European Union

What is the role of knowledge today when almost every aspect of our lives is affected by the global pandemic? What changes does this radically new situation bring to politics and policies of science, technology and higher educattion?  These and other questions were discussed at the Knowledge Politics and Policies Section of the first virtual General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 24-28 August 2020. At this year’s conference the ECPR not only celebrated its 50th anniversary but also addressed some of the most pressing topics of our times such as gendered impact of Covid-19 crisis and decolonisation of curriculum and political practice. The conference connected some 2200 researchers to discuss 1804 papers in 72 sections and 443 panels.

 

This is the ninth time when a section dedicated to the topics of politics and policies of higher education, science and innovation is organised at the ECPR General Conference. It is endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and Policies which brings together more than 200 researchers from arounmd the world. Some 30 papers were discussed in the eight panels of this section covering topics from geopolitics of knowledge and science diplomacy to policies for emerging technologies and higher education.

 

Politics and Policies of Artificial Intelligence

The panel ‘Politics and Policies of AI, Big Data and Algorithmic Governance’ kicked off our section. In recent years, the fast development of these emerging technologies has presented major opportunities and challenges as well as proliferation of dedicated policies to facilitate beneficial effects and mitigate concerns. Papers in this panel addressed political and policy dynamics in Europe, the United States and Asia and examined emerging patterns of global collaboration and competion. Nora von Ingersleben-Seip (Technical University of Munich) presented her joint research with Andrea Renda (College of Europe) on great power competition among the European Union, the US and China. In another collaborative paper, Pertti Ahonen (University of Helsinki) and Tero Erkkilä (University of Helsinki) examined questions of algorithmic decision-making as a challenge and opportunity to openness and transparency in the Finnish political context. In her contribution, Raluca Csernatoni (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) discussed artificial (in)security and the politics of hype in Europe through buzzwords, myths and imaginaries. Continuing the topic of AI and the EU, Inga Ulnicane (De Montfort University) traced elements of Normative Power Europe and Market Power Europe in emerging EU policies, ethics guidelines and regulation in the field on AI. In the final paper in this panel, Jongheon Kim (University of Lausanne) explored the evolution of discourses on AI in South Korea.

 

While the topic of politics and policies of AI is relatively new, it is attracting an increasing interest. One of attendees shared on social media that he has come to this panel ‘purely out of curiosity’ but has managed to follow it and has realised ‘what a central issue will be for the future of politics!’ All panel participants agreed that it would be beneficial to undertake comparative research on AI politics and policies.

 

Academic Time

How have changes to the higher education sector around the world shaped the profession of political science? The panel ‘Conceptualising Academic Time’ addressed this question through the lens of ‘academic time’. While time in the academy has been traditionally measured by tasks an academic performs (i.e. research, teaching, and service), its allocation is increasingly complex as requests for today’s academic labour grow from within and beyond the university. Tero Erkkilä (University of Helsinki), Meng-Hsuan Chou (NTU Singapore), and Niilo Kauppi (University of Helsinki) kicked off the panel with ‘Conceptualising Academic Time’. The paper reviewed how scholars of political science and higher education studies conceptualised time that ultimately revealed the elusive character of academic time as an object of study. Simona Guerra (University of Surrey) followed with ‘Crashing Time? The Contemporary Experience of Time’, and showed that the ways in which time is valued in the UK very much depended on the role that an academic occupied (senior, junior), as well as the financial, institutional, and individual resources available ‘at the time’.

 

Dorota Dakowska (University of Lyon 2) continued with ‘In Search of Lost Time. The Academic Profession Under Pressure’ that examined how the profession has evolved in Poland and France through the analytical lens of time. She demonstrated how the two cases confirmed that research time has become a scarce resource and how conflicting temporalities threatens research time—the very essence of the academic profession. By calling attention to the symbolic violence of ‘time stolen’ in ‘The Social Suffering of Some Homo Academicus(es): Digital Time Machine and Time Control’, Didier Bigo (Sciences Po Paris) discussed how public-private management narratives have invaded the world of universities, depicting higher education institutions as branded companies. In ‘Time, Space and Academic Identity’, Christopher Pokarier (Waseda University) argued that the transformation of academic work can be usefully examined from the perspective of time, space, and resources. By inviting us to study the temporalities and spatiality of academic work, he emphasised the interdependence between time and our physical worlds. James Mittelman (American University) and Heidi Mauer (University of Bristol), panel co-discussants, animated the discussions by asking the participants to consider how and why the analytical lens of academic lens is needed now. Some similar topics where further discussed in the panel ‘Time-scales and Time Policies in Higher Education’.

