Russia's interest in the Mistral: the political and military aspects. OSW Commentary No. 41, 2010-10-11

The negotiations over Russia’s purchase of French Mistral-class multipurpose assault ships, which were intensified in 2010, have gained a significant political dimension. The prospects of such a spectacular acquisition of large and expensive assault ships from one of NATO’s member states are being used by Russia to demonstrate that it has opened a new stage of relations with Western Europe. Paris has welcomed Russia’s desire to embark on military cooperation; for France, the Mistral deal has become a convenient tool to prove that relations with Russia are becoming increasingly normal, and that Russia poses no threat to the European security.

Integrating Europeans: The Political Economy and Social Aspects of Europeanization. ACES Working Papers (Curriculum Development), 2012

This course, then, investigates the effects of integration on European citizens as well as the duality of the EU as a competitive and social model. It is sensitive to the involvement of social groups, protest, and domestic politics in the study of market integration. Some of the questions we explore are: What are the effects of regulatory policy-making on social actors, how do such actors’ strategies and behaviors change as a consequence, and how to they overcome their collective action problems? Why is it that the logic of integration has at times followed a logic of “permissive consensus” while at other times it has been described as a “constraining dissensus”? What is the importance of discourse in domestic politics in order to articulate and legitimate Europeanization? How do European identities change as a consequence of policymaking as well as of protest? To what extent do ordinary Europeans matter in terms of accepting and opposing the project of European integration, how do European citizens in core and peripheral EU states experience Europeanization, and how is their involvement in the integration project to be conceptualized?

The Eurasian Economic Union – more political, less economic. OSW Commentary Number 157/20.01.2015

The Eurasian Economic Union is undoubtedly the most comprehensive form of economic integration of the post-Soviet countries since the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, the way in which the integration process has been unfolding, as well as Russia’s aggressive policy over the last year, are indications that the EEU has become primarily a political project, and the importance of its economic aspects has eroded. This has triggered a change in the way Kazakhstan and Belarus treat the EEU. Initially, the two countries viewed integration as an opportunity for the development of genuine economic co-operation. However, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine have revealed the real significance of the EEU project – as a tool to reinforce Russian influence in the post-Soviet area and isolate the post-Soviet countries from the West and China. While the Kremlin presents the EEU as the Eurasian equivalent of the European Union, the project is in reality an imitation of integration. The reasons for this include the nature of the political systems in the participating countries, which are authoritarian, prone to instrumentalise law, and affected by systemic corruption; the aggressive policy that Russia has been pursuing over the last year; and Russia’s dominant role in defining the shape of the EEU. The EEU appears to be based on forceful integration, and is becoming less and less economically attractive for its member countries other than Russia. Moreover, it is clearly assuming a political dimension that those other member countries perceive as dangerous. For these reasons, its functioning will depend on the power and position of Russia. In the longer term it is likely that the other member states will try to ‘sham’ and delay closer integration within the EEU. This means that if Russia becomes politically and economically weaker, the EEU may evolve into an increasingly dysfunctional organisation – a development that will be reinforced by the low standards of legal culture in its member states and their reluctance to integrate. Should Russia’s power increase, the EEU will become an effective instrument of Russian dominance in the area of the former USSR.

Strategic Voting in Proportional Systems: The Case of Finland. IHS Political Science Series No. 138, September 2014

Voters try to avoid wasting their votes even in PR systems. In this paper we make a case that this type of strategic voting can be observed and predicted even in PR systems. Contrary to the literature we do not see weak institutional incentive structures as indicative of a hopeless endeavor for studying strategic voting. The crucial question for strategic voting is how institutional incentives constrain an individual’s decision-making process. Based on expected utility maximization we put forward a micro-logic of an individual’s expectation formation process driven by institutional and dispositional incentives. All well-known institutional incentives to vote strategically that get channelled through the district magnitude are moderated by dispositional factors in order to become relevant for voting decisions. Employing data from Finland – because of its electoral system a particularly hard testing ground - we find considerable evidence for observable implications of our theory.

Minding and not minding your own business: What justifies attempts to assess the democratic quality of political systems? IHS Political Science Series No. 139, May 2015

Founded in 1963 by two prominent Austrians living in exile – the sociologist Paul F. Lazarsfeld and the economist Oskar Morgenstern – with the financial support from the Ford Foundation, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, and the City of Vienna, the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) is the first institution for postgraduate education and research in economics and the social sciences in Austria. The Political Science Series presents research done at the Department of Political Science and aims to share “work in progress” before formal publication. It includes papers by the Department’s teaching and research staff, visiting professors, graduate students, visiting fellows, and invited participants in seminars, workshops, and conferences. As usual, authors bear full responsibility for the content of their contributions.