Transatlantic Studies refer to a recent academic discipline foremost studying the economic, cultural, political, legal, and social linkages between Europe and the U.S. However, the main focus of Transatlantic Studies has shifted somewhat over time. While Transatlantic Studies in a narrow perspective have referred to Anglo-American relations, or at most transatlantic relations including the European Union (EU) and Canada, contemporary Transatlantic Studies have come to put greater attention to a broader geographical scope, including Latin America and Africa. This is foremost due to the political and economic growing importance of many states in Latin America and Africa in international politics and economics. These geographical spaces all border on the Atlantic Ocean and it is the nature and dynamics of these relations over time that are of crucial interest in Transatlantic Studies. There has been a growing notion that in order to understand the common, the national, there is great need to explore the uncommon, the transnational. The growing interest in Transatlantic Studies finds its roots in area studies, but has been reinforced and redeveloped by the notion of globalization. This book addresses challenges to the transatlantic world, reflecting upon the contemporary situation of transatlantic relations at the early 21st century.

In an era of globalisation, the present volume constitutes a comprehensive overview of some of the most prominent themes and challenges that policy-makers are addressing in contemporary Europe, dominated by a European Union of 27 Member States. A connection is made between the Europe order and the integration process on the one side, and issues and challenges that are present in a globalised world, on the other. Ten themes are addresses, illustrating the complexity of and the interrelation that exist between global and European affairs in our contemporary world: integration, enlargement, regional policy, international security, power relations, immigration, terrorism, regime change, self-determination and nation-state building, and humanitarian intervention.

Political Entrepreneurship explores the role of political entrepreneurs in regional growth and entrepreneurial diversity. The authors define a political entrepreneur as a politician, bureaucrat or officer within the publicly funded sector who encourages entrepreneurship for growth and employment using innovative approaches. This book aims to enrich the established research on entrepreneurship with in-depth knowledge of the conditions conducive for political entrepreneurship in Sweden.

This unique book expertly analyses European political entrepreneurship in relation to the European Union’s approach towards the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development strategy. It explores the role of European political entrepreneurs in shaping, influencing and realising the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Chapters examine EU actors in the context of numerous development goals to assess how political entrepreneurship challenges traditional EU institutions and promotes visionary activity.

This article explores the European Union’s (EU) democratic and security objectives in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) toward three post-Soviet states: Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. By discussing the ENP’s objectives, this study concludes the following: first, despite long-term ENP democracy promotion, there have been very limited democratic developments in the partner states between 2005 and 2014; second, security challenges remain in partner states in the breakaway regions in Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk in Ukraine. Therefore, EU’s Kantian view of security through democracy has failed, and its ambition to create a ring of Eastern friends has not led to improved relations in the Eastern neighborhood. On the contrary, the EU’s push eastward has instead intensified insecurity in its partner states due to limited democratization.

Based on a theoretical perspective linking international actors with domestic elites, this article explores how Ukraine’s process of democratization in the 2000s should be understood in terms of international pressure from the European Union (EU) and Russia squeezing the domestic elites into two alternative roadmaps for Ukraine. Ukraine, as a “swing-state” of democratic progress and problems, is assumed to have great impact on the regional democratic landscape. The contemporary hybrid nature of Ukraine’s political regime is a consequence of Ukraine being located geopolitically between the authoritarian Russia and the democratic member states of the EU, leading to competing political elites with alternative visions for the future of Ukraine.

Based on the promising democratic changes around the world during the late twentieth century, what are the favorable factors for building democracy? In the 1990s, research on democratization mushroomed, exploring how to explain reasons for democracy around the world. The global spread of democracy resulted in numerous conclusions about national and international favorable factors for democracy. More recently, the global democratic upsurge seems to have halted with worrying tendencies toward new forms of authoritarianism, hybrid regimes of both democratic and authoritarian institutions and fragile democracies. Recent studies have argued how authoritarianism has gone global and challenge the previous global spread of democracy. Based on a literature review of the bulk of studies on democracy building, this chapter identifies the main national and international favorable factors for democracy. It is argued that research has had a domestic focus up until the 1990s, but how international factors have come to play an important role in explaining democracy. Today, research must focus on the interplay between national and international factors to democracy building embedding both an actor and a structural dimension.

