Economic Integration

The results of international trade have generated a set of both winners and losers. On one side we have the big companies and big producers that stand out and on the other hand, there is a sector that has been affected such as groups of peasants, rural communities, cooperatives, amongst others that live in the poor southern countries. Therefore, the objective of this research article is the search and the design of mechanisms that will counteract the flaws of the current systems, and that will translate into social policies to give a solution to the more unprotected people. Fair trade is an alternative that is heading towards practices of a more social and solidary economy and through these mechanisms, that are funded in

Decentralization in Ukraine and bottom-up European integration

Author´s accepted manuscript.Available from 30/07/2023.acceptedVersio

Reclaiming the local in EU peacebuilding: Effectiveness, ownership, and resistance

Since the early 2000s, the "local turn" has thoroughly transformed the field of peacebuilding. The European Union (EU) policy discourse on peacebuilding has also aligned with this trend, with an increasing number of EU policy statements insisting on the importance of "the local." However, most studies on EU peacebuilding still adopt a top-down approach and focus on institutions, capabilities, and decision-making at the EU level. This special issue contributes to the literature by focusing on bottom-up and local dynamics of EU peacebuilding. After outlining the rationale and the scope of the special issue, this article discusses the local turn in international peacebuilding and identifies several interrelated concepts relevant to theorizing the role of the local, specifically those of effectiveness, ownership, and resistance. In the conclusion, we summarize the key contributions of this special issue and suggest some avenues for further research

Interest Groups, NGOs or Civil Society Organisations? The Framing of Non-State Actors in the EU

Scholars have used varying terminology for describing non-state entities seeking to influence public policy or work with the EU’s institutions. This paper argues that the use of this terminology is not and should not be random, as different ‘frames’ come with different normative visions about the role(s) of these entities in EU democracy. A novel bibliometric analysis of 780 academic publications between 1992 and 2020 reveals that three frames stand out: The interest group frame, the NGO frame, as well as the civil society organisation frame; a number of publications also use multiple frames. This article reveals the specific democratic visions contained in these frames, including a pluralist view for interest groups; a governance view for NGOs as ‘third sector’ organisations, and participatory and deliberative democracy contributions for civil society organisations. The use of these frames has dynamically changed over time, with ‘interest groups’ on the rise. The results demonstrate the shifting focus of studies on non-state actors in the EU and consolidation within the sub-field; the original visions of European policy-makers emerging from the 2001 White Paper on governance may only partially come true

Robust image analysis with sparse representation on quantized visual features

10.1109/TIP.2012.2219543IEEE Transactions on Image Processing223860-871IIPR

"The Commission's bureaucratic sectorisation: Resource or constraint for a European form of interest representation?"

Having chosen to compare a very integrated policy-sector, which is agriculture, with a policy field based on national competences (nuclear energy), the research attempts to determine if there is more convergence between the national policy styles in the sectors in a very integrated policy field than in a policy area where policy-making is mainly based on intergovernmental bargaining. I argue that looking systemically at the sector specific characteristics of European policy-making, we observe sectorally divergent styles of public-private interaction, which are mediated by the interaction style forged at the national level. Contrary to Gerda Falkner's study we do thus not observe "rather more convergence than before between the geographic layers of the European Union and between the Member States.

“The Negotiation Process in the European Union: The Mediation-Role of Structures in Negotiations Between Social Actors and the Community re: the Eastern Enlargement Process”

The paper, drawing on evidence from a case study-German actors’ strategies in the Eastern enlargement discussions-argues that approaches focusing on the macro-level of analysis, and thus following conventional wisdom in enlargement studies, can too easily neglect the subtleties of a policy-making process. These subtleties can be seen more clearly in an analysis of routine, rather than “constitutional or historical,” decisions. These processes of elaboration of public policies on the European level are characterised not only by the interaction of a number of national actors, both public and private, but also by the complexity of the negotiation process and, finally, by the weak formalisation of decision-making procedures. This form of governance and policy-making in the European Union makes it necessary, in order to analyze actors’ strategies in the decision-making processes, to take policy-making structures on both the national and the European levels into account. In defining a different legitimate order and, therefore different ways to exercise political power, these structures mediate the activities of actors and allow for both the Commission and the social actors to intervene on various decision-making levels. Yet, at the same time, there is substantial evidence to suggest that national governments still enjoy a great deal of leverage in shaping the social and economic conditions of their societies according to prevailing political preferences