Changing Dynamics in European Politics

Abstract

The European arena is characterised by vibrant dynamics that results in considerable changes to politics, leading to changes in policies in European states and the EU as well. The essential part of European politics is a significant interdependence between the latter and its Member States. The nature of this interdependence is multi-faceted and multilevel and can be seen in Europeanisation processes, which outline the EU's top-down influence mechanisms, as well as the importance of internal mechanisms and processes (bottom-up), which determine directly and indirectly the European level. In this panel, the participants undertake the diagnosis, description and analysis of interesting processes and mechanisms that fit into the dynamic arena of European politics. In the first paper, the issue of populism has been taken up in the new case, which is discussed on the example of the Italian Five Star Movement in the context of its interesting transformation into institutionalisation resulting from its entry into the National and European Parliament. The second paper deals with the role of the national parliaments of the Member States during the EU Treaty negotiations. On the example of the Austrian and Luxembourgish legislatures, the analysis is based on an extremely interesting research assumption that goes beyond traditional studies in Europeanisation on the institutional capacities of national parliaments in the context of European integration and focuses on parliamentarians' motivations and their institutional context. The following papers examine the processes and mechanisms involved in the UK in the context of its internal, European and international policies. In the article on reassessing the role of the British Government in a foreign policy, the starting point is the thesis about the decreasing role of the UK Government in setting, pursuing and implementing the foreign policy decisions and the author attempts to examine how this state of matter translates into the UK's position in international relations.