A study of East Central Europe and its place in the modern world. Combining narrative with analysis, it presents the past and present of East Central Europe in the larger context of the political and economic history of the continent.

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.

A groundbreaking comparative history of the formation of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, from their origins in the eleventh century.

This book is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood both as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy?as well as the older political traditions?and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.

Central Europe is one of the key notions of classical geopolitics yet it has always been a somewhat elusive concept. Originally perceived as a plan for a German dominated political and economic union, it subsequently emerged to threaten leaders in the East and West in a variety of forms. Otilia Dhand provides a critical examination of the concept of Central Europe, from its early inception to the present day. Making extensive use of archival material, she shows how successive manifestations of Central Europe - of whatever vintage - have failed to bring about their intended changes on the international structure, and how customary claims about Central Europe are not supported by the original source material. The result is a work of outstanding scholarship that advances our understanding of regionalism and geopolitics in Europe.