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Which factors influence bilateral counterterrorism (CT) cooperation between EU Member States? Although scholars have studied European CT, the question still needs to be answered. This paper addresses the issue by introducing a new theoretical framework that combines CT and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature. As citizens' threat perception increases, governments are pressed to act. Overall, centrist cabinets tend to rely more on cooperation agreements; likewise, pushed by threat perception, left-wing executives also recourse to international cooperation. I tested this framework on a newly collected dataset, which comprehends bilateral CT agreements signed among EU Members from 2002 to 2017. As such, this paper fosters studies on EU CT, focusing on a less debated issue: bilateral cooperation between EU Member States. The results support the initial hypotheses, disclosing a robust influence of threat perception and cabinet ideology on the number of bilateral CT agreements signed. Furthermore, they show that the perception of the threat is more influential on cooperation than the actual impact of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), despite being regarded as the most developed integration project in the post-Soviet area, has faced different hurdles in acquiring international recognition. Especially, the EU, the EAEU's Significant Other, has been reluctant to formally recognize it, in spite of close ties with EAEU member states as well as of its own self-image as a supporter of regional integrations. This paper focuses on this puzzle and examines how the EU has been discursively explaining its non-recognition of the EAEU at the institutional level. Based on the analysis of EU-articulated narratives since 2010, the paper reveals three dominant representations of the EAEU in the EU discourse: (1) Russia's geopolitical project; (2) a protectionist union; and (3) a dysfunctional union. These narratives have been used by Brussels to create the EAEU's image as a threatening Other, thus justifying why the EU cannot formally recognize the EAEU and officially engage with it. The paper also identifies five different stages of the EU's discursive representation of the EAEU since 2010, when its tone and content varied. The paper concludes that such non-recognition from the Significant Other still limits the EAEU's international agency despite its increasing interest in cooperation with non-Western actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses attitudes around the projection of the EU among Latin American elites, namely the determinants of support for a Free Trade Agreement between the two regions and the trustworthiness of the EU government. We take as data elite surveys conducted in 15 Latin American countries (2014–2019) and consider sociodemographics, ideology, support for democracy, views of foreign powers, exports to the EU, and electoral democracy. Results show that ideology and support for democracy are key determinants of support for an interregional FTA, and that the trustworthiness of governments in the US, China, and Spain covary with attitudes toward the EU. The latter (trust in the government in Spain) proves to be the main driver and, furthermore, its impact is conditional on the economic strength (observed as exports) of the EU: wherever the EU is not a strong economic actor in Latin America, trust in the Spanish government does nothing but improve the image of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the impact of European Union (EU) funds on corruption in the EU ex-communist countries by following a panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The panel includes 10 former EU communist countries, over 2007–2019. The key findings reveal that an improvement in the EU funds paid and their rate of absorption can reduce the level of corruption in the long-run in the recipient EU ex-communist countries. This is due to better monitoring of EU funds paid compared with national resources, and a more efficient and fairer channel of EU funds absorption. In parallel with the EU funds, corruption can be controlled in certain conditions by the degree of economic development, size of government, level of democratisation and religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on Euroscepticism tends to portray parties opposing European integration or criticising the European Union (EU) as a family of Eurosceptic parties (either hard or soft). Recent literature, however, offers empirical evidence on the ambivalence and diversity of the EU critique. What is still unclear are the reasons behind the chameleonic nature of Euroscepticism and the implications that this may have for the EU critique and the changes proposed about EU policy or institutions. The present article addresses this question exploring the role of EU crises to capture the changing nature of Euroscepticism and suggests that it is related to contextual pressures on the political debate around the EU. The paper develops this argument and illustrates it through the analysis of the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, covering the EU crises of the last decade, including the recent period of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. Drawing on a corpus of party manifestos and speeches between 2013 and 2022, this study shows that there are three main frames used by the party to criticise the EU. It also concludes that these frames involve distinct political implications for the EU critique and the alternative proposals presented by the party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholarship on postfunctionalism in European integration has drawn attention to how processes of Europeanisation are not restricted to policymakers, but exist equally (if not more significantly) in the quotidian. The 2016–2020 Brexit process and debates on the relationship between national identity and 'Europeanness' urge a new consideration of how Europeanisation is narrated in everyday discourses. This paper analyses British fictional portrayals of the EEC and EU and posits a new theoretical framework of 'Imperial Gothic 2.0'. Pre-2016 representations of the EU were entirely dystopian. But post-2016, Brex-Lit fiction has reversed this trend and the EU now appears as a flawless utopia. Early twentieth-century 'Imperial Gothic' saw popular fiction defined by themes of British decline and oppression by foreign powers; a century later, Brex-Lit has resurrected these themes by narrating Britain in terminal decline, reflecting cultural anxieties, a reversal of Self and Other, and a loss of identities. This 'Imperial Gothic 2.0' reveals anxieties which reflect and influence political action, and reveals the extent to which imaginations and narratives of the EU have transformed from depictions of a distant, technocratic entity used for comedy or conspiracy, into a site of intense emotional affiliation, nostalgia, anticipation, and regret. