This paper perceives the politics of EU eastern enlargement to be a twofold process, in which governments of transition countries decide whether or not to apply for membership and in turn EU members decide whether or not to accept these applicants. Specifically, we argue that the level of...

Conflicts between EU members about enlargement result from its re-distributive effects. EU members are more likely to suffer from enlargement if they profit from EU transfers and if they are relatively close to applicant countries in which unemployment is significantly higher than in member...

German educational spending per student has dramatically declined since the early 1970s. In this paper, we develop a theory of fiscal opportunism and argue that state governments exploit higher educational policies as an instrument of active labor market policy. By 'opening' universities to the...