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Michigan Paper Series
The Michigan Paper Series is presented by the the Center for European Studies-European Union Center.
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Title: "From Revolution to Reintegration: Romania's Return to Europe."
Author(s):
- Ciuhandu, Gheorghe
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Conversations on Europe" lecture series. The soundly based questions I intent to state are the following: why was a revolution necessary to overthrow the communist dictatorship? What did the 1989 revolution mean for the Romanian society? To what degree have the political changes of December 1989 brought about the Romania's democratization and the adapting of the state to the demands of Western Europe and the USA? How does one explain Romania's being accepted as a fully fledged member of NATO and the European Union? What are Romanian citizens' difficulties during the process of European integration and how are those explained?
Publication Date: 2008
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Title: "Europe: Heir to the Ages or Pregnant Widow"
Author(s):
- Ascherson, Neal
Description: Lecture given as part of the "EUC Annual Distinguished Lecture on Europe" series. "'The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. But what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it not an heir, but a pregnant widow. Between the death of one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass'. These were the words of Alexander Herzen, the Russian democratic exile, written shortly after the failure of the 1848 revolutions in Europe. Herzen understood the revolutions? message to be that the old empires of the Holy Alliance were doomed ? although he could not know that their final doom would not come for more than seventy years. Although the empires had reasserted control, the real victors of 1848, he thought, had been the European bourgeoisie and their values which Herzen despised as narrow, repressive and selfish. But he was certain that the middle-class victory was doomed too, and that the bourgeois order would itself collapse as the peoples of Europe, the urban and rural masses, rose and created their own unimaginable forms of freedom. Like many things Herzen said and wrote, this magnificent prophecy seems to say more about Russia itself than about western Europe. Many of you will remember his bitter comparison, during his London exile, between the traditions of Polish and Russian émigré revolutionaries. The Poles, he said, could look back to countless holy relics; the Russians had only empty cradles. Some Russian intellectuals, after about 1860, might feel that the Tsarist regime was dead on its feet and that dark forces were slowly gathering to sweep it away. But was the second half of the 19th century really 'a long night of desolation and chaos? in France, Britain or Germany? We think of it as the supreme historical moment of European self-confidence; the maximum expansion of colonial empires, the decades of breakneck industrialisation and urbanisation as Germany, France and Italy caught up with British pre-eminence, the period of the first effective globalisation though trade and through intercontinental transport and communications, the emergence of modern cities with their blaze of middle-class wealth and their enormous proletarianised workforces. Nevertheless, when I read that prophecy I cannot help thinking about Europe - the big Europe - of today. For 1848, we can read 1989, or 1991 - the collapse of external and then internal Soviet Communism, and the end of the 50-year Cold War which had at once divided Europe and frozen it into a sort of unnatural stability."
Publication Date: 2008
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Title: "Europe: The Tragic Continent"
Author(s):
- de Mul, Jos
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Conversations on Europe" lecture series. "Two weeks ago, in his lecture in this series on Europe, Neal Ascherson asked two intriguing questions: 'Where is Europe?', and 'When is Europe'. Intriguing because it turned out that these seemingly simply questions are very hard to answer. Today I want to add a third question, as simple as the other two and as difficult to answer. This question is: What is Europe? In a sense, we may regard this third question as the primordial one, as we can start our search for Europe in time and space only when we at least have a slight idea of what we are actually looking for. So the question I want to address this afternoon is: what is it that makes Europe European? And as the title of my talk already indicates, the answer I will defend today is that Europe first and foremost is a tragic continent."
Publication Date: 2008
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Title: "The Role of Greece in the Discourse of Modernity"
Author(s):
- Koundoura, Maria
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Conversations on Europe" lecture series. 'There is something on earth with one voice that is two-footed and four-footed and three-footed. Alone among however many creatures there are on land and on sky and on sea, it changes its nature. But when it proceeds, supported by the most feet, then the swiftness of its limbs is weakest.'(i) The answer is, of course, "Man," at least as Oedipus answers it. And so began, in Western culture's fiction of origin, the history of man.(ii) Oedipus' answer is "the only ideal and the only idea of man's possibilities," Henri Lefebvre tells us in Introduction to Modernity in which he attempts to think the modern by transplanting the myth of Oedipus.(iii) The Sphinx's riddle also begins my interrogation of the role of Greece in the discourse of modernity. But, unlike Oedipus, I am not interested in its solution, or, in maintaining the solution that has been accepted as his. Rather, following Walter Benjamin's advice in "Riddle and Mystery," I want to explore the riddle's "precondition."(iv) For, as Benjamim explains, "the key to the riddle is not only its solution? but also its intention...its foundation and the 'resolution' of the intent to puzzle that is concealed in it."(v) "Riddles," Benjamin explains, "appear where there is an emphatic intention to elevate an artifact or an event that seems to contain nothing at all, or nothing out of the ordinary, to the plane of symbolic significance." (vi) And, he continues: "Since mystery dwells at the heart of symbol, an attempt will be made to uncover a 'mysterious' side to this artifact or event." The mystery, however, is not inherent in the object but is found in the work of the subject that produces the riddle through its solution.(vii)"
Publication Date: 2008
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Title: The Unintended Consequences Of European Power
Author(s):
- Laidi, Zaki
Description: *Why does Europe favour norms as its mode of influence? *Why has its normative influence become global? *What are the main areas for externalizing European norms? These are three questions that this paper will attempt to answer.
