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Stretching Concepts Too Far? Multi-Level
Governance, Policy Transfer and the Politics of Scale in South
East Europe
Paul StuBBS
This paper
suggests that the literature on multi-level governance,
dominated by Western European and U.S. writers and research
settings, suffers from methodological and epistemological
limitations. The concept, when refracted through the lens of
lived political experiences in South East Europe, appears in
serious need of revision and refinement. The paper goes on to
argue that both notions of policy transfer and of the complex
politics of scale of interventions in time, place and space,
need to be added in order to complement the basic multi-level
governance concept. Only in this way is it possible to capture
something of the complexity of modes of governance in South East
Europe.
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The EU’s post-Conflict Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina: (re)Integrating the Balkans and/or (re)Inventing the EU?
ANA E. Juncos
Despite the
often-cited “fiasco” of the EU during the Yugoslavian wars, the
EU’s later interventions in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia
and Herzegovina (BiH), may have served as a scenario to foster
the emergence of an EU whose international identity is that of a
regional normative power. The EU’s intervention in BiH,
supported by significant economic assistance and using military
instruments, has proved essential to endorsing the
institutional-building process currently taking place in BiH.
This article explores the consequences of the EU’s continued
activities, both for BiH and the EU itself. It argues that a
parallel process has taken place in the last decade facilitating
the (re)integration of BiH in the European mainstream and the (re)invention
of the EU as a regional normative power, aiming to promote
regional cooperation, human rights, democracy and rule of law.
But these developments have not occurred without problems, which
this article also addresses.
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The Road to Europe I: Development of the Rule of Law in Hungary and Bulgaria after
1989. The Case of Human Rights
ANETA BORISLAVOVA SPENDZhAROVA
This
article examines changes in the rule of law in two
post-communist countries: Hungary and Bulgaria, in relation to
their bid to join the European Union. I concentrate on human
rights issues. First, the article considers the impact of policy
legacies on the feasibility of domestic change. Second, I
propose that a rationalist perspective focusing on the elites’
strategic behavior explains some of the observed change, but
cannot account fully for the extent of compliance (or lack
thereof) with international human rights standards. Third, I
find ‘domestic resonance’ with human rights norms to be an
effective supplementary mechanism.
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- The Road to Europe II: When Will
the Next Enlargement Occur?
ALEXANDRU JEREB
Structured in
three parts, this paper attempts to provide a broader
perspective on the systemic change which occurred in Romania
after the fall of communism and in conjunction with the ongoing
European Accession process. The political developments before
1989 are discussed in the first part of the paper in order to
provide a better understanding of the existing political
climate. The second part of the paper is focused on the exit
mode from totalitarianism and its consequences. The last part
explains the possible future directions of development.
Karen Henderson (ed.), The Area of Freedom,
Security and Justice in the Enlarged Europe. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, xix + 174pp., 45 GBP, ISBN
140393522X.
Reviewed
by Lara
Scarpitta
David L. Phillips, Unsilencing the Past. Track
Two Diplomacy and Turkish Armenian Reconciliation. New York,
Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005. 160pp.,
39.95 USD, ISBN 1-84545-007-8 (hardcover)
Reviewed by
Ana Dinescu
Milada Anna Vachudova,
Europe Undivided.
Democracy, Leverage and Integration after Communism.
Oxford: Oxford University press, 2005, xii +
314pp., 20GBP, ISBN 0-19-924119-8 (paperback).
Reviewed by
Lara Scarpitta
David Turnock (ed.), Foreign Direct Investment
and Regional Development in East Central Europe and the Former
Soviet Union. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. 361 pp. 99.95
USD, ISBN 0-7546-3248-2 (hardcover).
Reviewed by
Aneta Borislava Spendzharova
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