Sliding Towards EC Membership: Norway in Scandinavian Perspective

1992 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Svåsand ◽  
Ulf Lindström
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Abrupt Change ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Single European Act ◽  
East West

THIS ARTICLE ADDRESSES THE PROBLEM OF NORWEGIAN membership in the EC. Why is it so difficult for Norway to follow in the tracks of Sweden and Finland, and for that matter the rest of Western Europe?The changes on the European continent since the collapse of the East-West divide have also altered the political agenda in the Scandinavian countries. The ambitions of the EC-internal market as well as the Single European Act speeded up a discussion of how Finland, Norway and Sweden should position themselves in order not to lose out economically and become marginalized politically. In Norway, the traumatic EC debate in 1972 had split the country, and the parties, into two camps, resulting in the rejection of EC membership by 53 per cent of the electorate. Since then, the issue has been absent from political debate. In Finland and Sweden the official rationale for not discussing the issue disappeared simultaneously with the regimes in Eastern Europe, suddenly pushing the topic onto the political agenda, causing an abrupt change in Swedish EC policy.

scholarly journals The Populist phenomena and the reasons for their success in Hungary

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (s1) ◽  
pp. 23-45
Author(s):  
Viktor Glied
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Essential Question ◽  
The Right

AbstractAfter the parliamentary elections in 2014, the weakened legitimacy of the Hungarian government could be re-established through activism in migration issues. Fidesz-KDNP that won elections twice already highlighted migration as the main theme of governance from 2014 to 2018, suppressing every other topic on the political agenda. The position that was established for purposes of the Hungarian domestic situation and politics initially faced intense rejections all over Europe, but then garnered some supporters as well, mostly in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, and to a smaller extent among the right-wing and populist parties of Western Europe. The anti-refugee and populist approach caused significant success in the communication field to the subscribing parties and governments, and also legitimised Hungarian government’s efforts that could mean it met the majority of the Hungarian society’s expectations. The most essential question is that how can political science reshape its terms and thoughts on populism to understand this phenomenon better, moreover what are the reasons of populism and why is the populist propaganda such successful in Hungary and Eastern Europe.

From Black Death to Black Hole

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Piatkowski
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Black Hole ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Black Death ◽  
European Continent ◽  
The Past

In this chapter I explain why Poland and most countries in Eastern Europe have always lagged behind Western Europe in economic development. I discuss why in the past the European continent split into two parts and how Western and Eastern Europe followed starkly different developmental paths. I then demonstrate how Polish oligarchic elites built extractive institutions and how they adopted ideologies, cultures, and values, which undermined development from the late sixteenth century to 1939. I also describe how the elites created a libertarian country without taxes, state capacity, and rule of law, and how this ‘golden freedom’ led to Poland’s collapse and disappearance from the map of Europe in 1795. I argue that Polish extractive society was so well established that it could not reform itself from the inside. It was like a black hole, where the force of gravity is so strong that the light could not come out.

Strategies of Dominance

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-110
Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries ◽  
Sara B. Hobolt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Real Risk ◽  
Party Strategies ◽  
Dominant Parties ◽  
And Control

This chapter examines the strategies employed by dominant parties to secure their long-term electoral success and control of office. The first of the dominant-party strategies is that of distinctive convergence, whereby dominant parties take positions closer to the center ground in order to appeal to the tastes of a larger share of the electorate. Second, dominant parties seek to keep challengers at bay by controlling the political agenda and avoiding issues that may be disadvantageous to them. The final strategy concerns the emphasis of dominant parties on their competence. In combination, the strategies of distinctive convergence, issue avoidance, and competence have kept the old center-right and center-left parties in a dominant position in most of Western Europe for decades. Yet, these strategies are not without risk. As dominant parties converge to the center, there is a real risk that voters perceive them as too similar and feel they lack a genuine alternative.

Potentials for East — West Integration: The Case of Foreign Direct Investment

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
M van Geenhuizen ◽  
P Nijkamp
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Direct Investment ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
East West

Reshaping the relationships between Western Europe and the former communist bloc is one of the most intriguing challenges for the coming years. Will Central and Eastern Europe become passive players in the European and world economy, or will companies located there become integrated as fully fledged partners? Foreign direct investment (FDI) is heavily concentrated in a few countries in Central and Eastern Europe. It is argued that the type of FDI is more important than the amount of FDI. There is a need for a critical assessment of the strategies of the investors and the impacts on local entrepreneurship. In this vein, the authors describe various interesting future research paths and make policy recommendations.