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has the Europeanisation of football at the level of governance (due to for example the effects of the Bosman ruling and the formation of the UEFA Champions League) – influenced the identities of football fans? This paper explores how such structural Europeanisation in football is influencing identifications among fans. Based on an analysis of articulations in selected online message boards, we distil the positioning of fans towards 'Europe' in football, and the factors which shape it. We control for three main avenues of impact: the club level, the league level, and the societal context. Our inquiry is based on a set of paired comparisons of fan scenes for football clubs in four different European countries. Results show that the factor carrying the most explanatory power is the club's participation in European-level competition. Although this broadly confirms a 'contact hypothesis' – according to which the more fans are exposed to cross-border contacts, the less relevance they attribute to aspects of national belonging – significant variations of how frequent exposure to European-level competition translates into more Europeanised perceptions do exist. For European identity studies, the work corroborates that a lifeworld arena such as football can foster Europeanised identifications, albeit not in a uniform manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The video game Valiant Hearts, released in 2014 for the First World War centenary, sold over 2.5 million copies and can be considered one of the major contemporary pop-culture historical representations of this war shaping public interpretations of this event. The paper explores how Valiant Hearts, as a kind of informal institution affecting historical remembrance, constructs and encourages a specific framing through the deployment of Europeanizing elements of anti-war narrative, Franco-German reconciliation narrative, and the de-nationalizing logic that indirectly legitimizes the European integration. The analysis of the videogame in the context of the historical film Merry Christmas (2005) is complemented with a close reading of illustrative empirical examples of Let's Plays (paratextual user-generated videos where people record themselves while playing videogames) that indicate how Europeans of different national backgrounds interact with the game Valiant Hearts. The examined cases point to how the everyday, seemingly apolitical leisure activity of playing and watching videogames dealing with history can advance Europeanizing narratives and present occasions for informal Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of growing nationalisms and Euroscepticism, this paper develops the original concept of 'Everyday Europeanhood' on a theoretical level, building on related concepts, such as Skey and Antonsich's 'Everyday Nationhood', Billig's 'Banal Nationalism', Anderson's 'Imagined Communities' and Beck's 'Cosmopolitan Vision'. It applies the concept to the European Universities Initiative (EUI), seen as a tool to promote European identity, based on a common sense of belonging conveyed through everyday practice, among students and staff in European University Alliances. It is argued that, in the light of previous top-down European initiatives designed to symbolically reinforce a sense of shared European identity, the EUI seems more in phase with bottom-up 'everyday' processes of identity development. Taking the European University Alliance 'FORTHEM' as an example, core features, aspects, actions and outputs achieved so far within this alliance are categorised in the light of four dimensions of 'Everyday Europeanhood': 'Talking Europe', 'Choosing Europe', 'Performing Europe' and 'Consuming Europe'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border regions are often deemed laboratories for initiatives to increase Europeanization. Our paper examines the German-speaking Community of Belgium in the Euregio Maas-Rhine to assess the relevance of everyday cross-border activities to the perception that living in a border region presents a unique opportunity to feel and think as a European. Departing from the assumptions of both Deutsch's transaction theory and Allport's contact hypothesis, we analyze Eurobarometer data (population-level surveys) and use data from focus groups with regional MPs. Results from quantitative data analysis suggest that perceptions of life in cross-border regions are positively influenced by frequent cross-border movement (functional dimension) as well as general trust in other people (emotional dimension). Our qualitative data from focus groups support the findings from the quantitative analysis and demonstrate further that it is not merely the quantity but the quality of contacts that contribute to a gradual 'growing together'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to shed light on the link between 'onward migration' and 'onward precarity' as an experience of continuous precariousness by paying attention to crisis/post-crisis contexts and how these contexts have led to precarity becoming structurally embedded in migrant labour markets in Europe. Onward migration studies have centrally focused on crisis contexts, but very little attention has been paid to post-crisis contexts. Thus, this article contributes