Ideas on Europe Blog

This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2022 (23-24 June, at FASoS, Maastricht).

 

EU-China relations are at a historical low and continue deteriorating. The EU’s skepticism towards China, which began in the mid 2010s, has been accentuated by the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s stance over the war in Ukraine, both of which have fueled the perception that the EU had been naïve about Beijing. This has prompted a turn in the way the EU approaches its relations with China. The EU’s traditional cautiousness has given way to an increasingly worded narrative and a more confrontational approach towards Beijing.

This has materialized in Asia, where Brussels sees China’s policies as a challenge to regional security and to Brussel’s own economic and security interests in the region. China’s foreign policy assertiveness has been a “wakeup call” for the EU to pay more attention to regional security. The security dimension, previously negligible in EU-Asia relations, is now, in the words of former HR/VP Federica Mogherini, the “biggest area of growth” in the EU’s engagement with the region. Against this backdrop, the key question is: how does the EU, as a soft security actor, navigate regional geopolitics and pursue its foreign policy goals?

This article proposes that soft balancing is a helpful tool to interpret the EU’s approach towards Asia in the context of worsening EU-China relations. Soft balancing is a “calculated, focused and nonmilitary strategy” designed in order to “delay, frustrate, and undermine” the threatening behavior of the target state. Hence, it is targeted against a state whose behavior is perceived as challenging, but who is not yet considered as an imminent or existential threat. Soft balancing strategies can be pursued through normative, diplomatic, or economic mechanisms, all of which are present in the EU’s approach towards Asia.

Normative and diplomatic means of balancing are closely linked in the EU’s approach to China’s connectivity strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and its growing military assertiveness in the South China Sea (SCS), both of which are considered a concern by the EU. Normative means of balancing include the promotion of alternative normative doctrines, or the use of international norms to undermine the legitimacy and/or delay threatening actions of the target state. Diplomatically, actors form formal or informal alignments to create a stronger front vis-à-vis the targeted state.

Regarding China’s military assertiveness in the SCS, the EU’s statements have responded to China’s moves by calling for adherence to international law and for strengthening the norms-based regional architecture. Similarly, the EU has delegitimated China’s actions by condemning them as “unilateral” and “endangering peace and stability.” On the other hand, the EU has sought to build cooperation with like-minded countries. The EU’s 2018 security strategy towards Asia identified maritime security as the top priority. Consequently, Brussels stepped up its efforts to build informal understandings, dialogues, and cooperation mechanisms on the matter, including setting up security dialogues with Japan and India. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is at the center of geopolitical tensions with China in the SCS, has also been at the front of the EU’s efforts. Brussels established new cooperation mechanisms with ASEAN and its member states, supported capacity building, stepped up its role at the ASEAN Regional Forum and even participated in a naval exercise hosted by Indonesia.

Regarding connectivity, the EU sees China’s BRI as a geopolitical tool through which Beijing aims at increasing its influence over developing countries and as a normative project to reshape the global governance architecture. Hence, on the one hand, the EU has tried to push China to adhere to international norms and made its engagement with the project conditional to its adherence to those standards. At the 2017 Belt and Road Form, the EU and its member states coordinated a series of common messages, emphasizing the need for the initiative to improve openness, transparency, and rules-based connectivity. In addition, it has sought to counterweight China’s BRI with its own vision of connectivity. The EU’s proposition echoes the normative criticism made to China, as it presents itself as a sustainable, rules-based, and comprehensive alternative. The implementation of EU’s connectivity strategy in Asia is grounded on close ties with Asian partners, including Japan, India, with whom the EU has concluded two connectivity partnerships, and ASEAN.

Finally, economic means of balancing include the use of economic tools to increase one’s own power and relative position vis-à-vis a threatening power. Recent studies unpack how the EU has sought to make use of its economic position in Asia to boost its role as a regional security actor. For instance, The EU’s FTAs with Singapore and Vietnam are part of its efforts to maintain a rules-based international order amid growing geo-economic competition between the US and China. The EU has also revitalized trade talks with India and has made efforts for relaunching trade talks with ASEAN in response to the “quickly changing international environment.” Finally, the EU upgraded its economic relations with Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, by holding their first ever ministerial-level trade talks.

This is not to say that the EU’s interest in Asia is only defined by China. Factors such as the US’ unilateralism during the Trump era and the consolidation of the EU’s foreign policy have all contributed to a more comprehensive approach towards Asian security. Yet, worsening perceptions of China have certainly played a role in driving the EU’s differentiated approach towards the region. Brussels has combined a strong reliance of international norms with the diversification of its regional partners and the promotion of its own initiatives in Asia.

This article has argued that soft balancing offers a useful framework to interpret the EU’s approach, as well as to reconcile its geopolitical narrative with its lack of hard security instruments, and its self-perception as a principled security actor.

The post Economic, Normative, and Diplomatic (Soft) Balancing: Making Sense of the EU’s Responses to China’s Rise in Asia appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2022 (23-24 June, at FASoS, Maastricht).

 

In recent years, political debate in many European countries and across the Atlantic has been characterised by the rise of populism, appeals to identity politics and frequent recourse to political myths. The political myths are here understood as the elements that enhance the strength of the narrative. Therefore, the critical reading of political debates should account for the examination of those elements in the official rhetoric. The unassessed and unscrutinised political myths introduce a system of symbols loaded with emotional messages and set paradigms and frameworks, which can hinder the perception and resilient policymaking in international affairs. The use of identity politics and political myths does not support the creation of truly resilient policies that ensure maximum flexibility, efficiency and the most adequate response to events occurring in international affairs. Examples of the establishment of the Three Seas Initiative (TSI) in Poland and the Brexit debate in the UK show how political myths and identity rhetoric can impact the creation of policy.  These brief case studies show that political myths have a significant impact on foreign and security policymaking. The appeal to emotions and frequent use of political myths in public political debate can simplify political reality. This type of rhetoric often promotes an instrumental but restricted view that does not allow for the appearance and formulation of alternative definitions.

In the last decade the use of the term “resilience” has increased in the context of foreign and security policy. The term gained great popularity as policymakers prefer its neutral character over the traditional term “stability” that does not fully portray the ever-changing nature of political and economic relations in the post-cold war world. Resilience in international relations and especially security policymaking will thus mean the form of governance that is characterised by flexibility, a bottom-up approach, and a quick ability to reform and adjust policies. To achieve resilience, governments need to incorporate a multi-stakeholder vision and perspective, so that the great variety of actors influences the policymaking process. In this sense, resilience in foreign and security policy implies the internal ability of the state to cope with the appearance of multiple and various types of crises. Thus, the term resilience in strategy and foreign policy means the shift in focus from avoiding the crisis to mitigating its effects. In essence, resilience concentrates on developing the crisis and disaster management rather than avoiding and preventing emergency. The perspective of post-September 11, the 2008 financial crisis and more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, is rooted in the conviction that in the contemporary unpredictability and era marked by insecurities, the risks and achievement of complete security are no longer possible. In contrast, resilience concentrates on the ability of a state, system, and society to adapt and recover quickly after experiencing any type of sudden shocks.

On the other hand, political myths have been recognised as elements that enhance the power of messages and narratives; therefore, making political communication more effective. Myths create the common, “mythical” ground that does not need to be backed by political debate or arguments.  Christopher Flood introduced a definition of a political myth as “an ideologically marked narrative which purports to give a true account of a set of past, present, or predicted political events and which is accepted as valid in its essentials by a social group”. National political myths may appear in historically simplistic or selective accounts about the origins of state formation.  They are the legends, told around specific historical figures and events that were crucial in the nation-building processes, and they are part of the state ceremonies, celebrations and rituals. Through the use of political myths, governing elites can more effectively extract resources and mobilise domestic support to undertake ambitious foreign policy goals. Political myths embedded in historical narratives can be seen as a tool, communicated tactically to dominate the agenda. Once implemented in the debate, they serve as cultural lenses through which nation’s views about the outside world are shaped. This type of message sets the primary definition of international affairs and marginalise competing points of view. Identity politics and appeals to historical and mythical symbols may be highly effective domestically as it helps to mobilise society and to achieve the political aims. However, they can also obscure security assessment and formation of foreign policy. Here we can recall the use of the National Health Service (NHS) symbol and the myth of “immigration’’ in the Brexit debate. For the British public, the NHS is an important symbol of a fair and equal society which British people are proud of. We can find how the symbol of the (NHS) has been tactically used by different parties in the Brexit campaign to gain support for both the “Leave’’ or “Remain’’ argument. Similarly, the political myth of “immigration’’ has been significantly incorporated in the debate to enhance the power of political messages and argumentation. The issue of immigration eventually became the key aspect that the public and government wanted to address in the renegotiation of the UK’s relationship with the EU and in the referendum campaign. The authors of Buying into Myths: Free Movement of People and Immigration had anticipated that the unscrutinised political myths functioning in the official rhetoric will eventually determine the outcome of the Brexit referendum. Similarly, another European example, the concept of Intermarium, portrays the ability of political myths to define paradigmatic direction of Polish foreign and security policy. The establishment of the Visegrád Group (V4) in February 1991 and more recently, the Eastern Partnership (EaP) in 2009 and the Three Seas Initiative (TSI) in 2016, represent a subsequent implementation of the Intermarium ideals into the objectives of foreign policy in Poland. The roots of the Intermarium stem from the creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century. The Commonwealth became one of the strongest countries in the region and successively managed to hold its own against powerful neighbours such as Sweden, Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

Most political parties, irrespective of their ideological affiliations, gave their support for a strong and independent Ukraine and Belarus and the Europeanisation of the eastern neighbourhood as the primary direction of the foreign policy. Maintaining good relations and cooperation among their eastern neighbours remain an important element of Polish everyday diplomacy. They are condensed into the main objectives of the Visegrád Group (V4) Eastern Partnership and subsequent foreign policy project, the Three Seas Initiative (2016). Evidently, the Intermarium narrative with its directions for foreign and security policy functions as prevalent and dominant axioms for Polish security strategy.

One of the main objectives as stated on the Visegrád website declares: “The member states of the Visegrad Group also desire to cooperate with their closest neighbours, with the reforming countries in the broader region, and with other countries, regional formations or organisations which are interested and with which specific areas of cooperation are found in the common interest and in the spirit of all-European cooperation.” The Europeanisation of the eastern neighbourhood and the strategic importance of Eastern countries such as Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus remain the main goals and unchanging direction of foreign policy for successive governments. The main objectives remain unchanged, even in the face of serious difficulties in their implementation, as posed by events such as the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and more recently, the open invasion of Russian forces of Ukraine in February 2022.

