Book Review: George Kyris, The Europeanisation of Contested Statehood: The EU in Northern Cyprus
| Author | Mustafa Cirakli |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916677885 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsEurope |
152 Political Studies Review 15 (1)
Oikonomou aims to fill this gap in the European
Studies and International Relations literature,
providing a detailed picture of ‘strategic,
industrial, institutional and ideational sources
of armaments collaboration and capability
development under the aegis of the EDA’ (p.
2). Through an approach based on theoretical
and methodological pluralism, the volume
focuses on the main historical steps, character-
istics, activities and actors involved in the
establishment and development of the Agency.
The book is divided into four parts. The
first part deals with the alternative theorisation
of the Agency’s establishment through three
different theoretical lenses: new institutional-
ism, critical constructivism and historical
materialist theory. The other three parts focus
on the empirical achievements and insufficien-
cies of the Agency, the interaction between the
EDA and the EU member states and some
understudied aspects of EU armaments policy,
such as ‘pooling and sharing’ of resources or
the EDA’s involvement in space issues, consid-
ered as a key area for fostering the EU’s mili-
tary–industrial agenda.
This volume provides a great contribution
to the literature on European Studies because it
is the first monograph that deals specifically
with the EDA’s role in the EU institutional
environment and it has the merit of holding
together, through a good balance between theo-
retical and empirical analyses, the multifaceted
aspects of the EU defence field. In addition, the
book clearly highlights the role of non-state
actors in order to explain the evolution of the
Agency’s activities, in particular, focusing on
the crucial political role of defence industries
and the interplay between public and private
interests in the national and European arenas.
The only negative aspect of the text is that –
exactly because of the complexity of issues
that deal with very technical military, eco-
nomic and political aspects – some parts of the
book are not easy to understand for a nonspe-
cialist readership.
This book is intended for students, academ-
ics and practitioners in the area of EU security
and defence policy and in general for those
who feel that – in a fragmented and violent
international system and in the context of
decreasing defence budgets – a potential mili-
tary integration is crucial for the EU’s peace,
prosperity and stability.
Antonio Calcara
(LUISS Guido Carli, Rome)
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916674579
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The Europeanisation of Contested
Statehood: The EU in Northern Cyprus by
George Kyris. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. 154pp.,
£60.00 (h/b), ISBN 9781472421593
While there is much academic work on the
European Union’s (EU) role in the Cyprus con-
flict, there is scant information on how the
European integration process has shaped the
domestic context in Cyprus, particularly in rela-
tion to the Turkish-Cypriot community and
their contested state. George Kyris’ book is a
timely contribution which sets out to fill this
important gap by examining the impact of the
EU on northern Cyprus through the analytical
lenses of Europeanisation and contested
statehood.
Kyris presents his case in seven well-writ-
ten chapters. The first chapter addresses the
complexity of concepts and the theoretical
basis of the book by successfully blending the
Europeanisation debate with intriguing insights
from the contested statehood literature. In the
next chapter, the book provides a brief over-
view of Turkish-Cypriot political history which
sheds important light onto the case study and
lays the contextual groundwork for the subse-
quent empirical analysis. In the chapters that
follow, the impact of Europeanisation on
northern Cyprus is traced in three distinct
domains: civil society (chapter 4), political
parties (chapter 5) and institutions (chapter 6).
In the last chapter, Kyris presents a critical
review of his findings as well as suggesting
new avenues for research on the work’s central
themes.
On the whole, the book is extremely lucid,
thoroughly researched and contains a detailed
bibliography. The author succeeds in his goal of
providing a systematic analysis of how the EU
can shape the domestic affairs of a contested
state in a ‘unique way’ under the particularly
intriguing conditions of contested statehood (p.
5). Arguably, some parts of the empirical analy-
sis would have benefited from further elabora-
tion. The precise ways in which Turkish-Cypriot
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