European Union And Disunion

The Euro crisis catapulted the EU into its most serious political crisis since its inception, leaving it torn between opposing demands for more sovereignty and solidarity. This volume focuses on the key themes of disunion, sovereignty and solidarity. It assesses the main EU institutions: member states, civil society actors and policy areas.

The European Union means many different things to its many peoples. In Germany, for example, the European project was conceived mainly as post-national, or even post-sovereign. In France, by contrast, President Emmanuel Macron has pursued the vision of a sovereign Europe; that is, an EU that would become a formidable geopolitical actor. Yet, instead, Europe has struggled to ascertain its values abroad and even domestically, facing a sovereignist rebellion from its newer member states, such as Hungary and Poland, and the departure of Britain. The eurozone crisis has undermined the EU's economic credentials, the refugee crisis its societal cohesion, the failure to stand up to Russia its sense of purpose, and the Covid-19 pandemic its credibility as a protector of European citizens. The key argument of this book is that the multiple crises of the European project are caused by one underlying factor: its bold attempt to overcome the age of nation-states. Left unchecked, supranational institutions tend to become ever more bureaucratic, eluding control of the people they are meant to serve. The logic of technocracy is thus pitted against the democratic impulse, which the European Union is supposed to embody. Democracy in Europe has suffered as a result.

The United Kingdom; Great Britain; the British Isles; the Home Nations: such a wealth of different names implies uncertainty and contention - and an ability to invent and adjust. In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain in the past. She examines the mythology of Britishness, and how far - and why - it has faded. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and their limitations, while scrutinizing England's own fractures. And she demonstrates how the UK has been shaped by movement: of British people to other countries and continents, and of people, ideas and influences arriving from elsewhere. As acts of union and disunion again become increasingly relevant to our daily lives and politics, Colley considers how - if at all - the pieces might be put together anew, and what this might mean. Based on a 15-part BBC Radio 4 series.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The divided nature of Britain is not unique, and its experience is not unique in that regard. Every state has experienced internal division, and the current disputes over these divisions possess ample precedent. #2 The United Kingdom is a recent invention. It only became the official umbrella designation for England, Wales, Scotland, and for all or part of Ireland in 1801. But no one has ever been proud to be a UKanian. #3 The UK has acquired wide currency in recent decades, as a sort of euphemism. It is used to describe the country as a whole, when in reality, not all of the countries in it feel British. #4 The British have always been a mixture of different ethnic groups, and the United Kingdom is no different. The leaders of the United Kingdom have had to acknowledge and protect the autonomy and separate rights of the various countries and regions that are contained within the state-nation, while still creating a sense of belonging and allegiance with regard to the larger political community.

The European Union (EU) has reached crisis point. Populist and Nativist forces are militating against years of austerity economics, distant elites, and a rising tide of migration. Despite the EU's shortcomings, this book seeks to determine the future of the EU, outlining how the institution can learn lessons from the elements that have plunged much of Europe into social, economic and political turmoil. This book argues for reform not revolution. By interviewing politicians, economists, representatives of national bodies and EU citizens, this book provides unique insights never before disclosed and makes a major contribution to current debates on the future of the EU and the Eurozone.

Provides a critical analysis of Brexit, placing it in the broader context of the historical development of the British Constitution.

The European Union (EU) is in crisis. The crisis extends beyond Brexit, the fluctuating fortunes of the eurozone and the challenge of mass migration. It cuts to the core of the EU itself. Trust is eroding; power is shifting; politics are toxic; disillusionment is widespread; and solidarity has frayed. In this major new text leading academics come together to unpack all dimensions of the EU in crisis, and to analyse its implications for the EU, its member states and the ongoing study of European integration.

Between 1772 and 1795, Russia, Prussia, and Austria concluded agreements to annex and eradicate the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. With the partitioning of Poland, the dioceses of the Uniate Church (later known as the Greek Catholic Church) were fractured by the borders of three regional hegemons. Larry Wolff's deeply engaging account of these events delves into the politics of the Episcopal elite, the Vatican, and the three rulers behind the partitions: Catherine II of Russia, Frederick II of Prussia, and Joseph II of Austria. Wolff uses correspondence with bishops in the Uniate Church and ministerial communiquŽs to reveal the nature of state policy as it unfolded. Disunion within the Union adopts methodologies from the history of popular culture pioneered by Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre) and Carlo Ginzburg (The Cheese and the Worms) to explore religious experience on a popular level, especially questions of confessional identity and practices of piety. This detailed study of the responses of common Uniate parishioners, as well as of their bishops and hierarchs, to the pressure of the partitions paints a vivid portrait of conflict, accommodation, and survival in a church subject to the grand designs of the late eighteenth century's premier absolutist powers.

A comprehensive, critical assessment of the EU after Brexit The European Union is a political order of peculiar stamp and continental scope, its polity of 446 million the third largest on the planet, though with famously little purchase on the conduct of its representatives. Sixty years after the founding treaty, what sort of structure has crystallised, and does the promise of ever closer union still obtain? Against the self-image of the bloc, Perry Anderson poses the historical record of its assembly. He traces the wider arc of European history, from First World War to Eurozone crisis, the hegemony of Versailles to that of Maastricht, and casts the work of the EU’s leading contemporary analysts – both independent critics and court philosophers – in older traditions of political thought. Are there likenesses to the age of Metternich, lessons in statecraft from that of Machiavelli? An excursus on the UK’s jarring departure from the Union considers the responses it has met with inside the country’s intelligentsia, from the contrite to the incandescent. How do Brussels and Westminster compare as constitutional forms? Differently put, which could be said to be worse?