This book provides a timely evaluation of the EU's ability to act internationally and coordinate policy in a time when it also seeks to meet shifting demands of international cooperation. These include global sustainable development, the challenge of multilateralism and the changing geopolitical order. Analysing the networks of officials and policy professionals in EU development policy, the book yields theoretical insights into dominant processes that characterise EU governance in international cooperation and assesses their role for policy coordination. Overall, this book concludes that EU policy coordination evades intergovernmental control and demonstrates how the agency of EU institutions depends on efforts of member state officials to defend their priorities and identities. Finally, it shows the need to better understand the EU as a collective international actor, beyond the widespread concern with institutional adjustments, which continuously fail to produce the intended outcomes. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU politics, EU foreign policy, EU external relations and more broadly to international relations and international development.

This book provides a timely evaluation of the EU’s ability to act internationally and coordinate policy in a time when it also seeks to meet shifting demands of international cooperation. These include global sustainable development, the challenge of multilateralism and the changing geopolitical order. Analysing the networks of officials and policy professionals in EU development policy, the book yields theoretical insights into dominant processes that characterise EU governance in international cooperation and assesses their role for policy coordination. Overall, this book concludes that EU policy coordination evades intergovernmental control and demonstrates how the agency of EU institutions depends on efforts of member state officials to defend their priorities and identities. Finally, it shows the need to better understand the EU as a collective international actor, beyond the widespread concern with institutional adjustments, which continuously fail to produce the intended outcomes. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU politics, EU foreign policy, EU external relations and more broadly to international relations and international development.

This volume brings together world experts in international business who offer a commentary on the key activities of transnational corporations including strategy, economic development, government policy, technology and law

This book is the first of its kind to paint a comprehensive picture of the manner in which the European Union (the EU) interacts with transnational policy networks (TPNs). The TPNs covered are those in a variety of fields including: conflict-prone natural resources, health, energy security, migration, human trafficking, combating of terrorism financing and climate change. The chapters are developed around six main lines of inquiry. The lines of inquiry articulated are: modalities through which the EU influences TPNs around the world, TPNs’ influence of policy and decision-making within the EU, conditions under which engagement between the TPNs and the EU may be regarded as successful, the identity and location of the TPNs and finally the added value or futility of a strategy developed in Brussels to weaken or fortify interactions with the networks studied. The importance of TPNs should be approached from the angle of the heightened attention now placed on informal modes of decision making. Increasingly there is a sense that many international decisions are adopted and internalized through networks that can be efficient yet wanting in transparency. The book unveils complex debates on the inter-phase between inter-governmental / supranational entities like the EU, on the one hand, and networks, on the other. The physiognomy of this inter-phase matters not only for the EU but also for other such inter-governmental/ supranational bodies as well as networks. This book was previously published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

In a globalized knowledge-economy, the European Union (EU) needs a new approach to its international science and technology (S & T) policies by focusing on improved coherence across the different tiers of government and by demonstrating leadership in tackling serious global challenges. The contributors to this book analyze European S & T policies in several areas of global concern as well as by exposing both the pitfalls of policy coordination and its potential to contribute to a more coherent international S & T policy. They highlight the interactions between national, European and international po.