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Looking West: the European Socialist regimes facing pan-European cooperation and the European Community

Project description

How socialist elites perceived pan-European cooperation

In the 1970s, socialist countries strove to collaborate with West European countries and the European Community. Socialist elites, such as ruling parties and state bureaucracies, developed new strategies for integrating their countries into the global economy. Funded by the European Research Council, the PanEur1970s project assesses how these elites perceived their countries’ roles and prospects in an emerging trans-European space with new possibilities for regional integration and challenges to existing political and ideological structures. The project analyses the debates within each socialist European country, shedding light on the long-term trajectory of European integration, the demise of socialist regimes, and the factors that led to the EU’s expansion into Eastern Europe.

Objective

The project investigates the European Socialist regimes’ expectations and predicaments vis-à-vis the opening of a space of pan-European cooperation in the long 1970s. Against the background of East-West détente and incipient globalization, the Socialist élites had to work out complex ideological, economic, and political issues originating from their attempts at integrating in the world economy, deepening their rapprochement with Western Europe and dealing with the commercial giant next door, the EC.
We intend to provide the first historical appraisal of the late Socialist élites’ views of their countries’ place and prospects in an emerging space of trans-European connections that presented them with new patterns of exchange and potential regional integration while challenging existing configurations of stability, political control and ideological self-legitimization.
The project intertwines international and economic history approaches to provide a dynamic portrait of the Socialist élites’ paradigms, goals and constraints in envisioning interdependence with Western Europe and cooperation with the EC. In order to map the debate within each European socialist country, our focus will be not only on the ruling party but also on state bureaucracy, experts and academics, trade unions, managers, and the official press. Our research will thus rely on a variety of primary sources originated by these actors.
Our study aims at linking the usually separate scholarships on Eastern and Western Europe and broadening the scope of integration historiography beyond the EC experience, bringing the outsiders’ perspective in. It will shed new light on the long-term paths of European integration and the antecedents to EU enlargement to Eastern Europe.
The PI will lead a team of experts on Socialist countries and historians of Western Europe’s integration, whose close collaboration is the key to the conceptual development of a broader history of European co-operation.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2014-ADG

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Host institution

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 811 200,00
Address
VIA DEI ROCCETTINI 9
50014 Fiesole
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Toscana Firenze
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 811 200,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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