to complementing the previous research on onward migration and onward precarity. The paper follows a qualitative and multi-sited approach based on in-depth interviews and discussion groups with Latin American migrants living in Madrid, Lisbon, and London. Our empirical analysis elucidates that labour mobility and onward migration are embedded in intersectional dynamics of exclusion which entail a continuous experience of multifaceted precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being often recognized as a middle power, Erdoğan and his aides have firmly believed that Turkey was not a real 'subject' in international relations and could only become one under Erdoğan's rule. This paper examines Turkey's claims to institute itself as a 'subject' in regional politics through the concept of 'actorness'. The article details the two major policy choices that represent Ankara's emergence as a subject, evaluates them with respect to the key attributes of actorness in international politics and discusses the implications of Turkey's militarised and assertive policies for its status in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The paper argues that while Turkey's quest for 'subjectness' has provided the country with some hard power capability and autonomy, it has not produced consistent and coherent policies, damaging its credibility and attractiveness in the eyes of the countries in the MENA region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon alignment behaviour in the post-Soviet space and seeks to explain why balancing Russia by certain post-Soviet states, despite their numerous efforts to form alliances, has failed. Whereas this failure lies within the explanatory realm of the classical alignment theories, it is more puzzling why some of these post-Soviet states understood the limitations of balancing well and acted accordingly, while others failed to do so at detrimental costs. Trying to explain the failure of balancing Russia, the paper introduces a new theoretical concept that complements the existing alignment theories, and subsequently moves to explain the empirical puzzle of variations in post-Soviet states' assessment of alignment options. In doing so, the paper focuses upon three case studies, namely Georgia and Ukraine on the one hand, that increased their efforts to balance Russia in the last decade and ended up detrimentally, and Azerbaijan on the other hand that refrained from doing so. Unit level variables such as the elites' mis-perceptions/miscalculations of their alignment options as well as distribution of material capabilities, domestic politics and different strategic cultures are employed to explain the variation. The theoretical concept offered in the paper allows for an accurate understanding of alignment behavior in the post-Soviet space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience approach has recently emerged as a new topic of EU foreign policy debates and research. This paper adopts a complexity theory perspective to analyze the operationalization of the resilience approach in the EU response to crisis in Ukraine during 2014–2021. Building upon this theory, this paper distinguishes between resilience-as-quality of a complex system and resilience-as-thinking about a complex system. The empirical analysis focuses on the complexity features of non-linearity and self-organizing localization of EU interventions undertaken in the framework of the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP). It concludes that the emerging system of intervention displays some complexity qualities, yet the EU crisis response follows the linear and top-down logic embedded in the project-based practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the underlying meaning of Chinese political ideas as represented in the Belt and Road discourse. It aims to contribute to overcoming the bias towards democratic systems in security studies. It challenges the argument that China's peaceful words can be taken at face value and compared with the ideas of democratic regimes. It delivers insights on new perspectives in the 'political threat versus desecuritization' discussion. This paper applies a qualitative discourse analysis with primary data collection of Chinese governmental and state institutional documents, Chinese think tank papers, and joint statements of EU-Chinese governmental officials. The data was analysed with NVivo Software. The empirical analysis shows that Chinese actors have built up a threat narrative idea which is hidden behind words such as 'trust, harmony, pluralism, community of a shared destiny'. Theoretically, this paper shows that the organizing principle, to apply Buzan's words, needs to be acknowledged when interpreting the way Chinese actors frame ideas in the BRI discourse. It challenges the argument of China as a desecuritization actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims at outlining five peculiar cultural vulnerabilities of the Russian state, which impede its military progress in Ukraine and might eventually result in a defeat. These include overcentralized structure of the dictatorship, culture of disregard to human life, lack of value proposition to neighbouring countries, embezzlement and lying. All these vulnerabilities are cultural in nature, permeating society from individual perceptions and preferences up to systemic practices and societal values, they do not lend themselves readily to replacement or reform. Thus, they represent significant handicaps of the Russian state in its effort to prevail in the war in Ukraine and further enlarge itself through conquest of neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) established in 2015 has developed an institutional framework that on the paper largely mimics the European Union's. The article suggests that a closer examination of the economic interdependence in the region adds valuable knowledge regarding the development of the organization. The analysis follows a (post)-functionalist model and highlights how the integration process responds to economic interdependence, and that the integration process has the potential of generating