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What factors drove the EU’s decision to add 10 new members by May 2004? This paper looks at the role played by Germany and Poland in this process, the largest actors among the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU states. In particular, the paper argues that Germany had strong national interests--economic, political, and historical--which led it to push hard for Polish membership in the EU, even over the objections of other EU states. Even in a post-national institution like the EU national interests and bilateral relations continue to play a large role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the heart of the EU?s problems in turning its European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) into an effective crisis management instrument are differences among EU member states about what role the EU should play as a security actor in a changing international context, what kind of instruments are to be used in what situation, and what the role of the military should be in all of this? This paper will analyse national responses to ESDP. The central argument presented is that while all EU members face the same pressures emanating from the international environment and ESDP, their responses are culturally conditioned. Growing convergence among EU member governments about the security challenges the EU is facing therefore does not produce convergence with regards to how to address them. The results are conflicting visions about the EU?s role in the world and the function ESDP should perform as an instrument at the EU?s disposal. I will briefly summarize external pressures expected to trigger policy change in EU member states. Second, I will outline a framework for comparative analysis, to examine how EU member states respond to these adaptation pressures. Finally, I will apply this framework to the case of Germany. An appendix sketches initial thoughts on the cases of Austria, France and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores why Germany lags in tobacco control legislation domestically and has obstructed tobacco control in the European Union. It explains German policy in terms of the close ties between tobacco companies and the political elite and the effects of the Nazi regime on the fields of public health and epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1998, one of the most remarkable developments in European integration has taken place in the defense field. On paper, all member-states but Denmark now support the idea of a common European security and defense policy (ESDP). Political-military structures have been created and new initiatives are launched almost every month, but the nature of the beast remains unclear. Should it become the independent defense arm of the European Union or a subsidiary of NATO? Should it remain an intergovernmental political forum or move towards the multinational integration of armed forces? And what should it do? Rational-choice theorists usually explain the difficult emergence of a European defense identity by focusing on supposedly conflicting state interests. On the contrary, I argue in this paper that the ?objective? (i.e. material and geopolitical) interests of European states dictate that a strong version of the European security and defense policy be put in place. However, ?subjective? (i.e. organizational and ideal) interests slow down the process of military integration because the most important member-states, for organizational and historical reasons, differ substantially in their perceptions of what the ?military? should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revises and amends the theoretical framework of "the new politics of the welfare state". It examines a deviant case: the partial privatization of public pensions in Germany’s frozen welfare state. After analyzing the paradox of major institutional change in a frozen welfare state, it makes suggestions to improve the three theoretical modules of the new politics framework: the theory of blame avoidance, interest group theories, and path dependence theory. Next it suggests two additional modules called institutional interference and creative opportunism. The argument is an explanation of major institutional change in frozen welfare states requires us to incorporate two additional causal forces for welfare state reform into our framework: the institutional goals and constraints embodied in the new fiscal institutions at the European level and the ideas and interests of governments. It also argues that the reform process is very different from welfare state adaptation to socioeconomic pressures: the politics of privatizing public pensions is highly conflictual and very risky, not negotiated and consensual as the politics of welfare state adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all EU member-states, which have in turn clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. These changes in practices and challenges to ideas have profoundly affected all EU member states, but some more so than others, largely as a question of ?institutional fit.? The EU, as a ?compound? supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to ?simple? national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to ?compound? national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member-states, however, is not so much that practices have changed and that ideas have been challenged than that national leaders have generally failed to come up with new ideas and discourse that reflect the new Europeanized realities. But here, too, institutional differences matter, although to differing effect. Simple polities have greater potential for speaking to changes in practices and challenges to ideas, were they to so choose, because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate ?communicative? discourse to the general public, in which they are better able to speak in one voice and to convey a single message than more compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]