Integration and Disintegration in Contemporary Europe [antikvár]

IntroductionResponding to the theoretical challenges and actual political needs resulting from the increasing importance and contradictions of European integration and from the prospect of Hungary joining the European Union, the Board of the Institute for Political Science of the Hungárián Academy of Sciences has decided to launch a new interdisciplinary research project on the problems of the integration processes in Europe on one hand, and on the internál and external factors promoting or hindering the full integration of Hungary into the European Union on the other. The Central European enlargement of the EU poses serious challenges both for the existing structures of the Community and for its member states as well, and has become an important aspect of European studies, i.e. the social science discipline devoted to the investigation of the institutions of the European Union.Thus it was a natural, mutual interest which led the Budapest-based Institute for Political Science and of the Institute of European Studies of the Université Libre de Bruxelles to organize a common workshop. The Hungárián organizers of the international seminar "Integration and Disintegration in Contemporary Europe" (30 September - 1 October 1994) invited three leading scientists from the ULB Institute of European Studies and a wide rangé of Hungárián experts from academic Institutes and public authorities.The present volume comprises the exposés and papers submitted to this Budapest seminar covering the following wide rangé of topics.1.Integration and disintegration in contemporary Europe (alsó the title of the introductory lecture of Prof. K. Kulcsár, director of the Institute for Political Science). Investigations of this topic pose the following question: Which political system - that of the nation-state or the supranational one - might be more effective in absorbing and treating recent and future changes?Several of the contributions placed special emphasis on the interrelationship between globalism, global competition, and European unity (including Central Europe) as the means to stop the decline of Europe in world economy and politics.2.The institutional responses of the European Union, and the internál and external implications of an enlarged Europe (extensively analyzed in the paper of Prof. M. Telő, director of political research of the ULB Institute of European Studies). These articles devoted special attention to the following questions:- the dialectic of deepening and widening,