Enlargement and the European Union’s Absorption Capacity: ‘oft-forgotten’ condition or additional obstacle to membership?

The Austrian government may have failed in its efforts in 2005 to have ‘privileged partnership' inserted into the European Union's framework for accession negotiations with Turkey, but this did not prevent the country's Chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, from claiming that ‘for the first time ever, we have set an extra condition which will yet be very important in the future for Europe, namely the ability of the Union to take in new members'. Indeed, since its inclusion in the framework for negotiations, the EU's ‘capacity to absorb' new members is referred to as a new criterion for further enlargement of the European Union (EU). When opponents of Turkey 's membership, like Schussel, celebrate the emphasis on the EU's ‘absorption capacity', Turks generally regard it as specially-designed extra obstacle to their membership aspirations even if the EU's ‘absorption capacity' is a permanent agenda item whenever the EU discusses enlargement. This article explores the origins of this – supposedly new – condition and argues that the increased emphasis on the EU's ‘absorption capacity' can be explained by the shifts in the dynamics of EU enlargement.

Negotiating Civic Space in Belfast or The Tricolour: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow’

What role does public civic space in Belfast city centre play in the negotiation of different political identities within the city? Focusing on key public events in this space the paper traces shifts in identity practices and focuses on negotiations over the uses of public space associated with Irish nationalism and British unionism. This, it is argued, gives a more sophisticated understanding of different types of ‘shared space’. The events probed are seen as precursors and possibly drivers of political change. It is concluded that the increased sharing of civic space has probably contributed to improved political relations within the city, though there remains the challenge of
understanding how public space might more effectively be used to influence
relationships between the city’s political identities in the longer term.

Ambiguity, social opinion and the use of common property resources

In this paper we argue that ambiguity, combined with social opinion formation, can be used as the foundation of a game-theoretic equilibrium concept that transcends the standard Nash equilibrium concept, applied to a model of the tragedy of the commons. Our approach sheds light on the international environmental crisis and the relevant ongoing international negotiations. We conclude that social opinion formation in most cases has a significant impact on equilibrium common property resource usage.

The WEU::A Europe of the Seven, 1954-1969

The history of the Western European Union after 1954–1955 is still a terra incognita. This article examines the function of the Western European Union in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture of the Cold War up to the 1960s. The paper studies the prime shifts of the tectonic plates forming the Western partial system of the bipolar Cold War system – and their systemic repercussions. The relationship between the Western umbrella organisation, NATO, and its European subsystem is analysed in four case studies: (1) the Arms Pool Negotiations of 1955; (2) Selwyn Lloyd's Grand Design of 1956–1957; (3) the wider Political European Union agenda of 1960–1962 and (4) the Western European Union nuclear force project of 1963.

SLA Brokering and Bandwidth Reservation Negotiation Schemes for QoS-aware Internet

We present a novel Service Level Agreement (SLA)-driven service provisioning architecture, which enables dynamic and flexible bandwidth reservation schemes on a per-user or per-application basis. Various session level SLA negotiation schemes involving bandwidth allocation, service start time and service duration parameters are introduced and analyzed. The results show that these negotiation schemes can be utilized for the benefit of both end users and network providers in achieving the highest individual SLA optimization in terms of key Quality of Service (QoS) metrics and price. The inherent characteristics of software agents such as autonomy, adaptability and social abilities offer many advantages in this dynamic, complex, and distributed network environment especially when performing Service Level Agreements (SLA) definition negotiations and brokering tasks. This article also presents a service broker prototype based on Fujitsu's Phoenix Open Agent Mediator (OAM) agent technology, which was used to demonstrate a range of SLA brokering scenarios.

Gifts, Loans and Intergenerational Support for Young Adults

Young adults in the UK are increasingly dependent on family support to offset the costs of living independently. This article explores these complex intergenerational exchanges from the perspective of a group of single young adults in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties who had been in receipt of various forms of financial and material support from family members since leaving the parental home. We outline the nature of this support and then consider how these forms of assistance are understood by those in receipt of them. We conclude that the co-existence of a sense of both gratitude and discomfort which is often generated by these exchanges is managed but by no means resolved by a blurring of the boundaries between gifts and loans, a set of negotiations which may not even be an option amongst less advantaged young adults.

