ASSOCIATION-CUM-INTEGRATION: THE EU-UKRAINE ASSOCIATION AGREEMENT AND ‘ASSOCIATION LAW’ AS AN INSTITUTION OF UKRAINE’S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

In the Court of Justice’s case law, association agreements have been recognised as forming part of the communitarian legal system since the famous ‘Haegeman’ judgment in 1974. The new-generation association agreements concluded by the EU with its Eastern neighbour states explicitly offer a ‘stake in EU law’ as one of the incentives for neighbour states to adapt to the Union’s normative transfer. Less pronounced are perspectives on ‘association law’ itself which derives from the respective association agreements, as a distinct normative order with its own regulatory content that can influence both the associated country’s legal system as well as the EU’s and its Member States’ legal orders. This article aims to address this gap in the literature by first defining and outlining the features of the EU ‘association law’ phenomenon; it then aims to provide an account of the legal nature, regulatory content as well as the legal institutional and functional features of the EU-Ukraine ‘association law’ derived primarily from the Association Agreement between the European Union, its Member States and Ukraine, which entered in force on 1 September 2017, as well as the burgeoning secondary association law, including joint-institutional acts. In what follows, the article will discuss the notion of EU ‘association law’ in the context of the European Neighbourhood Policy and the so-called ‘new-generation association agreements’. It will then outline the teleological nature and instrumental logic of the EU-Ukraine ‘association law’ as an institution of integration, just as it will also disentangle the many layers of the institution of ‘association law’ – from participatory to instrumental and integration-oriented association modalities

Book review: Germany’s Russia problem: the struggle for balance in Europe by John Lough

In Germany’s Russia Problem: The Struggle for Balance in Europe, John Lough argues that Germany’s historically conditioned reflexes have distorted its view of Russia and inhibited its policy approach to this strategic issue. This sharp and insightful account into German-Russian relations is a very timely read for policymaking and scholarly communities alike, writes Andriy Tyushka

Twists and Turns of Democratic Transition and Europeanisation in East-Central Europe Since 1989: Betwixt EU Member and Neighbour State-Building

With democracy declining and becoming sporadically illiberal and populist in Europe and elsewhere, the questions of democratic transformation gain new resonance and topicality. Within the European Union and its neighbourhoods, the results of long-pursued Europeanisation are being reconsidered against the new criteria of democratic transition resilience, as well as against the new realities of emerging de-democratisation and de-Europeanisation undercurrents – and the re-emerging split of Europe. The thirtieth anniversary of the Central and Eastern European countries’ democratic transition and ‘return to EUrope’ provides a good opportunity to reassess successes and shortcomings of their transformation trajectories. Rather than engaging in a metrical exercise of measuring the quality of democracy in each EU member state, this article approaches the puzzle of East-Central European states’ transition resilience from an interdisciplinary law and politics perspective on the respective countries’ transition to EU ‘member-statehood’ and ‘neighbour-statehood’ as distinct types of statehood. In so doing, it develops an account of European Union ‘member state-building’ and ‘neighbour state-building’ as an inherent part of the respective countries’ simultaneous transformation, European integration, and state-building agendas. Drawing on the democratisation, Europeanisation and state-building literatures, as well as a wealth of primary sources, this article bridges the discussion of the differentiated EU-induced and EU-centric transition trajectories of candidate and non-candidate countries in light of them becoming successfully, or less so, ‘ideal’ EU members or neighbours, respectively

Book review: Germany’s Russia problem: the struggle for balance in Europe by John Lough

In Germany’s Russia Problem: The Struggle for Balance in Europe, John Lough argues that Germany’s historically conditioned reflexes have distorted its view of Russia and inhibited its policy approach to this strategic issue. This sharp and insightful account into German-Russian relations is a very timely read for policymaking and scholarly communities alike, writes Andriy Tyushka. Germany’s Russia Problem: The Struggle for Balance in Europe. John Lough. Manchester University Press. 2021