spillovers. The Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) has initiated work targeting the removal of non-tariff barriers, and business associations in the region are paying attention to the organization. Yet, there are also several constraints to integration in the region linked to the member states' reluctance to delegate substantial powers to the EEC, and their insistence on the cooperation as being merely economic. These limitations are in line with previous suggestions in the literature regarding non-democratic regional organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact the war in Ukraine has had on Russia's great power status. Post-Soviet Russia has been one of the most active status-seekers and sought to re-establish its rank among the existing great power status community. In its claim to high status, Russia has historically relied on traditional status markers, including its permanent seat at the UN Security Council, diplomatic prominence at the summits with other great powers, and the strength of its military. However, as this paper shows, Moscow's fateful choice to launch a war against Ukraine has led to considerable slippage of its status. Russia now struggles to get things done at international fora and has also faced increased diplomatic isolation. Moreover, the war – especially the struggles of the Russian armed forces – challenged Russia's claim of great military power and an exclusive security provider in the former Soviet space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmopolitanism, which is often defined as openness to other cultures and individuals, is significant for understanding processes of stratification in contemporary, globalised societies that are home to increasingly diverse populations. In this paper, we broaden the perspective on cosmopolitanism to include cultural, interpersonal, and political dimensions. We test the associations between these types of cosmopolitanism and three types of correlates: socio-demographic characteristics, personal exposure to other cultures, and exposure to other cultures via various media. We analyse data from nine European countries that differ in the characteristics of their population, cultural traditions, and political models. Results indicate that differences between respondents in the nine countries are better explained by individual characteristics than by country characteristics. Furthermore, it is mainly personal and mediated exposure to other cultures, rather than socio-demographic variables, that play a significant role in influencing respondents' cosmopolitan tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors that influence a greater or lesser decrease in gender inequality, paying special attention to the role of social policy. To this end, a measure of inequality in the distribution of income between men and women has been developed and a panel of data has been estimated for 33 European countries and a time period of 15 years. The results show that income inequality in general, as measured by the Gini index, and gender inequality based on differences in the distribution of income between men and women are closely linked, and that retirement benefits and women's educational attainment are the tools that most improve gender equity in income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at assessing whether party organizational profiles and policy issue saliency converged in 7 European democracies (Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK), from the 1970s to the 2010s. Building on the theoretical premises of the cartel party thesis and historical new-institutionalism, the paper argues that general tendencies in party policy issue saliency and organizational evolution driven by contextual factors have been taken for granted by party literature based on ideal-typical models. We maintain that party convergence is mainly associated to higher levels of socialization to government. Our empirical analysis shows that patterns of cross-country convergence among parties actually emerge concerning the saliency of the issues placed on the classical left-right divide, as well as party resources, while higher variance characterizes all the other organizational dimensions and post-materialist/value-based policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the events taking place in Ukraine, in particular in light of the recent developments, and classify them in legal terms. The main research questions are as follows: Are there any justifications for remedial secession in the case of Donetsk and Luhansk republics? Are Russia's actions legally justified? How can such actions be classified? Answers to these questions will help to outline and, in fact, discard Russia's arguments. The main source of information about Russia's justifications will be President Putin's speech of 24 February 2022. The paper examines such issues as self-determination and secession in general, remedial secession and Russian arguments in this regard, some of the Russian justifications for the use of force against Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Western Balkans EU candidate countries face rule of law challenges far more serious than Hungary or Poland did at the time of their accessions in 2004. Despite extensive EU conditionality and support, with 16% of EU pre-structural funds dedicated between 2014 and 2020 to rule of law projects, governance indicators show no substantial change. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) also found little impact in advancing the rule of law in the candidate countries in the Western Balkans. The European Commission, however, does report signs of progress. By drawing on public procurement data from the two sectors concentrating most public expenditure, namely health and construction, between the years 2017 and 2019, this paper solves the dilemma of how allegedly successful reforms can happen without much impact. By directly measuring government favouritism in procurement, before and after EU-driven reforms, the paper finds that evolution has so far been limited despite proving the effect of certain interventions. The paradox is explained by providing evidence of versatile behaviour by the main rent owners and the increasing discretionary power of Albania's governing party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer attention is a significant feature in the horizontal cross-loading of EU countries when there are many uncertainties in the decision-making. Taking the case of the 28-EU countries' interactive media attention during China's second Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum in April 2019, this paper explores the two questions of who pays attention to whose action to the BRI, and what are the determinants of the peer attentions? The measurements from the network analysis identify the positions and roles of EU countries in the attention network. The gravity model further examines the determinants on different levels of peer attention flows. The findings suggest that the peer attention network the EU countries formulate is a core-periphery structure where big powers and forerunners construct the core and connect other big power and peripheral countries from the nearby to the far-reaching. Substantively, this paper contributes to the literature on the horizontal interaction of countries in response to China's engagement. Methodologically, the network analysis is an innovative method to study how a country receives the influence imposed by a single country, by a cluster of countries and the peer attention network as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent spread of Euroscepticism has largely been limited to criticism of the actions, inefficiencies, or credibility of EU institutions, while the issue of leaving or not joining the EU is still out of focus for the vast majority of the European population. With the exception of the United Kingdom, which withdrew from the EU, Serbia is the only country where the majority of the population does not want to join the bloc. This paper is dedicated to researching the causes of this phenomenon and measuring their impact on the current additional increase in resistance to the EU among the population of Serbia. This paper presents the results of a survey organised by the authors in Serbia in 2020. MANOVA and the Generalised Linear Model (GLM) were used to analyse the impact of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, as well as the influence of the national attachment of respondents to their attitude towards EU membership. The results showed that Euroscepticism was on the rise due to a weakening expectation of economic benefits of EU membership and a strengthening of national attachment, including concerns over the loss of national sovereignty, under increased EU pressure on Serbia to give up disputed Kosovo territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discover whether the rate of unemployment in the first two decades of the 21st century influenced electoral support for the radical left parties (RLPs). The election results for 37 RLPs were analysed at the level of the NUTS 2 regions. The impact of unemployment was examined using four indicators – general, youth, long-term and male unemployment rates. The aim was achieved through a multilevel regression analysis conducted for parliamentary elections between 2002 and 2019. The results suggest that RLPs are more successful in regions with a higher unemployment rate (general, long-term, male) across the years under review. A 1% rise in the long-term unemployment rate led to an increase in support for RLPs of 0.2% to 1.9% in most NUTS 2 regions (179 out of 198). This effect is most pronounced in the regions where the centre-periphery cleavage associated with historically strong leftist tendencies can be observed, particularly in the case of German, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish regions. The main thrust of the paper is in the analysis of electoral support in parliamentary elections at the regional level, which is less represented in the thematic literature compared with the individual or national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study highlights the experiences of Turkish asylum seekers who have been persecuted, victimized, stigmatized, labeled, discriminated against, prosecuted, segregated, and targeted following the Turkish government crackdown after the failed coup attempt in July 2016 and settled in the United States, Canada, and European countries. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, field notes, and documentation, conducted, and subsequently analyzed using the principles of Transcendental Phenomenological Analysis. After examining the most frequently repeated concepts in the interviews, the following three themes emerged: 1) labeling, 2) targeting, and 3) social pressure and psychological status. This study showed the depths of the psychological pressure, discrimination, torture, and humiliation that detained and jailed participants who were excluded from society endured. The paper ends with several recommendations for Turkey to rejoin the community of nations protecting, fulfilling, and respecting human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the two most recent extended manifestos on Europe (2019) of the French populist radical right party Rassemblement National (RN), previously known as the Front National (FN), from a narrative perspective. The perspective used is based on the Narrative Policy Framework's focus on the setting, plot, characters and moral of the narrative combined with a generic approach. Rather than the 'classical' genres of tragedy, comedy, romance and satire, however, this study focuses on the narrative elements of the dystopian genre, and argues that the RN's narrative on Europe broadly resembles fictional dystopian narratives. In dystopian narratives, the inhabitants find their ontological security threatened by a dehumanising, authoritarian regime, in this case the EU. It is in the 'green world', a timeless space outside the limits of the dystopian state, here represented by the RN's proposed European Alliance of Nations, where the dystopian hero recuperates their sense of autonomy and identity. Such narratives, through exacerbating an already widespread sense of anxiety and ontological