Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski Boeken

Despite its unequalled history of success, the European Union is still far from its citizens. In the aftermath of the failed referenda on the European constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands in the early summer of 2005, the EU is facing a severe crisis of trust. Hence, the questions arise: how much pressure can the community tolerate in order to persist and what does hold it together in times of scarcity, conflict, danger, and threat? The contributions of this volume do not only provide a variety of conceptualizations of European identity in the broad field of social sciences such as sociology, political theory and International Relations, but first and foremost intend to enrich the present research by offering new theoretical perspectives and recent empirical findings.

The volume deals with the impact of the EU on the Polish state and governance. Contributors from Politics and Law explore transformation processes, which are influenced by the EU, took place in the legal system, party landscape and various policy fields in Poland. The authors analyze amongs others counterterrorism policy, climate and energy policy, foreign policy as well as gender equality policy of Poland. In addition, the transformation processes in the Polish judiciary, interest representation and parties are discussed. With contributions by: Ireneusz P. Karolewski, Monika Sus, Robert Grzeszczak, Stanislaw Konopacki, Jolanta Maj, Anna Bachmann, Anna Paczesnika, Agnieszka K. Cianciara, Ewa Wójtowicz, Andzej Ceglarz, Andrzej Ancygier.

The volume studies the Polish term as a crucial example of the rotating EU Council Presidency after the Lisbon Treaty. By covering all relevant policy fields, this in-depth analysis of the arguably most ambitious Presidency since the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty provides a balanced and differentiated evaluation of the profile of the reformed EU Council Presidency. The volume embarks on the analysis by relating to three main aspects of rotating Presidencies. First, the introduction systematizes the major functions of the rotating Presidency. Against this background, the individual chapters analyze the Polish term. Second, the authors address the tension between the formal neutrality expectation and the tempting opportunity for the country holding the Presidency to foster its national interests through the informal impact on the policies formulated, decided upon and implemented during the Presidency. Third, the volume adopts a contingency approach by distinguishing between endogenous and exogenous variables that may affect the outcome and success of the EU Council Presidency. The authors are Polish and German experts, both from academia and think thanks, specialized in research on European Union.

The volume offers contributions from social sciences dealing with new challenges to the European welfare state. It includes new theoretical insights as well as empirical studies with a focus on one country or cross-country comparisons. The case studies include Austria, Belgium, Ireland, European Turks and the Belarus. The authors are particularly interested in questions regarding the relationships between welfare state and citizenship, the conflict potential of different welfare regimes, immigration and welfare, conditions of solidarity in multi-ethnic societies, welfare nationalism as well as the welfare state in the context of a dictatorship. The volume assembles contributions of renowned academics from several countries such as Austria, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and the US. They offer two major perspectives on the subject at hand, comprising the national framework of analysis of citizenship, nationalism, conflict and welfare as well as the comparative perspective.