The European Union was ultimately unsuccessful in its negotiations with Tehran, but its efforts were worthwhile. In the future, the organization can play a vital nonproliferation role; today, the circumstances that hampered previous European efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff have improved and could be capitalized on by the European Union and the international community. READ MORE

Eastern Europe’s Balancing Act. Andrew Wilson, Current History, October 2010, pp. 295-300. A debate has begun on the “end of enlargement.” The post–cold war expansion that took NATO membership to 28 states in 2009 and European Union membership to 27 in 2007 appears to have stopped at the borders of Eastern Europe. The NATO Membership Action Plans for Ukraine and Georgia that were discussed in 2008 now seem dead in the water. The EU is reluctant, to say the least, to renew the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s role as the principal agent of expansion in the east. And the United States seems to have lost interest in the region. Russia, on the other hand, fought a war in Georgia in 2008 at least in part to provide a demonstration of both its power and its keen interest in the region. READ MORE