The above examples portray the potential of political myths and associated systems of symbols to impact political debate and the policymaking process. Therefore, current security studies and foreign policy analysis need to develop a new research agenda that would critically assess and measure the presence of political myths in official rhetoric. This type of research would facilitate the creation of a more peaceful and inclusive security agenda and bring new insights into the foreign policy creation process. The debate enriched by the analysis of political myths will be more open to alternative interpretations and points of view.

Political myths are used to highlight specific aspects of policy while marginalising others and often leading to securitisation. The scholars of critical security studies are already well aware of the effects of farming on foreign and security policies. Securitisation effects as described by   in 1993 are considered as one of those phenomena where the specific use of language is directly affecting the formation of security and foreign policy strategies. The Copenhagen School is one of the first which introduced the critical approach to security studies. Securitisation describes the event where narratives, frames and discourses which function in security can make some actions appear more legitimate, credible, and realistic than others. Issues may not be threatening until it is described and referred to as a threat to national security. In this way, the political problem can be elevated to the matter of national security.  Securitisation processes promote some political issues to an extreme security concern. Those issues are then labelled as “dangerous”, “menacing”, “threatening”, and “alarming” for the one that needs to be addressed urgently. Through the process of securitisation, the actor has the power to force the problem beyond the realm of politics.  According to the Copenhagen School, security issues are not simply given. They may come into existence through the strategic implementation of political narration. As every problem needs to first be articulated, language plays an important function in threat perception and the interpretation of threats. Considering also that the national interests and countries’ priorities in foreign policy are shaped through the identities of the governing groups, we can see how important the function of language may play in the formulation and development of foreign strategies. Securitisation theory challenges more traditional security approaches. mainly because it asserts that security and foreign policy formation is also a discursive process. The examination of political myths in official rhetoric and political debate could then be seen as another form of study of securitisation and its effect on security policy.

The resilient political agenda and policy is the strategy exactly opposite to the one characterised by the securitisation effect. This is due to how securitisation concentrates and prioritises certain issues, themes and narrows the agenda. As per definition, the resilient policy is characterised by the multidimensional perspective that considers various aspects and gives equal attention to all elements. The proposed research methodology could be used to conduct an analysis of the domestic or international use of political myths and their influence on the formation of foreign and security policy strategies. This is a new venue of research initiated by Joanne Esch and Berit Bliesemann De Guevara.

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By Dominika Furtak

Air transport is one of the strategic sectors with broad socio-cultural and economic importance. Global in nature, the sector allows thousands of passengers and tons of products and mail to be transported daily between even the most remote corners of the world. The smooth functioning of such a complex network is not only the result of top technological achievements but also of an established broad legal and political framework. My research addresses the changes in the global aviation system from the perspective of the European Union as a new player in the arena. Part of the project touches on the issue of the extraterritorial effect embedded in the EU legislative framework on civil aviation and its consequences. Based on instruments adopted in various subject areas, I argue that applying EU law outside its territory may supplement the formal External EU Aviation Policy and, as such, provides an innovative mode of international engagement.

With support from the UACES Microgrant, I was able to cover the cost associated with participating in the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA) 2022 Bratislava Convention held on 22-24 June at the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia. It enabled me to present my results before a group of international scholars and subject my conclusions to critical discussion. Lessons from this experience will feed into the final work on a scientific article based on this inquiry on the global reach of air Union rules of the air, as well as into further work on the doctoral project.

In addition, participation in the CEEISA Convention was an important step in my scientific career. Especially for young researchers like me, this is a great opportunity to interact with the academic community, learn about new trends in the field, and cultivate soft skills. All this translates into opportunities and improved quality of further scientific work. In addition, the Bratislava meeting led to the launch of a network of Ph.D. students in the field of IR from Central and Eastern Europe or those interested in this region. Therefore, I am very grateful to the Association for providing the funding opportunity to cover this type of cost.

 

The post Participation in the CEEISA Convention – A UACES Microgrant Report appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

By Reini Schrama, Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen & Ellen Mastenbroek

COVID-19 put health policy in the European Union (EU) high up on the political agenda. Since the pandemic hit Europe, heads of states, health ministers and experts have increased their collaborative efforts to mitigate its effects. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen announced closer collaboration among EU countries to “work together to detect, prepare and respond collectively” and proposed a stronger European Health Union. To do so, the mandate of both the European Medicine Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease prevention and Control (ECDC) have been strengthened and a new Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) has been established. These recent developments demonstrate how rapidly EU health cooperation surfaces at the face of a cross-border health crisis.

 

Expert networks in health cooperation

Under the surface, however, expert-driven health cooperation is already widespread. Civil servants and experts across Europe meet regularly in European Administrative Networks (EANs) to share information, develop common standards, and pool resources, ensuring a uniform approach to EU health policy. These networks are not well known to the public, but can be seen as a compromise of an increasing need for cross-border cooperation and a lack of willingness to delegate health care competences to the supranational level.

Through these networks, EU health care policy cooperation is substantial. Over time, a variety of EANs have developed, covering a wide range of issues such as such as orphan medicinal products, health security, human tissues and cells, adverse effects of medicines, medical devices and cross-border health care. A recent well-known example is EMA’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC), which is a safety committee of national medicine agencies that monitors and reviews side effects of medicines in the general population and reached headlines as a result of its review of the AstraZeneca vaccine. In our study for the Journal of Common Market Studies, we focus on the rapidly developing field of Health Technology Assessment (HTA). The speed at which new pharmaceuticals and medical devices enter the market increases the need to assess their quality, effectiveness and ‘value for money’. HTAs provide health policy makers with scientific advice upon which they can decide on reimbursement and coverage of such drugs and technologies. With limited health budgets and growing demands, EU cooperation on HTA allows for the pooling of resources, joint assessments and the development of a collective evidence-based approach to deal with the pharmaceutical industry. Pooling of resources at a larger European scale can thus be crucial for the public provision of healthcare. For a large part, these collaborative exchanges take place in EUnetHTA, a voluntary network consisting of expert civil servants acting as representatives from national HTA authorities.

 

Assessing network structure

The implicit assumption is that such networks are horizontal. Formally, their interactions are on equal footing. However, that is not to say that they are free of hierarchy in practice. In our study we ask ourselves, are network members equally influential in defining the way forward or do some members control and influence the process more than others, and if so, why? Some network members may be more central to the network than others and use this position to push through their preferences and approaches in developing the methods, evidence and procedures for joint HTAs. This is a pressing issue in this case, as a common HTA approach is being developed and a permanent EU HTA network has been under negotiation up until recently.

To examine the network structure of the EUnetHTA, we investigate whether interactions to exchange information, best practices, prepare joint assessments and provide advice are horizontal or whether some member state representative occupy a central position in the network. In a next step, we inspect the factors that explain why some members are more central than others, being it their experience, capacity or external contact relations? To study the network structure and its driving forces, we collected survey data on their interactions and employed social network analysis.

 

Some are more equal than others

Our findings have several implications for both the study of EU health policy and the more general study of European administrative networks. First, with regard to EU health policy we find that EUnetHTA is considered a very important governance instrument for HTA by its members. The voluntary network for resource pooling can thus be seen as an important forerunner for the soon to be established permanent EU HTA network. Hence, EANs function as important building blocks for the building of a European Health Union.

Second, with regard to European administrative networks more generally, we find that such networks are not quite horizontal in their resource pooling and development of common practices. Instead, the structures in which interaction take place are rather hierarchical. They may not be subject to supranational steering, but some members are able to take on a more central role in the network due to their experience and advancement as regulators on the subject matter. As a result, experienced national regulators can steer the network and push for convergence with their regulatory tradition on a European level. It is not surprising that experienced HTA regulators such as Germany, France and Spain, insisted on maintaining a member-led governance structure for HTA, rather than an increased role for the European Commission in the new and permanent EU HTA network.

It is clear that sitting in the centre of a network is a position of power and that strong regulators may use the opportunity structures of these seemingly horizontal governance instruments to exercise their influence over policy-making and the way forward. While formally all network members are equal, in practice some members may be more equal than others.

 

 

 

About the authors

 

Reini Schrama is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In her research she has advanced the use of social network analysis to study interaction in administrative networks and the functioning of such governance instruments in EU policy implementation.

Twitter: @ReiniSchrama

Academic profile

 

 

Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen is Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on EU welfare policies, investigating integration, national implementation of and compliance with EU social policies, including health care.

Twitter: @dm_martinsen

Academic profile

 

 

Ellen Mastenbroek is Professor of European Public Policy at Radboud University. Her main research interests are the Europeanisation of national governments and EU policy analysis, focusing on compliance, implementation and evaluation of EU legislation.

Twitter: @E_Mastenbroek

Academic profile

 

 

 

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By Eliška Ullrichová

The study of political agenda-setting analyses what issues political actors think and talk about. Alongside the descriptive analysis of issues on the policy agenda, the element of ‘how’, these problems are discussed, is no less important. The agenda-setting debate centrally focuses on the determination of the most important problem of a particular agenda at a specific time. What issue takes most of political representatives’ time and attention? Agenda-setting is important because there is no further political debate, policy formulation or decision over a particular issue without this stage of policymaking. Scholars attempt to identify the most important problem on the agenda because this issue has the highest probability of generating political activity.

In an article recently published in JCMS,  I propose the framework of issue hierarchization to identify not only the most important problem but also the position of all issues on the entire agenda. This enables us to follow the path of a particular item from a long-term perspective to identify how the issue gets on the top of the agenda and how the position of issues influences the entire agenda-setting dynamic. The concept of issue hierarchization allows us to tell apart primary and secondary issues. The former type encompasses problems that attract the most policy attention at a specific time. The latter category refers to less salient issues occupying less policy attention than primary ones. The salience of issues is measured by assessing place, space and framing. The earlier an issue is mentioned, the more space taken up in the minutes and the more urgent the framing, the more salient an issue is considered to be and, thus, to have a higher position on the agenda.

The differentiation between primary and secondary issues at a given time allows us to see the position of and general attitude towards a particular issue in a medium or long-term perspective. The article analyses issue hierarchization and dynamics in the case of the European Council agenda from December 2014 to December 2020, which covers the periods of two European Commission Presidents, Jean-Claude Juncker and Ursula von der Leyen. Even though six years period might offer a medium-term rather than a long-term perspective, it reveals an interesting tendency.

