Die Wahl des neuen amerikanischen Präsidenten bedeutet eine Zäsur für die Europäische Union, weil Donald Trump im Wahlkampf und vor seiner Amtseinführung die Fundamente der transatlantischen Kooperation in Frage gestellt hat. In seiner Kampagne gegen das Washingtoner Establishment erklärte Trump die NATO für obsolet und die EU für gescheitert, unterstützte EU-Gegner und begrüßte das britische Austrittsreferendum, lehnte das transatlantische Freihandelsabkommen TTIP ab und kündigte einen Ausstieg aus dem Pariser Klimaschutzabkkommen an.read more
A workshop by SIGMA and Montenegro’s Ministry of European Affairs, Podgorica 11-12 May 2017
To step up its EU accession preparations, the newly elected government of Montenegro has established a new Ministry of European Affairs (MEP) since November 2016. In May 2017, the Ministry organized a government-wide workshop on the coordination of strategic planning together with SIGMA, the joint program created by the OECD and the EU to strengthen public management.
The purpose of the workshop was to discuss the requirements and coordination of strategic plans, to link strategy documents and medium-term budget planning and to define goals and indicators for monitoring and reporting. Apart from MEP, senior civil servants from the Secretariat of the Government, the Ministry of Finance and key line ministries attended the workshop. SIGMA experts included practitioners from Estonia, Latvia and Hungary.read more
Foreign-Policy Positioning in Germany’s Electoral Campaign
Berlin TV Tower
Opening lecture at the Center for International Studies, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, 28 March 2017
Surrounded by global and European uncertainties, Germany is expecting federal legislative elections on 24 September 2017. European integration, the transatlantic alliance and the cooperation with Russia have been bedrocks of Germany’s foreign policy and its official international identity as a “reflective power” (Frank-Walter Steinmeier). All three fundaments are now subject to eroding forces or unprecedented political challenges. External turbulences interact with domestic tendencies of popular concern and distrust regarding the governing political elites and their European crisis management capacities.read more
To upgrade their research capacity, think tanks need access to methodological and conceptual tools that have recently been developed by researchers in the field of policy analysis and evaluation. My three-day workshop with Belgrade Open School provided an overview on rationalist and institutionalist approaches of policy analysis, focusing on examples from Europeanization studies. Notions of causation and strategies to deal with confounding causes formed the basis of our discussion on evaluation methods. The workshop also included an introduction to regression and factor analysis, two key tools of empirical policy research.read more
Training for the Institute of World Policy, Kiev, 4 September 2015
A full day of teaching with the staff of Ukraine’s leading independent think tank for International Relations, the Institute of World Policy. The main themes were:
1. Research design / causation, theory building;
2. Conceptualization and measurement
3. Qualitative and quantitative methods
4. Evaluating policies
Claudia Matthes and I prepared a paper for the panel: “Demokratieentwicklung in vergleichender Perspektive”, organized at the annual conference of the DVPW section on Comparative Politics, German Institute of Global and Area Studies, 25 – 27 February 2015
The conference venue: GIGA Hamburg
East-Central European Democracies Adrift? Trajectories and their Causes
Electoral landslides, corruption scandals involving political leaders, declining satisfaction with democracy, mass protests and the erosion of democratic accountability institutions in one of the countries, Hungary, raise questions about the development of East-Central European democracies. Our paper argues that these democracies are subject to several drift processes triggered by the crises of economic and European integration and the deeping dealignment between voters and political parties. The impact of these factors differs from country to country, depending on its configuration of institutional constraints, socio-political cleavages and citizens’ expectations. In the paper, we examine how these structural factors influence democratic governance in East-Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and why some of these democracies have been more resilient than others.read more
A seminar for PhD students at Kazakh National University Al’-Farabi, Almaty
Eastern Europe has been shaped by historically late state and nation building. Due to this trajectory, questions of state identity and cohesion have acquired persisting political relevance. Ethnopolitical conflicts have led to the disintegration of all three state socialist federations. Ethnopolitical cleavages structure party systems in the new nation states of Eastern Europe, particularly where they are related to persisting ethnoregional diversity.
Author: László Sebők, Teleki László Foundation and Südost-Institut
The course discussed the political integration of ethnoregional diversity in connection with the territorial restructuring of states which occured in the context of public administration reform, the consolidation of peace agreements and the preparation for accession to the European Union. Drivers, paths and outcomes of regionalization processses were compared.
Vortrag beim EZFF-Autorenworkshop “Regionalparteien nach der Europawahl: Selbstverständnis, Handlungsspielräume und Bedeutung” 23.-25.10.2014, Tutzing
Mehrere Parteien konkurrieren um die Repräsentation der magyarischen Volksgruppen in Rumänien und der Slowakei. Während der Verband der Magyaren Rumäniens (UDMR/RMDSZ) seine dominante Position seit der politischen Pluralisierung Anfang der 1990er Jahre behaupten konnte, verlor die traditionelle Partei der Magyarischen Koalition (SMK/MKP) in der Slowakei gegenüber der 2009 neugegründeten Partei Most-Híd, die magyarische und slowakische Wähler anzusprechen versucht.
In dem Vortrag analysiere ich die Wahlergebnisse, Organisationssstrukturen, Wählerbasis, Programmatik und Koalitionspolitik der magyarischen Regionalparteien sowie ihre Beziehungen zur ungarischen Regierung.
A lecture series on ethno-regional diversity and political integration in Central and Eastern Europe, European Academy Bozen/Bolzano, Winter School Federalism and Governance, 12 February 2014
(c) Martin Brusis
Outline
• Does ethno-regional diversity still matter in Central and Eastern Europe
(CEE)?
• How have CEE regions emerged?
• Why have the state socialist federations collapsed?
• What approaches exist to integrate ethno-regional diversity?
• Why have CEE states reformed their territorial organization?
• How does European integration affect regionalization in CEE?