This study explores the contemporary democracy in South Africa three decades after the end of Apartheid. Based on the classical study provided by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996), the challenges to South Africa’s democracy are analyzed in the political, judicial, bureaucratic, economic and civil societies. Each society is important as a single-case study analysis, but they are also interrelated societies, together bringing deepened insights to the quality of democracy. It is argued that although the African National Congress (ANC) was once the promoter of democracy, its long-term political dominance has resulted in major hindrances for further democratization in the political, bureaucratic and economic societies, but with positive signs in the judicial and civil societies.

This study explores the literature on factors favorable to democratization. It is argued that there has been a domestic dominance, with international factors a forgotten dimension. It is also argued that the limited body of work dealing with international factors has been empirical in nature. This study sheds lights on one international factor in democracy promotion. The theoretical contribution of this study is the presented analytical framework for democracy promotion. The analytical framework consists of actors, interests, methods, channels, relations and impact. It is argued that, within a specific time-context (setting): (1) There are actors (2) that may promote the democracy norm and reinforcing interests. ( 3) They may use different methods of pursuing their interests and (4) that may be channeled towards domestic actors. (5) This may create certain relations and (6) have different impact on domestic actors.

The empirical aim of this study is to illustrate the analytical framework. The empirical contribution is to provide an improved understanding of democracy promotion and democratization in postcommunist Europe. This is done by analyzing the role of the EU as democracy promoter in Slovakia, Belarus and FRY from 1995 to 2003. The analysis illustrates different interests, methods, channels, relations and impact between the EU as democracy promoter and the targeted states in Slovakia, Belarus and FRY.

This chapter addresses the challenges to liberal democracy in Europe and how a questioned liberal democracy has become a threat to the European Union (EU) and European integration. This chapter reviews the research on democratization and autocratization and explores the democracy status among EU member states. It further discusses how previous decades of democratization provided for EU enlargements and an expanded democratic peace order, but how recent years of democratic decline has become an existential threat to the EU. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what the EU should do if some member states further declines into populism, illiberalism and autocracy.

In this article, I argue that the largest UN mission in history, the United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), was doomed to fail in its overall efforts because of the catch-22 situation embedded in the UNâs underlying policy towards Kosovo. UNMIK stressed the necessity for Kosovo to meet certain democratic standards before the question of future status could be settled. A viable Kosovo needs democracy, but, as argued here, the question of statehood has to be resolved prior to building such a democracy. As previous (but often neglected) research has shown, statehood is a precondition for functional democracy, and democratization boosts the state with the necessary central capacity and societal cohesion that a functional state requires. However, what previous research on democratization has overlooked is the need for external recognition of statehood to promote state-building and democratization. Here, this crucial role of external recognition to state-building and democratization is illustrated in the analysis of Kosovoâs way towards recognition.

Erasmus+ är ett EU-program för internationellt samarbete där MUCF ansvarar för ungdomsdelen som heter Erasmus+ Ung och Aktiv. Inom programmet ingår mobilitet, strategiska partnerskap och att påverka ungdomspolitiken. För att säkerställa att programmet lever upp till det innehåll och den kvalitet som eftersträvas, finns RAY - Research based evaluation of Youth in Action program. RAY utvärderar programmet kontinuerligt. I denna analys får vi en bild av hur Erasmus+ Ung och Aktiv har påverkat svenska deltagare och projektledare.

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) decided on 17 sustainable development goals. Goal 16 focused on peace, justice and strong institutions and on the importance of democracy for global sustainable development. This study explores the status of democracy in Europe and highlights tendencies of authoritarianism in some post-communist states. This happens in a global context of resurgence of autocratization. Although the European Union (EU) continues to be a solid liberal democratic order, challenges in post-communist Europe exist, especially in Hungary as a new authoritarian state within the EU.

This study deals with the European Commission and Communication Europe 2020, which was a result of the global economic crisis of 2007–2008 and forward. Europe 2020 was an initiative to deal with the crisis by promoting smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. The Commission addressed the crisis as an existential threat to Europe, but also as a window of opportunity to build a new prosperous region. This study explores the political entrepreneurial efforts taken by the Commission as well as assesses the outcome of reforms implemented. The Commission has achieved many targets, although some challenges remain unsolved.