Book review: Anne Mette Kjaer, Guvernanţa(Governance), CA Publishing, Cluj-Napoca, 2010. Reviewed by Sergiu Mişcoiu
June 16, 2011 Author: Sergiu Mişcoiu
Out of the numerous books and articles about this tricky concept of ‘governance’, Anne-Mette Kjær’s Governance: has the remarkable merit to be clear and useful. Constructed more like a handbook than like a PhD thesis, this book is a cohesive and readable collection of theoretical debates and empirical applications of the concept of ‘governance’ in a variety of fields, from national administration to international relations.
Book review: Simona Piattoni, The Theory of Multi-level governance: Conceptual, Empirical, and Normative Challenges, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010. Reviewed by Oana-Andreea Ion
June 15, 2011 Author: Oana-Andreea Ion
The book to be reviewed here – The Theory of Multi-level Governance. Conceptual, Empirical, and Normative Challenges – subscribes to the same endeavour of analyzing the EU governance, this time in its multi-level form. The subject of the book is largely debated within the EU studies, especially in the last decade, as many scholars continued Gary Marks’ initial work and brought valuable contributions to this field through studies oriented either towards some general characteristics of the multi-level governance (MLG) or to its specific manifestations within the EU system[i]. The importance of Simona Piattoni’s work lies in her effort to systematise these different meanings and approaches of MLG through a three-dimensional based study (theoretical, empirical and normative), whose red thread is the aim to argue in favour of a theory of multi-level governance.
Prospects on the citizenship of the European Union
June 1, 2011 Author: Ştefana Ignea
bstract: It has been two decades since Citizenship of the European Union was enforced by the Maastricht Treaty, in 1992. Throughout these years, it has evolved from an economic perspective to a more complex form, which stands as a guarantee for political, economic and social rights. The European Union has improved through the enforcement of a EU citizenship and has grown to a more democratic and modern “political object” or “form”, but it still faces great challenges concerning this aspect. An important part of the Justice and Home Affairs area is still controlled by the member states, including the granting and withdrawl of EU citizenship. The general guidelines and the directives submitted by the EU are still weakly implemented within the member states and this is one of the reasons why the EU citizens face difficulties when excercising their rights on a supranational level.Recent Eurobarometres have shown that less than half of the EU citizens are familiar with their status and rights within the EU. This problem, being a two-way road, is why both institutions and citizens are to blame for it.First step: aknowledging there Is a problem. Next step: solving it. Citizenship of the European Union needs to be rebranded and get a better support for its understanding and implementation. This paper is about the chalenges, both old and new, the EU citizenship has faced since its enforcement and, mainly, since the last enlargement wave in 2007.
Keywords: citizenship of the European Union, European rights, participation, awareness, Eurobarometer
The Transport Success Story: Europeanization in The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania
June 1, 2011 Author: Eleanor E. Zeff & Ellen B. Pirro
Abstract: This paper explores the nature of success in EU transport policy implementation in three of the newer Eastern member states, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, to see how their governments and administrations are integrating with the European Union. It utilizes the concept of Europeanization (as used by the European Union) to examine how multi level governance works for this one sector of policy implementation. In particular, we focus on supra national, national and regional inputs and development to explain how these nations are integrating their transport sectors within their nations and with the European Union. Our case histories show three different stages of transport sector development: the great progress in the Czech Republic; the plans and programs created by Slovakia with the European Union which should bring notable success within the next five years; and the initial stages of Romania’s efforts in the transport area.
Key words: European Union, multi-level governance, Romania, Slovakia, transport policy
The role of national parliaments in the European decision-making process after the Treaty of Lisbon The EU early-warning system for subsidiarity control
June 1, 2011 Author: Corina Turşie & Ciprian Niţu
The Lisbon Treaty introduced an early-warning mechanism for subsidiarity control, which formally gave an institutional procedure to enforce the subsidiarity principle. This mechanism has been developed as a way to increase the national parliaments input in the European system of governance, but, beyond that formal competence, the system proves to be of little practical relevance because it presents some weaknesses and does not bring a relevant shift inside the traditional institutional triangle designed for making decisions for the EU. The method used to reach such a conclusion is the analysis of the early-warning system for subsidiarity along four key elements of an efficient mechanism of risk prevention.
Regionalization amidst ‘state-shrinkage’: the case of Vojvodina
June 1, 2011 Author:Vassilis Petsinis
The advent of the third millennium saw rapid and radical changes in Serbia’s constitutional landscape. One of the debates has been the restitution of certain competencies to the assembly of Vojvodina. Since 2000, the Vojvodinian debate was overshadowed by other domestic and foreign policy priorities until it kicked off again by the end of the third millennium’s first decade. Correspondingly, by the end of November 2009, the assembly of Vojvodina and the Serbian parliament jointly adopted the new statute for Vojvodina. In this work, I focus on the political significance of the new statute for Vojvodina, as part of the broader process to set Serbia’s regionalization on novel foundations. What I try to demonstrate is that the new statute is compatible with the ‘European’ guidelines and standards on contemporary regionalization. It also comes to fill in certain gaps and ambiguities in the 2006 Serbian Constitution.
Keywords: Serbia, Vojvodina, regionalization, regionalism, European integration