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In 2020 Germany released its Indo‐Pacific guidelines in response to global shifts and escalating Sino‐US rivalries in the region. This article scrutinises Germany's ambitions and stance in the Indo‐Pacific, utilising the middle power concept as an analytical tool. It argues that Germany's Indo‐Pacific strategy is broadly in line with its wider foreign policy approach rather than marking a radical shift. Divided into three sections, the article explores middle power theories, Germany's foreign policy approach and Germany's Indo‐Pacific tilt. Assessing Germany's progress in the Indo‐Pacific, the paper employs a middle power framework based on capabilities, identity and engagement. We argue that Germany seems intent on positioning itself as a civilian middle power, evident in its deeply engrained norms determining identity and guiding engagement. The article uses a qualitative approach, drawing from primary material such as official statements of German policymakers and policy documents, supplemented by secondary sources covering the literature on middle power dynamics, the Indo‐Pacific region and Germany's foreign policy. Employing thematic documentary analysis, the paper identifies recurring patterns and trends in Germany's evolving role in the Indo‐Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automation and artificial intelligence, with their skill-biased characteristic, were estimated to benefit high-skilled workers while displacing the low-skilled. Their uneven distribution of technological dividends and costs led to calls for policy interventions. This paper aims to answer: ‘What kind of government and business intervention can deliver needed skills to large parts of the population?’ in facing automation challenges to labor markets by investigating Switzerland’s vocational education and training (VET) policy. This paper identifies its policy eco-system and argues that, while historically – embedded particularities are hard to replicate, the Swiss case still inspires us with cross-country implications. These implications are underpinned by a solid stock of social capital, which enables behavioral internalization and anticipated reciprocity. Viewing social capital as constructive rather than endowed, this paper argues that building social capital is a viable and practical approach to VET policy learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU's latest decision on adopting the recovery fund was revolutionary, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It would also dominate the EU's economic governance of the decade of the 2020s. This article is an attempt to evaluate whether the EU's recovery fund was the right policy answers to the post-COVID-19 EU economy or not, and explore its meanings and implications for European integration. This article argues that COVID-19 hit the EU at a time of health and social precariousness, and proved the conventional economic governance unsustainable. Necessities for game-changing in the post-COVID-19 economic governance were justified on both practical and moral grounds. Judging with these yardsticks, the EU's recovery fund was evaluated as a welcomed paradigm shift in both the ideology and methodology of its economic governance. Beyond a contemporary economic rescue package, the recovery fund implied laying the cornerstone of completing a fiscal union in the Eurozone, for enhancing institutional functions of the European Commission, and for rediscovering the nature of European integration as the rescuer of national states, through the newly-forming consensus between Eurosceptic nationalists and pro-EU integrationists. This article reminds us that the COVID-19 crisis was a crucial opportunity for EU leadership to legitimize the EU's existence in the post-Brexit era. If well implemented, the recovery fund could usher in a new chapter of European integration. If it fails, European integration would be at risk of further fragmentation and entrench into an ever-stronger anti-EU populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the eve of 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the UK voted to withdraw from the EU (so-called Brexit). The implications for European integration and EU policies are far from clear and require further investigation. This paper aims to answer: what does Brexit imply for European integration? What messages were sent to the EU from the UK referendum? Did EU leaders interpret these messages and implications correctly and did they respond with the right policy? After examining the competing interpretations, this paper argues that the sharp divisions between different socio-economic classes shown in voting behaviour highlight the imperative of addressing economic inequality and distributive injustice, which are rooted in the structural flaws of EU governance and have been aggravated by the mismanagement of the Euro crisis. To move European integration forward and to keep a ‘political Europe’ sustainable, a ‘social Europe’ making an ‘economic Europe’ more inclusive and fair is required. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) election resulted in the rise of populist right-wing parties (PRPs). This paper aims to answer: why PRPs were able to rise in the 2014 EP election; what messages were delivered by the election results regarding European integration; and whether or not policy-makers addressed the messages correctly with the right policy responses? After examining the competing interpretations, this paper argues that a deep disillusionment and crisis of trust in the political establishment, which derived from the long neglect of deteriorating distributional justice and fairness in European integration, which became acute after the euro crisis mismanagement, explains the 2014 EP election results. This paper, accordingly, argues that policy redirection of EU economic governance and the addressing of a ‘social Europe’ are required to regain political trust. After assessing the policy responses taken by the EU, an economic Europe is expected to revive, but the required social Europe will still remain absent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the diverse approaches of EU members' integration with the EU through modelling, and assesses the applicability of each model to Taiwan-China relations. Building upon two variables: 'the association with national identity and reorientation or not', and 'being the leading or founding member or not' four EU members' integrative models stand out. The German model is proved to be the most integrationist, followed by the Finnish and the French models. The UK model appears to be the least committed. Due to sovereignty controversies, the visionary German and French models are not applicable to Taiwan-China integrations and the prospects are for the pragmatic Finnish model at best, and the UK model at worst. These modelling outcomes can then explain why the growing economic integration between the two sides has not produced spillover effects into the political arena. This paper therefore argues that it would be in China's interest to make Taiwan an equal leading player in Taiwan-China integrations, and to transform its 'one-China policy' from the current political and sovereignty contents to a cultural and value-laden concept. Among the theories being examined, (neo)realist-constructivism demonstrates more applicability than two mainstream integration theories - neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of policy-making by the Blair government on the issue of the UK's European Monetary Union (EMU)/Eurozone membership. The Blair government inherited a 'wait and see' policy from its predecessor, and introduced its own variations in the detail of this policy. In particular, five economic tests were invented and placed at the centre of EMU policy-making, in order to depoliticise the political risks during a general election and referendum while also serving the needs of party management. This paper applies four well-known theories of policy-making to the EMU policy case: the broker state pluralist model, instrumental Marxism, the core executive model and rational choice theory. This paper demonstrates that each model possesses a degree of applicability, but argues that instrumental Marxism seems the most appropriate theoretical model among those examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]