Publication Date: 2008
Country(s):- France
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Author(s):
- Rensmann, Lars
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Conversations on Europe" lecture series.
Publication Date: 2008
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Author(s):
- Brüß, Joachim
Description: This investigation assumes that discrimination plays a vital role in shaping inter-ethnic relations and explores discrimination against Muslims in Europe. The different experiences and perceptions of discrimination are related to the different histories of immigration in European countries, the different political arrangements for Muslims in Europe, the participation in structure and culture of the receiving societies, and - especially since the attacks on September 11 , 2001 in the US - th the perception of Muslims in European cities. Considering the efforts by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) as a top-down method, the complementary approach is to examine the victim?s perspective in a bottom-up method and study the perceptions of those who suffer discrimination. The sample for this pilot study consists of Turkish Muslims from Berlin (n=225), Bangladeshi Muslims from London (n=135) and Moroccan Muslims from Madrid (n=203) who were interviewed between July and December, 2004. The results indicate that Turkish and Moroccan Muslims comparatively often said that they belong to a minority that is discriminated against. Bangladeshi Muslims regarded themselves significantly less often discriminated against, though a more detailed analysis reveals that significant numbers of younger Bangladeshi Muslims often perceived themselves as belonging to a minority that is subject to discrimination. In addition, the study examines factors that lead to an increase in perceived discrimination. Results from a logistic regression analysis indicate that everyday experiences such as being stopped by the police, verbal attacks, or disrespectful treatment in public particularly increase the likelihood to say that one belongs to a minority that is discriminated against.
Publication Date: 2007
Country(s):- Germany
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Title: "One for Some or One for All? Taylor Rules and the Inter-Regional Unemployment Dispersion Puzzle"
Author(s):
- Coibion, Olivier
- Goldstein, Daniel
Description: We document a robust and surprising empirical phenomenon: both the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank appear to set interest rates partly in response to regional disparities in unemployment rates. This result is exceedingly robust, even after controlling for a wide variety of factors, including the central bank's information set and a battery of explanatory variables. Furthermore, including measures of inter-regional unemployment dispersion in Taylor rule estimates also helps improve the identification of the central banks' responses to inflation and unemployment rates. We propose a variety of statistical and theoretical possibilities to account for this puzzling empirical result, but find that none is consistent with our findings.
Publication Date: 2007
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Title: Enlightenment, Emancipation, and National Identity: Koraes and the Ancients.
Author(s):
- Evrigenis, Ioannis
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Conversations on Europe" lecture series. Attempting to demonstrate, towards the end of the seventeenth century, that the enslaved descendants of the original possessors of a country "retain a Right to the Possession of their Ancestors", John Locke wondered, "Who doubts but the Grecian Christians descendants of the ancient possessors of that Country may justly cast off the Turkish yoke which they have so long groaned under when ever they have a power to do it?" Many, in fact, did. In his essay "Of National Characters", published in 1748, David Hume expressed a widely held view when he remarked, "The ingenuity, industry, and activity of the ancient GREEKS have nothing in common with the stupidity and indolence of the present inhabitants of those regions". A Greek contemporary of Hume's might well take offense to his description, and an impartial listener would not be entirely mistaken in considering his attitude towards modern Greece to be divergent from Locke's. And yet, no less illustrious a modern Greek than Adamantios Koraes, born on April 27th of the year in which Hume's essay was published, found the essence of these two positions simultaneously correct and inextricably intertwined. After all, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Greek world had been under Ottoman domination for some 300 years, and liberation was still far off.
