ARENA and the University of Bergen co-organises a doctoral course on "The Post-Sovereign Constellation - Law and Democracy in Neil MacCormick’s legal and political theory", in Bergen 6-9 November 2007. The list of lecturers include Neil MacCormick. Application deadline for the course is 15 October.

Professor Stefan Collignon is guest researcher at ARENA in September. Collignon is a renowned political economist, specialising on monetary economics and related social and political issues.

ARENA hereby announces 2-3 student grants for Autumn 2007 with application deadline 20. September. Master's degree students within the fields of social sciences, law and humanities are welcome to apply for the grants.
Information on areas of focus and application criteria (in Norwegian). International students are welcome to apply.

At the EU Summit in June 2007 European leaders agreed on the outline of a new Reform Treaty to replace the Constitutional Treaty. After intense rounds of negotiation, this last-minute deal was deemed a success for the German presidency. But are the changes real or merely symbolic? On September 17th ARENA invites you to a seminar with policy adviser and political economist Stefan Collignon and legal scholar Agustín José Menéndez presenting their views on the simplified treaty.

A new book, edited by John Erik Fossum and Philip Schlesinger, has recently been published by Routledge. The book, 'The European Union and the Public Sphere', focuses on what the prospects are for a 'citizens' Europe' and places particular emphasis on the notion of a European public sphere; that is a communicative space that might enable and engender the formation of a transnational or a supranational public.

As the core institution of knowledge in Europe through centuries, the European University is ’over- debated and under-investigated’. A new book, ’University dynamics and European Integration’, edited by Peter Maassen and Johan P. Olsen, is an attempt to deal with some of the challenges posed to the University.

Under a new research effort, ARENA has been granted 26 mill NOK to do research on the basic fundations of the political order in Europe. Out of 31 applications, the Research Council approved three.

"This is a major recognition of ARENA's theoretically founded empirical research on the new political order in Europe", says Professor Morten Egeberg, research director at ARENA.

The CONNEX conference will take place in Barcelona 7-9th June 2007. The Conference is arranged by Research Group 1, which is co-ordinated by ARENA. Click here to see the complete programme (pdf).

The RECON Online Working Paper Series publishes pre-print manuscripts on democracy and the democratisation of the political order in Europe. The topics of the series correspond to the research focus of the Integrated Project RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe), which studies the prospects for democracy within the multilevel configuration that makes up the EU.

Thomas Christiansen is staying at ARENA from March to June 2007. He is Senior Lecturer at European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht and will strenghten ARENAs activities in fields like EU institutional politics, administrative governance in Europe and constitutionalisation of the EU.

Two positions as PhD fellows are available at ARENA, starting from Summer 2007. One fellowship is announced within ARENAs research focus in general and one within European foreign and security policy. The closing date for applications is 21 May 2007.

Johan P. Olsen has just published his new book ”Europe in Search of Political Order” on Oxford University Press. The book is a collection of his recent articles on European co-operation and integration, but it also contains new chapters.

Based on ideas from institutional theory the book offers a systematic perspective on institutional change and the role of institutions in relation to four central and durable issues in the study of political life.

In the framework of the Connex Network of Excellence, ARENA is convening a workshop focussing on the growing number of EU-level agencies. The event takes place in Oslo 15-16 March 2007.

Recent journal articles and book chapters by researchers at ARENA:

• Ulf Sverdrup: "Implementation", Paolo Graziano and Maarten P. Vink (eds.), Europeanization - New Research Agendas, Palgrave Macmillian
• Morten Egeberg: "The European Commission", Michelle Cini (ed.), European Union Politics, Oxford University Press
• Agustín José Menéndez and Erik Oddvar Eriksen (eds.), Arguing Fundamental Rights, Springer
• Maria Martens: "National Regulators between Union and Governments: a Study of the EU's Environmental Policy Network IMPEL", Morten Egeberg (ed.), Multilevel Union Administration - The Transformation of Executive Politics in Europe, Palgrave Macmillan

Professor Johan P. Olsen will 1 February be appointed Commander of The Royal Norwegian Order of St.Olav. Olsen receives the appointment on the basis of his longstanding contributions to Norwegian and international social science.

