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This paper focuses on the progress of democratic consolidation in Central Europe from the perspective of national security. The paper analyzes the depth of democratic reforms that have already taken place in the various national security institutions of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland and highlights the gains that have been made as well as areas in need of deeper reforms in order to ensure the success of the overall democratic consolidation effort in each case. Special emphasis is placed on examining the interface between the various government agencies that participate in the national security policy making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the adoption of new constitutions in Eastern and Central Europecontaining numerous provisions allowing for referendums, cross-nationalcomparative work on the policy effects of referendums across theEuropean continent have become possible. This allows us to close animportant gap in the literature on referendums, namely to assess theconsequences of these institutions at the national level. Moreprecisely, we wish to assess whether the well-documented policy effectsat the subnational level (e.g., in the United States or Switzerland)carry over to the national level. Some of these subnational studiessupport the theoretically derived implication that the possibility ofreferendums leads to policies more closely reflecting the voters'wishes. The present paper provides empirical tests of this, but contraryto other empirical studies so far, proposes a comparative analysis atthe national level. For several policies in the domain of laborregulation we show that the presence of institutions allowing forreferendums reduces the difference between policy outcomes and thevoters' wishes as assessed in surveys. We carry out these tests on thebasis of several datasets covering a range of mainly Western countries,and rely on a diverse set of methodologies to assess policy outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address the impact of national and sectoral level economic interests on the development of national government policies to promote economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe. EU membership places the Central and East European countries before important dilemmas. For one, EU membership ultimately forces these countries to think more regionally or locally than was previously the case-in particular with respect to the use and administration of the EU's structural and cohesion funds. Despite the fact that these countries have been able to rely on more centralized control and administration of these funds for the period 2004-2006, the EU essentially requires that this policy be shifted to one of more decentralized control and administration for the next framework period 2007-2013. At the same time, however, it may well be possible to think of the crucial economic development concerns facing these countries as more explicitly national and/or global in character. In particular, these countries now stand before the requirement of consolidating the past decade of privatization, economic restructuring and foreign investments into more firmly embedded systems of economic production and technological development. At the same time, powerful forces are at work in the European Union to limit the degree of economic competition between East and West, potentially reducing the inflow of resources and restricting the nature and shape of the economic development tools these countries have at their disposal. This paper thus attempts to illuminate an important debate and emerging in Central and Eastern Europe and the New Europe over appropriate national level economic development tools and goals. This debate revolves around both centralized and regional control of the EU's structural and cohesion funds on the one hand, and the nature and shape of national-level economic development goals and their translation into industrial policy on the other. In important ways, this debate reinvigorates previous discussion of the North/South debate in Europe. The basic goal of this paper then is to outline the basic forces involved in the construction of national level economic policy-in particular in Hungary-and thereby to explain the basic shape and contour of emerging national strategies of economic development. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role have ethnic minorities played in the creation of new policies and state behavior in East-Central Europe? This paper argues that ethnic groups prompted European institutions to apply pressures on states to change their domestic policies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU-membership is tightly conditioned, leaving little room for real negotiations between the applicant states and the EU. The EU is not passively waiting for applicants to adapt to the membership criteria, however. On the contrary they are actively taking part in the adoption process, giving financial and administrative assistance and policy recommendations on the basis of the annual opinions of the progress made. The aim of the paper is to study the role of the EU in the domestic policy processes in the former and current applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe.The overarching question to be answered is thus: In what way, to what extent and with what consequences does the EU interfere in the domestic policy processes in applicant countries?The second part aims at analysing the effects of the pattern discovered in part one and what lessons EU should learn from the last and current enlargement processes, when starting negotiations with new countries. The specific questions related to section two are thus: What are the consequences of the EU interference in terms of sovereignty, democracy and accountability, popular trust and support for the domestic political institutions in the candidate countries? How should EU deal with these issues in future enlargement processes? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the activities of various transnational actors as they seek to diffuse international anti-trafficking norms to domestic level and influence state anti-trafficking policies and initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]