The findings indicate three categories of issues based on their dynamics on the agenda. First, some problems tend to occupy primary positions and rarely drop to the second position: these include migration or Brexit. Second, the European Council agenda is composed of regularly discussed secondary issues that only exceptionally move to the highest position. These ʻstable issuesʼ are prone to be excluded from the agenda in the event that a highly salient problem emerges. However, this elimination is only temporarily. Once a crisis or an emergency is fading, the stable issue is more than likely to rise on the agenda again. External relations and climate change are good examples of these kinds of issues. The third group refers to issues that constantly change their position from primary to secondary and the other way around. Jobs, growth, and competitiveness are, for example, classified as highly dynamic issues.

 

Figure: Dynamics of different categories of issues on the EC agenda

 

In addition, it is noteworthy to mention that if an issue drops out of the European Council agenda for a few meetings, this does not necessarily mean it will not appear on the agenda after a while. This is a very interesting finding because agenda-setting scholars widely assert that there are two types of competition among issues for policy attention – to get (1) onto an agenda and (2) to the top of an agenda. This research, however, indicates that there are different dynamics to the competition of getting onto an agenda among issues that have never been placed on the agenda before and those that have been featured before. This is believed to be a factor of inertia, in particular. In this context, inertia refers to historical trends of policy attention towards specific issues on a particular policy agenda. Inertia is the reason why new issues face difficulties in getting onto the agenda. Inertia is also why certain issues are privileged in getting onto the agenda after dropping out after they have already managed to get onto an agenda before.

In conclusion, my article on issue hierarchization has shown in the case of the European Council agenda that the identification of primary and secondary issues on the entire agenda is helpful to understand the medium and/or long-term performance of an issue on the policy agenda. Since agenda-setting is a litmus test for the policymaking process, a medium or long-term issue’s performance is of use to understand the correlation between an issue’s position on the agenda and potential policy or decision-making regarding it.

 

 

Eliška Ullrichová is PhD Candidate in Area Studies at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic)

Her research interests are in the area of EU agenda-setting, environmental policy, and diplomacy. During her PhD studies, Eliška was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Padua (2020) under the supervision of Professor Graziano.

 

Twitter handle: @EUllrichova

Academic profile:

https://ims.fsv.cuni.cz/en/contacts/people/79335963

https://fsv.cuni.cz/en/contacts/people/79335963

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WorldCould. Author’s illustration

Anna-Lena Rüland

The world has seen a fair share of democratic backsliding in recent years, for example in countries like Turkey, the Philippines and Russia. Science diplomacy is often seen as a means to continue some sort of engagement with such regimes. Although it sounds great in theory, we do not yet know how exactly science diplomacy can facilitate engagement with autocratic states. I address this blind spot in my recent article “Learning from Rivals”, which features an in-depth case study of a US-Iranian collaboration in public health. In the article, I use a policy transfer lens to trace how a group of US and Iranian public health experts brought Iran’s health house policy to the Mississippi Delta, and, in the process, fostered engagement between their respective countries. Bringing to light opportunities and challenges for science diplomacy between states with tense political relations, the findings of my article hopefully prove useful for both science diplomacy practitioners and scholars.

 

An Unlikely Partnership for Science Diplomacy

At first sight, it seems unlikely that public health experts from the US and Iran would partner up for a collaboration in public health. Yet, although few are aware of it, parts of the US, specifically the Mississippi Delta, face similar public health challenges as post-Revolution Iran.

 

Up until the early 1980s, rural residents in Iran were lacking access to basic healthcare services. Whenever they needed to see a doctor, rural residents had to walk long distances to reach the nearest hospital. Many people living in remote countries in the Mississippi Delta face a similar challenge today, as they struggle to find easily accessible primary health care. In contrast to the Mississippi Delta, Iran has successfully addressed its primary healthcare challenges and, in doing so, developed one of the least expensive and most effective primary healthcare systems in the world. The core of the Iranian healthcare system are “health houses”, which provide a variety of integrated primary and preventative healthcare services, including public health education, maternal care and family planning. Staffed with at least two community health workers, known as behvarz, each health house serves up to 1,500 rural residents and several satellite villages. Behvarz are trained to perform basic healthcare services and are allocated to communities that they match ethnically and linguistically. Sharing strong ethnic and linguistic ties with the local community is crucial because the behvarz need to understand local customs to collect sensitive health information for the community they are serving. Over time, Iran’s health houses have drastically improved health indicators across the country’s rural areas (Sajadi and Majdzadeh, 2019).

 

A public health expert from the Mississippi Delta, who later joined the US-Iranian collaboration, first learned about this success story during a meeting with a delegation of the Iranian Ministry of Health. A few years later, he was working as a consultant for several hospitals in the Mississippi Delta that were struggling financially due to an influx of uninsured patients from rural areas. The consultant realized that these patients were appearing in Emergency Rooms because they did not have access to primary health care. Remembering Iran’s success story, he decided to promote Iran’s health house policy as a potential solution for the Mississippi Delta’s healthcare challenges. Together with two other local public health experts, the consultant began reaching out to public health professionals in Iran who were familiar with the health house policy. The local US public health experts ended up travelling to Iran to experience first-hand the country’s health system and, while there, partnered up with some Iranian public health professionals to help transfer Iran’s health house policy to the Mississippi Delta. Ultimately, the efforts of the US and Iranian public health experts were partially successful. Although they managed to pilot test fifteen health houses in the Mississippi Delta, the health houses were not implemented throughout the entire state of Mississippi, as they had originally hoped.

 

Opportunities and Challenges for Science Diplomacy between Rival States

Although the experts were given several opportunities during their time working together, they also faced major challenges. Eventually, this is what brought the collaboration to an end.

 

Three factors were crucial for the initial success of science diplomacy in my case study:

First, high-ranking support. Several high-ranking incumbent and ex-policymakers supported the collaboration in both the US and Iran. In the US, then Vice President Biden was in favor of the project because it fit well with President Obama’s conciliatory “new beginning” strategy for the Middle East. In Iran, several incumbent and ex-policymakers backed the public health partnership because as former public health professionals, they were either interested in the project’s outcomes or saw the collaboration as a way to improve the image of Iran abroad.

 

Second, relevant political and cultural network. The collaboration involved experts who had contacts to policymakers in the US and Iran and a good understanding of their interests. Furthermore, the US experts brought in a public health researcher who – as a US-Iranian – was familiar with both countries and thus able to facilitate trust-building between Iranian and US colleagues.

 

Third, in-person meetings. Several in-person meetings were held in the US and Iran, which strengthened group cohesion. For a collaboration which has to withstand potential political interferences group cohesion is key.

 

Despite the initial success of the collaboration, three events eventually led to its downfall. First and most importantly, the collaboration was immediately halted when one of the Iranian partners ran as a hardline presidential candidate. This move led several US policymakers who had initially backed the project to withdraw their support. Second, after one of the US public health experts passed away, the remaining US team fell apart. Third, even before these two incisive events, the US experts experienced considerable opposition from local and regional policymakers towards their initiative and as a result had trouble securing sufficient funding.

 

Lessons Learned?

In theory, science diplomacy is a promising foreign policy tool for maintaining engagement between states with tense political relations. However, as my research shows, science diplomacy in practice can be an extremely challenging endeavor. In particular, my findings underline that top-level political support for science diplomacy between rival states is essential, but also easily withdrawn – even during peaceful times. What does this mean for science diplomacy efforts during times of war? More specifically, can and should we engage in science diplomacy with a rouge state like Russia? Drawing on my findings and given the current situation in Ukraine, I would argue that it is highly unlikely that Western powers will engage in science diplomacy with Russia anytime soon. However, once a military or political solution to the conflict is found, this may change. If and how science diplomacy will then be used, remains to be seen.

 

Anna-Lena Rüland is a PhD candidate at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin and University of Potsdam. Her current research focuses on topics such as science diplomacy, North-South research collaboration and Big Science.

 

References

Graticola I (2020) 8 Facts about Healthcare in Iran. Available at: https://borgenproject.org/facts-about-healthcare-in-iran/ (accessed 24 June).

Rüland A-L (2022) Learning from Rivals: The Role of Science Diplomats in Transferring Iran’s Health House Policy to the US. Globalizations Online First. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2022.2062845.

Sajadi HS and Majdzadeh R (2019) From Primary Health Care to Universal Health Coverage in the Islamic Republic of Iran: A Journey of Four Decades. Archives of Iranian Medicine 22(5): 262-268.

 

The post Learning from Rivals: The Role of Science Diplomacy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Almost a decade after the last major reform of the European fiscal framework, Eurozone decision-makers have recently engaged in a discussion about the revision of fiscal rules. The pandemic is said to have changed the landscape of European economic policymaking. It has forced policymakers to embrace expansionary fiscal policies to address the diminished economic activity caused by the disruptions in supply and demand. Supporting the recovery of the European economy appeared to overshadow the consolidation of public finances as the predominant concern of the decision-makers. Recent scholarly work depicts the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility as a watershed moment in European fiscal integration, signifying a major shift in the economic policy paradigm of the Eurozone.

The unexpected change of policy stance of many countries – particularly Germany – has made obvious the decline of ordoliberal ideas in the management of European fiscal policy. The ordoliberal tradition had been advocating indirect intervention in the economy via the establishment of an economic constitution. This framework prohibited discretionary fiscal intervention in the economy, endorsing rules-based fiscal discipline.

While there is little doubt that the proponents of Ordoliberalism have much less clout in the Eurozone nowadays, the attribution of the shift to the pandemic overlooks some important developments that had already emerged in the context of the latest European fiscal governance reform between 2010 and 2013. Arguably, the main element of that reform was the establishment of the European Semester, a system of integrated economic surveillance combining pre-existing fiscal and macroeconomic monitoring instruments and newly introduced procedures. Did the European Semester follow in the ordoliberal mold?

 

An ordoliberal European Semester?

Several important scholars embraced the so-called ordoliberalisation hypothesis: the strengthening of German ordoliberal ideas within EMU after the financial crisis shaped the direction of the 2010-2013 reform of EU economic governance. Different scholars highlighted different aspects of the process: the strategic use of ideas by the German government, the constraining effects of German ideas which reflected the reluctance of the German hegemon or the discursive abilities of the German Chancellor in her attempt to legitimise financial assistance arrangements. Nedergaard and Snaith undertook a thorough examination of the ordoliberal philosophy, pointing out the connections between institutional developments and two core ordoliberal principles: the predictability and constancy of economic policy.

