Thursday, May 16, 2024

New Publication: Twenty years of Malta’s EU membership : the impact on Maltese environmental NGOs

 Briguglio, Michael (2024). Twenty years of Malta’s EU membership : the impact on Maltese environmental NGOs. 20 Years of EU Membership Paper Series, 3-16. 


In this study, I analyse the impact of EU accession on Maltese Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs), twenty years after Malta, the smallest EU-member state, joined the Union in 2004. In the run-up to EU accession, the environment was often seen as an area which would benefit from Malta’s EU membership, especially since Malta had a lack of environmental legislation and enforcement. Not surprisingly, Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) supported Malta’s EU accession. ENGOs are major protagonists in environmental politics in Malta. Their activism covers different areas, though some issues - most notably land development, and hunting of birds - are more visible and contentious in the public sphere. Environmental protest is also one of the most common types of protest in Malta.

I investigate the impacts of Malta’s European Union (EU) accession on Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) through a sociological perspective, following two decades of Malta’s accession. For this purpose, the activism of ENGOs in relation to Malta’s EU accession was analysed, through political process theory and a social constructionist approach which engaged with the interpretations of the same ENGOs on the issue under analysis. For this purpose, primary data was collected through elite interviews with representatives from Malta’s major ENGOs. The main research question of this study is “how do ENGOs interpret the impacts of the EU, 20 years after Malta’s accession?” 

The study is a follow-up of a similar study I had published following ten years of Malta’s EU membership. It forms part of the '20 Years of EU membership' paper series published by the Institute for European Studies, University of Malta. 

Download: https://www.um.edu.mt/media/um/docs/events/20yearseumembers/MichaelBriguglio.pdf

Book Review: Turkish Politics and ‘the People’ – Mass Mobilisation and Populism, written by Spyros A. Sofos

The latest edition of academic journal Protest includes the following book review which I have written.

Briguglio, M. (2024). Turkish Politics and ‘the People’ – Mass Mobilisation and Populism, written by Spyros A. Sofos. Protest4(1), 103-106. https://doi.org/10.1163/2667372X-bja10055

Link:

https://brill.com/view/journals/prot/4/1/article-p103_008.xml

UM OAR: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/120225




Friday, May 03, 2024

Malta represented at International Conference on Blue Economy

 A few days ago, the first RethinkBlue international conference was organized by EU COST Action CA22122 - Rethinking the Blue Economy: Socio-Ecological Impacts and Opportunities, with the support of COST - European Cooperation in Science and Technology, the University of Zadar, and the Croatian Science Foundation.

During the conference, scholars and other experts discussed and presented research on issues related to social, environmental and economic aspects of the Blue Economy. This included maritime occupations; food security; sustainable blue consumption; port cities; coastal communities; fisheries governance; marine tourism; emergent activities; climate change; and natural hazards. The book of abstracts of the conference can be obtained from

https://conference.unizd.hr/rethinkblue/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/04/book-abstracts.pdf

The RethinkBlue conference was opened by the Chairperson of RethinkBlue, Dr Dražen Cepić and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Zadar Prof Zvjezdan Penezić.

Malta was represented by Management Committee members Prof Michael Briguglio and Matthew Laspina. Prof Briguglio and Prof Godfrey Baldacchino also presented respective research during the conference. 


More information on this Cost Action can be obtained from

https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22122/