 

Knowledge and Global Challenges

Several panels highlighted global dimensions of knowledge politics and policies. The panel ‘Science Diplomacy and Global Challenges’ explored different aspects of science diplomacy as both an academic concept and a term of practice in foreign policy. The first paper ‘The Promotion of European Studies in China. A Case of European Soft Diplomacy?’ by Silvana Tarlea (University of Basel) looked at how the EU exercises soft power in its promotion of European Studies in China, finding that its influence was diminishing for two reasons, first because of its perception by China as a powerful global actor, and second, due to a misplaced focus with its grants on universities rather than think tanks, which the author shows are the key actors particularly in regards to the diffusion of knowledge into the foreign ministry. The second paper, ‘Knowledge as Power: Global Challenges and the Development of European Foreign Policy’ by Mitchell Young (Charles University), explored the ways in which knowledge could be understood as a form of power in international relations, and particularly questioned whether the EU could be depicted as a powerful knowledge actor. Finally, Muhammad Adeel (Murdoch University) presented a paper on ‘Application of Science Diplomacy for Regulation of Genome Editing’ which traced the efforts to regulate genome editing, and the policy narratives that have become engaged in these debates through a variety of diverse stakeholders, particularly he focused on the question of whether Crispr should be considered genetic modification or not. A lively discussion followed the papers.

 

The panel ‘Knowledge and International Relations’ explored the relationship between the international relations and knowledge policy domains. The first paper focused on how the re-emergence of nationalist ideas and the re-closing of borders (to a large extent spearheaded by right-wing parties) challenges the trend of intensifying internationalisation of higher education. The empirical setting in focus was Denmark and Katja Brøgger (Aarhus University) linked the various developments in Danish higher education, including significant reductions in English-speaking programmes, with the overall shift towards protectionist and inward looking migration and welfare policies. Sarka Cabadova Waisova (University of West Bohemia) discussed in her paper the concept of expert knowledge and how diffusion thereof has been and could be studied. She particularly discussed the promises and pitfalls of actor-network theory, social network analysis, and other approaches utilized in international relations literature, as well as bibliometrics, qualitative historical analysis, topography and topology.

 

Geopolitics of Higher Education

Papers in the panel ‘The Geopolitics of International Higher Education’ explored international dimensions of higher education within the altered global context of emerging powers, shifting international and regional relations, and growing populism and nationalism. Natalia Leskina (Ural Federal University, Russia) and Emma Sabzalieva (University of Toronto, Canada) presented their research on higher education region-building in Central Asia. Their paper is a comparative analysis of activities in the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union and Chinese led Belt & Road Initiative and how these activities have been received and are being shaped by Central Asian policymakers. Bowen Xu’s (University of Cambridge, UK) paper focussed in on China’s efforts to create an educational community using the Belt & Road Initiative, helpfully bringing policy initiatives to an English language audience.

 

Huili (Stella) Si presented a co-authored paper with Miguel Lim (both University of Manchester, UK) again centring China but from the perspective of the rise and decline of joint programmes and institutes with other states. Hannah Moscovitz (University of Cambridge, UK) continued the focus on international linkages in her paper on the role of international student recruitment for nation branding in Québec and Canada. These are contexts where nationalisms compete and where sovereignty is shared, underscoring a differentiated process of nation branding in majority and minority nations. Taken together, the papers opened up new approaches at sub-national, national and supra-national levels to explore the changing impacts of geopolitics on higher education. They help to lay the groundwork for new kinds of research on higher education that are grounded not in Eurocentric approaches but explore different framings and geographies.

 

Participants found exchanges in this panel fruitful. One of them said: “It was my first time to attend ECPR, and it was a great experience for me. Having conversations with like-minded scholars help me to grow both intellectually and socially. I’d love to have this continued and looking forward to next year.” Similarly, another panellist who is a 2nd year PhD student told: “It is very meaningful to meet so many fantastic researchers through ECPR. ECPR provides a brilliant platform for researchers to communicate and share with insights. The comments and feedbacks from my peers are very valuable not only to my research but also to my future development.”