In sharp contrast to the above academic discussion, the German Bundesbank’s harsh criticism of the fiscal framework, cast doubt on the ordoliberal direction of the reform. The rules appeared overly flexible, enabling discretionary fiscal policies.

 

Weakened fiscal discipline before the pandemic

A study of the underlying economic policy beliefs of Eurozone policymakers participating in the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) reveals that Eurozone’s shift from Ordoliberalism preceded the pandemic. The findings show that the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2007-2009 weakened the rules-based approach to fiscal discipline. Countries embraced Keynesian anticyclical policy as a temporary measure to stimulate demand and stabilise the economy. But they faced considerable difficulties when they attempted to design their Fiscal Exit strategies. The rapidly deteriorating public finances in most member states damaged the intellectual grip of the fiscal rules in the eyes of policymakers. Instead of being the solution, fiscal rules appeared to be the problem. A new consensus emerged in the discussions of the EFC: fiscal discipline would have to be institution-based. The centralisation of decision-making on budgetary matters would enable the Commission and the EFC to combine long-term fiscal discipline with short-term fiscal discretion.

The above findings challenge the ordoliberalisation hypothesis. Ordoliberalism did not shape the direction of the 2010-2013 reform of the European economic governance. Contrary to the ordoliberal notion of the self-limited state, the reform increased the authority of the executive, allowing direct intervention in the economy by the state. Additionally, the reform opened the way to fiscal discretion effectively undermining the ordoliberal principle of consistent economic policymaking. These developments undermine the economic constitution as they transform the role of the state and impede the function of complete competition. The system of decentralized responsibility, which was favoured by ordoliberals, was turned on its head and was replaced by a system of centralised responsibility. The EMU had therefore abandoned the ordoliberal paradigm long before the outbreak of the pandemic.

 

An enduring shift?

This analysis offers a new perspective on the examination of the recent course of European fiscal integration. The waning influence of ordoliberalism in the EMU decision-making after the financial crisis highlights the existence of significant continuities between pre-pandemic institutional reforms and the post-pandemic policy response. In this light, the creation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility can be explained as a step in the path of creating a macroeconomic stabilisation function following relevant initiatives that had emerged between 2015 and 2019. What remains to be seen is whether the intellectual shift of EU policymakers to institutions-based discipline will endure, guiding the ongoing discussions regarding the revision of the fiscal framework. Or will the ordoliberal rules-based approach come back with a vengeance, prioritising fiscal consolidation over other policy goals?

This blog post draws on the JCMS article The European Semester: An Ordoliberal Construct?

 

Author:

 

Dimitrios Argyroulis is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg. His research interests include the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact after the financial crisis and the pandemic and the independence of the ECB in light of the emerging democratic legitimacy challenges. Dimitrios holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield (2020).

The post The European Semester: An Ordoliberal Construct? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In his EU3D-funded master’s thesis, Simon Zemp analyses how Swiss newspapers have referred to Brexit as a benchmark when evaluating the recent attempts of the Swiss government to (re-)negotiate its bilateral relations with the EU. The results show that Brexit references were important in the public debate about the Swiss EU relationship and were often referred to as a ‘role model’.

Schwexit. Illustration by: Marcus Gottfried (toonpool.com).

Immediately after the British vote to leave the European Union, observers feared that Brexit might boost Euroscepticism in the rest of Europe. Since then, these fears have not been borne out. To the contrary, scholars have documented a reinforcement of support for EU integration in the aftermath of Brexit, indicating a deterrent effect of Brexit.

Benchmarking[1] Brexit: looking over the Channel matters for EU support

The British experience with Brexit constitutes a unique, highly informative precedent for disintegration. European citizens may take this information into account and adapt their opinion regarding their own country’s EU integration. Depending on how the own country’s performance is evaluated when benchmarked against Brexit, different changes in public opinion may result. For example, if Brexit is widely perceived as a success, citizens will consider a change in the status quo in a similar direction. On the contrary, benchmarking against a negatively evaluated Brexit experience will deter people from supporting disintegration steps and make them more appreciative of EU integration. Such benchmarking may play a crucial role for EU support among its member states (see de Vries 2017) as well as in externally integrated countries like Norway or Switzerland.

Do Europeans refer to Brexit as a ‘benchmark’? Novel evidence found in the analysis of Swiss media

Despite evidence strengthening the explanatory power of ‘Brexit benchmarks’, we lack observations from the real world that concretely show how people benchmark their own situation against Brexit. Since we can understand benchmarking as a thought process within people’s minds, it is obviously difficult to observe it. My study circumvented this difficulty with the help of a media framing analysis. The idea was to grasp the phenomenon of ‘benchmarking against Brexit’ in public discourses, as it is reflected in news media content.

The Swiss context presented itself for such an investigation as Swiss EU relations were high on the political agenda throughout the entire Brexit process. Foremost, the negotiation on an institutional framework agreement between 2014 and 2021 triggered intense public debates in Switzerland about the country’s future integration path.

By analysing articles from four Swiss newspapers of different political leanings, I found a total of 229 framings which evaluated Switzerland’s EU integration by referring explicitly to the Brexit process as a reference point. These frames reveal that ‘Brexit benchmarks’ played a prominent role in the Swiss public debate and that Brexit served as both a ‘deterrent’ and a ‘role model’ (see the box for two examples).

Evidence from Switzerland shows: Brexit is by no means just a deterrent!

Swiss media coverage contained ‘benchmark framings’ foremost during episodes of Brexit characterised by a high issue salience and a good comparability with the Swiss situation. The relatively short period when the UK under PM Johnson negotiated and adopted the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU at the end of 2021 stands out in the data. After the long-winded exit phase, the UK situation at this stage was well comparable to the Swiss attempt of getting external access to ‘Europe’ and commentators in the news have frequently benchmarked the Swiss situation against the salient Brexit events (see Figure 1).

Also, it was in this final negotiation phase under Johnson that newspapers framed Brexit increasingly as a ‘role model’. Foremost the British negotiation style and the concrete outcome of the negotiations were presented as admirable benchmarks, which helped to point out alleged flaws in the Swiss-EU negotiation. A total of 97 framings presented Brexit as a ‘role model benchmark’ for Switzerland. This number is astonishing, especially given the evidence indicating effects of ‘Brexit deterrence’ in European countries.

Figure 1: How Swiss news media framed Brexit as a benchmark. Number of frames shown along the x-axis.

Besides the remarkable amount of ‘role model benchmarks’, Swiss news regularly referred to Brexit with a negative, deterrent framing (104 frames). Especially in tumultuous Brexit episodes, as in Spring 2019, benchmarking against Brexit tended to come with a negative framing; and the comparison with the UK made the Swiss situation appear more desirable. Here, Brexit references allowed to argue for the preservation of the Swiss status quo and against similar ‘experiments’ in the name of national sovereignty, which may endanger the relations with Europe.

Newspapers’ use of framing power when presenting Brexit as a benchmark

My data reveal that the political leaning of a newspaper is a decisive factor for understanding the way Brexit is framed as a benchmark in the media. For example, the Eurosceptic outlet ‘Weltwoche’ pointed extensively to the Brexit process as a benchmark and thereby used almost exclusively a ‘role model’ framing (in 60 out of 73 frames). More EU-friendly newspapers, like NZZ and Tages-Anzeiger, referred to Brexit with both ‘role model’ and ‘anti-role model’ framings, yet with a clear bias towards the latter. Interestingly, Eurosceptic commentators have (re)framed Brexit under PM Johnson as a success story by clearly separating his premiership from Theresa May’s, who was presented as the scapegoat for the negative experiences publicly associated with Brexit.

In conclusion, the findings from Switzerland indicate that the Brexit experience matters for public discussion and opinion formation on European (dis-)integration beyond the UK and that Europe is far from having ‘outlived’ the risk of ‘Brexit contagion’. After a tumultuous withdrawal process, the most fruitful years for framing Brexit as a role model for disintegration attempts may be yet to come. Certainly, the future performance of the UK outside the Union is key in this respect. Moreover, my study emphasises that we are also well-advised to keep a close eye on the hitherto neglected role of news media and political entrepreneurs: It is their ‘framing power’ that significantly influences whether Europeans perceive the British path as a role model or a deterrent.

 

 

[1] The verb to benchmark means to evaluate a situation by comparing it with a certain reference point⸺the benchmark.

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The title of this post feels insanely optimistic, given the events of the past weeks, but if we don’t try then we certainly won’t succeed.

Last month I submitted some evidence to the Follow-up inquiry on the impact of the Protocol, run by the Lord’s EU Committee’s sub-Committee on the Protocol. Being very aware of my limits, I only wrote about the dynamics of EU-UK interactions on the issue and how a possible restarting of constructive relations might look.

My unwritten conclusion was that the current UK government was really unlikely to make this work, or would even try to make it work, since its first step was to engage wholeheartedly with the current Protocol system, to show it was making best efforts. Only once that path is exhausted (and seen to be exhausted) would the UK get renegotiation on the table.

Of course, this has been overtaken by the publication last week of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

Resting on a very dubious legal basis of a doctrine of necessity, the government argues that the Protocol’s effects are so terrible as to require urgent action, albeit through passing legislation that may need months to come into effect and while also arguing it is just ‘minor bureaucratic changes‘.

Even if we disregard the justification, then we can still say that the Bill proposes a fundamental reworking of the Protocol, as laid out in the graphic below.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic105

Even those (few) parts of the Protocol that appear to be protected from changes – notably Art.2 rights for individuals – are compromised immediately by the removal of the ECJ from any UK-based legal judgements (so people can’t access definitive ECJ rulings on relevant provisions) and have the shadow of Clause 18 powers hanging over them.

Clause 18 would allow UK ministers to take whatever they like on any aspect of the Protocol as they see fit, without Parliamentary control. To call this sweeping would be an understatement and sets up a much more antagonistic passage through the Lords (and probably with some Tory backbenchers).

As a whole, the Bill reads like a legal embodiment of 1980s Millwall supporters.

Legally, the Bill stands on the weakest of justifications, just as the chances of it forcing the EU to the negotiation table like vanishingly small. Given that both of these things was very evident beforehand,  the key question is ‘why carry on regardless?’

As I’ve long said, it reflects much more on the state of domestic debate than on real, existing international relations.

For more evidence of this, we might look to yesterday’s publication of the Centre for Brexit Policy’s report on Global Britain.

I only focused on the EU/Europe section in my thread below, but it suffers from the flawed assumption that just because you think the EU is rotten, so must everyone else.

