The paper proposes to use regulatory competition theory in order to better understand the evolution of the EU member States' asylum legislation. It argues that regulatory competition theory can explain the rapid trend of legislative amendments from the mid-80's onwards, the progressive yet...

This paper examines the progress of, and conditions for, Europeanisation in one of the EU's new neighbours to the East. Since the late 1990s under Leonid Kuchma's presidency, Ukraine regularly expressed its willingness to participate in European integration via membership of the European Union....

This paper considers the dynamics of migration of constitutional ideas in the context of the gradually "constitutionalizing" EU, and in particular the advent of a first documentary Constitution shape new (and as yet unratified) Constitutional Treaty 2004. normal, profound, complexities tracking...

How can sociology contribute to the understanding of the social and political transformations that are affecting contemporary Europe? The article proposes that sociological accounts of European integration should focus around the basic problem of internal differentiation and external adaptation...

This paper examines the Convention on the Future of Europe in terms of whether its work bears the imprint of a constitutional treaty or a constitution proper. Two constitutional visions for the EU are presented - deep diversity and constitutional patriotism - and assessed in relation to the...

Joseph Weiler's Un'Europa Cristiana argues that there should be an explicit reference to the Christian roots of European identity in the Preamble of an eventual European Constitution. Such a claim requires discussing the groundings of European identity, its relation with personal and collective...

Integration may occur through coercion and intergovernmental bargaining - through blackmail, tradition, functional adaptation, copying, diffusion or exit - but it may also occur through reflexive reason-giving and entrenched commitments. The usefulness of such an approach to transnational and...