Suchergebnisse

The article explores the theoretical capabilities of the fusion approach as a conceptual 'kit' to explain the 'bigger picture' of European integration from a local government perspective. Fusion addresses the rationales and methods facilitating the transfer of policy-making competences to the European level. It understands European integration as a merging of public resources and policy instruments from multiple levels of government, whereby accountability and responsibilities for policy outcomes become blurred. The article argues that the fusion approach is useful to explain the systemic linkages between macro-trajectories and the corresponding change at the local level; the fusion dynamics of the local and European levels in a common policy-cycle; and the attitudes of local actors towards the EU. Although the article concludes that local government is rather modestly 'fused' into the EU, fusion approaches allow examining the extent to which the local level has become integrated into the European governance system.

The objective of the article is to assess the impact of past and future enlargements of the European Union (EU) on the development of federalism within the EU in its historical, current and likely future context. After briefly considering the problems of defining federalism and establishing a number of key criteria on which the impact of various accessions on the popularity of federalism can be judged, the article then applies these criteria to past and future enlargement phases. The final section summarizes the evidence and argues that, in practice, enlarging the EU has incorporated a majority of `dissident' members who are resistant to the development of a federal EU and that, to some extent, intergovernmental tendencies have been reinforced. Its general conclusion is that a multi-speed EU, with a hard core essentially based around the original six (and more federal inclined) founding members is looking an increasingly likely scenario for the future.