Inscribing value on business model innovations: Insights from industrial projects commercializing disruptive digital innovations

In this paper we seek to show how marketing activities inscribe value on business model innovation, representative of an act, or sequence of socially interconnecting acts. Theoretically we ask two interlinked questions: (1) how can value inscriptions contribute to business model innovations? (2) how can marketing activities support the inscription of value on business model innovations? Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the thirty-seven members from across four industrial projects commercializing disruptive digital innovations. Various individuals from a diverse range of firms are shown to cast relevant components of their agency and knowledge on business model innovations through negotiation as an ongoing social process. Value inscription is mutually constituted from the marketing activities, interactions and negotiations of multiple project members across firms and functions to counter destabilizing forces and tensions arising from the commercialization of disruptive digital innovations. This contributes to recent conceptual thinking in the industrial marketing literature, which views business models as situated within dynamic business networks and a context-led evolutionary process. A contribution is also made to debate in the marketing literature around marketing's boundary-spanning role, with marketing activities shown to span and navigate across functions and firms in supporting value inscriptions on business model innovations.

Protracted Peace processes: Policy (Un)learning and the Cyprus Debacle

The article examines why a comprehensive settlement to resolve the Cyprus problem has yet to be reached despite the existence of a positive incentive structure and the proactive involvement of regional and international organizations, including the European Union and the United Nations. To address this question, evidence from critical turning points in foreign policy decision-making in Turkey, Greece and the two communities in Cyprus is drawn on. The role of hegemonic political discourses is emphasized, and it is argued that the latter have prevented an accurate evaluation of incentives that could have set the stage for a constructive settlement. However, despite the political debacle in the Cypriot negotiations, success stories have emerged, such as the reactivation of the Committee for Missing Persons (CMP), a defunct body for almost 25 years, to become the most successful bi-communal project following Cyprus’s EU accession. Contradictory evidence in the Cypriot peace process is evaluated and policy lessons to be learned from the CMP ‘success story’ are identified.

Intellectual Property and the EU’s Deep Trade Agenda

The EU is considered to be one of the main proponents of what has been called the deep trade agenda—that is, the push for further trade liberalization with an emphasis on the removal of domestic non-tariff regulatory measures affecting trade, as opposed to the traditional focus on the removal of trade barriers at borders. As negotiations on the Doha Development Round have stalled, the EU has attempted to achieve these aims by entering into comprehensive free trade agreements (FTAs) that are not only limited exclusively to tariffs but also extend to non-tariff barriers, including services, intellectual property rights (IPRs), competition, and investment. These FTAs place great emphasis on regulatory convergence as a means to secure greater market openings. The paper examines the EU's current external trade policy in the area of IP, particularly its attempts to promote its own regulatory model for the protection of IP rights through trade agreements. By looking at the IP enforcement provisions of such agreements, the article also examines how the divisive issues that are currently hindering the progress of negotiations at WTO level, including the demands from developing countries to maintain a degree of autonomy in the area of IP regulation as well as the need to balance IP protection with human rights protection, are being dealt with in recent EU FTAs.

Regulating Services Trade Agreements - A Comparative Analysis of Regulatory Disciplines Included in EU and US Free Trade Agreements

Developed countries, led by the EU and the US, have consistently called for ‘deeper integration’ over the course of the past three decades i.e., the convergence of ‘behind-the-border’ or domestic polices and rules such as services, competition, public procurement, intellectual property (“IP”) and so forth. Following the collapse of the Doha Development Round, the EU and the US have pursued this push for deeper integration by entering into deep and comprehensive free trade agreements (“DCFTAs”) that are comprehensive insofar as they are not limited to tariffs but extend to regulatory trade barriers. More recently, the EU and the US launched negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“TTIP”) and a Trade in Services Agreement (“TISA”), which put tackling barriers resulting from divergences in domestic regulation in the area of services at the very top of the agenda. Should these agreements come to pass, they may well set the template for the rules of international trade and define the core features of domestic services market regulation. This article examines the regulatory disciplines in the area of services included in existing EU and US DCFTAs from a comparative perspective in order to delineate possible similarities and divergences and assess the extent to which these DCFTAs can shed some light into the possible outcome and limitations of future trade negotiations in services. It also discusses the potential impact of such negotiations on developing countries and, more generally, on the multilateral process.

