Birol A. Yeşilada - Global Power Transition and the Future of the European Union

Birol A. Yeilada, Jacek Kugler,
Gaspare Genna,
and Osman Gktu Tanrkulu

First published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 Birol A. Yeilada, Jacek Kugler, Gaspare Genna, and Osman Gktu Tanrkulu

The right of Birol A. Yeilada, Jacek Kugler, Gaspare Genna, and Osman Gktu Tanrkulu to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-28349-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-27022-7 (ebk)

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The idea for this book came about at the annual Carmel Meeting of the TransResearch Consortium. We began exploring this topic because of our shared interest in the European Unions integration process of peaceful amalgamation among nations. Scholars and policy practitioners often ask how and why European states succeeded in reaching such a high level of integration while other experiments around the world failed. As we show in this book, many theories attempt to provide answers to the EUs uniqueness. However, these theories fall short of capturing what International Relations scholars call the levels of analysis problem. The EU came about as a result of systemic changes, regional and state interests, and visionary political leaders efforts. Today, the EU faces challenges that threaten not only internal cohesion but also its position in the global system: Brexit, financial crisis, imigration and refugee problem, uncertainties surrounding common foreign and security policy, and competition with other global powers. It is clear that the EU faces the most difficult challenges to its survival since the days of Eurosclerosis and Europessimism of the 1970s.

In this collaborative research, we combine knowledge about conflict and cooperation into a general theory of international interactions to explain which factors lead states toward integration, assess the nature of policy challenges facing member states, and provide simulation analysis to show what the future holds for the EU. Because each of us brings to the table broad but diverse methodological perspectives we were able to integrate cross-national empirical work derived from surveys, with detailed assessment of national power, and explore outcomes with novel agent-based approaches designed to assess policy options. Alone none of us could have amassed or explored the empirical data incorporated in this book, nor could we have systematically analyzed policy choices and successfully explored the interaction between short-term decisions and their long-term implications. While collaboration is never easy, fruitful collaboration led us to a much better understanding of the integration process. Structural analysis provided clues about what could be done and micro-assessments disclosed policy opportunities that, if implemented, could further European integration.