Brussels blog round up for 17– 23 November: Budget troubles, France is downgraded, and are European young farmers facing extinction?

Chris Gilson and Stuart A Brown take a look at the week in Brussels blogging

Parma Eldalamberon XXII (2015), by J.R.R. Tolkien

Book review, by Andrew Higgins, of Parma Eldalamberon XXII (2015), by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Gilson and Arden R. Smit

Book review: enterprising care? Unpaid voluntary action in the 21st century by Irene Hardhill and Susan Baines Posted on April 22, 2012 by Blog Admin

Many voluntary organisations now face having to take up the provision of some public services as government funding shrinks, and are also under considerable pressure to become more enterprising. Chris Gilson reviews Enterprising Care? which includes case study descriptions, discussions of academic debates about volunteering, work and care as well as research practice

Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson: “Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now”

Following this week’s the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigating matters of European Politics and Policy –Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson (also the creators of this blog!) discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out of restrictive publishing loops

Foreword: Revisiting Gilson and Kraakman’s Efficiency Story

Gilson and Kraakman\u27s ‘Mechanisms of Market Efficiency’ is part of the canon of modem corporate law scholarship, one of a handful of articles that has profoundly influenced the way we think about the field. It is also enigmatic, warranting a fresh look by those who think they know what it says from some long-ago reading or second-hand references by other authors

5 minutes with Salam Kawakibi on the Syrian crisis: “while we can see many political declarations, we cannot see any real action”

The crisis in Syria continues despite the efforts of Europe and the wider international community. In an interview with EUROPP editors Chris Gilson and Julian Kirchherr, as part of our coverage of the European neighbourhood, Salam Kawakibi of the Arab Reform Initiative discusses the roots of the conflict in Syria, its regional implications and the role that Europe might now be able to play

Five minutes with Noam Chomsky – “Europe is pretty much following behind US policy, no matter what that policy is”

Last week the General Assembly of the United Nations voted in favour of recognising Palestine as a non-member observer state. The EU was unable to reach a common position on the issue, with some states voting in favour and others, including Germany and the United Kingdom, abstaining. EUROPP editors Stuart A Brown and Chris Gilson asked Noam Chomsky for his views on the vote and Europe’s wider response to the Israel-Palestine crisis

What about the Lib Dems?

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claims that there have been “no deals and understandings” with either Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament, despite the media’s obsession with his (potential) role of kingmaker

Structuring accountability: non-governmental participation in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)

This paper issues from a conference on ‘Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance’, organised by Jan Aart Scholte in May 2007. It examines the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the role of parallel summitry that has established itself on the margins of the official biennial gathering. Now comprising thirty five ‘cooperation partners’ from the regions of Europe and East Asia, ASEM summits, and the many other meetings in its name, focus on a host of issue areas for cooperation, from the further development of ICT to climate change and anti-terrorism. However, while business groups and trade unions are accommodated within the formal structures of ASEM, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are not. Nevertheless, the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) has established itself alongside the summitry process, and the ways in which it has been able to influence government actions within ASEM to date have been contingent upon the particular structural conditions in which they have had to function. In demonstrating the tensions and opportunities inherent in the interregional space created by ASEM, this paper claims that accountability, itself a contested concept, is shaped by the structural frames of reference of agents, by their (power) relationships with one another and by both the internal and external mechanisms available to them to ensure accountability. As ASEM has yet to allow the formal inclusion of NGOs within its framework, claims and consultation to date have been conducted on the edges of the official track. In addition, the multitude of NGO types within the AEPF make it difficult to reach consensus and to organise difference. This difference also implicates and reinforces different levels of influence by NGO participants and highlights the fact that different NGOs may approach their remit quite differently. In addition, the ASEM process embeds an Asian versus European participation that is mirrored within AEPF, with the result that at times in the civil society realm, too, there is evidence to suggest that the structure can bring into conflict Asian versus European ways of doing business. Can accountability be ensured within structures whose modes may not be conducive to transparency and scrutiny? And what claims can the NGO community make for its own accountability? The conclusion examines whether the existing paradigm of civic engagement sets up an impossible hurdle for the establishment of open and accountable policy making behaviour within ASEM