The Great Catalyst

For over half a century, European Union has been a promising endeavor of cooperative institutionalism. It has shown that even nation states with a long history of conflict are capable of collaborating with one another to serve their own interests. However, the EU project has also made visible that there is no one-size-fits-all policy in economics that can be applied to all countries with success. Economics starts and ends with the society. Common culture determines the outcomes of economic policies, and ordinary people pick up the bill when policies turn out to be failures. This book presents two different tales of the European Union to provide an empirical challenge to oversimplified assumptions behind the neoliberal orthodoxy in policymaking: Favorable experience of the EU-candidate Turkey, and the regrettable venture of the EU-member Greece. The fact that these two neighboring countries with similar cultures have had vastly different experiences with the European Union suggests that the EU functions as a catalyst of change in the countries that associate with it, but this impact could be negative as well as positive depending on the role the EU plays. Political economist Bülent Temel presents a lucid analysis of the Turkish and Greek encounters with the EU-based on contributions from a diverse range of social sciences; economics, game theory, finance, political science and sociology.

Autorentext
Bülent Temel is a political economist who teaches and conducts research at Atilim University and Southern New Hampshire University. He has worked as a financier in corporate America for eight years before joining academia, and received several recognitions including the 2007 Edward Jones Outstanding Performance Award. Author or coauthor of 18 publications in the fields of political economics, international relations and cooperatism, Temel is an editorial board member at the International Journal of Human Rights and Constitutional Studies based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Inhalt

Introduction Chapter 1: Greece and the Eurozone: Staying or Leaving? Panagiotis E. Petrakis Chapter 2: Euro and the Economic Crisis in Greece Basil Dalamagas Chapter 3: Doomed to Failure: The EU's Role in the Greek Debt Crisis George Dourakis Chapter 4: Effects of Economic and Monetary Union on the Greek Political System: Dimensions of the Current Crisis Christoforos Vernardakis and Bülent Temel Chapter 5: Greece and the European Union: Neoliberalism and its Discontents Grigoris Zarotiadis Chapter 6: Acrobats on a Rope: Greek Society between Contemporary European Demands and Archaic Cultural Reflexes Panayis Panagiotopoulos and Vassilis Vamvakas Chapter 7: Regularizing the Unregulated? European Union's Role in the Immigration Problem in Greece Christina Akrivopoulou and Bülent Temel Chapter 8: European Union Fervor in Turkey: Foreign Policy as a Domestic Political Apparatus Ersin Kalaycioglu Chapter 9: Alignment of Turkish Securities Market Legislation with the EU Acquis: Does EU Membership Offer Additional Benefits? Aylin Ege and Gül Ertan Ilal Chapter 10: Turkey's EU Accession Prospects Serdar S. Güner Chapter 11: Political Stability and Economic Expansion: Turkey Before and After the EU Candidacy Demet Yalçin Mousseau Chapter 12: Turkey's Kurdish Conflict: The EU Candidacy and the Prospects for Reconciliation Hayriye Özen Chapter 13: Trajectory of Corruption in Turkey's EU Venture Ilhami Alkan Olsson Chapter 14: Cognitive vs. Emotional Evaluations as the Foundations of Public Perception of the EU in Turkey Cengiz Erisen and Elif Erisen Chapter 15: Turkish Democracy during the European Union Process: Demilitarization and Resecuritization Doga Ulas Eralp Chapter 16: Candidacy versus Membership: Is Turkey the Greatest Beneficiary of the EU? Bülent Temel