So that much-trailed @CentreBrexit report has finally droppedhttps://t.co/zyNn8tryLN

Some observations

1/

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) June 22, 2022

And so we continue to go round the same old problems, again and again.

Even if the NIP Bill gets binned and even if the CBP’s ideas don’t become official policy, the issues still remain about how to find a mutually-acceptable and stable solution for Northern Ireland. Which seems rather lost in this debate.

The post Making the Northern Ireland Protocol work appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Billy Melo Araujo, from the Queen’s University, in Belfast.

 

 

 

 

euradio · What is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill ? – Ideas on Europe

 

 

Billy, a few days ago the British government decided to introduce legislation unilaterally overriding key aspects of the Northern Ireland Protocol. You’re an expert in international trade law, what is your take on this new bill?

This Bill is the latest instalment in a long-running saga throughout which the UK has sought, on multiple occasions, to rewrite the terms of the Protocol.

As a reminder, the Northern Ireland Protocol is a legal instrument annexed to the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement, which, amongst other things, creates a legal framework that ensures there is no hard border within the island of Ireland. It does so by requiring Northern Ireland to comply with EU customs and internal market rules in relation to goods. However, as the rest of the UK is subject to a separate customs and regulatory regimes this has meant that GB goods entering NI are subject to border checks.

 

But what’s wrong with that? Why exactly is the so-called Irish Sea Border at the centre of so much debate and controversy?

The application of border checks on British goods is seen by some as undermining the integrity of the internal UK market. More importantly, some people within the unionist community of Northern Ireland see these border checks as a threat to their identity as part of the UK. This is a very important point to bear in mind. The border issue is not really about goods, trade or economics. It is about complex issues of identity and belonging.

On the other side of the argument, it is argued that the Protocol’s focus is to avoid border checks within the island of Ireland. The checks being carried on GB goods entering NI are not a consequence of the Protocol itself but rather of the UK’s sovereign decision to leave the EU customs and regulatory sphere.

 

And what is now the effect of the famous new bill on the Northern Ireland Protocol?

The bill effectively empties the Protocol. As it currently stands, under the Protocol, goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain are subject to EU tariffs unless it can be shown that those goods are not at risk of being moved on to the EU. In other words, the default setting under the Protocol is that non-EU goods imported into NI are subject to EU tariffs and compliance checks to protect the integrity of the European Single Market.

The bill turns the system on its head by establishing a “dual regulatory system” that lets businesses choose whether to abide by UK or EU regulations when selling goods in Northern Ireland. It also creates a so-called “green channel” that would remove customs and regulatory checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, while keeping checks on goods that are moving through Northern Ireland to the rest of the EU.

And it does not stop there. The bill also does away with the direct effect of EU law in Northern Ireland and removes the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice on matters relating to the Protocol. It also gives significant powers to ministers to disapply other aspects of the Protocol as well as the surrounding regulatory framework.

 

Wow! But is that actually legally possible?

There is absolutely no doubt that the bill breaches the Protocol. It is an attempt to unilaterally re- write the Protocol in its entirety. Even the UK government accepts this. It simply contends that the bill can be justified by reference to a defence plea of necessity. However, this plea can only be invoked under very exceptional circumstances. It must be shown that a wrongful act is necessary toaddress a situation of extreme gravity. Not only that, the UK would have to show that it has not contributed to the situation and that there was no other lawful alternative available to it than to completely empty the Protocol.

Even the most creative of lawyers would struggle to reasonably argue that scrapping the entirety of the Protocol – a legal instrument that was negotiated by the UK and is backed by Northern Ireland businesses and the majority of parties sitting in the Northern Ireland Assembly – could be justified on such a weak legal basis.

 

One last question: this bill, will it pass?

To start with, it will have to go through the UK legislative process which could take up to a year. In the meantime, the EU has already stated that it will respond by initiating a number of legal challenges against the UK. The upshot is the further souring of EU-UK relationship. More damagingly, for Northern Ireland, it means further instability, division and uncertainty in an already polarised and fragile society.

Many thanks, Billy, for helping us understand this new initiative of the British government.
“Ideas on Europe” will be back next week, and we will welcome Amelia Hadfield, from the University of Surrey.

The post What is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2022 (23-24 June, at FASoS, Maastricht).

 

The advancement of biotechnology has ignited both enthusiastic approval and fear, yet it has not left the public indifferent. The global COVID-19 pandemic has particularly focused public attention on this science-based sphere. An inherently interdisciplinary field, biotechnology is broadly defined as ‘the application of science and technology to living organisms, as well as parts, products, and models thereof, to alter living or non-living materials for the production of knowledge, goods, and services’. Rapid development pace, high initial investment, high development costs, significant educational and financial investments– is just a brief list of some key characteristics and needs of this dynamically developing sphere. It is also regarded as a ‘strategic’ technology with a diverse array of applications, ranging from traditional ones: medicine, agriculture, food products, to emerging industries, such as nanotechnology.

The importance of national biotechnology capabilities became especially evident during national border closures and a scarcity of certain medical supplies, which took place during the COVID pandemic. As production and supply chains were interrupted, government involvement was of decisive importance. For some, a reference to government involvement may bring to mind a formerly dominant techno-centric rationality, which narrowly focuses on inputs (research funding) and outputs (patents). However, views on how innovation should be understood and governed have already changed. A more holistic approach of National Innovation Systems (NIS) recognises innovation as a process, which takes place within a network of relationships and involves a variety of actors from both the public and private sectors. Yet, NIS have now been increasingly recast as National Innovation Ecosystems (NIE) because concerns about diversity, participation, and inclusivity of various types of actors have also come to the foreground. Furthermore, NIE brings particular awareness to the importance of an innovation-conducive environment.

My doctoral study explores the ways in which these theoretical reflections may help understand Bulgaria’s overall unsatisfactory innovation performance. The small Eastern European economy was ranked second to last, according to the Summary Innovation Index of the European Innovation Scoreboard’s ranking of 2021 (the last EU Member-State being Romania). The 2015-2020 National Innovation strategy admitted with concern that low-tech products hold a major share of the country’s exports, internationalisation of Bulgarian enterprises is low, there is a limited contribution of Foreign Direct Investments to technology transfers, production methods are energy intensive, and partially because of the above factors, labour productivity is low. This concern is also echoed by a more recent 2019 EBRD report, which warns that the country’s economic development is hindered by its low capacity to innovate and generate value. In 2018, the EU even took the drastic measure of withholding innovation funds after Bulgaria’s failure to identify enough sufficiently qualified scientists to evaluate research proposals.

Admittedly, Bulgarian technopolitical and development strategies are embedded in a pan-European ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship. Some of the issues faced by the small Eastern European country are recognised as wider pan-European challenges. For example, in comparison with the USA, EU start-ups have access to much less venture capital. Thus, even though the number of EU and US start-ups is comparable, far fewer European start-ups manage to scale up.

However, issues about Bulgaria’s innovation performance run deeper than what can be determined from assessments of purely economic factors or business analyses of economic actors. In 2021, researchers who were identified as ‘non-innovators without disposition to innovate’ were 54.1%, while the EU average was 31.3%. The Bulgarian Ministry of Education identified key weaknesses of Bulgaria’s NIS: institutional rigidities and a growing distrust amongst key stakeholders in the research and innovation system. Such concerns bring attention to the importance of fostering a culture of innovation, which helps nurture innovative behaviours and attitudes, new forms of communication and collaboration, as well as forms of rationality that inform these new forms and innovative behaviours.

Consequently, in addition to an analysis of broad national-level innovation policies and strategies, my doctoral research pays particular attention to Bulgarian science entrepreneurs, especially focusing on the biotechnology sphere. Science entrepreneurs are scientists who have been able to commercialise their own research and the nature of biotechnology research has been considered as particularly favourable to the emergence of this group. While most existing analyses have focused on the economy, my research argues for a need to understand the role of ideas, narrative, and discourses in the constitution of NIS/NIE. Special attention is given to these, which emerge at micro-sites of discourse production, such as individual biotechnology laboratories or research institutes. The doctoral project argues that such an understanding is just as important for understanding national innovation capacity as quantitative reports of relevant indices about the country’s innovation performance.

The post Bulgaria’s National Innovation (Eco)System: the Case of the Biotechnology Sphere appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Baris Celik, from the University of Surrey, in the United Kingdom.

 

 

 

 

 

euradio · Can the EU to please everyone in climate politics ? – Ideas on Europe

 

Baris, your research focuses on the EU’s environmental politics, a field where the EU’s ambition for global leadership is perhaps the most visible.

That’s right: in environmental politics, the EU seeks to lead by example by committing to protect the environment and establish sustainable development. For example, as you well know, the EU often attaches environmental standards to its trade deals with the rest of the world.

However, being a global leader requires gaining the legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the actors that the EU must interact with. In a globalised world, the support of developed and developing countries is crucial for the EU to be recognised as world leader in the protection of our environment.

In addition to these actors’ concerns, the EU also sets itself a set of some values to follow in international climate politics, such as protecting jobs, dealing with the negative economic effects of climate measures, and protecting endangered species. Add to that is the member states’ interests that the EU officials try to mitigate on a daily basis.

 

And do you think the EU is up to the job?

In fairness, fulfilling all these tasks at the same time is a mountainous undertaking. Knowing this difficulty, the EU scaled down its high ambitions over the last few years and adopted a more ‘realistic’ position in its interactions with the rest of the world in environmental politics. Researchers call this a ‘strategic shift’, or the EU’s realisation that its rose-tinted spectacles do not match the political reality of the world we live in.

 

How precisely did such a ‘strategic shift’ take place? How did the EU adjust to the ugly political realities of climate change?

As I said, while the EU officials emphasise ecological matters and societal issues, they also want to reassure political-economic concerns.

In my research, I showed that to achieve these conflicting tasks at the same time, what the EU officials say and what they officially decide upon respond to different demands. To be more precise: while appreciating the ‘dirty politics’ of climate change, the EU officials still want to maintain the EU’s commitment for a greener earth and sustainable development. To do this, the EU officials portray the EU to the rest of the world in different ways. For example, while the EU’s policy decisions focus on the demands of strategic actors like the US and China, the verbal declarations of top EU policymakers emphasise the societal and ethical concerns.

You mean there’s a real gap between what is said and what is done?

To put it bluntly: the EU as an organisation behaves like a hypocrite. No need to be scandalised: ‘hypocrisy’ may have negative connotations in moral or ethical terms, but hypocrisy can in fact be very functional for a multilevel organisation like the EU.

