Professor Theofanis Exadaktylos

This book explores the reasons behind the variation in national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it furthers the policy studies scholarship through an examination of the effects of policy styles on national responses to the pandemic. Despite governments being faced with the same threat, significant variation in national responses, frequently of contradictory nature, has been observed. Implications about responses inform a broader class of crises beyond this specific context. The authors argue that trust in government interacts with policy styles resulting in different responses and that the acute turbulence, uncertainty, and urgency of crises complicate the ability of policymakers to make sense of the problem. Finally, the book posits that unless there is high trust between society and the state, a decentralized response will likely be disastrous and concludes that while national responses to crises aim to save lives, they also serve to project political power and protect the status quo.This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of public policy, public administration, political science, sociology, public health, and crisis management/disaster management studies.

To what extent do public health crises create unity or polarise the public sphere? We investigate the development and dynamics of the public debate in Greece in light of Covid-19 to detect polarisation within the public sphere. We cover the first wave of the pandemic (March-May 2020), assessing reactions to government measures. In times of crises, the public looks for shortcuts in the media to assess the overabundance of information and digest the complexity of a crisis. Hence, people look at opinion leaders for guidance or to reinforce their own views. To assess the formation of the public debate and public responses we look at the cues the public receives via the media. Through a content analysis of editorial pieces in Greek newspapers we code references to government responses, the public response or the responsibility of fellow citizens, and the role of experts in providing professional advice to the government and guidance to society. The differential of positive and negative references reflects and determines a polarized debate that triggers public mobilization and engagement with specific repertoires of action. The findings assist in understanding the adherence to government guidance by the public and the passive reception or contestation of measures.

Why do national governments fail to implement deep reforms in light of strong international and European pressures? Building on the top-down implementation framework by Mazmanian and Sabatier, we argue that political trust underpins the government's implementation track record. We investigate this argument by looking at the failure of the Greek government to implement bailout reforms between 2010 and 2012 in two areas: tax and duty collection and liberalization of taxi licenses. Lower levels of trust decrease administrative capacity and widen problem intractability, creating a vicious cycle of noncooperation and economic recession. Our findings have policy implications for administrative reforms and offer amendments to theories of implementation and institutional rational choice. © The Policy Studies Organization.

Research on the European Union over the past few years has been strongly implicated in the crises that currently grip Europe with a failure to ask the pertinent questions as well as a perceived weakness in the methods and evidence used by researchers providing the basis for these allegations. This volume moves the study of EU research strategies beyond the dichotomies of the past towards a new agenda for research on Europe through a rich diversity of problem-solving based research. This new agenda acknowledges the weaknesses of the past and moves beyond them towards greater openness and awareness of the importance of research strategies, designs and methods. The 20 chapters in this collection range from micro-level analyses of identities, single policy studies and European discourse, through meso-level analysis of agenda setting, bargaining, implementation and Europeanisation, to macro-level analyses of the EU as a global actor, European integration and globalisation as well as hard and soft governance, elections and party groups, attitude formation, and new-regionalism. As such, it provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to conducting research on the European Union today.

Leading scholars explore the complex questions arising from the ongoing transformation of Europe through the deepening and widening effects of European integration. Based on authoritative analyses, the book takes account of the many national, transnational and international processes and contexts in which European integration has become embedded.

Theofanis Exadaktylos argues that it remains to be seen whether Greece’s new government will manage to keep up with the rest of Europe’s expectations and show that it is credit-worthy, and that their proposed changes to the memorandum will yield concrete results, or if it will continue its entanglement in Greek politics’ never-ending spiral and succumb to social, economic and political interests and agendas.

In this article, we contribute to the debate on research design and causal analysis in European integration studies by considering the sub-field of Europeanization. First, we examine the awareness of research design issues in the literature on Europeanization through a review of the debate on causality, concept formation and methods. Second, we analyse how much of the discussion of the trade-offs in causal analysis in mainstream political science has percolated into Europeanization studies. We therefore construct a sample of the Europeanization literature, comparing it to a control group of highly cited articles on European integration. This enables us to control if some patterns are specific to the Europeanization literature or reflect a more general trend in European integration. We then look at trade-offs in the Europeanization sample and in the control group. Our findings indicate that awareness of research design is still low. Europeanization articles differ from the control group in the focus on mechanisms (rather than variables) and the qualitative aspects of time in politics. Complex notions of causality prevail in Europeanization but not in the control group and the cause-of effects approach is preferred to effects-of-causes in the control group but not in Europeanization – in both cases, however, the difference is slight. We conclude by explaining differences and similarities and make proposals for future research.

Are EU institutions able to perform their preferred role within defence capability development? Highlighting increased demands for a stronger EU role in security, we explore how EU institutions have promoted their role within CSDP. Using role theory, we investigate the European Commission, the EDA, the EEAS and the European Parliament’s ability to promote pooled and shared defence resources in European capability development. We argue that this depends on the combination of the alignment of their original role treaty/design-based mandate with the role they perceive having; the role expectations of the big three Member States (Germany, France, UK); and the changing international environment, which may alter both role perceptions and role expectations. We find that the Commission and the EEAS have managed on occasion to promote pooled and shared defence resources overcoming Member State objections, showing autonomy in creating increased defence capability independently of MS leading to more integration within CSDP.