Strategic partnerships, international politics and IR theory

Strategic partnerships are the ‘new normal’ in International Relations. They emerged at the close of the twentieth century and are most likely here to stay for the decades to come. The acquis académiques on strategic partnerships is thriving in the business and economics literature, wherefrom it originates. In political science scholarship, a serious theoretical problematizing of the nature and meaning of the concept is, to a wider extent, lacking. This chapter problematizes strategic partnerships as an emerging political category and provides a thematic literature overview. It more closely addresses several domain-featured typologies of strategic partnerships as well as typologies of partnership-constitutive elements. By elucidating on the scholarly achievements and drawbacks from the so far three waves of studies on strategic partnerships, this chapter critically analyses the current situation in the field and develops a plea for a structural-functional analysis of strategic partnerships within the realist-constructivist epistemological framework

Partnerstwa strategiczne, polityka międzynarodowa i teoria stosunków międzynarodowych

Strategic partnerships are the “new normal” in International Relations. They emerged at the close of the twentieth century and are most likely here to stay for the decades to come. The acquis académiques on strategic partnerships is thriving in the business and economics literature, wherefrom it originates. In political science scholarship, a serious theoretical problematizing of the nature and meaning of the concept is, to a wider extent, lacking. This chapter problematizes strategic partnerships as an emerging political category and provides a thematic literature overview. It more closely addresses several domain- featured typologies of strategic partnerships as well as typologies of partnership- -constitutive elements. By elucidating on the scholarly achievements and drawbacks from the so far three waves of studies on strategic partnerships, this chapter critically analyzes the current situation in the field and develops a plea for a structural-functional analysis of strategic partnerships within the realist-constructivist epistemological framework

Gotowość do współpracy strategicznej: konwergencja celów i ról strategicznych

Seeking to disentangle what drives the cooperation willingness between would-be partners, this chapter advances two main assumptions that hypothesize the cause-effect relationship between the converging strategic goals and strategic roles, on the one hand, and the scope of cooperation willingness, on the other. It also theoretically contextualizes, conceptualizes as well as operationalizes the main three variables hypothesized. Based on the foreign-policy manifestos analysis, the chapter presents an original approach to the study of strategic goals and salient policy issues that actors seek to pursue, or tackle, in their external relations. an approached towards estimating the salience of foreign-policy goals and issues as well as the scope, direction and degree of their convergence is developed within the chapter as well. data-intensive matrices of indicators and measures of cooperation willingness, strategic goals and roles convergence accomplish the effort in theorizing a testable causal relationship within this dimension of strategic partnerships phenomenon

Państwa, organizacje międzynarodowe i partnerstwa strategiczne: teoretyczne podstawy modelu idealnego

drawing on the critical literature review from the previous chapter, this chapter sketches the minefield of theorizing an escapable phenomenon – strategic partnerships in world politics and IR theory. It first outlines the theory-building rationale and strategy, epistemological considerations and ontological standing; then it justifies why building of a „heuristic model” was chosen as a way of studying the phenomenon. The chapter develops a realist-constructivist approach to the study of strategic partnerships, according to which strategic partnerships can provide states and non-state actors with a form of foreign-policy assertiveness, special bilateral relations and alignment, as well as a form of structured international engagement. The theoretical and methodological discussions within this chapter are completed by five main hypotheses, a qualitatively-driven mixed-method methodological framework, including the description of main variables, their operationalization and measurement methods, data collection and research sampling

Specyfikacja i operacjonalizacja modelu: podstawowe korelaty partnerstw strategicznych

This chapter advances a testable analytical model of strategic partnerships in IR. The developed regression model of strategic partnerships between states and international organizations is built around a set of two dependent variables (cooperation willingness; cooperation sustainability), four independent variables (strategic goals convergence; strategic roles convergence; unique bonds; regularized bilateral strategic interactionism) as well as a single intervening variable (trust). The model- -underlying theory suggests that strategic partnerships are a product of the intertwined cooperation willingness and cooperation sustainability factors, with trust intervening as a salient factor in the process of cooperation. This means that the increase in cooperation willingness and cooperation sustainability will result in the increase of strategic partnership substantiality. This chapter theoretically contextualizes, conceptualizes and operationalizes the main seven variables, as well as develops a set of applicable qualitative and quantitative indicators and measures