Dirk de Bièvre, Christine Neuhold (Eds.)
	Dynamics and Obstacles of European Governance
	204 p., Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007
	ISBN 978 1 84720 034 1

Abstract

This book examines some of the major origins of change in institutions and policies in European governance. The authors combine a sophisticated institutional analysis with in-depth insights into European policies across a wide variety of policy fields. The fields examined are higher education, employment, research, police co-operation, as well as foreign affairs, trade, energy, and security and defence policy. Presenting the fruit of years of collaboration in an EU-funded Research Training Network, the authors expand the mechanisms through which political actors transform apparent deadlock into actual change in European policy making. Providing a systematic treatment of changing modes of European governance, "Dynamics and Obstacles of European Governance" will be of great interest to those in the fields of international politics and European studies, as well as European law and policy studies.

Contents

Notes on Contributors

Mariano Barbato is post-doctoral researcher at the Graduate Programme 'Anthropological Concepts and Developments in Christianity and Islam' of the University of Bamberg. He studied political science, history and philosophy in München, was an Erasmus student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a Marie Curie Fellow at the European Research Institute of the University of Birmingham. He obtained his PhD in 2004 from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München where he also worked as a visiting lecturer. He is author of two books and several articles on European integration. He is currently working on a project using the religious idea of pilgrimage to conceptualise new ,political phenomena such as globalisation and European integration. His main research interests are the political philosophy of European integration and theories of international relations.

Simon Dalferth studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and Charles University, Prague as well as contemporary European studies at Sussex University, Falmer. He previously worked as a researcher at the Institute of International Relations, Charles University, Prague. He is a PhD student at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. His research interests include European Justice and Home Affairs, internal security, interest group lobbying and European integration more generally.

Dirk De Bièvre is professor of international politics at the Department of Political Science of the Universiteit Antwerpen and visiting research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. After studying at the universities of Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve and Konstanz, he obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in San Domenico di Fiesole in May 2002. He was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn and the MZES, first with EU funding, then with a grant from the VolkswagenStiftung. His research interests include international trade institutions, judicialisation in the World Trade Organisation, European trade policy and state-society relations.

Andreas Dür is lecturer in international relations at the School of Politics and International Relations of the University College Dublin. He studied in Innsbruck, Charleston and Berkeley, before obtaining a PhD at the European University Institute in San Domenico di Fiesole in July 2004. Prior to taking up his current position, he was a research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. Among his research interests are American and European trade policies, international negotiations, decision-making in the European Union and interest group lobbying.

Stephan Hofer is lecturer in political science at the University of Vienna. He holds a PhD in political science and an MA in political science and economics from the University of Vienna as well as an MA in European integration studies from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. Between 2004 and 2006 he was a doctoral researcher at the Technische Universität in München. His current research focuses on external governance and the relations of the EU towards neighbouring countries in Southeast Europe and the former Soviet Union with a particular focus on energy.

Pat Lyons is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences. His research work focuses primarily on public opinion, electoral behaviour and political participation, and mass attitudes towards the European Union. He previously worked at the Department of West European Studies at Charles University in Prague. He has also been a Research Fellow within the Public Opinion and Political Behaviour Research Programme at the Geary Institute, University College Dublin. He completed his doctoral studies at the Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin.

Christine Neuhold is assistant professor and director of the Master in European Public Affairs at the Universiteit of Maastricht. She has previously worked at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna. She coordinated the Research Training Network `Dynamics and Obstacles of European Governance'. She has i.a. published on the role of the European Parliament and its committees. She has also worked on controlling powers of national parliaments over the Council of Ministers and examined the role of committees within the European system of governance.

Cornelia Racké is a doctoral researcher at the Universiteit of Maastricht in the Netherlands. She holds a BA in European studies from the University of Osnabrück and an MA in European integration from the University of Bradford. Her research interests include modes of governance, institutions, European foreign and security policy, and education policy. Currently, she is preparing her PhD thesis on the emergence and institutionalisation of the Bologna Process, the process of creating the European Higher Education Area.

Elissaveta Radulova is a researcher at the Universiteit of Maastricht. She hast studied in Sofia, Nice and Maastricht and holds an MA in international relations and an MA in European public affairs. She is currently working on her PhD project on the effectiveness of the Open Method of Coordination. Among her research interests are modes of governance in the EU, problemsolving capacity of the EU and application of the Open Method of Coordination in the field of employment policy.

Christopher Reynolds is a researcher in political science at the GeschwisterScholl-Institut of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München. His work is financed by the VolkswagenStiftung as part of its 'European Foreign and Security Policy Studies Programme' and focuses on the institutional structures of European security and defence cooperation. Christopher studied political science in Cardiff, Lyon, Bruges and München and is the co-editor (with D. Mahncke and A. Ambos) of European Foreign Policy: From Rhetoric to Reality (Peter Lang, 2004).

Isabelle Tannous was based at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) from 2002 untill 2005. She holds an MA in political science (LudwigMaximilians-Universität München) and spent an academic year at the Department of European Studies in Bradford. She has worked for two German political think-tanks, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) in Munich. Her main interests lie with the history and reform of the European Union, foreign and security issues, and development policy.