The ceremony takes place in the University library building at Blindern campus (Georg Sverdrups hus Moltke Moesvei 39) at 15.00 hrs.

Please contact arena for participation. Photo: The Royal House of Norway

The research project RECON started on 1 January 2007. RECON involves a broad range of research milieus across Europe, mainly within social sciences and law, and will study the possibilities for a reconstitution of democracy in Europe. ARENA is coordinating partner for the project which is made up of 20 partner institutions in 12 European countries.

A new book edited by Agustín José Menéndez and Erik O. Eriksen at ARENA has been published by Springer in the Series: Law and Philosophy Library, Vol. 77. The book Arguing Fundamental Rights explores the path-breaking Theory of Constitutional Rights of Robert Alexy. The book is a timely defence of practical reason against claims that emergencies justify trumping fundamental rights.

Are we witnessing a long-term profound transformation of the administrative order in Europe? The way the European Commission has developed as a relatively autonomous executive at the supranational level, and its relationships to parts of the national administrations, suggests that.

The CONNEX-Network of Excellence will address this and related questions from various disciplinary perspectives in order to achieve a more coherent understanding of a European administrative space. More on the CONNEX Thematic Conference.

The European Union suffers from a ‘democratic deficit’. Not only are there basic principles of democracy lacking in the EU, but European integration also affects democracy in its member states in a problematic way. Decision-making in Brussels seems out of reach of traditional democratic procedures. Elected politicians in both the European Parliament and national parliaments are hardly involved in European policy making. The impact of EU legislation on the member states is increasing, but no one can be held accountable for these decisions. Professor Philippe C. Schmitter claims that we, Europeans, should be concerned about this. One way of reducing the democratic deficit is to promote European parties, he suggests.

A temporary position as Researcher under the RECON project is vacant at ARENA from 1 January 2007, with a duration of up to five years. Application deadline is 23 October 2006.

Helene Sjursen, Research Professor at ARENA, has been awarded the first Anna Lindh Award. The award is initiated by three European foundations - Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) and VolkswagenStiftung (Germany) - in the framework of their jointly developed International Research and Training Program "European Foreign and Security Policy Studies" (EFSPS) and was handed over on September 14th.

A permanent position as senior researcher is available at ARENA, starting from January 2007. The closing date for applications is 20 September 2006.

A new book edited by Helene Sjursen has been published in the series Routledge Studies on Democratizing Europe. The book Questioning EU Enlargement: Europe in search of identity takes a unique approach to the study of enlargement and offers up-to-date studies of the EU enlargement processes and country-specific in-depth analyses. It focusses on what kind of understanding of the EU the enlargement processes speak to, whether decisions to enlarge mainly suggest: that the EU is a free market, focusing on potential economic gains; that there is a sense of common European identity; or whether the focus is primarily on securing respect for democratic principles and human rights?

A new book edited by Morten Egeberg, Research Director at ARENA, has been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Under the title Multilevel Union Administration: The transformation of executive politics in Europe the contributors argue that the EU makes a unique difference to excecutive organisation and politics in Europe.

Bruce Ackerman's Before the next attack, recently published in America, has sparked a debate about civil liberties and fundamental rights in the present state of US 'war against terrorism'. On Monday 12 June ARENA is co-organiser of a workshop at the University of Bergen, taking Ackerman's debate to the European context, with several notable scholars present in addition to Professor Ackerman himself.

An international workshop on anti-discrimination efforts in Europe in hosted by Arena on 9 June. The event unites legal and political scholars, civil society activists and government representatives to look closer at the state of anti-discrimination in a European perspective.

