Wolfgang Zank

Aalborg University · department of politics and society

Emerging Power Europe: The “Expansionism” of the EU and the Ukraine Crisis Wolfgang Zank Abstract Many observers posit that a shift in global power has taken place the last many years, away from the West to “emerging powers”, in particular the BRICS. In contrast to this view, this paper accepts Moravcsik’s view that it has been the EU which has de...

The countries of North Africa are members of the Arab League and have participated in efforts at strengthening Arab cooperation. At the same time they are, save Morocco, members of the African Union (AU) and they have also been under the influence of the European Union (EU), especially Morocco and Tunisia, but increasingly also Egypt (see Chapter 7...

In the Mediterranean Basin two projects of economic integration overlap, namely the project of a Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA) and a process of economic integration of the European Union (EU), which neighbors into EU’s Internal Market; the EU endeavors to strengthen cooperation with the neighbors practically on all fields. For decades, in sp...

This paper explores the possible consequences which the process of EU's eastern enlargement might have for theoretical reasoning on European integration. In a first section, the author reviews some newer contributions to the theoretical debate about enlargement. The second sections contains a historical reconstruction of the process from 1989 until...

According to an encyclopedia definition, the model of the meltingpot envisions an assimilation process that operates on cultural and structural plans. One outcome is a culture that contains contributions from numerous ethnic groups and is adopted by their members. A parallel outcome on a structural plane is a pattern of widespread marriage across e...

On 20 April 1792 the French National Assembly passed a declaration of war against Emperor Franz II. The war quickly received an all-embracing international character. The French revolutionaries were unexpectedly successful in mobilizing and inspiring large armies. In 1795 they had conquered modern Belgium and the Netherlands and stood firmly along...

Between 58 and 51 BC Caesar conquered Gaul and pushed the borders of the Roman empire to the Rhine. As he wrote in his report about the war, the Rhine was also an ethnic border: Gauls (or Celts) settled on the Western side, Germani on the other. He thereby enriched the Roman world with a new ethnographic category (until then, the people living at t...

The feeling that change was necessary was widespread at the end of the fifteenth century. Many feuds made it apparent that the worldly order did not function appropriately. The long-lasting agrarian crisis had impoverished large sections of the peasantry; most of the peasants were obliged to work for the noblemen, and their obligations were increas...

In contrast to the Catholics, the Jews were socially discriminated against in a positive way. By 1900 there were about 600 000 Jews in Germany, roughly one per cent of the population.1 But about 4 per cent of the Prussian judges were Jews, so were 3 per cent of the higher Prussian bureaucrats, 2.5 per cent of the professors in ordinary, 6 per cent...

The formation of Hitler’s government meant an immediate boost to the morale of the Nazi movement and a severe blow to the spirit of its opponents. The Nazis gained control over strong power instruments such as the Prussian police and, for the first time, could use the radio for their propaganda. This produced a political dynamism which Hitler’s con...

In 1945 the Allies had actually given up any plans for division: Germany was to be disarmed and placed under strict control, but kept intact. The four military occupation zones (American, British, French, Soviet) were not intended as preconfigurations of future states. As to the eastern borders no decision had at that time been reached, but by May...

The cultural tension lines gave good potential breeding conditions for separatism, which could become actual in all those cases where a regional dominant culture was in conflict with the main lines of Prussian politics. This was the case with the Polish- and Danish-speaking regions (see next chapter), but also many regions with a German-speaking po...

When on 1 August 1914 the authorities announced mobilization, the streets of Berlin and other cities quickly filled with jubilating crowds. Three days later the Reichstag unanimously endorsed the war credits, and Kaiser Wilhelm II said: ‘I don’t know parties any more, I only know Germans.’ Millions of workers loyally followed the call to arms, and...

Between 1871 and 1914, many cultural groups were discriminated against as an authoritarian regime denied political participation to huge segments of the population. In combination with harsh social problems, this configuration was bound to produce bitter conflicts. Many members of Germany’s political and military elite openly advocated an imperiali...

In the 1860s the conflict between liberals and conservatives was still the main cleavage which divided Germany. To recap, a cleavage is a long-lasting conflict line, with institutionalized cultures on both sides of the divide. In 1848/9 the cleavage had produced civil war, and in the 1860s, during the Prussian Verfassungskonflikt both sides stood a...

In autumn 1989 the GDR imploded. The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November, and less than a year later, on 3 October 1990, the new Länder of the GDR became members of an enlarged Federal Republic of Germany. Many obervers interpreted the German unification as the natural outcome of history. To divide a nation was seen as ‘unnatural’, so it was ‘natural’ t...

In 1867–71 about one-tenth of Prussia’s 24 million inhabitants were Poles. Against the protest of their representatives1 they were incorporated into the Reich, without any special rights or institutions. Bismarck regarded the Poles as a security problem because they entertained aspirations for a state of their own; in time of conflict they might su...

During the first decades of the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Germans emigrated to Russia and the Habsburg monarchy, and between 1816/17 and 1914 5.5 million Germans crossed the Atlantic.1 In the early 1880s German overseas emigration reached its peak (857 000 persons within five years),2 but thereafter the figures steadily declined....

In November 1918 a huge coalition of sailors, soldiers, workers and middle-class people made the power structure of Imperial Germany collapse. Events placed the Social Democrats in a key position. Due to its traditional anti-militarist and oppositional stance, the SPD was the only organization left with authority. On 9 November Prince Max of Baden,...

The Germany of 1871 was a federation of 22 monarchical states and three towns (plus Alsace-Lorraine under special status). The constitution of the Kaiserreich combined federal and unitarian, authoritarian and democratic aspects in a particular way.1 Foreign policy, customs, trade, communication and economic legislation were to be regulated centrall...