Core-periphery Relations in the European Union ─ Power and conflict in a dualist political economy

Successive Enlargements to the European Union membership have transformed it into an economically, politically and culturally heterogeneous body with distinct vulnerabilities in its multi-level governance.

This book analyses core-periphery relations to highlight the growing cleavage, and potential conflict, between the core and peripheral member-states of the Union in the face of the devastating consequences of Eurozone crisis. Taking a comparative and theoretical approach and using a variety of case studies, it examines how the crisis has both exacerbated tensions in centre-periphery relations within and outside the Eurozone, and how the European Union’s economic and political status is declining globally.

This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of European Union studies, European integration, political economy, public policy, and comparative politics.

Jose M. Magone is Professor of Regional and Global Governance at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. He has published 11 books, over 40 chapters in edited books and 14 journal articles on European politics, particularly on southern Europe and European integration.

Christian Schweiger is Lecturer in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. His research interests concentrate on the institutions, policies and the member states of the European Union (particularly the UK, Germany and the CEE countries), the political economy of the EU Single Market, economic globalisation and transatlantic relations. He coordinates the UACES collaborative research networkThe EU Single Market in the Global Economy.

Brigid Laffan is Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,and Director of the Global Governance Programme, European University Institute (EUI), Florence. In August 2013, Professor Laffan left the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe) University College Dublin where she was Professor of European Politics. She was Vice-President of UCD and Principal of the College of Human Sciences from 2004 to 2011. She was the founding director of the Dublin European Institute UCD from 1999 and in March 2004 she was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy. She is a member of the Board of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, the Fulbright Commission (until September 2013) and was the 2013 Visiting Scientist for the EXACT Marie Curie Network. In December 2012, Professor Laffan was awarded the THESEUS Award for outstanding research on European Integration. In 2010 she was awarded the Ordre nationale du Merite by the President of the French Republic.