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This paper shows that multilateralism and unilateralism are in process. We make this argument by drawing on two case studies - the Arab-Israeli rapprochement, and China’s trade restrictions against Lithuania - critically analyzing the thesis of multilateralism in crisis. The study shows that world politics is undergoing a period of transformation in which traditional multilateral structures are being tested and reassessed, while new forms of cooperation and crisis management, such as informal multilateralism, are emerging. Our results indicate that the thesis of multilateralism in crisis comes up short. Despite current tensions and unilateral actions, the thesis of multilateralism in the crises cannot be fully confirmed. The study emphasises the need for a flexible approach that combines the advantages of multilateralism and unilateralism in order to adapt to changing geopolitical conditions. There are signs of a dynamic shift in the world order between multilateralism and unilateralism, which calls into question previous beliefs of liberalism.
The European Union’s Role in the Cultural Integration of European Muslims and Combating Islamophobia
(2022)
The European agenda on multiculturalism has undermined Muslim communities through cultural repulsion. Muslims have been labelled as primitive and dangerous people. They experience discrimination at university, workplace or in the public sphere on a daily basis. Hence, the problem of Muslim cultural integration and the manifestation of Islamophobia in Europe pose a threatening challenge to European stability. The stigmatisation of Muslims and their exclusion undermine the image of the EU as the protagonist of liberal values and mar its motto of ‘unity in diversity’. So, it is prudent to assume that a great power such as the EU should step forward to tackle Islamophobia and support a multicultural way of living by promoting Muslim cultural integration into European societies. Keeping this in view, the proposed research aimed to analyse the EU’s legal framework and the mechanism of its ‘soft policy’ towards the cultural integration of European Muslims and combating Islamophobia from an anthropological perspective.
By means of qualitative research methods, the descriptive analysis of the EU policy and its anthropological impact on the Muslim cultural integration and combating Islamophobia led to the following results: The EU’s policy in this field is more likely to be assessed as insufficient and ineffective. Nevertheless, it tends to support the cultural hybridisation of European Muslims. Such a policy choice results in moderate Islamophobia and protecting Muslims only against certain forms of discrimination.
The dissertation aims at better understanding the ambiguity of parliamentary representation in the EU political system where both national parliaments and the European Parliament play a functional role and are characterized by distinct electoral and territorial interests of representation. In this context EU budgetary politics are a particularly interesting field of research since they constitute a prime parliamentary function that carries high importance inside parliamentary institutions. The EU budget – the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) – is formally divided between the revenue side, which is legitimated through the national parliamentary channel and the expenditure side for which the European Parliament is responsible.
Analyzing the internal parliamentary coordination and the parliamentary debate on the EU’s MFF 2014-2020 it is shown that parliamentary actors are embedded at different points in the budgetary policy cycle while at the same time feeling legitimately responsible for both revenue and expenditure strands of the EU budget. The EU parliamentary budget authority is formally upheld through the national and supranational channels of legitimation. Practically, however, it is impeded by even more constraints than in national budgetary procedures due to the shape of the EU multi-level system.
The performance of the parliamentary budget authority strongly diverged between the policy and the polity level of budgetary policies in the MFF 2014-2020 negotiations. On the one hand there has been a broad understanding between parliamentary actors of the same political family on the policy level in the budgetary debate. This covered joint perceptions of what policies should be enacted through the EU budget and what political priorities should be pursued. However on the polity level of the budget, there has been a fundamental disagreement on what formal structure or institutional shape should be achieved with the EU budget. Therefore the representative interests of parliamentary actors are strongly centered on territorial interests of representation – despite strong similarities in terms of electoral interests.
Budget policies constitute the core of parliamentary sovereignty which in the MFF 2014-2020 negotiations lead to the dominance of an institutional power-play over a joint coordination of welfare as it has already been found with regard to the EU budget negotiations on the member state level in the Council and European Council.
This study analyzes whether the introduction of a European smart grid, comprising of a compound of national smart grids, is economically worthwhile. Therefore, ten national cost-benefit-analyses are analyzed, which either address solely the implementation of smart meters or the implementation of national smart grids. Smart meters are regarded as a necessary precondition for the implementation of national smart grids involving private households. Thus, also an analysis of those studies, whose scope is limited, is beneficial. The studies are evaluated in regards to type, height, and distribution of the respective cost- and benefit-parameters. Although distributional effects are not subject to classical cost-benefit-analyses, considering them is significant for this study. Only thereby policy recommendations can be framed that offer state incentive regulations to those actors bearing the highest financial burden. In addition, own calculations are made in order to corroborate the cost- and benefit-analysis of smart grids. These analyze on the one hand the energy saving effect in private households fostered by smart grids, and on the other hand the capacity effect, which quantifies monetarily the reduction of peak load capacities through load shift during off-peak times. Finally, the costs for the necessary infrastructure update for grids are quantified. This study is based on the hypothesis that the future energy system needs to be able to integrate a higher share of renewable energy sources. This allows the following thesis: the costs of a so called dumb grid with a high share of renewable energy sources are higher then those of a smart grid as in the second case synergies can be exploited, load shift can take place, and, therefore, less infrastructure update is necessary. Under the premises that the future energy mix has to include a significant share of renewable energy sources smart grids, hence, create opportunity benefits.