International relations scholarship on the European Union and EU law: ships passing in the night?

From the dominant points of view in theories of International Relations (IR), the European Union (EU) is a phenomenon both difficult to comprehend and precarious. Depending on the specific school of thought, scholars would expect European integration to fail, due to (a) the persistent dominance of nation states and their struggle for relative power, (b) divergent interests among member states combined with a failure to shape an institutional order that could successfully manage this divergence, or (c) the failure to develop a shared identity across member states. Those (fewer) IR scholars who are truly convinced of the EU’s long-term significance are divided into three camps: integration idealists, left-wing Eurosceptics and right-wing Eurosceptics. That leaves very few integration pragmatists, and much in the dominant IR positions is counterintuitive, to say the least, for students of EU law. This chapter maps out the IR community’s takes on European integration and relates them to scholarship on European integration and EU law. Where and how do these literatures speak past one another? Where and how could they learn from and build on each other instead

Critical Theories

This chapter explains how critical theories problematize the notion of great power competition because it is a state-centric one, because it grants a disproportionate role to the material aspects of power, and because it is by and large status quo affirming. For critical theorists, the global order is not simply a reflection of the distribution of material capabilities among states. Rather, power operates much more diffusely: it links different types of actors at different levels of governance and across borders. It also includes ideational components (the ability to persuade) alongside material components (the ability to force). The author shows that critical theories demand fundamental change. They do not expect it to emerge from states, and certainly not from the most powerful, because they have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Great power competition as studied by mainstream international relations theories is unlikely to truly change the global order, as it is usually part of the status quo game: international relations as we have come to expect them to work. There is a competition between elites, and it harms those most who are already disadvantaged. Critical theories therefore propose a broader framework for understanding the dynamics of competition among great powers in the international system, beyond a focus on material state power and always with an emancipatory agenda

The education skills trap in a dependent market economy. Romania's case in the 2000s

We discuss the political economic development of Romania since 1989, with a focus on the evolution of higher education (HE). First, we place this evolution in the context of demand for HE by prospective students and employers, focusing on the low demand for skills in the MNC-dominated Romanian economy. Second, we provide empirical insight on indicators of quality, enrolment, and funding as key features of the HE system. We argue that Romania has evolved into a dependent market economy entrenched in a low-skills equilibrium, and that the weakness of the HE system is a key element in this process