Organisations like the EU are formed of various actors, institutions, and levels of policymaking. As a result, people working for these organisations have to address multiple demands at the same time. And these are demands that are not easy to reconcile with one another. Under these circumstances, saying and doing things differently allows such organisations to offer ‘win-win’ solutions to complex problems. As a matter of fact, ‘hypocrisy’ is a functional tool for the EU to address political, economic, and environmental concerns at the same time.

However –and let this be a warning to the EU policymakers– research also shows that saying things in one direction and doing things in another makes it more difficult for the EU to maintain a legitimate standing both at home and abroad. By simultaneously communicating different signals about the EU’s intentions, the EU officials and their decisions portray different and conflicting aspects of the EU – is it a rational, innovative, or responsible actor? This leads to confusion in both developed and developing countries about what the EU really tries to achieve in global climate politics. For example, developing countries may not see the EU’s ‘green approach’ as particularly green. Consistency in message should be an important concern for the EU, because environment will remain a key area where the EU’s claims for global leadership will be tested.

A real balancing act! Many thanks, Baris, for sharing your network’s insight on this increasingly relevant issue. “Ideas on Europe” will be back next week, and we will welcome your colleague from Surrey, Amelia Hadfield.

The post Can the EU Please Everyone in Climate Politics? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Europeanization, the impact of European integration on domestic policies, processes, discourses, and institutions of both member and candidate states, is a hot topic. As an integral part of its enlargement process, the European Union (EU) has used the accession negotiations as leverage to promote economic reform as well as democracy, the rule of law, and human rights in candidate countries moving towards EU membership.

Of late, there have been attempts to ‘roll back’ or ‘withdraw from’ EU policies and to depart from European values and norms both in EU member states, including Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Estonia, and candidate countries such as Serbia. Despite taking significant steps to comply with the Copenhagen criteria after receiving the candidate-country status in 1999, Turkey has also been undergoing such a process of de-Europeanization, gradually moving away from European norms, values, and policy demands in various policy areas, including gender policy.

In our article, we explore (de)-Europeanization of Turkey’s gender equality policy in terms of both legislative changes and the shifts observed in domestic actors’ discourses over the past decade, focusing particularly on the debates surrounding the Istanbul Convention. We demonstrate that Turkey’s recent decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention constitutes a case of de-Europeanization – a decision that has undermined Turkey’s European vocation.

The Istanbul Convention (the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women and domestic violence) is the first comprehensive and legally binding document that recognizes violence against women as a violation of women’s human rights and includes measures to prevent violence, protect victims, prosecute perpetrators, and to eliminate all sorts of gender-based violence and discrimination. The European Commission’s progress reports between 2005-2011 as well as the 2009 ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, concerning the Opuz v. Turkey case exposed Turkey’s failure to prevent domestic violence against women, which constituted a human rights violation. To improve the country’s image and credibility, Turkey’s governing elites participated in the preparation of the Istanbul Convention and became the first country to sign (2011) and ratify (2012) it.

While Turkey actively participated in its drafting and was the first country to ratify the Istanbul Convention, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a midnight presidential decree in March 2021 pulling the country out of the Convention. Domestic and international factors played a decisive role in the President’s decision. On the domestic policy front, a vocal conservative religious block favoured rolling back existing gender equality legislation, including the Istanbul Convention, arguing that the Convention promotes ‘third gender’ and ‘same sex marriage’. In the context of the economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, President Erdoğan appealed to religious conservative values to energize and expand his party’s base to maintain his rule. The governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP) framed gender equality as a threat to the family and to the future of the nation and promoted ‘gender justice’, based on Islamic values and beliefs, driving Turkey away from EU values, norms, and policy expectations in the field of gender equality. In Turkey, reform reversals took the form of both dismantling of gender equality laws and policies (such as the restrictions on C-Sections, and the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention) and discursive attacks on the gender equality norm, which affected the legitimacy of existing gender equality legislation (such as the Law on the Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence against Women (Law no. 6284) and the legislation on reproductive rights).

International factors such as the stalling EU-Turkey relations coupled with the backlash against gender equality in EU member states also served as the key determinants of de-Europeanization of gender equality policy in Turkey. In a written statement issued by the Communications Directorate of the Presidency of Turkey, six specific EU member states (Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia) with ‘serious concerns over the Convention’ were cited to justify the President’s decision to pull Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention. Our analysis has revealed that the discursive strategies employed by the ruling elite devalued and delegitimized gender equality as a Western/European import and reframed the EU as an ‘inferior’ norm imposer that fails to follow what it preaches. The Istanbul Convention was de-legitimized by emphasizing the essential incompatibility of cultural and religious values between Turkey and the EU and by construing the values of the former as superior in relation to the values of the latter.

Recently, the European Commission took legal action against Hungary and Poland over ‘LGBTQ discrimination’, arguing that these countries breached the EU laws and violated the core EU values and that the Commission ‘will use all the instruments at its disposal to defend these values’. The European Commission and the European Parliament also responded to Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. The European Parliament resolution on Turkey stated that withdrawal from the Convention ‘brings Turkey further away from the EU’. A similar concern was expressed by the President of the European Commission. These interventions may restore the credibility of the EU, leading candidate countries such as Turkey to (re)consider and reckon with the EU’s call to adopt and implement legislation in line with the EU gender acquis.

 

 

Authors:

Marella Bodur Ün is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Çukurova University, Turkey. Her research interests include gender and politics, social movements, norm contestation, and migration. Her recent work has been published, among others, in Review of International Studies and Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, and in the edited volume EU/Turkey Relations in the Shadows of Crisis: A Break-Up or Revival?(2021).

Twitter: @marbodur

Links to academic profile: https://avesis.cu.edu.tr/mbodur/yayinlar

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marella-Bodur-Uen

 

 

Harun Arıkan is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Çukurova University, Turkey. His research interests are in the areas of European Union with a particular focus on enlargement and Turkish foreign policy. Previously, Dr. Arıkan served as Head of Department of Political Science and International Relations at Çukurova University. He received a master’s degree in European studies from Manchester University and PhD in international relations from Birmingham University in the UK.

Twitter: @arikan_harun

 

 

 

 

The post Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention Undermines Turkey’s European Vocation appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

European Union (EU) leaders introduced the bloc’s most comprehensive plans yet to combat climate change. Unveiled by the European Commission, a dozen of directives would make the bloc’s goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. The EU institutions are better placed than national governments to set green standards but, are they as green as they said?

Against this background, our recent article provides an objective framework by which we can measure or quantify the green effort done by many European institutions. To put it differently, it allows us to shed light on the green actorness of EU institutions. Our research is relevant because it primarily focuses on the differences between the EU institutional triangle – the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. In doing so, we rely on the EU’s green purchasing power: Green Public Procurement (GPP). In the EU governance framework, GPP is a voluntary, not an obligatory instrument, which suggests that if EU institutions are implementing green policies in their procurement this could be interpreted as evidence not only of their green commitment but also of their broader pledge to push for green policies.

We draw on the Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) database, which contains all active calls for tenders published in the Supplement to the Official Journal (OJS) in the European Union from 2009 to 2019. The methodology we employ is to conduct a word search in all the awarding criteria in the contract award notices and in each of the EU’s official languages for terms related to green award criteria.

Two core findings stand out in our article when it comes to which institutions are greener, where the following two figures help us illustrate this claim.

The first figure shows the proportion of GPP at every government level. As a surprising result, EU institutions present the lowest adoption rate (3%), while local government present the highest adoption rate (8.7%). Why are these findings relevant? On the one hand, the results are pretty straightforward in proving, once again, that municipalities are the level of government that is most committed to improving our everyday life, but also the level of government that will could a major role in shaping the green European future. On the other hand, results pave the way to the question that even though EU institutions have the lowest adoption rate, is there any difference in the level of adoption between institutions?

 

 

More to the point, analyzing the GPP level in every institution is crucial to identify who is the front-runner and who is the laggard. As Figure 2 shows, two big groups can be identified. As front runners, we identify the European Parliament, the European Central Bank, the European Investment Bank and the European Court of Justice. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we find the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, among others.  The results already point out the already well-known Parliament’s green identity and help to shed light on, from the perspective of leading by example, how the European Investment Bank is moving to become the EU’s climate bank. Another interesting result is while the EP seems to be increasing the implementation of GPP over time, in the EC the Juncker mandate had a negative impact on its GPP adoption.

 

 

Nevertheless, the results of the European Commission are nothing but worrying. First of all, during the drafting period, the Barroso Commission, in 2011, considered that GPP should not be a mandatory tool. Such a decision already highlighted its decreasing green dynamism. Secondly, with the new Juncker’s Commission, the institution performance vis-à-vis GPP adoption diminished. Two factors explain the low performance of Juncker’s when compared with Barroso’s Commission. In overall terms, Juncker’s considered environmental policy as simply one element among many others in his growth and job creation agenda; and the new organizational structure resulted in the suppression of environmental initiatives that were either promoted by Commissioners or originating at the service level. In this vein, Juncker’s accelerated the bureaucratic normalization in environmental policy, where this low appetite for GPP may be due not to institutional constraints but to a lack of intention.

All in all, our results show that the myth of a Green Europe, from the perspective of European institutions, is just that, a myth. On that note, the EU should start moving away from the world of words and entering the world of action. This is highly relevant in the field of sustainability. The European Parliament seems, in our paper on GPP, to be slowly moving towards this world of action, where every year they are increasing its GPP adoption. We consider this to be of critical importance as the Parliament is the only directly elected institution of the EU, and thus open to citizens queries and concerns.  But it remains to be seen what role can be expected from the Von der Leyen’s Commission, the most important actor as it holds the exclusive competence to submit a legislative proposal to the Parliament and the Council of the EU, as in our research the Commission was reducing every year its adoption of GPP.

 

 

Authors:

Diego Badell is a Ph.D. candidate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and Predoctoral Fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). His research focuses on European Union foreign policy and norm contestation, with a particular focus on multilateral institutions.

Twitter:  @diegobadell

 

 

 

 

 

Jordi Rosell is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Universitat de Girona, Spain. His research focuses on public policy evaluation (environment, transportation and governance). He has published in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Energy Economics and Public Management Review, among others.

Twitter: @jordi__rosell

 

 

 

 

 

 

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For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Patrick Bijsmans from Maastricht University, in the Netherlands.

 

euradio · COVID lessons for European Higher Education – Ideas on Europe

 

 

We have spoken a lot about research over this season, but higher education is of course also about teaching and learning!

