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The Economics and Politics of European Integration offers a comprehensive history of European integration, from the conceptualization of a United States of Europe, to the present day. The special role of the United States in this process of integration, and the expansion and evolution of the European Union, is critically analyzed. The book also thoroughly discusses the current view of the EU and the complex crises emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.While the book focuses primarily on Europe, the role of other countries is also examined. The rise of hostile enemies from Turkey, Russia, the US and China is explored, and the history and outcome of Brexit also receives unique focus. Maps are used throughout to clearly depict the enlargement process. This illuminating text will be valuable reading for students and researchers across international economics, economic history, political economy and European studies.

This book presents the sharp regional diff erences within the integrating European continent. Four regions – Northwestern Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe, and Eastern-Southeastern Europe – represent high, medium, and relatively less-developed levels of economic advancement. These disparities have emerged as a result of historical diff erences that produced and reinforced cultural and behavioral diff erences.The author examines the distinctions between the regions, looks at how these differences transpired and became so retrenched, and answers the question of why some countries were able to elevate to higher levels of economic development while others could not. This book is unique in that it provides a timely historical analysis of the main causes of the most pressing conflicts in Europe today. Readers will come away from this book with a deeper understanding of the sharp divergence in economic standing between the four different regions of Europe, as well as knowledge about how institutional corruption and other cultural features exacerbated these variations. The book also offers a better understanding of major European Union confl icts between member countries and between member and nonmember countries, as well as the rise of autocratic regimes in certain countries. The book begins with a short history of European integration throughout European civilization and then goes on to discuss the modern reality of integration and attempts to homogenize the Continent that divided into four different macro-regions.It will primarily appeal to scholars, researchers and students studying Europe from various fi elds, including economics, business, history, political science, and sociology, as well as a general readership interested in Europe's past, present, and future.

This book gives a complex description and discussion of today's populist attacks against the European Union (EU) following the financial crisis of 2008, which opened the floodgates of dissatisfaction, and the migration crisis which destabilized the traditional solidarity basis of the EU. The problem of Brexit is also explored.Each chapter presents one of the main elements of the crisis of the EU. These include West European populism, Central European right-wing populism in power, and the exploitation of the EU's mistake during the migration crisis of the mid-2010s. These also include the discovery of Christian ideology against immigration and hidden anti-Semitic propaganda using a hysterical attack against the liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros, and Brexit. There is a detailed discussion of the failures of the EU to pacify the neighbourhood in the South and North, especially in Ukraine, and the rising hostile outside enemies of the EU, including Russia and Turkey, bad relationships with Trump's America, the uncertainty of NATO, and the emergence of a new rival, China, that enters into the Central European edge of the EU.The author explores strategies for coping with, and emerging from, this existential crisis and ends with the alternative plans and possibilities for the future of the eurozone. This will be an invaluable resource for understanding the crisis of the EU, one of the central questions of contemporary international politics for undergraduate and graduate students, and readers interested in the discussion surrounding an endangered European integration and difficult world politics.

The European Union widened and deepened integration when it introduced the Single Market and the common currency, increasing the number of member countries from 12 to 28. After a quarter of a century, the 2008 financial and economic crisis opened a new chapter in the history of European integration. Prosperity was replaced by economic crisis and then long stagnation, with ramifications far beyond the economic arena.For the first time, after more than half a century, some countries were almost forced to step out of the Union. History's most frightening migration crisis shocked Europe and led to the strengthening of several anti-integration parties in various countries. This pioneering book discusses the nine crisis elements that could lead to disintegration of the EU. Beginning with the Greek Debt disaster this book delves into the cause of the recent European crisis and then onto the recent immigration influx and its consequences, as well as Britain's exit from the Union. A concluding chapter, based on the facts of positive development during the crises years, gives a cautiously optimistic forecast for the future and asks the question: further integration or disintegration?This volume is of great importance to academics, students and policy makers who have an interest in European politics, political economy and migration.

Estudio histórico, político y económico sobre Europa (tanto Oriental como Occidental) a partir de la década de 1980, periodo en que el bloque socialista comienza a debilitarse y las dinámicas en la relación intraeuropea se deben reestructurar y adaptar al acontecer regional e internacional de la época.

The foundation of the European Union was one of the most important historical events in the second half of the 20th century. In order to fully appreciate the modern state of the EU, it is crucial to understand the history of European integration. This accessible overview differs from other studies in its focus on the major roles played by both the United States and European multinational corporations in the development of the European Union. Chronologically written and drawing on new findings from two major archives (the archives of the US State Department and Archive of European Integration), this book sheds crucial new light on the integration process. The History of European Integration offers a major contribution to our understanding of Europe's postwar history, and will be essential reading for any student of postwar European History, Contemporary History, European Politics and European Studies.

The Soviet Union's dramatic collapse in 1989 was a pivotal moment in the complex history of Central and Eastern Europe, and Ivan Berend here offers a magisterial new account of the dramatic transformation that culminated in ten former Soviet Bloc countries joining the European Union. Taking the OPEC oil crisis of 1973 as his starting point, he charts the gradual unravelling of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, its ultimate collapse in the revolutions of 1989, and the economic restructuring and lasting changes in income, employment, welfare, education and social structure which followed. He pays particular attention to the crucial role of the European Union as well as the social and economic hurdles that continue to face former Eastern-bloc nations as they try to catch up with their Western neighbours. This will be essential reading for scholars and students of European and economic history, European politics and economics.

There is probably no greater authority on the modern history of central and eastern Europe than Ivan Berend, whose previous work, Decades of Crisis, was hailed by critics as'masterful'and'the broadest synthesis of the modern social, economic, and cultural history of the region that we possess.'Now, having brought together and illuminated this region's storm-tossed history in the twentieth century, Berend turns his attention to the equally turbulent period that preceded it. The'long'nineteenth century, extending up to World War I, contained the seeds of developments and crises that continue to haunt the region today. The book begins with an overview of the main historical trends in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, during which time the region lost momentum and became the periphery, no longer in step with the rising West. It concludes with an account of the persisting authoritarian political structures and the failed modernization that paved the way for social and political revolts. The origins of twentieth-century extremism and its tragedies are plainly visible in this penetrating account.

Only by understanding Central and Eastern Europe's turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century can we hope to make sense of the conflicts and crises that have followed World War II and, after that, the collapse of Soviet-controlled state socialism. Ivan Berend looks closely at the fateful decades preceding World War II and at twelve countries whose absence from the roster of major players was enough in itself, he says, to precipitate much of the turmoil.As waves of modernization swept over Europe, the less developed countries on the periphery tried with little or no success to imitate Western capitalism and liberalism. Instead they remained, as Berend shows, rural, agrarian societies notable for the tenacious survival of feudal and aristocratic institutions. In that context of frustration and disappointment, rebellion was inevitable. Berend leads the reader skillfully through the maze of social, cultural, economic, and political changes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Soviet Union, showing how every path ended in dictatorship and despotism by the start of World War II.Only by understanding Central and Eastern Europe's turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century can we hope to make sense of the conflicts and crises that have followed World War II and, after that, the collapse of Soviet-controlled st