Changing foreign policy: the Obama Administration’s decision to oust Mubarak

This paper analyses the decision of the Obama administration to redirect its foreign policy towards Egypt in the wake of the Arab Spring. It attempts to highlight the issue of how governments deal with decision-making at times of crisis, and under which circumstances they take critical decisions that lead to major shifts in their foreign policy track record. It focuses on the process that led to a reassessment of US (United States) foreign policy, shifting from decades of support to the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, towards backing his ouster. Specifically, the paper attempts to assess to what extent the decision to withdraw US support from a longstanding state-leader and ally in the Middle East can be seen as a foreign policy change (FPC). A relevant research question this paper pursues is: how can the withdrawal of US support to a regime considered as an ally be considered, in itself, as a radical FPC

EU representation in the UN Security Council Bridging the 'capabilities- expectations' gap

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:3812.015(no 157) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Cyprus and the European union: the significance of its smallness, both as an applicant and a member

Cyprus's smallness influenced its decision to seek EU membership and is now shaping its behaviour as a member state. Although Cyprus's size limits what it can seek to achieve in the EU, strategies allow it partly to overcome these limitations. In important respects Cyprus is a 'special' small EU state because of the way in which 'the Cyprus Problem' dominates much of its political focus and because it is the member state most geographically distanced from Brussels

The politics of fiscal policy in Europe

In this review the books: Economics, Politics and Budgets: The Political Economy of Fiscal Consolidations in Europe Carlos Mulas-Granados (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 316pp., ISBN: 978 1 4039 9942 9 and Fiscal Governance in Europe Mark Hallerberg, Strauch and Jürgen von Hagen (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009), 230pp., ISBN: 978 0 521 85746 8 are reviewed