The relationship between history and sociology has been the subject of heated controversies ever since sociology was established as a discipline. These debates continue, and over the last decades, historical sociology has been at the core of debates spanning the whole spectrum from specific...

Europeans currently reflect on how to express and promote human rights and solidarity in their common institutions in the new Constitutional Treaty now facing ratification. What is the scope of toleration towards states that violate human rights, within and beyond its borders? And what is the...

The European Union is presently at a major crossroads. The Laeken process which launched the EU onto an explicit constitution-making process, has ground to a halt after the negative referendum results in France and the Netherlands. The European Council at its 16-17 June 2005 meeting decided to...

Language minorities can be found as evidence of unfinished nation-building in relatively closed territorial settlements all over contemporary Europe. From a comparative perspective, different paths of accommodating linguistic diversity can be followed resulting in very dissimilar regimes of...

This article discusses the question of the EU's uniqueness. This issue is of particular importance when considered in relation to the nation-state. Uniqueness can then be considered as a case of departure from or transformation of the nation-state. The EU has emerged with a complex mixture of...

In this paper I relate Europeanisation to the processes of nation states formation and consolidation. The paper first offers a general framework for the historical interpretation of the integration process. It then describes that same process in analytical terms, sketching the implications of...

This article argues that a key to the influence of the EU in foreign policy is its consistent basis for the latter in terms of the legitmacy of human rights in current international affairs. Humanrights norms today carry both normative power in a public discourse on foreign policy, and they are...

In this paper, the constitution making process in Europe is assessed with emphasis on incorporating the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Is the Charter a means to reduce the democratic deficit even if it does not fully comply with the notion of people-made law? The EU establishes post-national...

To sketch an institutional approach, this paper elaborates ideas presented over 20 years ago in The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life (March and Olsen 1984). Institutionalism, as that term is used here, connotes a general approach to the study of political...

The paper starts by discussing what I think most students of government hold to be the most characteristic features of development over the last couple of decades; namely ‘agencification’ and fragmentation of national governments. Interestingly, when dealing with the problems such a...