This is all the more alarming since the origins of democracy can be found in our continent. The changes have an (negative) impact on the European integration process as such and on support for EU enlargement.

A taste of austerity, the limits of democracy and the overlooked, untold stories of a country in "crisis"

This article examines the affective content of Greek media representations of the debt crisis, from 2009 to 2012. We analyze the content of opinion pieces from journalists, experts and public intellectuals published in Greek newspapers, and identify their affective content tone towards political actors and institutions. We focus on anger, fear and hope, and identify blame attribution frames, which underpin the public’s trust and confidence in domestic and EU institutions. This article contributes to the systematic understanding of the impact of the debt crisis as a traumatic event on public opinion, and considers its implications for attitudes towards European integration.

This article examines the individual, collective and social emotions embedded in media discussions of the financial crisis. Emotional experiences towards crises and the political institutions associated with them serve as valuable tools in understanding how citizens think and feel in the public sphere. We highlight over-time links between individual, collective and social emotionality as we analyze the content of UK media representations of the European financial crisis, from 2009 to 2012. We code editorials from journalists, and commentaries from experts, public figures and opinion leaders published in four UK newspapers, and identify the valence and affective tone of individual, collective and social expressions of anger, fear, disappointment, hope, pride, and compassion. We also examine how these interlinked levels of emotional talk underpin the public’s blame attributions. This article contributes to the systematic understanding of the impact of the financial crisis on public opinion, and considers its contribution towards European integration attitudes in the period marked by the introduction of Brexit as term in the public sphere.

Informed by epistemological pluralism and state-of-the-art debate on research design in the social sciences, this volume combines conceptual elaboration with substantive research puzzles. Research Design in European Studies investigates different notions of causality and relates them to methods and techniques. Designed for use either in a course on European Union politics or in preparing projects on Europeanization, the book offers an applied perspective on research methods in specific areas of qualitative approaches to causality, as well as chapters introducing quantitative, critical realist, and discursive strategies. Substantively, the contributors tackle research issues in the domains of compliance, EU external relations, foreign policy, health care, party politics and urban governance.

In the early 1990s, the countries of the Eastern Bloc faced the collapse of existing socialism and the loss of important commercial ties with the Soviet Union. The transition from the socialist regime to liberal democracy brought about the transition from a centrally planned economy to the free market. The purpose of this article is to study the two proposed economic transition methods and to examine the reasons why there were different economic outcomes in the countries of Southeastern Europe. The first section analyzes the basic theoretical methods on economic transition. The second section traces the common factors present in the Balkan countries and the third, the possible causes that affected the smooth transition to a market economy based on these common factors. Finally, the article combines these factors with other country specific circumstances. The article comes to the conclusion that for Southeastern Europe their relative failure is not due to the choice of method but rather, due to the specific factors present in the Balkans: low levels of industrialization at the onset of communism, low incomes at the start of the post-communist era, geographic location, and, failure to achieve a clear breakup with their past economic and political system.

This edited volume brings together a range of examples illustrating the development and importance of regional actors in the global governance of the political economy.

The European Union referendum was supposed to be a significant moment for political engagement and ownership in the UK. This article looks at how the two official European Union referendum campaigns (Vote Leave and Remain) framed discussions about the UK’s membership of the European Union, as well as the impact of the campaign on women’s political activation. Using data from a survey questionnaire conducted two weeks after the European Union referendum (in July 2016), we analyse women’s sense of political efficacy and engagement with European politics. We project those findings on a frame analysis, where we assess the footprint of each campaign in terms of issue coverage and the salience of gender as a campaign issue. Our findings shed light on the way in which issue framing and confidence affect the quality of political engagement among ‘weak publics’.

During the last two decades the study of European foreign policy has experienced remarkable growth, presumably reflecting a more significant international role of the European Union. The Union has significantly expanded its policy portfolio and though empty symbolic politics still exists, the Union’s international relations have become more substantial and its foreign policy more focused. European foreign policy has become a dynamic policy area, being adapted to changing challenges and environments, such as the Arab Spring, new emerging economies/powers; the crisis of multilateralism and much more. The SAGE Handbook of European Foreign Policy, Two-Volume set, is a major reference work for Foreign Policy Programmes around the world.

In late 2009, Greece found itself in the global spotlight as the country struggled to remain solvent and in the Eurozone. The Greek debt crisis became the subject of world summits, international news headlines and intense market activity. In the four years that followed, the Greek government implemented a series of radical austerity measures, while receiving bailouts and loans of unprecedented magnitude. The situation in Greece revealed structural deficiencies in the European integration project and threatened the existence of the Eurozone itself. This volume investigates the framing, policies and politics of extreme austerity during those crucial four years. It also puts the Greek case into a global context by comparing it to the situation in countries that have faced similar challenges, such as Spain, Ireland, Argentina and Turkey. Featuring multidisciplinary contributions from leading social scientists and an exclusive interview with George Papandreou – the former Greek Prime Minister who handled the crisis from 2009 to 2011 – this is the first comprehensive account of the economic crisis at the heart of Europe. This volume investigates the framing, policies and politics of extreme austerity during those crucial four years.