Turkey and the EU: Looking Beyond the Pessimism

This paper analyses the reasons for frustration and pessimism about Turkey-EU relations. It focuses on the impact of the crisis in Europe, the 2014 EP elections and selection of Jean-Claude Juncker for the Commission President post on Turkey’s EU accession process. Finally, the paper tries to answer how the current pessimism over Turkey-EU relations can be overcome.

The Shifting Battleground of Article 4(2) TEU: Evolving National Identities and the corresponding need for EU management?

Article 4(2) TEU requires that the European Union (EU) respect the Member States’ national identities, creating a legal obligation enforceable before the CJEU and valuable in political negotiations. However, the concept of national identities is unclear, leaving open questions about the scope or parameters of the provision and its applicability. The CJEU appears likely to take a relatively flexible approach in light of Article 4(2) TEU’s relationship with national constitutional courts’ reserves. This flexible approach would enable Member States to rely upon a range of aspects as part of their national identity, including ones that were previously unidentified. This is a crucial feature if one considers that national identities may evolve gradually or even dramatically, including where Member States purposefully attempt to develop their national identities further. This possibility of an evolved national identity is exemplified by the French Charte de l’Environnement. It may thereby be possible for Member States to stretch the scope and application of Article 4(2) TEU through reference to these evolving national identities. This potential raises significant challenges for the EU regarding the management of Article 4(2) TEU, which it will need to address if it wishes to ensure harmonisation and uniformity in the relevant areas.

(Re) making trajectories: Eviction, control and power

The City of Cairo's experienced a major shift in its urban planning attitude and practice since the mid 1970s which mostly validated elements of economic planning while neutralizing its social aspects. This ad hoc approach escalated conflict in planning politics over the control of space between tiers of the planning institution and the locals leading to rigorous planning actions among major stakeholders such as eviction and control of spaces. The article examines how institutional claims over space reassembled alternative definitions of quality of life in one of Cairo's oldest quarters, and how ambitious planning schemes were mostly driven by entrepreneurial rather than societal. Based on first-hand interviews and visuals, the article aims to reveal the local's struggle to survive such interventions with attention to their daily negotiations in place.

Representing Irishness in Belfast’s Gaeltacht Quarter

This paper examines a place-making project in post-conflict Belfast, analyzing efforts to transform an area which has often been used as a byword for militant Irish nationalism and social deprivation into an inclusive, vibrant tourist destination and cultural hub themed around the Irish language (called the "Gaeltacht Quarter‟). The antagonistic and territorial assumptions about place that characterize divided cities now co-exist with global trends towards the commodification of difference as recreation or spectacle, and longstanding struggles over the representation of contested identities are intertwined with the struggle to compete for international tourism and investment. The proliferation of officially themed quarters in many cities across the world reflects the enthusiasm with which planning authorities have embraced the vision of difference as a benign resource for the creation of tourist revenue. Yet, analysis of „quartering‟ processes reveals that such commodification does not neutralise or evade the political potency of naming, representing and delimiting cultural difference. Indeed, this paper argues that such projects offer a valuable insight into the inseparable roles of physical and representational space as both loci and catalysts of contestation in urban conflicts. Bringing together a wide range of public and private interest groups, projects redefining parts of Belfast as distinctive quarters have been explicitly linked with efforts to deterritorialize the city. The creation of bounded, themed spaces as an attempt to leave behind the ethno-sectarian geographical segregation that parts of Belfast still experience has its particular ironies, but is in many ways typical of contemporary trends in urban planning. The Gaeltacht Quarter exemplifies both the importance and the challenge of representation within cities where culturally distinguishing features have acted as markers of violent division, and where negotiations about how to successfully encompass difference necessarily address multiple local and international audiences simultaneously.

Seeking the New Normal? Troubled Spaces of Encountering Visible Differences in Warsaw

In times of globalisation and super-mobility, ideas of normality are in turmoil. In different societies in, across and beyond Europe, we face the challenge of undoing specific notions of normality and creating more inclusive societies with an open culture of learning to live with differences. The scope of
the paper is to introduce some findings on encounters with difference and negotiations of social values in relation to a growing visibility of difference after 1989 in Poland, on the background of a critique of normality/normalisation and normalcy.On the basis of interviews conducted inWarsaw, we investigate how normality/normalisation discourses of visible homosexuality and physical disability are incorporated into individual self-reflections and justifications of prejudices (homophobia and disabilism). More specifically we argue that there are moments of ‘cultural transgressions’ present in everyday practices towards ‘visible’sexual and (dis)ability difference.