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With the advancement of the eastern enlargement of the EU in the early 2000s, some experts and advocates of the European social model began labeling enlargement as the “Trojan horse” against Europeanization, for the Americanization of Europe. According to them the idea of the European social model would be seriously challenged after enlargement because the candidate countries from the formerly communist region had developed more liberal regimes in the course of their post-communist transformation, and were practicing a rather different brand of social partnership. Based on such concerns, the EU decided to include special requirements and recommendations for the strengthening of the forms of negotiations among the social partners in candidate countries. This paper reveals four major venues for change of the existing tripartite institutions in accession countries: (1) emphasis on a new philosophy of social dialogue as social governance rather than a more narrow “social peace” and interest intermediation mechanism; (2) broadening the scope of participants in social dialogue, development of social dialogue beyond the existing tripartite structures, as a broader civic engagement; (3) development of autonomous and multi-level social dialogue among the organizations of employees and employers, without the participation of the state, and especially in regard to the lower sectoral and regional levels; and (4) development of the capacity of the social partners to participate in social dialogue at the European level. The concluding section of the paper critically evaluates the development of social dialogue in the new EU member states, and addresses the issue about the extent to which their “revised” structures of social dialogue are able to contribute towards the sustainability of the European social model in an era of increased neo-liberal pressures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentarization and the institutionalization of human rights are two processes of constitutionalization in the EU that constitute a puzzle for explanations inspired by both rationalist and constructivist institutionalism. We propose to analyze these processes as strategic action in a community environment: Community actors use the liberal democratic identity, values and norms that constitute the EU's ethos strategically to put social and moral pressure on those community members that oppose the constitutionalization of the EU. Theoretically, this process will be most effective under conditions of high salience, legitimacy, publicity and resonance. In a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of the EU's constitutional decisions from 1951 to 2004, we show salience to be the by far most relevant condition of constitutionalization in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1992 Maastricht Agreement gave hope to some of the more optimistic EU scholars, policy makers, and other observers that a new era of foreign, security, and defense policy integration among EU member states was near. After some fifteen years since the signing of the Maastricht Agreement it is appropriate to take stock of the extent to which European states have been able to forge an "ever closer union" in foreign, security, and defense policy.Integration in these areas has neither achieved what the most optimistic EU observers had anticipated nor has it failed as miserably as the most pessimistic had predicted. The results are rather mixed. Variation among EU member states regarding the level of support for closer integration in foreign, security, and defense policy persists, and as the prelude to the Iraq War in 2003 demonstrated, EU member states are not immune to a complete breakdown in their foreign and security policy objectives.Such shifts from periods of greater foreign, security, and defense policy coordination to more fractious periods is part of a broader research question in international relations. States go through periods of intense coordination in the realms of foreign and security policy only to see complete disintegration and breakdown at other points. What explains this variation? This paper looks at the nature of foreign, security, and defense policy coordination and breakdown between states and at these dynamics among EU member states in particular. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Rhetorical action" is one of the most promising explanations of the EU expansion to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It claims that even though the immediate economic gains for existing member states from expansion to CEE are negligible, the CEE states were able to draw on prior rhetorical commitments within EU to equal and fair consideration of all applications for membership to exert moral and symbolic pressure and to obtain the more tangible benefits of EU membership. Thus, this explanation begins to engage with the question of the different kinds of power - material, symbolic - that can be brought to bear in international negotiations between states (and international organizations). In this paper, I discuss the interplay between material and symbolic forms of power within the logic of honour to sharpen these analytical distinctions in order to account for the paradoxes, tensions and possibilities contained in relations between states who have to maintain the important presumption that they are (formally) equal entities while remaining constrained by asymmetrical distributions of material power (economic, military, political). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War and disintegration of the USSR, we have seen total transformation of Finnish foreign policy. It includes membership in the European Union, diversification of economic and political ties with neighboring countries, involvement into creation of security architecture in Europe. The aim of the paper is to analyze main trends in Finnish foreign policy, defining priorities of Helsinki?s policy towards Central Europe and Baltic States as well as prospects for Finnish-Russian relations after EU and NATO enlargement in May 2004.The author is going to answer following questions: 1)What are political and economic interests of Finland in Central Europe?2)Is there separate Finnish policy towards Central Europe, which differs from Finnish position towards European Union in general?3)What kind of impact new Finnish policy towards Central European and Baltic countries may have for Finnish-Russian relations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why EU member states may or may not perceive that body as the appropriate level and institution for advancing national interests in the areas of foreign policy and defense and security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why not to encourage the transformation of current bureaucratic EU institutions for a wider European-Atlantic Community of Europe and North America, where the United States and Canada eventually could be invited to join? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]