This research cluster focuses on the study of politics in EU member states and candidate countries and decision-making processes at the EU level. Specific areas of interest include:
Why do some states manage to establish stable, well-functioning democracies while others seem to struggle to do so, often despite multiple democratic transitions? More specifically, given the relatively similar political circumstances faced by Italy, Spain, and Turkey at the time of their respective post-World-War-Two transitions to democracy, why has the latter struggled to secure stable democracy whilst the former two countries managed to create stable democratic regimes?
Research in this area
Professor Paul Heywood has authored books on the topic of one of the key consolidated democracies in Southern Europe: Spain (e.g., Spain and the European Union , co-authored with Carlos Closa, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; Marxism and the Failure of Organised Socialism in Spain, 1879-1936 , Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Government and Politics of Spain, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995). His more recent research looks at issues of executive capacity, and in particular the policy process and core executive decision-making. He has also worked extensively on political corruption, both in Spain and in comparative perspective.
Dr. Lauren McLaren’s book with Routledge, Constructing Democracy in Southern Europe (2008), focuses on factors such as problems with state building, prior experience with the breakdown of democracy, the aggregation of interests and representation via political institutions, economic structures, and consensualism as potential explanations for differences in the transition outcomes in the three countries. Dr McLaren and PhD student Burak Cop are also examining the relationship between constitution writing processes and democratic consolidation in Southern Europe.
[Return to Top]
Bureaucracy and corruption in Central and Eastern Europe
What sorts of administrative structures prevent political corruption? Can institutions be designed to reduce the risk of corruption?
Research in this area
Funded by the Ernst & Young ‘Better Government Programme’, Paul Heywood and Dr Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling have examined how the political management of ministerial bureaucracy affects the risk of corruption in the public sector in post-communist Poland. The research has focused on the role of senior officials in the design, co-ordination and implementation of regulatory frameworks and concentrates on regulation in danger zones for corruption, i.e. areas of the public sector that are most vulnerable to the problem.
Dr Meyer-Sahling is also currently investigating the sustainability of civil service reforms in eight Central and Eastern European countries since their accession to the European Union in 2004. He manages the project on behalf of OECD-SIGMA (Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) and is financed by the European Commission. The first findings have been published as a research report .
[Return to Top]
The struggle over the future EU model of capitalism
To what degree are decisions made by EU member states pushing the EU toward an Anglo-American model of capitalism? How has the EU and its member states resisted this rising neo-liberal approach to the management of the economy?
Research in this area
Centre Member Professor Andreas Bieler, is analysing the role of trade union movements in resisting the move toward the Anglo-American neo-liberal approach to economic management. Some of the research outcomes have been published at: The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade unions and EMU in times of global restructuring , Manchester University Press, 2006., Manchester University Press, 2006.
Professor Bieler is also currently working in the project Small European States in the Global Economy: Divergence or Convergence?. The main purpose of this research project is to provide a comparative assessment of small European states in today’s global economy and to assess whether they continue to have a distinctive approach of how to respond to economic change or whether they too have converged around a neo-liberal economic-political model. The project will include an analysis of Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
[Return to Top]