‘SYRIZA and Podemos, we shall overcome’? Left transnational cooperation in times of crisis

2021 ◽  
pp. 030981682110615
Author(s):  
Vladimir Bortun
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Transnational Cooperation ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
Party Family ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Radical Left

The Eurozone crisis and its austerity-centred management opened up a fertile ground for the so-called ‘radical left parties’ (RLPs) and their anti-austerity agenda. Moreover, it provided a unique opportunity for this party family to enhance its rather underdeveloped transnational cooperation. Sharing several objective and subjective features, SYRIZA (Greece) and Podemos (Spain) – arguably the two most prominent European RLPs today – seemed particularly well-placed to develop a strong transnational cooperation. However, the current literature has hardly addressed whether such expectations have been borne out. Indeed, despite a recently increased interest in the radical left, there are still very few studies focusing on the transnational cooperation among RLPs. Building on documentary research and qualitative elite interviews covering the 2014–2017 period, the article has two main objectives: first, to map the cooperation between SYRIZA and Podemos by identifying the key channels and actors of this process; second, to assess their cooperation over said period, with a focus on the factors fuelling and obstructing it. The article argues that the relationship between the two parties reached its peak around SYRIZA’s electoral victory in January 2015 but declined following its deal with the ‘Troika’ 6 months later, which blatantly contradicted SYRIZA’s anti-austerity programme. It is shown that while the main incentives behind their cooperation have been their shared opposition to neoliberalism, the European Union’s (EU) reaction to the crisis, and the similarities in their countries’ economic situations, the main obstacles hindering that cooperation have been the primacy of national politics and the diverging views on the EU. The findings arguably provide useful insights for the wider left transnational cooperation today, in a time of renewed global capitalist crisis, when such cooperation is perhaps more relevant than ever.

Policy responses to the Eurozone crisis: A comparative analysis of southern European administrations

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manto Lampropoulou
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
External Factor ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Fiscal Consolidation ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Administrative Change ◽  
Administrative Tradition ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

The Eurozone crisis has worked as a forceful external factor for activating a series of fiscal and structural adjustments in the countries of the EU periphery. Public administration was a key reform area and has undergone notable transformations under the fiscal consolidation programmes. This paper aims at identifying the impact of the crisis on public administration with a focus on southern Europe. It reviews and compares the goals and the outcomes of the administrative reform programmes that were implemented in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain during the crisis. This cluster forms a distinct administrative paradigm emanating from the Napoleonic state tradition. The relationship between administrative tradition and administrative change or persistence is explored in a historical institutionalist perspective. The findings identify similarities, divergences and variations across and within the Southern countries, also suggesting that while certain changes occurred, the Napoleonic features of the southern administrations remained largely untouched by the reform programmes.

Split-Level Legitimacy and Politicization in EU Governance

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-84
Author(s):  
Vivien A. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Good Thing ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Eu Governance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Related Identity ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Eu

Chapter 3 explores the dilemmas of the EU’s “split-level” legitimacy, where output and throughput operate primarily at the EU level and input at the national, and then examines the impact of politicization on both national and EU levels. The chapter begins by considering the EU’s legitimacy problems stemming from the fragmentation of its governing activities, with policies and processes located mainly at the EU level while politics remains national. While the EU has been largely successful in improving legitimacy in all three categories over time, it has faced major challenges to legitimacy. In the Eurozone crisis, citizens’ sense of EU legitimacy has suffered even if their EU-related identity may not have. The chapter then focuses on the EU’s biggest challenge, the politicization of EU governance. After briefly describing the longstanding depoliticization of EU technocratic governance, this section argues that the EU’s politicization has been increasing not only at the bottom, as evidenced by the weakening of mainstream parties to the benefit of populist challengers, or from the bottom up, as national politics influences EU actors, but also at the top, where EU actors have become more politicized. The chapter uses the debates about who is in charge or control of EU governance to show how scholars’ defense of “their” actor through “new” or traditional versions of intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, and parliamentarism actually demonstrates the EU’s increasingly political dynamics of interaction. This chapter ends with the question: Is such politicization a good thing or a bad thing?

EU Powers Under External Pressure

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Eckes
Keyword(s):  
External Pressure ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Member States ◽  
External Relations ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Organizational Principles ◽  
The Eu

This book argues that external actions of the European Union result in an acceleration of national politics being locked into a tightening net of EU law. It brings to light the -hidden effects of EU external actions on, for example, the interpretation of organizational principles, pre-emption, and international obligations of the Member States. It then connects these effects to the broader debate on the democratic crisis, by engaging with the basic structures of the EU legal order and the Union’s relations with its citizens. The focus of this book is on the ‘outside-in’ effects of EU external relations. More specifically, the book sheds light on how the Union’s external actions affect the power division between the EU and its Member States, the structures that shape the relationship between the Union and its citizens, as well as the autonomy, effectiveness, and legitimacy of EU law. It examines, for example, the interpretation and potential of organizational principles, such as loyalty, subsidiarity, primacy, and coherence, in the context of external relations. It analyses how the choice of an external legal basis affects Member States’ powers. It traces how the European Parliament represents EU citizens in external relations. The book then analyses these legal findings through the lens of ‘structure of bonding’, that is, basic structures that have the potential to frame and affect the Union’s relations with its citizens. It shows how bonding structures could be used to justify that the Union takes external actions, including where they constrain Member States.

