infonet-economy

This article analyses the modes of governance through which the EU seeks to ensure the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries’ participation in the realization of its internal security project. Although the EU, given the strong interde- pendence in these ‘soft security’ issues, has strong incentives to govern by conditionality in order to ensure the ENP countries’ compliance,…

As sociological neo-institutionalist theories have shown, social and political institutions are not only a set of rules, procedures, organizational routines and governance structures (see March and Olsen 1984), but they also provide norms and habits that determine individual choices and behaviours. in this chapter, we would like to apply this line of reasoning to propose a…

This article reanalyzes the data of a previous study on the policy impact of antinuclear, ecology, and peace movements in three countries with the aim of replicating its findings. Our goal is to see whether using a different analytical technique will yield similar results. The previous study used a regression approach to time-series analysis. Here, we use qualitative comparative…

Referendums have experienced some sort of a comeback. Citizen involvement in political decisions is seen increasingly as a healthy add-on in democratic polities. While earlier writers on democratic theory often saw a danger in increased participation of citizens, more recently several authors suggest that this participation should be fostered. I argue in this paper that both sides in…

Human gene patents are patents on human genes that have been removed from human bodies and scientifically isolated and manipulated in a laboratory. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the USPTO) has issued thousands of patents on such genes, and patents have also been granted by the European Patent Office, (the EPO). Legal and moral justification, however, are not identical, and it…

Inspired by the experience of Eastern enlargement, much of the academic debate on EU external relations and the European neighbourhood policy conceives of external influence in terms of the Union’s ability to induce third countries’ adaptation to predetermined EU norms and regulations. This article introduces a more structural perspective on EU external influence that scru- tinizes…