"European Integration and Higher Education" was the theme of an international seminar arranged in Oslo 27. and 28. April in cooperation between ARENA, The Faculty of Education, University of Oslo, and NIFU-STEP.

European University Institute in Florence, the University of Bremen and ARENA organises a workshop held Florence 19-20 May. Under the working title Constitutional Ratification Crisis: Exploring the European Public Sphere the workshop unites a broad range of scholars on the constitutional treaty, public debates and politics in the media.

A Commission evaluation of the ARENA-coordinated CIDEL project states that the project is an 'outstanding contribution to the state of the art in the most recent and innovative development of normative-analytical approaches to European integration.'

ARENA's core research areas for the period 2006 to 2009 is now available.

In particular, ARENA will be concerned with the capacity for renewal of democratic institutions in a European and global context of persistent change. A fundamental question is thus to what extent, and under what circumstances, the process of European integration may strengthen or constrain the prospects for democracy at the European level.

Within the CONNEX network's Research Group 1, which is coordinated by ARENA, the 2006 conference is held on 11-13 May in Vienna. The conference includes four parallel workshop sessions. Researchers affiliated to Connex are invited to present some of their work. Click here to see the full invitation (pdf).

Johan P. Olsen, Professor in Political Science and Research Director at ARENA, has been awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Olsen already holds similar positions at the Academy of Åbo, University of Copenhagen and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Professor Dr. Beate Kohler-Koch from the University of Mannheim will be staying at ARENA as guest Professor from April to June 2006. Kohler-Koch is one of the most influential scholars in European Political Science and in the studies of Multi-Level Governance in Europe in particular.

The article "The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life" written in 1984 by Johan P. Olsen at ARENA and James G. March at Stanford, is the 6th most cited article in American Political Science Review since 1906.

The recent issue of the Journal of European Public Policy is a Special Issue on European foreign policy, edited by Helene Sjursen. The issue, entitled ‘What Kind of Power? European Foreign Policy in Perspective’, examines the question of the EU as a so-called normative or civilising power in the international system.

A position as PhD fellow is available at ARENA, starting from Spring/Summer 2006. The closing date for applications is 10 March 2006.

Please visit the RECON web site at www.reconproject.eu by clicking here

Hans-Jörg Trenz, senior researcher at Arena, has published a new book at Campus Verlag. Europa in den Medien discusses the role of the public sphere with regards to European integration. One of the observations presented in the book is that, ­contrary to common held assumptions of a European public sphere deficit, ­ media coverage in quality newspapers is extensive and generally supporting the aims of European integration.

On 25 November 2005 Arena hosted a public conference on the EU. Under the heading "What now? The EU at a crossroads" the conference united participants from the political world and academia. The event also marked the end of the three-year CIDEL project (Citizenship and Democratic Legitimacy in the EU), coordinated by Arena from 2002 to 2005.

The idea of a common European tax to help finance the EU has been a recurring topic of research, also at ARENA. Present deliberations on the EU's budget appear to have heightened the political relevance of the issue.

On 5-7 December 2005 Arena organised a doctoral course at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. Eighteen doctoral students from all across Europe took part in the course, under the title "An institutional approach to European integration".

Jürgen Habermas shows that democracy is based on rights and procedures rather than the national state ethos, according to professor Erik Oddvar Eriksen in Dagbladet 28 November 2005. The article is published on the occassion of the Holberg Prize, which is awarded to Habermas in Bergen this week.

Professor Jeffrey Checkel, affiliated to Arena, has edited the autumn issue of International Organization (59, 4 (2005)), one of the more influential journals on politics and public administration emanating from the US. The edition is entitled International Institutions and Socialization in Europe, in correspondence with Professor Checkel's research interests at the University of Oslo.

Åse Gornitzka from Arena is one of the editors behind Reform and Change in Higher Education, recently published by Springer. The edited volume is part of a series on the dynamics of higher education.

Professor Johan P. Olsen has been appointed member of the Research Council at the European University Institute for the period of 2005 - 2010.