It is! And all over Europe, the pandemic has of course changed our practice considerably.

Let me tell you an anecdote to start with:

Last week I was on my way from my office to a classroom, walking with a coffee in my hand through a faculty garden full of staff and students enjoying the great weather. It was then that I realised how much I had missed this; the informal, almost relaxed campus atmosphere that I last saw in the spring of 2019. The fresh green leaves in the garden, people chatting over a coffee, as if the pandemic had never happened… But as soon as I entered the classroom, I was informed that two students would be joining online – both at home with Covid

 

So you’re not back to normal yet!

Actually, the real question is: even if the pandemic is coming to an end, can we really go back to normal when it comes to teaching and learning in higher education?

I’m involved in several teaching and learning networks and chat with colleagues about these topics regularly. Plus I’m one of the founders of the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog.

And one of the observations that has recently been popping up again and again in these exchanges is that class attendance is much lower than before the pandemic. Two of my best students told me that they struggle to come to class, feeling demotivated because quite a few of their classmates only show up sporadically, if at all. They suggested that students need to be reintroduced into academia; that they need to re-learn the importance of attending class and discussing readings with their peers.

Given that the informal interaction, conversations, and so one, is as valuable as what happens in the classrooms, this challenge is even more important. And if there is one thing that we’ve learned from two years of moving between online and hybrid teaching and learning spaces, it is that being online can lead to and reinforce feelings of isolation.

 

Did you draw any positive lessons during the pandemic from using online and hybrid teaching and learning spaces?

Yes, for some students, interacting in synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning spaces is less scary than asking a question in a classroom or lecture hall.

So, how can we learn from this for face-to-face teaching and learning? Many of the colleagues I talk with believe that online audience response tools such as Wooclap and collaboration platforms such as Padlet certainly could play a role here – and many of us already used them in pre-pandemic times.
But we have also experienced that they can be used in the wrong way. We need to ask ourselves why we want to use what tool, and design a plan. Also, explain its added value to our students. And not forget that sometimes we can just ask students to raise their hands in the old-fashioned way instead of having them answer a question online.

 

There has also been a lot of talk about “synchronous” and “asynchronous” learning. Can you explain?

In short, “synchronous” means learners and instructors together at the same time, while “asynchronous” refers to learning at distance at one’s own speed and rhythm. Videos and podcasts, for instance, offer flexibility to students and teachers. For staff, they offer easy-to-make reactions to what is going on in the course. For students, they offer an opportunity to learn at their own pace and in their own time. This is certainly important for students with caring duties, jobs, etc., who have found such formats useful to have better control over their studies.

 

These challenges and opportunities, have they been the same all across Europe or are there major differences?

We’re having an ongoing discussion, and some have coped better than others, often because of other constraints. In other words, despite the uplifting talk about new opportunities for teaching and learning in higher education, the pandemic also confronted us with limitations. For instance, the best screens and tools for hybrid learning are of little use when combined with suboptimal cameras and microphones.

And in a world in which academics are constantly confronted with budget cuts, while at the same time under pressure to deliver excellent teaching and publications, overwork is the norm and time for reflection and development is rare. So, if we want our teaching and learning to benefit from the lessons of these past two years, it is important that we think things through now.

Many thanks, for sharing your network’s insight on this increasingly relevant issue. “Ideas on Europe” will be back next week, and we will welcome Baris Celik from the University of Surrey, in the UK.

The post COVID Lessons for European Higher Education appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Since we’re back in a hotter phase of the NIP rhetoric cycle, it’s useful to revisit various points.

None of it’s new and I’ve shared all the content below with you before, but apparently that’s not got through to everyone.

The UK government is seemingly on the verge (again) of producing a bill that would resolve its problems with the Protocol. This time, there’s talk of a dual-track system for checks, which I leave to the trade people to deconstruct.

However, the framing of this current effort is that the primary objective of the government’s push is a negotiated resolution, to address the problematic implementation of the Protocol by the EU. Conor Burn gave evidence on this to Parliament yesterday, helpfully summarising in this thread by Tony Connelly:

6/ He said there was "surprise at the scale of implementation versus the perceived risk…we did not believe the EU would insist on the full panoply of checks on product moving to stay in the NI mktplace to be sold and consumed in NI which poses zero risk to the single market"

— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) June 8, 2022

If implementation is the problem, then the Protocol and the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) within which that Protocol sits has a ready-made process: Title III.

Title III deals with dispute settlement, in a graduated and progressive manner, from talks to arbitration to remedies. The graphic below lays out the detail.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic39

This process covers all issues with implementation and (per Art.168) is the only procedure that should be used. That there is no sign of this happening will raise the obvious question about the objectives of the UK government, which makes it less surprising that the EU has trust issues.

We might also note that neither Title III nor Art.16 of the Protocol allows for unilateral domestic legislation to address problems of non-compliance.

Of course, non-compliance is only one option: the UK government also continues to talk about renegotiating the Protocol.

Again, the mechanisms for changing the text are set out in the Protocol and WA itself, as summarised below:

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic89

So change is possible, but only by joint agreement: even the Art.18 NIP consent provision ultimately leaves the parties still having to find a common solution to their various obligations (e.g. Good Friday Agreement, EU law, WTO, etc.), which probably brings them back to something like the Protocol.

To summarise all this, we can see that options for unilateral action really don’t exist:

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic91

Which raises the obvious policy implication that the UK’s best chance of securing change might be to try those joint paths, rather than going off-range with its planned bill. That is almost certainly the advice the government has been given by its advisers. If it does follow through on advancing the bill, then it’s driven by domestic political exigencies rather than the legal or political conditions that materially shape the EU-UK relationship.

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Mitchell Young

While, as the name of this blog reflects, knowledge has become a central concern in European policymaking internally, it has not made the same inroads into the EU’s external policy discourses. This neglect of knowledge in the field of international relations is not limited to the EU, but given the European policy context, one would expect that pursuing a Europe of Knowledge would have both an internal and an external rationale. Our recent article ‘Knowledge power Europe’ finds that the EU has indeed taken steps to mobilize its knowledge power externally, but these have been largely ignored in the academic literature.

 

Knowledge as a new way to frame the EU’s position in global affairs

For those who study international relations and the external policies of the EU, the need for a new conceptualization of European power is generally seen as unnecessary. It is true that the past two decades have seen more than 15 such conceptualizations, suggesting saturation or at least explaining the sense of weariness and skepticism towards new proposals, but as we trace in the article, knowledge and science have never been a defining component of any of these previous depictions. This absence is something that we, as researchers coming from the fields of science policy and higher education studies, found particularly puzzling. Could the EU really not be doing anything to externalize its belief in the importance of knowledge?

What we found, when we applied the lens of the discourse on Europe-as-a-power, was that quite a bit was going on. The discourses tend to look at three aspects of the EU as a foreign policy actor: its identity or ‘what the EU is’, its discourses and strategy documents or ‘what the EU says’, and its actions or ‘what the EU does’ (see Damro’s 2012 ‘Market power Europe’ for a very clear demarcation of these).  Our investigation into all three elements, confirmed that indeed the EU is engaging and seeking to mobilize knowledge. We see this as an ongoing process that is still in its early stages, much of which is occurring under the framework of ‘science diplomacy’.

 

Knowledge power in a new geopolitical context

The article was published just as Russia invaded and began its war on Ukraine and the rug was pulled out from under the established understanding of the EU’s geopolitical role and capacity in world affairs. At this critical juncture, there was a clear elevation of military power and a reconsideration of Europe’s relation to it, which is seen not only in Germany’s changed position, but also in Sweden and Finland on the verge of joining NATO. Nevertheless, the EU has not abandoned its other power conceptions. As we argue in the article, power is multi-dimensional. It does not behoove us to consider it in zero sum terms, as it more likely works in mutually reinforcing feedback loops: Europe’s market and normative power complement its renewed interest in military power, and as we argue in the article, also its knowledge power. In some ways, this is precisely the idea that Josep Burrell has sought to capture in his long running call for Europe to learn the languages of power. Though he has not yet named knowledge as one of those languages, we hope that he will begin to consider it as such.

What we have seen since the beginning of the war, is that the EU has mobilized its knowledge power. One of the earliest sanctions was to cut Russia off from Horizon Europe and other research funding and cooperation. With the onset of Horizon Europe, the EU had promised to use Horizon Europe more instrumentally to shape and condition its relations with other countries, but it was unclear how and whether that would be followed through on. The EU conditioned participation in Horizon Europe on shared norms, but in policy documents it appeared that those were more of the scientific type (i.e. academic freedom) than the core ones (i.e. peace and human rights). Now that distinction is becoming blurred.

 

Global challenges, science diplomacy, and knowledge power

Where we see the most potential for knowledge power, however, is not in security (though investments in military research and development through the European Defense Fund and the importance of science in cybersecurity are examples of its relevance), but in the areas of global challenges, innovation, and global supply chains in a knowledge-based economy. These topics tie directly into the central concerns of science diplomacy, which is now coming into its own as a part of the European approach to foreign policy and diplomacy. While still in development, science diplomacy has established itself institutionally, with a full-time science advisor position in the EEAS, and has been increasingly mentioned in the EU’s global strategies and global policy instruments (more details can be found in the article). Our argument is that the two are intricately interrelated: knowledge power enables science diplomacy. Or, phrased slightly differently: science diplomacy is the mobilization of knowledge power.

Knowledge power can help overcome three problems that are faced by what we consider the two most important conceptualizations of European power, those of Europe as a ‘market power’ (see Chad Damro’s work) and as a ‘normative power’ (see Ian Manner’s work). Both are important and relevant ways of understanding the EU and its role in international affairs, but both also have weaknesses in their ability to address multilateralism, leadership, and the physical world context. The article explains how knowledge power fills a gap in terms of those weaknesses, particularly in the ability to address global challenges.

 

A call for more research

Linking knowledge and power in international relations, particularly as it relates to the EU with its broad and long-standing focus on making knowledge a core element of its societal and economic identity and action, opens up many avenues for academic research and policy advice. It invites further theoretical articulation of knowledge and power, which are terms that often remain vaguely defined even in the discourses bearing their names. It also calls for cases studies and concrete examples explaining how (as well as whether and when) the EU deploys this sort of power and to what effect. We hope that more academics, European policymakers and think-tanks will focus on understanding and shaping the major changes occurring as science policy and international relations intersect and integrate more deeply.