 

Higher Education Policy

Several panels examined issues of higher education policy. In the panel ‘Competition and Agentification in Funding Research and Innovation’, Ivar Bleiklie (Universitetet i Bergen) presented the co-authored paper ‘Policy Making by Dialogue?’ which introduces a new mode of policymaking that has emerged in Norway’s process of university mergers. It is identified as a ‘managerial’ mode, as it is based on direct dialogue with the leadership of organizations and their strategic positioning. The authorship collective included several other members of the SG, Svein Michelsen (Universitetet i Bergen), Nicoline Frølich (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education) and Mari Elken (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education). A second paper was presented by Anastasia Steinbrunner (Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, Universität Erfurt) which examined the policy process around tuition fees in France and Germany. The paper, co-written with several other researchers at Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, ‘Agenda Setting and Policy Diffusion: Exploring Higher Education Tuition Fees in France, Germany, and the United States’ applied a multiple streams analysis to the contentious and unstable issue of fees and their rationale.

 

The final panel in this section ‘The Politics of Higher Education Policy – Lessons from Western Europe, Canada and the USA’ chaired by Jens Jungblut (University of Oslo) brought together four papers that discussed different elements of the politics of higher education policy. All of the contributions are part of an upcoming volume that compares the policy-making dynamics in higher education policy in Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada. In the first contribution, Martina Vukasovic (University of Bergen) presented her work on the role of interest groups and intermediary organizations for higher education policy in Europe. In her paper, she not only provided a concise overview on the literature but also a detailed mapping of the interest group ecology in the higher education sector in multiple European countries. A key finding of her work is that most European countries show corporatist characteristics in their higher education interest group arrangement.

 

Meng-Hsuan Chou (Nanyang Technological University) presented in her paper an analysis on the use of the concept of policy framing in higher education policy. The results of her detailed literature review showed that the use of the concept of framing became more prominent in the literature especially after the year 2001. Moreover, she identified three clusters in the literature focusing on “The European story”, “When Europe hits home”, and “the national story”. In his contribution, Julian Garritzmann (Goethe University Frankfurt) presented a concise overview of the politics of higher education finance literature, highlighting the differing explanatory approaches that are used in the literature. In addition, he used new public opinion data to show how different factors influence public opinion towards tuition fees. Finally, Jens Jungblut (University of Oslo) presented the literature on the politics of higher education governance reforms. Focusing on the role of political parties for changes in the governance of higher education, he presented an analysis of party manifestos from six West European countries to highlight differences between party families regarding their preferences for the relationship between higher education and the state.

 

Excellent Paper Prize and future plans

To share official news, future plans and informally discuss how pandemic has affected our work and lives, our Standing Group met for the business meeting and social hour. The key highlight was celebration of the excellent paper award from an emerging scholar which this year was awarded to Justyna Bandola-Gill (University of Edinburgh) for her paper ‘Knowledge exchange repertoires: Producing and translating knowledge for policy’. This was the fourth time that our Standing Group awarded this prize. The new call for applications will be published soon and we will be celebrating the next winner at the 2021 ECPR General Conference which hopefully will take place in Innsbruck (Austria).

The post Virtual ECPR Knowledge Politics and Policies 2020 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Vor wenigen Monaten hat der Deutsche Bundestag offiziell beschlossen, dass ab 1.1.2021 das neue Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten (BfAA) mit Sitz in Brandenburg(Havel) gegründet wird. Hier trage ich zusammen, was wir bislang alles wissen und was noch nicht (alles) auf der Wikipedia steht.

Warum mich das interessiert?

Zum Einen wohne ich seit einigen Monaten hier in der Stadt Brandenburg, unter anderem um eine neue Wissenschafts- und Forschungsorganisation zu gründen. Als Fast-Nachbar des neuen Amts und als Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaftler verfolge ich daher den Aufbau eines neuen Amts natürlich mit großer Aufmerksamkeit.

Aber wer meine Forschung der letzten Jahre verfolgt hat, weiß, dass ich mich natürlich auch inhaltlich für die Arbeit des BfAAs interessiere. Laut der Webseite des Auswärtigen Amts ist eine der Aufgaben des Amts nämlich das “Management von Fördermitteln und Zuwendungen, zum Beispiel für humanitäre Hilfsprojekte“.

In meiner Forschung rund um die Finanzierung des UN-Systems habe ich mich zuletzt intensiv mit Fragen der humanitären Finanzen befasst, inklusive von Organisationen wie dem UN-Flüchtlingshilfswerks UNHCR oder dem UN-Hilfswerk für Palästina-Flüchtlinge UNRWA. Da ist das Amt genau in meinem Themenbereich unterwegs.

Interessanterweise wird laut den lokalen Medien (hier Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, MAZ) der ehemalige deutsche Botschafter in Beirut (Libanon), Georg Birgelen, wohl der erste Leiter der neuen Amts werden.