Publication Date: 2007
Country(s):- Greece
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Title: "With or without you...judging politically in the field of Area of Freedom, Security and Justice"
Author(s):
- Hatzopoulos, Vassilis
Description: The study of the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) case law regarding the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ)is in many ways fascinating. It relates to a new field of EU competence, touches upon all the fundamental issues of European integration and is intertwined with the protection of fundamental rights. From a more technical perspective, it is impregnated with all the institutional drawbacks resulting from the EU's three-pillar structure, as well as with the substantial shortfalls related to the lack of a clear political will for strong harmonisation. Against this background, the ECJ follows a binary logic, which may also appear somehow controversial. On the one hand it shows high respect for specific policy choices enshrined by the member states into pieces of secondary legislation. On the other hand, and more importantly, the ECJ energetically pushes forward its own vision of the AFSJ. This vision is one which is liberated from the strict three-pillar logic of the EU Treaty, where fundamental rights and the rule of law rank high in the agenda.
Publication Date: 2007
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Title: "Transitional Justice in Post-Conflict Societies of Former Yugoslavia"
Author(s):
- Kandic, Natasa
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Revisiting Yugoslavia's Dissolution" series. A failure to begin to critically review their role in armed conflict and responsibility for the crimes committed in that conflict is common to all states which emerged on the territory of former Yugoslavia.
Publication Date: 2007
Country(s):- Yugoslavia
- Serbia
- Croatia
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Title: "The Three Models of Church-State Condominium"
Author(s):
- Ramet, Sabrina P.
Description: Across post-communist Europe, a battle is being waged over the moral content of democracy. This is a battle over whether the religious market should be open or closed, over whether the dominant religious organization should be able to translate its moral convictions into laws binding on all citizens regardless of their religious affiliation, over the proper exercise and limits of freedom of speech, and even over the putative right of a religious body (whether the Catholic or the Orthodox Church) to harness the political apparatus in one or another state for the purpose of obtaining exceptions to EU standards. It is, in short, a battle over whether the dominant social system in post-communist Europe will be liberal democracy or clerical democracy.
Publication Date: 2007
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Title: "Which Form of Accountable Government for the European Union?"
Author(s):
- Van Gerven, Walter
Description: In this contribution the question is asked, and tried to be answered, which form of accountable government the European Union should have in the future. The subject may seem to be of a speculative nature and, indeed, it is. However, complaints are often heard that political decisions are taken, jumping from one crisis situation to another, ending up in a political structure without any consistency. Consequently, it may be desirable to think about how a coherent political structure of the EU may look like. Surely, many will think that this is preposterous now that a constitution for Europe has been rejected. But, is it not exactly when the political decision making process has come to an halt and limiting itself, as it usually does, to taking punctual decisions in order to resolve daily problems, that some long term academic thinking is appropriate? That is what I intend to do herein, dividing my lecture in three parts: first, which proto-type forms of accountable government are available in democratic states, second, which form is preferable from a theoretical point of view, and third, what would be the most appropriate form of accountable government for the EU from a practical viewpoint. The whole exercise is about making the Union's structure more democratic, and the Union's decision making process more legitimate.
Publication Date: 2007
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Title: The EU Essential Facilities Doctrine
Author(s):
- Hatzopoulos, Vassilis
Description: The doctrine of essential facilities originates in the US antitrust case law of the Circuit and District Courts, but has never been officially acknowledged by the Supreme Court. It has been further developed and hotly debated by scholars in the US, both from a legal and from an economic viewpoint. In the EU, the essential facilities doctrine was openly introduced by the Commission during the early 1990s, but has received only limited and indirect support by the Court of First Instance (the CFI) and the European Court of Justice (the ECJ). It also indirectly inspired the legislation concerning the deregulation of traditional ?natural? monopolies.
Publication Date: 2006
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Title: Why the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is bad for you: A Letter to the EU
Author(s):
- Hatzopoulos, Vassilis
Description: The paper intention is to further stimulate the scientific dialogue on the open method of coordination (OMC).
Publication Date: 2006
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Author(s):
- Kennedy, Michael
Description: There is a great value in trying to figure the relative influence of and relationship between transnational and domestic actors in policy making and agenda setting.
Publication Date: 2006
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Title: Who are the Europeans and why does that matter for politics?
Author(s):
- Fligstein, Neil
Description: It is useful to summarize the basic story of the past two chapters. Only about 13% of the Europe's population sees themselves as mostly European. A large fraction of the rest of the poputlation sometimes sees itself as european but mainly has a national identity.