insecurity, are potentially powerful attempts to frame continued membership in an unreformed EU as a threat to security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called 'migration crisis' facing the EU between 2015 and 2017 divided EU Member States and caused a rise in populist and racist discourses. Countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic refused to participate in the EU relocation scheme. This paper explores what enabled this opposition to the EU. It analyses the securitising move of the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS) in constructing migrants as a security threat. It studies the adopted discourse and the effectiveness of the securitisation process, applying the Copenhagen School Approach to securitisation theory. Through an in-depth discourse analysis of a wide range of texts, we argue that the PiS discourse enabled the securitisation of migration and the subsequent decision to refuse the EU relocation scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a small and new EU member state Croatia had little to contribute to Brexit, which occurred just a few years after the country's accession to the EU. Stemming from its size, its pre-existing relations with the UK and its drive to learn to operate within the EU, Croatia is no outlier in the literature on small states' foreign policy. This paper analyses the behaviour of Croatia during Brexit and adds to the literature on small states. First, it analyses whether and to what extent Croatia opted for one or more of the following strategies: seeking shelter, hiding or hedging during the Brexit negotiations. Second, it examines the logics underpinning the aforementioned strategies (logic of consequences vs. logic of appropriateness). Third, it scrutinizes Brexit's impact on the Europeanisation of Croatia's foreign and defence policies and possible advancement or undermining of this Europeanisation process. We focus on both policy-uploading and policy-downloading dimensions of Europeanisation, thus contributing to the literature on Europeanisation. Our research is based on existing literature, second-hand sources such as official documents and statements, and the primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with eight persons who either shaped the Croatian foreign and defence policies or were well-informed about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the debate on domestic politicisation of EU issues by suggesting hitherto overlooked explanation of (non)politicisation. This paper uses Czechia as an intriguing case in which the mainstream explanations of a low level of domestic politicisation of EU issues do not apply. The Czech case illustrates that, first, even in the context of high public Euroscepticism, EU issues do not necessarily become politicised, particularly so when the public does not consider them to be important. Second, high politicisation does not occur when there is a path dependency of a mismatch between positions of political parties and significant parts of their electorates on EU issues. Finally, the rise of catch-all populist parties prevents a high level of politicisation of EU issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper addresses the representation of territorialized and conflicting interests by the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) through a case study on the posting of workers. Public debates on the reforms to the legal framework for this controversial practice have been steadily increasing since the EU's eastward enlargement. Focusing on parliamentary questions, our mixed-methods research design analyses why and how MEPs take position on this highly divisive issue, beyond their nationality and a so-called opposition between Eastern and Western EU member states. MEPs' implication depends both on the impact that the posting of workers has on employment in their home country and on their own political career, including whether they hold national or local electoral mandates. These factors also determine which political roles are performed by MEPs (moral entrepreneur, policy maker, interest groups broker), as the textual analysis of their questions in Parliament highlights. These results emphasize the influence of parliamentary socialization on the positions taken in the debates about social Europe, but also the significance of the territorial dimension of parliamentary representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows the perspective of recent political communication studies approaching the online public sphere as a new platform for the political expression of citizens. Based on an explorative, in-depth analysis of user-generated content related to mainstream media coverage of the immigration crisis, with a specific focus on representations of the role of the EU in the crisis, it aims to discover how recent political trends in Europe are reflected in the online political expression of Eurosceptic citizens of a post-socialist Central European country, the Czech Republic. Relating the analysed data to current knowledge of the links between populism, illiberalism and Euroscepticism, and reflecting the post-socialist specifics of this relationship, it suggests that ressentiment may explain the representation of the EU as a traitor to the Europeans in the civic online discourse in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research addresses two attitudes as key measures for public responses to austerity: the belief in the necessity of austerity and the willingness to tolerate its costs. These two measures, each representing preferential and behavioral attitudes toward austerity, are extensively discussed in existing literature. Little is known, however, about how they are related to each other. This paper raises the issue of compatibility between the two attitudes, investigating their individual/joint variations. Analysis of 22 European countries (2010–2011) gives evidence against the compatibility, calling special attention to behavioral reluctance to pay the costs of austerity and its implications for fiscal consolidation and redistributive politics in hard times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the