Dr. Mitchell Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University. His research is focused on knowledge governance and science policies in the EU and Member States both internally as a form of European integration and externally through science diplomacy as a tool in foreign policy. He was the empirical cases work package leader for the recently completed Horizon 2020 project ‘Using science for/in diplomacy for addressing global challenges’ (S4D4C). He is a member of the EU Science Diplomacy Alliance and chair of the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and Policies.

 

Reference:

Young, M. and Ravinet, P. (2022). Knowledge power Europe, Journal of European Integration. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07036337.2022.2049260

 

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UACES Chair, Prof Simon Usherwood

Dear Colleagues

In the few months since my last message to you, Europe has changed, perhaps fundamentally.

The unprovoked and unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year has been simultaneously a humanitarian disaster and an attack on the values of liberal democracy and free association in Europe. As an association, we condemn the invasion and express our solidarity with all those fighting to preserve and protect Ukraine from aggression.

As part of that work, UACES has been actively working to find ways to support all our members’ efforts, including encouragement and financing for CARA (the Council for At-Risk Academics). You will find an option to add a donation to their work when you register for our annual conference: UACES will match-fund your contributions up to £1500, so now is the time to make the most of our early-bird rates (ending 31 May).

However, money alone will not mend the damage done. As the recent elections in France and Slovenia have shown, the need to make the case for liberal democracy is one that should concern us all, both as citizens and as academics. I find it heartening to see so many of you providing fair, evidenced contributions to national and European debates about how we make democracy work as well as it can and I would encourage all of you to see our work as something that can bring about a better understanding of why democracy must persist, despite of all its frustrations.

Again, UACES is trying to help with this through its various activities.

As already mentioned, our Annual Conference in Lille this September is now open for registrations, with a great line-up of plenary speakers, panels and networking opportunities. The team at ESPOL have put together a fitting welcome for all of us coming together after the disruptions of Covid and I look forward to seeing many of you in this fine city. For those of you unable to join us in person, we have an additional day of virtual sessions, which also allow us to make this an even bigger part of our calendar and demonstrate the richness of work in European Studies.

For our student and early-career members, the Graduate Forum Research Conference in Maastricht in June will be another moment to make connections and reflect on European integration on the thirtieth anniversary of the eponymous treaty. The Graduate Forum’s work in helping those entering European Studies to build networks and gain experience has always been one of our association’s key concerns and the return to in-person activities is a very positive step.

Aside from events, we’re also very pleased to share the redevelopment of the Ideas on Europe blogging site. This has been one of the leading forums for those wanting to produce timely and informed content on all aspects of European Studies, and its new organisation makes it easier than ever to both find and create materials. For those of you looking to get your work out to a bigger audience, I can personally testify to the site’s value in generating interest and opening new conversations.

We also continue to strengthen and develop our links with sister organisations. Within the UK, we have been involved in ongoing discussions with other social science bodies about how we can make meaningful improvements in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, drawing on our exemplary work under Prof Roberta Guerrina. The joint seminar series with IACES on the UK, Ireland and the EU has been a very positive development over the past year and we continue to organise more of these. I also hope that our Lille event will be a moment to strengthen our ties with our French counterparts, AFEE-CEDECE, and I am always very happy to speak with colleagues outside the UK about where UACES might be able to help develop new collaborations.

To all those who have these activities possible – especially Emily, Melina and Emma in the UACES office – I give my thanks. Just as democracy stands on the participation of its citizens, so too does the association stand on the involvement of its members and we have been particularly fortunate to have so many of you be part of our work. The recent committee elections reflected this with a healthy slate of candidates from across the membership and I am looking forward to new members starting this autumn. UACES continues to work because of all your efforts and I applaud you all.

 

Simon Usherwood, UACES Chair

 

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A UACES Microgrant report by Marianna Lovato, PhD candidate, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has made online interviewing an everyday reality for qualitative research and turned us all into tech wizards (or, at least, self-proclaimed ones).

My research project, which investigates member states’ bargaining strategies and negotiation success in EU foreign policy, heavily relies on qualitative interviews, by virtue of the more secretive and confidential nature of CFSP/CSDP decision-making.

Much like that of many other researchers like me, my PhD project was affected by Covid-related travel restrictions: when I was only a few days into a fieldwork trip to Brussels, the dominos of national lockdowns across Europe back in March 2020 forced me to cut my stay short and start relying solely on online interviews. Zoom quickly emerged as the prevalent videoconferencing platform, but it soon became clear that the platform was falling short when it comes to users’ privacy and compliance with the GDPR (O’Flaherty 2020).

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Zoom was decidedly not the platform of choice for the diplomats and national functionaries that I was hoping to interview. Rather, they opted for a mix of Microsoft Teams, Webex or the platforms made available by their own Ministries, which complied with their national security standards. However, the 50-minute time limit on Webex meetings that comes with the free subscription soon turned out to be a rather problematic feature. I had interviewees cut off mid-sentence and had to send them a second link, with all the problems that this entails, such as having participants lose their train of thought and potentially missing out on critical interview data. Rather quickly, therefore, I resigned to the fact that I would need premium subscriptions to several different videoconferencing platforms at once. This seemingly trivial logistical concern actually calls for a more in-depth discussion around confidentiality and data protection in the context of online interviews, which, for all the burgeoning literature on remote interviewing (see e.g. the dedicated chapter in the 2019 volume by King, Horrocks and Brooks or the 2018 manual by Lee Ann Fujii), does not seem to have been explored in detail. For instance, it would be helpful to have an informed scholarly discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of alternative video conferencing platforms.

Additionally, we should recognize that confidentiality has a price. If we are to take our research participants’ concerns seriously, we should start a conversation about the costs of protecting our participants when carrying out online interviews and about the steps universities are taking to help PhD candidates and early career scholars shoulder the additional costs tied to secure online interviewing. While the latter certainly entails lower expenses than fieldwork research, my own experience shows that extra funding might be necessary to face the costs of multiple subscriptions.

In this sense, UACES certainly set the trend in providing additional funds to cover the costs of online research. As every PhD candidate knows, extra research-related expenses are always a cause for concern. UACES Microgrants scheme was truly the perfect funding opportunity to cover this type of unforeseen and non-negligible cost.

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For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Dr Nick Startin, from the University of Bath, in the UK. Bonjour, Nick!

 

 

 

euradio · A defeat – Ideas on Europe Nick, you’ve been following French elections for decades now, and you’re an expert of the Radical Right. Were you surprised last Sunday? Did you at any stage think that Marine Le Pen might actually win?

No not really, there was never really a moment where I felt that she would win.

Previous presidential elections have shown that you need to win a minimum of around 18 million votes in the second round. Marine Le Pen ended up with just over 13 million. Although this was an improvement on the ten and a half million votes of 2017, even with a lowish turn-out of 72%, it was still significantly short of the votes required to win a second-round majority.

In an article I wrote for The Conversation after the previous presidential election five years ago, I stated that ‘it’s not a given that the Front National can continue to grow in electoral terms if the demand-side conditions do not remain as favourable.’ I went on to say that ‘the party has worked tirelessly to detoxify its image over the past decade, but doubts remain as to whether an historically anti-system, radical-right party is capable of positioning itself as a party of government.’ Despite polling more than 42% of votes cast in last Sunday’s election, I think this conclusion still holds up.

 

So you haven’t changed in your assessment. What makes you so sure?

It’s the doubts that remain about the Rassemblement National’s ability to convince as a party of governance.

When you bear in mind the cost-of-living crisis and the immigration/humanitarian crisis, as epitomised by the situation in Northern France, the demand-side conditions for a populist challenger party like the RN were as favourable in 2022 as they were in 2017.

This raises the question of whether the RN can ever break through the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ (what the French call the ‘Plafond de Verre’) and become a potential party of government. The reality is that the RN is still searching for that elusive ‘Winning Formula’, as it was famously labelled thirty odd years ago by American political scientist Herbert Kitschelt.

For this election, the RN positioned itself primarily in economic territory, focusing on protectionist and interventionist policies, opposed to globalisation and reticent of the EU. It also continued to pitch itself socially and culturally, as a nationalist party with its traditional agenda still firmly built around identity and immigration. The problem for the RN, though, is that this search for the ‘winning formula’ is rather like treading on eggshells. Every tweak and change of policy, and every new idea introduced, while appealing to one demographic of voter, risks at the same time alienating a different demographic and losing existing supporters. It is a delicate balancing act for Radical Right parties in their quest for a majority of voters. And that’s the dilemma that the RN has wrestled with under Marine Le Pen’s leadership over the last decade.

 

A ‘balancing act’ – can you give some examples for this concept?

Certainly. I think there were policy tweaks that, with hindsight, helped the party gain votes. Take the switch away from exiting the Eurozone and the dilution – on the surface – of its Eurosceptic opposition, which no doubt played well with older voters and some traditional, Gaullist voters. Similarly, the focus on the cost-of-living crisis with the commitment to abolish Income Tax for those under 30 (however realistic) appealed to younger voters, a demographic where Marine Le Pen polled well in both rounds.

On the other hand, when it came to the second round, two policies stand out which I think will have alienated, significant numbers of undecided voters. To win a majority, she needed to convince some voters that her lukewarm policies on the environment would at least show some respect to the planet. While her focus on nuclear power was not a vote loser per se, the commitment not only to stop all new wind farm projects, but also to dismantle existing ones, was a very tough sell both on an economic and an environmental level.

Similarly, the commitment to ban the headscarf in public places became something of a poisoned chalice as she looked to increase her voter base for the second round. These two policies, I think were a reality check for many undecided voters as they started to visualise the realities of a Le Pen Presidency. Also, withdrawal from NATO’s command structure (given the backdrop of the war in Ukraine) and the party’s association with Russia, in particular the controversial 9 million Euros loan taken out with a Russian bank, will also have raised alarm bells for undecided voters.

 

So what is the future for the RN and its leader?

I wouldn’t want to speculate too far ahead but I think the party faces some real challenges as it looks to position itself during the second Macron presidency. The most immediate will be seeking to maximise its representation in the National Assembly in the June legislative elections – a crucial test of the party’s capacity to break through the ‘glass ceiling’. A crucial test too for Marine Le Pen and her future leadership of the party.

 

Many thanks, Nick, for sharing your election analysis with us. I hear you’ll be leaving for Rome soon, it would be great to have you back on our antenna any time soon! “Ideas on Europe” will be back next week, and we will welcome Simona Guerra again, from the University of Surrey.

 

First published on eu!radio.

 

 

 

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