Publication Date: 2006
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Title: The Case Law of the ECK Concerning the Free Provision of Services 2000-2005
Author(s):
- Hatzopoulos, Vassilis
Description: The rise in the number of cases that the ECJ has had to review has gone up from 40 to 140 cases. This confirms, beyond any doubt, the tendency already observed in a previous overview, that a "third" generation case law on services is developing at an very rapid pace by the ECJ
Publication Date: 2006
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Title: Beyond Gerorge W. Bush, Texas and the Current Administration Policies
Author(s):
- Markovits, Andrei S.
Description: Lecture given for the "Conversations on Europe" series: There can be no doubt that the Bush Administration's policies have massively contributed to a hitherto unprecedented deterioration in European-American relations.However, European antipathies towards many things American date back at least to July 5, 1776, if not before. Following a conceptual discussion of anti-Americanism, the paper then turns to an account of these historical dislikes and anchors them particularly among Europe's elites. A discussion of anti-Semitism in relation to anti- Americanism follows in the subsequent section. A summary of an analysis of newspaper articles collected in the decade of the 1990s highlights the widespread nature of anti-American sentiments in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Lastly, anti-Americanism's functionality as a useful ingredient in Europe's burgeoning state building process concludes the paper.
Publication Date: 2006
Country(s):- Germany
- United States
- France
- United Kingdom
- Italy
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Title: The Many Faces fo the EU: A Guide
Author(s):
- Sbragia, Alberta
Description: The European Union is confusing. It is confusing to Europeans and to American's-and to just about everyone else. It is intrinsically difficult to understand because it is neither a normal state like the us or canada, not is it a normal international oranization like NATO or the OAS or UN. It is fundamentally a regional system of governance. It is not a regional system of "government" however, for the EU does not have a government as we traditionally think of a government.
Publication Date: 2006
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Title: The Myth of the Dutch Middle Way
Author(s):
Description: Since the Netherlands seems to have solved the unemployment problem that is still haunting its neighbours, its policies have attracted a Europe wide attention. Somehow the rumor spread that there existed something like a Dutch ?Poldermodel? in politics, capable of solving the problems which were faced by almost all the West European states in the early 1980?s, like high unemployment, huge public deficits and over crowded universities.
Publication Date: 2005
Country(s):- Netherlands
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Author(s):
- Avi-Yonah, Reuven S.
Description: In October 2005, a group of distinguished tax experts from the European Union and the United States, who had never met before, convened at the University of Michigan Law School for a conference on "Comparetive Fiscal Federalism: Comparing the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice Tax Jurispruence."
Publication Date: 2005
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Title: The Double Challenge of Globalisation and Regionalisation
Author(s):
- Cartalis, Costas
Description: Lecture on regionalisation and globalisation, with an effort to exemplify on the regionalised character of the European Union and also include in the discussion the current situation in Europe as well as the prospects and trends.
Publication Date: 2005
Country(s):- Greece
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Title: Haunting Europe: Some Modernist Uses of Hellenism
Author(s):
- Kolocotroni, Dr. Vassiliki
Description: "A Greek contemplates an ancient greek urn: or, as George Bush would have it, a Grecian contemplates an urn."
Publication Date: 2005
Country(s):- Greece
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Title: The Moderns Between the Greek and the Romans: Tony Blair's Athenian Bithday
Author(s):
- Stothard, Sir Peter
Description: The reminisace of British theatre classics due to current political events.
Publication Date: 2005
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Title: Managing the Global Firm: Appliying the Lessons of a Transatlantic Merger
Author(s):
- Zetsche, Dr. Dieter
Description: Lecture on the importance and significance of the economic ties between America and Europe.
Publication Date: 2005
Country(s):- Germany
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Title: Muslim Communities in Europe, Recognition of Religious Differences in Britain, Germany and France.
Author(s):
- Berta Alvarez-Miranda
Description: Difficulties of Muslim emmigrats in various European nations. Also covers dealing with education, employment and language barriers.
Publication Date: 2005
Country(s):- France
- Germany
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Title: Labor Force Participation Trends of older workers in the EU
Author(s):
- Maarten Lindebooom
Description: Outline of compare and contrasting of several European nations and the United States, regarding retirement wages and benefits.
Publication Date: 2005
Country(s):- Netherlands
- Germany
- Sweden
- UK
- US
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Title: Similarity and Convergence in the EU and CEECS Trade Structures
Author(s):
- De Benedictis, Luca
Description: In this paper we look at similarity and convregence of trade patterns between the EU and four of the so called "accession countries" of Central and Eastern Europe.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: The Economic Significance of the Euro
Author(s):
- Viaene, Jean-Marie
Description: Objective: To estimate theh significance of the birth of the euro for the international trade developments of EMU countries and of their trading partners.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: The 2004 European Elections and Legislative Politics in the EP
Author(s):
- Gabel, Matthew
Description: Topics Outline: Party Groups and their significance, The Post-election PG system, The post-election organization of the EP, The potential legislative impact on the Lisbon Strategy.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: Another look at the Connections Across German Elections
Author(s):
- Gaines, Brian J.