Moldovan armed forces will need continued NATO support

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Defence Spending ◽  
Political Scene

Subject Moldova's armed forces. Significance Russia's military build-up in Crimea and other parts of the continent, combined with its intervention in Syria, continue to alarm nations in Eastern Europe. With Moscow maintaining a military contingent in Transnistria and its growing military presence regionally, Moldova's armed forces and their relations with NATO will come under greater focus. However, Moldova's financial plight will make military reform and boosting defence spending difficult. Impacts The banking scandal that has rocked the political scene will push defence reform lower down the political agenda. A more militarily capable Moldova would be a useful partner for Ukraine in the future. Moldova may be invited to participate in more NATO exercises to enhance capacity-building measures.

scholarly journals An East‑West Divide in the European Union? The Visegrad Four States in Search of the Historical Self in National Discourses on European Integration

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-191
Author(s):  
Christopher Walsch
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Member State ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Discourses ◽  
The Individual ◽  
East West ◽  
The Eu

Abstract This article explores whether a new east‑west divide exists in the enlarged European Union by analysing national discourses on European integration in the Visegrad Four (V4) states. Two V4 foreign policy legacies form the basis of analysis: the “Return to Europe” discourse and the discourses around the reconstruction of the historical self. The article gives evidence that the V4 countries share sovereignty in external policies and thus have a distinct European orientation. V4 national‑conservative governments hold sovereigntist positions, however, in policy areas that they consider falling exclusively within the realm of the member state. Comparison with Western European member states gives evidence that the post-1945 paradigm changes were more profound than those of post-1989 ones of Eastern Europe. This historic legacy can explain the more integrationist orientations in Western Europe. The article concludes that behaviour of the individual V4 state seems to be of greater importance for each member than collective V4 group action. Finally, the article gives an outlook on ways in which solidarity between the Western and Eastern halves of the EU can be exercised in an ideologically diverging Union.

East, West, and the Return of ‘Central’: Borders Drawn and Redrawn

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Lee ◽  
Robert Bideleux
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Impact ◽  
East West

Western Europe has not only met but also married Eastern Europe, even if there are rumours that it was a marriage of convenience, consummated in ‘EU Europe’. Nevertheless, a significant outcome of the cohabitation has been the resurgence of debates about the status, location, and distinctiveness of ‘Central Europe’; the changing nature of borders and borderlands; and the emergence of ‘new’ East/West divides. Because World War II was predominantly fought on the Eastern Front, almost 95 per cent of Europe's fatalities of war and genocide were in Central and Eastern Europe (including Germany and Austria). These mass killings, combined with the paramount role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of the Third Reich, led to substantial reconfigurations of the borders and ethnic compositions of European states. This article examines the reconfigurations of European territories at the close of World War II, the drastic redrawing of European borders during 1945–1948 and again in the late 1980s and 1990s, the impact on European borders of the European Union and its ‘deepening’ and ‘widening’, and Europe's new East/West divide.

De-Orientalizing the Western Gaze on Eastern Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-162
Author(s):  
Barbara Christophe
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Publishing Houses

Comparing narratives of the Soviet occupation in 1940 in current textbooks by two leading Lithuanian publishing houses, I claim that Lithuanian textbooks offer diverging accounts, which mirror to a large extent the opposing mnemonic frames supported by two rival political camps. I also show that the same textbooks tame those differences by transcending the politically charged frames they have chosen in the first place, presenting, for example, the USSR as both villain and victim of the war. Considering the relevance of these findings for our understanding of dynamics of remembering in general and in the Lithuanian culture of memory in particular, I point out that embracing the political inherent in all acts of recalling the past does not necessarily lead to politicized, i.e. narrow-minded memories, and I reflect on what these mnemonic practices mean for reevaluating the traditional role of Eastern Europe as the backward other of Western Europe.

Policing with Noise

Beyond Bias ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 93-140
Author(s):  
Scott Krzych
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Spectrum

This chapter employs the discourse theory of Jacques Lacan and the political theory of Jacques Rancière to interrogate the conservative simulacrum of political debate. Michael Moore’s early documentaries produced waves of criticism from across the political spectrum, as critics expressed concern, and sometimes shock, in response to Moore’s flamboyant flouting of documentary conventions. Moore’s ironic performances lure his interlocutors into a defense of untenable political ideas and positions; the corresponding nonsense of the latter’s political speech demonstrates the bias or noise (in Rancière’s sense of the term) constitutive of the very status quo that Moore seeks to upend. Conservative films made to counter, critique, or contradict Moore’s earlier works hysterically mimic Moore’s form as the very means to dismiss his political arguments. Through the strictly formal debates in which they engage, conservative documentaries produce aesthetic noise as a spectacular means to drown out Moore’s own political agenda and divest the so-called debate of its explicit political content.

Nationalism in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages

1972 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitri Obolensky
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
General Definition ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The divergent views held by historians and sociologists as to what does and does not constitute nationalism will, I hope, provide me with some excuse for not attempting here a general definition of this phenomenon. Nor will I presume to adjudicate between the opinions of scholars like Hans Kohn who, confining their attention to Western Europe, will not hear of nationalism before the rise of modern states between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, and of historians like G. G. Coulton who, after surveying the policy of the Papacy, the life of the Universities, the internal frictions in the monasteries and the history of medieval warfare, concluded that nationalism, which had been developing in Western Europe since the eleventh century, became a basic factor in European politics by the fourteenth. My paper is concerned with the medieval history of Eastern Europe: an area which I propose to define, by combining a geographical with a cultural criterion, as the group of countries which lay within the political or cultural orbit of Byzantium. The subject is vast and complex, and I can do no more than select a few topics for discussion. These I would like to present as arguments in support of three theses.

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