Das ist insofern spannend, weil der kleine Staat Libanon in großer Zahl Geflüchtete aus Syrien aber auch eine eine signifikante Zahl Palästina-Flüchtlinge aufgenommen hat und damit ein wichtiger Empfänger von multilateraler Hilfe über Organisationen wie UNHCR und UNRWA ist. Birgelen hat also vermutlich vor Ort gesehen, was das Management von Hilfsgeldern direkt und indirekt bedeutet.

Was genau das neue Bundesamt alles tun soll ist allerdings noch nicht im Detail bekannt. Im Kern soll es nicht-politische Verwaltungsaufgaben des Auswärtigen Amts übernehmen.  Wobei das natürlich nicht heißt, dass es hier um unwichtige Aspekte geht.

Im Gesetz heißt es (§2 Abs. 2):

“Das Bundesamt unterstützt den Auswärtigen Dienst auf dem Gebiet der Auswärtigen Angelegenheiten bei der Verwaltung und Infrastruktur, dem Fördermittelmanagement sowie im Rechts- und Konsularwesen. Das nähere regelt das Auswärtige Amt.”

Außerdem können dem Amt noch weitere auswärtige Aufgaben übertragen werden, inklusive aus anderen Ministerien und Bundesbehörden (§2 Abs. 3). Man könnte sich also vorstellen, dass es irgendwann nicht nur die Verwaltung der auswärtigen Fördermittel des AAs sondern auch anderen Ministerien übernimmt. Z.B. wird wohl auch die Verwaltung des Auslandsschulwesen auf das BfAA übertragen (siehe weiter unten).

Die ungenaue Aufgabenbeschreibung des BfAA wurde im Februar vom Bundesrechnungshof in einem Einzelbericht zum neuen Amt kritisiert:

“Welche Aufgaben das neue Bundesamt übernehmen soll und was demgegenüber der für die politische Steuerung des Auswärtigen Amts zuständigen Zentrale vorbehalten bleibt, lässt der Gesetzentwurf offen. Er enthält auch keine hinreichend genauen Angaben zu den mit dieser Organisationsmaßnahme verbundenen haushalts- und insbesondere personalwirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen. Weder lässt der Gesetzentwurf erkennen, wie die Personalausstattung des neuen Bundesamtes genau ausfallen soll noch wie sich die Neugründung auf die Personalausstattung der Fachabteilungen der Zentrale auswirkt.“

Die Begründung zum Gesetzesentwurf sprach übrigens von einem “geplanten schrittweisen Aufwuchs des Personalstamms des Bundesamts auf 700 Beschäftigte“.

Wir haben es hier also nicht mit einer kleinen Behörde zu tun, sondern in ihrer angestrebten Größe mit einem signifikanten Akteur in einer Stadt mit knapp über 70.000 Einwohnern. Und auch ein Akteur, der mit Sicherheit einiges im Auswärtigen Amt verändern wird, wenn dadurch tatsächlich Stellen eingespart oder verlagert werden.

Damit ist laut Presse auch klar, dass die zunächst angemieteten Räumlichkeiten in der Kirchhofstraße in Brandenburg wohl nicht ausreichen werden und es möglicherweise einen Neubau für das Amt geben könnte.

Die Lage in der Kirchhofstraße ist aber für Mitarbeiter*innen des BfAAs, die aus Berlin oder Potsdam einpendeln, insofern vorteilhaft, als dass man in nur 5-10 Minuten zu Fuß vom Bahnhof dort ist. Von Berlin fährt der RE1 halbstündlich in ca. 50 Minuten von Berlin Hbf nach Brandenburg Hbf (zurück auch). Ab 2022 wird der Takt sogar von halbstündig auf 20-minütig erhöht.

Was für Mitarbeiter*innen werden gesucht?

In einer Stellenausschreibung des AAs für den gehobenen Dienst vom August 2020 hieß es zum Beispiel:

“Wenn es Sie reizt, am Aufbau einer neuen, international ausgerichteten Bundesoberbehörde, dem zentralen Servicezentrum für außenpolitische Verwaltungsaufgaben im Geschäftsbereich des Auswärtigen Amts engagiert mitzuarbeiten, Sie hohe Teamfähigkeit und Einsatzfreude sowie die unten aufgeführten Anforderungen mitbringen, freuen wir uns auf Ihre Bewerbung.“

Die Aufgaben in dieser Ausschreibung waren ganz klar an der Mittelverwaltung angesiedelt:

• • “Bewilligung von Zuwendungen nach § 44 Bundeshaushaltsordnung einschließlich der Prüfung von Finanzierungsplänen und der Beratung zu Projektvorhaben im Ausland
  • Abschluss von zivilrechtlichen Verträgen mit im Ausland sitzenden Zuwendungsempfängern, einschließlich Kommunikation in Wort und Schrift mit den Zuwendungsempfängern in englischer Sprache
  • Prüfung von Ausgaben im Rahmen von Verwendungsnachweisen
  • Projektbegleitung und Bewertung von Sachberichten einschließlich der Dokumentation von Beanstandungen und der Durchsetzung von Rückforderungen Mittelbewirtschaftung“

Auch die Visa-Vergabe soll demnächst hier Brandenburg geschehen, wobei juristisch das Verwaltungsgericht in Berlin zuständig bleibt — formal werden die Entscheidungen also wohl in der Zuständigkeit es Auswärtigen Amts fallen, nicht hier.

Darüber hinaus deuten weitere Stellenausschreibungen darauf hin, dass auch Aufgaben des Bundesverwaltungsamts in Bereich des Auslandsschulwesens auf das BfAA übergehen:

“Derzeit wird die Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen durch das Bundesverwaltungsamt betreut. Mit Einstellung dieser Tätigkeit beim BVA übernimmt das Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten diese Aufgabe voraussichtlich zum 01.01.2021.“

Weiterhin werden wohl Aufgaben in der Buchführung und Rechnungslegung des AAs an das BfAA ausgelagert. Auch Expert*innen im Tarifrecht werden in der Zentralabteilung des BfAA gesucht. Auch braucht das BfAA natürlich eine neue IT, so dass Stellen für das Auswärtige Amt in diesem Bereich schon seit Anfang 2020 mit der Möglichkeit der Versetzung nach Brandenburg ausgeschrieben wurden.

Hier in Brandenburg ist also einiges in Bewegung. Wenn die ersten 2-300 Mitarbeiter*innen hier im Laufe des nächsten Jahres ihre Arbeit beginnen, wird das in Brandenburg(Havel) sicher einiges in Bewegung setzen.

Dem neuen Amtsleiter Birgelen kann man nur viel Erfolg wünschen, denn beim Aufbau einer neuen Behörde kann ja einiges gut aber auch einiges schief laufen. Als Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaftler wäre beides interessant zu beobachten, aber als Bürger der Stadt hoffe ich auf ein gutes Zusammenwachsen von Bundesamt und Brandenburg.

The post Das Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten (BfAA) in Brandenburg: Was wir wissen appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Azerbaijan is currently actively working with several companies to bring the COVID-19 vaccine to the country.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said this during the opening of a modular hospital of the Health Center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for the treatment of coronavirus patients.
Azerbaijan will be among the first countries to receive the vaccine in this area. But the main condition is that the vaccine should go through all the stages of testing. Doctors are well aware that any new vaccine goes through several stages and only then is released to the market and used to vaccinate people. Therefore, Baku aims to bring this vaccine to the country after all the stages of research have been conducted by companies and after international certification has been completed. After that, it will be possible to say that this terrible situation is over.
“Currently, 100 to 200 people are infected in our country every day. This is certainly a better result than in previous months. However, daily monitoring is and will be carried out to keep the situation under control. At the same time, mitigation steps should be taken in such a way that the number of patients does not increase sharply. This is the key issue, and we will certainly take our steps very carefully”, Mr. Aliyev noted.

Editor

The post Baku is actively working with several companies to bring the COVID-19 vaccine to the country appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Weekly schedule of President Charles Michel 28 August - 4 September 2020

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries concerning restrictive measures against ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaeda and persons, groups, undertakings and entities associated with them

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries concerning restrictive measures against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries concerning restrictive measures in view of the situation in Libya

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries on the application of specific measures to combat terrorism

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries restrictive measures in view of Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries concerning restrictive measures in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol

Media advisory - Press briefings ahead of the informal meetings of EU defence ministers of 26 August, and foreign affairs ministers (Gymnich) of 27-28 August 2020

The European Union issued a declaration welcoming the recent political announcements by the Libyan Presidency Council and the Libyan House of Representatives.

International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence based on Religion or Belief: declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union

European Council President Charles Michel presented his conclusions following the video conference of the members of the European Council on 19 August 2020

President Charles Michel invited the members of the European Council to a video conference on Belarus on 19 August 2020

The EU issued a declaration welcoming the announcement on the normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on the alignment of certain countries concerning restrictive measures in view of the situation in Venezuela

The EU issued a declaration on the presidential elections in Belarus

Today, almost thirty years after gaining its independence, the citizens of Kazakhstan can state with confidence and a sense of pride that their country is an equal and respected member of the international community and has all the signs of a well-established statehood, writes Kairat Mami.