Description: By examining connections between recent federal and state elections in Germany, we evaluate whether German elections seem to be maintaining some interesting preunification patterens broadly reminiscent of American elections, even as the reabsorption of the East has made the German party seem chaotic.
Publication Date: 2004
Country(s):- Germany
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Author(s):
- Halberstam, Daniel
Description: We are a group of academic and researchers on the European Union, coming from many disciplines and teaching across Europe and beyond. We have taken seriously the calls by the Nice Treaty, the Laeken declariation and the Convention itself for input from academia in the writing of a constitution for Europe.
Publication Date: 2004
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Author(s):
- Hix, Simon
Description: Despite a sophisticated understanding of the impact of electoral institutions on aggregate political behavior, we know little about the relationship between these institutions and legislative behavior at the individual level.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: Our European Demoi-cracy: Is this Constitution a third way for Europe
Author(s):
- Kalypso, Nicolaidis
Description: The tabloids have branded it as the biggest decision facing modern Britian, and the mark of its final downfall. Ever since the draft of the Constitutional Treaty for the European Union started to take shape in bits and pieces last year it has provoked passion in Britain and a yawn in the rest of Europe.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: European Integration and the Nationalities Question
Author(s):
- Keating, Michael
Description: European integration poses new questions about the relationship between nation and state. It undermines traditional understandings of sovereignity and weakens the need for statehood. Minortity nationalist movements have in many cases adopted the European theme, adjusting thier ideology and strategy accordingly.
Publication Date: 2004
Country(s):- Federated States of Micronesia
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Title: Financial Integration, exchange rate regimes in CEEC's, and joining the EMU: Just Do It?
Author(s):
- Mathilde, Maurel
Description: Canidate countries of central and eastern Europe are supposed to join the EU in 2004, June, which imply that they will face important chalenges in the conduct of macroeconomic policy, in order to be able to enter the ERM-II system and eventually enter the EMU.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: A Larger and Stronger European Union - An Analysis of Recent Developments
Author(s):
- Nowotny, Eva
Description: Progressive enlargement of the European Union, combined with greater clarity, transparency, cohesion and efficiency is a a goal to which all member states of the Union subscribe.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: When Moderate Voters Prefer Extreme Parties
Author(s):
- Orit Kedar
Description: This work develops and tests a theory of voter choice in parliamentary elections.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: Hannah Arendt and the Future of Europe
Author(s):
- Vecchiarelli Scott, Joanna
Description: Hannah Arendt has become the Sybil of the 20th and 21st centuries who continues her role as a "truth-teller", often in a startlling mix of irony, abstraction and reportage, for those who dare to inquire about the fundamental breat in history and memory which we term Modernity.
Publication Date: 2004
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Title: Back toe the 1930's? The Shaky Case for Exempting Dividends
Author(s):
- Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Description: "In recent weeks there has been a significant revival of and old idea from the first Bush administration. Encact an Exemptions for dividends. The details are unclear, except for the potential significant revenue loss."
Publication Date: 2003
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Title: Global Civil Society As a Community of Memory
Author(s):
- Helmut Dubiel
Description: Lecture given as part of the "Conversations on Europe" lecture series. In the last decade there has without any doubt been a dramaticall increaded awareness of politically motivated crimes like mass murder, mass rape, torture, ethnic cleansing, or other miseries inflicted on people on the mass scale like famines and forced migration.
Publication Date: 2002
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Title: Global Government Networks, Global Information Agencies, and the Disaggregated Democracy
Author(s):
- Slaughter, Ann Marie
Description: Can global governance be democratic? That is the quesiton that animates this volume and many others, that brings protesters to the streets in Seattle and Prague and Washington, and that has national and international government officials working on a host of reforms to enhance "transparency" and "access" to thier global dileberations
Publication Date: 2002
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Author(s):
- Lorenz, Chris
Description: To all appearances higher education in both the EU and the US has turned into a more fashionable topic for politicians and journalists than it was ten years ago1. With some frequency readers of the daily and the weekly press are informed about what is going on in 'the brain business' in the first half of their newspapers and journals ? a topic that used to be covered by journalists at the very beginning of their career or by journalists who simply did not understand what the average reader finds interesting. Being a very complex and an utterly unsexy topic (moreover with a complex history), higher education usually just does not capture the publics' eye and imagination.
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