The Great Slump of 2008–9 and Ukraine's integration with the European Union

For a number of years following the Orange revolution of 2004, Ukraine aspired to join the European Union. Although full integration was never a short-term prospect, European integration, through the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, offers considerable benefits to Ukraine. However, the country was severely affected by the Great Slump of 2008–9 in the global economy, and this profoundly negative experience has shaped Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy in the subsequent period, putting paid to aspirations to EU membership and influencing the Ukrainian government's decision to seek a closer relationship with Russia immediately following the presidential election of 2010. Nevertheless, closer relations with Russia should not adversely affect Ukraine's efforts at EU integration.

What is the European Union? Religion between neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism

This paper examines the ways in which religion has played a part in the process of European integration. By exploring the position of religious communities towards the European Community since the 1950s until today, it argues that the place of religion has been influenced by the theoretical debates on European integration, namely neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. It suggests that, since 1992, the European Union has adopted a neofunctionalist approach towards religious communities, in contrast with the dominant intergovernmentalist integration process between EU member-states. The analysis of religion in relation to this theoretical dispute raises questions about the nature of the European Union and the adaptation of religious communities to supranational institutions.

Roman Catholicism, diplomacy, and the European communities, 1958-1964

This article investigates the Roman Catholic Church's role in the process of European integration from the first Hallstein Commission in 1958 to the failure of the Holy See's application to establish a diplomatic representation at the European Economic Community in 1964. The article focuses on the Church's response toward emerging European institutions and shows that local mobilization in Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and Brussels was instrumental in shaping relations between the Catholic Church and the European Communities (EC). The Church's position toward the EC, placing local communities as prime actors in dialogue with European institutions, reflected the sensitive nature of religion during the Cold War.

Does Germany still have a European vocation?

The narrative of Germany's European vocation falls into three stages. In the first stage - constituting Germany in Europe - European integration was a vital secondary arena for ensuring that the Federal Republic was able to develop economically, and to become a stable democracy. The second stage, of ever closer union accompanied by institutional export, was already evident under Helmut Schmidt, but became really manifest during the Kohl Chancellorship, reaching a high point in the early 1990s. In the post-Kohl third stage the European vocation persists, but has been very much scaled back. © 2010 Association for the Study of German Politics.

La critique du nationalisme de la "Semaine Sociale de Bordeaux" à la "Lutte pour la civilisation et la philosophie de la paix"

Over a long period the philosopher, Maurice Blondel, was an outspoken critic of exaggerated nationalism. The series of articles that appeared in 1909-10 in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne under the title of « La Semaine sociale de Bordeaux », and later were published in book form, contained a philosophically and theologically motivated critique of the early support shown by French Catholics for the doctrinaire nationalism of Charles Maurras. In 1928 Blondel returned to a critique of this same nationalism in his detailed article « Patrie et Humanité ». But the further criticism of nationalism contained in parts of his book Lutte pour la civilisation et philosophie de la paix, which was published in 1939 (and anew in 1947 in a slightly revised edition), was of a different order, being focused on the nationalism associated with what Blondel termed totalitarisme in its then German or Nazi form. Despite this record, it would be a mistake to assume that Blondel was an internationalist fitting clearly into the Briand mould. After the First World War Blondel favoured the hard-line foreign policy advocated by Poincaré and Foch, in particular over the future of the Rhineland. And he remained a conservative Catholic. His book of 1939 denounced not only totalitarisme in both its Nazi and Soviet forms, but also, on an opposing front, liberalism in the social and economic sphere. As to the deleterious effect of nationalism on international relations, he was an advocate of strengthening international law, notably the corpus of law emanating from The Hague. Maurice Blondel was greatly admired by Robert Schuman, the prominent French foreign minister under the Fourth Republic and a key figure for post-war European integration.

France and the construction of Europe, 1944-2007:the geopolitical imperative

In the second half of the twentieth century France played the greatest role - even greater than Germany’s - in shaping what eventually became the European Union. By the early twenty-first century, however, in a hugely transformed Europe, this era had patently come to an end. This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a sixty-year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate’s referendum rejection of the European Union’s constitutional treaty in 2005.

Conceiving of Europe:diversity in unity

At the end of the 20th century, the development towards a united European Community or European Union and the movement towards a post-bloc Europe are having to be combined. This study explores such subjects as the agendas of European integration and linguistic aspects of the European debate. At the end of the 20th century, the development towards a united European Community or European Union and the movement towards a post-bloc Europe are having to be combined. This study explores such subjects as the agendas of European integration and linguistic aspects of the European debate.