The Concept of Europeanization and Possibilities of its Application to the Analysis of Ukraine-EU Relations

2017 ◽  
pp. 149-160
Author(s):  
Natalia Popova
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Member States ◽  
External Governance ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Eu Studies ◽  
The Eu

The concept of Europeanization has become quite fashionable in EU studies in recent years. It is often used for the analysis of the relations between the EU and non-member states. The aim of the article is to examine the possibilities of its application in explaining the relationship between the EU and Ukraine. The structure of the article is as follows: firstly, the concept of Europeanization is defined considering such two disputable issues as distinguishing among concepts of Europeanization and European integration as well as Europeanization and EU-ization. Next, the evolution of the theoretical research of Europeanization and definition of this concept are analyzed. Two main mechanisms of Europeanization (conditionality and socialization) are examined. The author considers main approaches to the analysis of the "external" Europeanization emphasizing the concept of "external governance". Three groups of factors which influence the effectiveness of Europeanization are briefly analyzed. And finally, the peculiarities of application of the Europeanization concept to the Ukraine-EU relations are outlined. Keywords: EU, Ukraine, Europeanization, EU-ization, ‘external’ Europeanization, conditionality, socialization, concept of ‘external governance’

The European Union’s Policy towards its Eastern Neighbours: The Crisis in Ukraine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatsiana Shaban
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
European Neighbourhood Policy ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
External Governance ◽  
Institutional Challenges ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

The European Union’s neighbourhood is complex and still far from being stable. In Ukraine, significant progress has occurred in many areas of transition; however, much work remains to be done, especially in the field of regional development and governance where many legacies of the Soviet model remain. At the crossroads between East and West, Ukraine presents an interesting case of policy development as an expression of European Union (EU) external governance. This paper asks the question: why was the relationship between the EU and Ukraine fairly unsuccessful at promoting stability in the region and in Ukraine? What was missing in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in Ukraine that rendered the EU unable to prevent a conflict on the ground? By identifying security, territorial, and institutional challenges and opportunities the EU has faced in Ukraine, this paper underlines the most important factors accounting for the performance of its external governance and crisis management in Ukraine.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v12i2.1310

A Review of the Current Literature on the Relationship between History and Studio

Transactions ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-17
Author(s):  
Margaret Stewart ◽  
Lynda Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
The Relationship

Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Public Preferences ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
The Eu

The European Union (EU) is facing one of the rockiest periods in its existence. At no time in its history has it looked so economically fragile, so insecure about how to protect its borders, so divided over how to tackle the crisis of legitimacy facing its institutions, and so under assault by Eurosceptic parties. The unprecedented levels of integration in recent decades have led to increased public contestation, yet at the same the EU is more reliant on public support for its continued legitimacy than ever before. This book examines the role of public opinion in the European integration process. It develops a novel theory of public opinion that stresses the deep interconnectedness between people’s views about European and national politics. It suggests that public opinion cannot simply be characterized as either Eurosceptic or not, but rather that it consists of different types. This is important because these types coincide with fundamentally different views about the way the EU should be reformed and which policy priorities should be pursued. These types also have very different consequences for behaviour in elections and referendums. Euroscepticism is such a diverse phenomenon because the Eurozone crisis has exacerbated the structural imbalances within the EU. As the economic and political fates of member states have diverged, people’s experiences with and evaluations of the EU and national political systems have also grown further apart. The heterogeneity in public preferences that this book has uncovered makes a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing Euroscepticism unlikely to be successful.

The Democratic Costs of Constitutionalization— The European Case

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter Grimm
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
European Law ◽  
European Court ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

This chapter examines the democratic costs of constitutionalization by focusing on the European case. It first considers the interdependence of democracy and constitutionalism before discussing how constitutionalization can put democracy at risk. It then explores the tension between democracy and fundamental rights, the constitutionalization of the European treaties, and the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) two separate judgments regarding the relationship between European law and national law. It also assesses the impact of the ECJ’s jurisprudence on democracy, especially in the area of economic integration. The chapter argues that the legitimacy problem the EU faces is caused in part by over-constitutionalization and that the remedy to this problem is re-politicization of decisions with significant political implications.

The Contingent Effect of Team Composition on the Performance of Entrepreneurial Teams

2019 ◽  
pp. 654-680
Author(s):  
Serghei Musaji ◽  
Julio De Castro
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Team Composition ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Team Diversity ◽  
Entrepreneurial Teams ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Active Debate ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

Despite the continuous interest in studying entrepreneurial teams, the relationship between team composition and, particularly, team diversity and performance remains fertile ground for active debate. Taking roots in the knowledge-based view and organizational learning literatures, this chapter argues that performance in entrepreneurial teams is contingent on (a) the overlap between team members’ knowledge/competences and the content of the performed tasks, (b) the duplication of the team members’ knowledge in the areas with that content, (c) the nature of tasks (exploration or exploitation), (d) the team’s flexibility to adapt to changes in the content and nature of those tasks, and (e) the rate of environmental change. Because an important source of ambiguity in the understanding of how team diversity and performance are linked ties to issues of how team diversity is conceptualized and operationalized, the chapter also proposes a new way of looking at diversity in future research.

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