Governance in contemporary Germany:the semisovereign State revisited

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, West Germany was considered to be one of the world’s most successful economic and political systems. In his seminal 1987 analysis of West Germany’s ‘semisovereign’ system of governance, Peter Katzenstein attributed this success to a combination of a fragmented polity, consensus politics and incremental policy changes. However, unification in 1990 has both changed Germany’s institutional configuration and created economic and social challenges on a huge scale. This volume therefore asks whether semisovereignty still exists in contemporary Germany and, crucially, whether it remains an asset in terms of addressing these challenges. By shadowing and building on the original study, an eminent team of British, German and American scholars analyses institutional changes and the resulting policy developments in key sectors, with Peter Katzenstein himself providing the conclusion. Together, the chapters provide a landmark assessment of the outcomes produced by one of the world’s most important countries. Contents: 1. Introduction: semisovereignty challenged Simon Green and William E. Paterson; 2. Institutional transfer: can semisovereignty be transferred? The political economy of Eastern Germany Wade Jacoby; 3. Political parties Thomas Saalfeld; 4. Federalism: the new territorialism Charlie Jeffery; 5. Shock-absorbers under stress. Parapublic institutions and the double challenges of German unification and European integration Andreas Busch; 6. Economic policy management: catastrophic equilibrium, tipping points and crisis interventions Kenneth Dyson; 7. Industrial relations: from state weakness as strength to state weakness as weakness. Welfare corporatism and the private use of the public interest Wolfgang Streeck; 8. Social policy: crisis and transformation Roland Czada; 9. Immigration and integration policy: between incrementalism and non-decisions Simon Green; 10. Environmental policy: the law of diminishing returns? Charles Lees; 11. Administrative reform Kluas H. Goetz; 12. European policy-making: between associated sovereignty and semisovereignty William E. Paterson; 13. Conclusion: semisovereignty in United Germany Peter J. Katzenstein.

Efficiency improvements to the Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) digital mobile radio system

Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) has been developed as the pan-European second generation of digital mobile systems. GSM operates in the 900 MHz frequency band and employs digital technology instead of the analogue technology of its predecessors. Digital technology enables the GSM system to operate in much smaller zones in comparison with the analogue systems. The GSM system will offer greater roaming facilities to its subscribers, extended throughout the countries that have installed the system. The GSM system could be seen as a further enhancement to European integration. GSM has adopted a contention-based protocol for multipoint-to-point transmission. In particular, the slotted-ALOHA medium access protocol is used to coordinate the transmission of the channel request messages between the scattered mobile stations. Collision still happens when more than one mobile station having the same random reference number attempts to transmit on the same time-slot. In this research, a modified version of this protocol has been developed in order to reduce the number of collisions and hence increase the random access channel throughput compared to the existing protocol. The performance evaluation of the protocol has been carried out using simulation methods. Due to the growing demand for mobile radio telephony as well as for data services, optimal usage of the scarce availability radio spectrum is becoming increasingly important. In this research, a protocol has been developed whereby the number of transmitted information packets over the GSM system is increased without any additional increase of the allocated radio spectrum. Simulation results are presented to show the improvements achieved by the proposed protocol. Cellular mobile radio networks commonly respond to an increase in the service demand by using smaller coverage areas. As a result, the volume of the signalling exchanges increases. In this research, a proposal for interconnecting the various entitles of the mobile radio network over the future broadband networks based on the IEEE 802.6 Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is outlined. Simulation results are presented to show the benefits achieved by interconnecting these entities over the broadband Networks.

The Ukrainian presidential elections of 2010

Ukrainians went to the polls in 2010 to elect a president for the fifth time since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, electing Viktor Yanukovych with a narrow majority over Yulia Tymoshenko in the second round run-off on 7 February. This article provides a contextual introduction to the 2010 presidential election, an analysis of the campaign and the results and concludes with a discussion of post-election coalition building and what the election means for the consolidation of Ukrainian democracy and Ukraine’s European integration process.

Germany at a crossroads:the gathering crisis sharpens

In our book, The Gathering Crisis: The 2005 Federal Election and the Grand Coalition (Miskimmon et al, 2009), we argued that the German political and economic systems faced a number of serious challenges. The resource crunch in public finances has been particularly problematic in a country used to consensus politics- money had previously been used to oil the wheels of German federalism (and European integration). In the light of recent events- the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the 2009 federal election- we claim that the crisis in the German political economy has sharpened. The task of Angela Merkel and subsequent chancellors will be to navigate the new era, ensuring that Germany remains a leading political and economic power in the European Union and beyond. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.