evolution of the European Union's (EU) and Russian Federation's discourse on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) along four frames – economic, (geo)political, normative, and security. We discover the dynamic of the EaP discourse in Brussels and Moscow, developing from an economic and political initiative to an adversarial security understanding, underpinned by logics of geopolitical and normative competition. With this study, we illuminate the misalignment of the EU and Russia's interpretations of neighbourhood policy and show how it underpinned mutual mistrust and the clash over the future of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privatisation is a strategic policy restructuring the relationship between the state and the market, the public and the private, and hence, the political and the economic. It opens non-capitalist spaces to capital accumulation and creates new markets for international competition. Privatisation alters a society's relationship to public goods, services and rights by commodification practices, and turns into a highly controversial reform in economic restructuring. This paper discusses how privatisation gained priority in Greece with the economic crisis. It incorporates the concept of depoliticisation to offer a new perspective on the analysis of the economic plans, programmes and documents that Greece signed with international creditors for the sake of its economic recovery. It claims that depoliticisation functioned as a strategy for putting privatisation policies onto the agenda by simply reproducing the elusive separation between the political and the economic. The paper argues that introducing extensive privatisation policies through internationally agreed-upon documents confirms the attempt to erode the political character of the process in order to (i) present such policies as a technical, economic imperative, (ii) externalise political decisions, and (iii) limit public discontent. The depoliticisation and privatisation processes reinforce each other in widening the state-market divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The flows of refugees have ignited the European political debate, thereby boosting nationalistic forces in almost all countries. The aim of this paper is to counterbalance a widespread view about their overall impact and show that the number of asylum seekers did not represent a 'refugee crises'. It argues, however, that the current European Union institutions and procedures are highly insufficient to successfully manage refugee inflows and asylum requests. It is often forgotten that large number of refugees are created from conflicts initiated or not prevented by EU members themselves. Once the problem comes into existence, as the procedures based on the Dublin Convention are widely recognised as inadequate, the paper provides a few suggestions for implementing radical changes to manage refugees and asylum seekers in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can EU comprehensive trade agreements effectively promote international labour standards, despite their soft enforcement rules? And if so, under what conditions? This paper addresses these questions by focusing on a hard case study, namely Vietnam's ratification in 2019 of the ILO Convention 98 on the right to organize and collective bargaining. Such a ratification is an epochal change for a mono-party regime lacking recognition of independent trade unions. This paper shows that the EU has emerged as a key partner of ILO in promoting international law in Vietnam and explains such a result from a political economy perspective. This case study provides insights into the extent to which a trade partner is dependent upon international trade increases the leverage of the EU, and especially the European Parliament, and ultimately affects the ability of the EU to emerge as a normative power through trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the significance of historical narratives on populism, the congruence between collective memory and scholarship regarding populism is scarce in Central and Eastern European countries. We address this gap by analysing the commemorative narratives of the competing populist right-wing political parties in Hungary and Poland promoted during celebrations for the Day of National Unity and National Independence Day celebration. The paper analyses the structure, content and functions of commemorative speeches to highlight the similarities and differences between the political actors under consideration. The findings reveal that victimisation and heroisation are constant and stable components of both countries' political narratives. Moreover, the elements of populist communication are articulated alongside nationalist themes emphasising the greatness of the nation, historical revisionism or national Catholicism. The references to the people using ethno-cultural and exclusionary terms are of particular significance. Although praised and credited with positive qualities, the Polish and Hungarian peoples are more frequently presented as victims of international enemies, European elites or internal, cultural and political elites. This victimhood status allows political actors to both represent themselves as advocates of the people and legitimises their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using composite indices that quantify the quality of institutions and democratic functioning, the paper argues that Turkey has always deviated in terms of liberal democracy and civil liberties from the average EU norms. Due to the democratic backsliding of recent years this gap is rapidly widening. These differences constitute one of the two insurmountable fundamental barriers that have always prevented full membership irrespective of all other impediments. The democratic gap barrier is compounded by the sheer size of the economy and the population. Both present an unprecedented challenge to EU's integration capacity with important political repercussions for the Union's institutional functioning. Full membership was never a reasonably realistic and pragmatic goal. Both the EU and Turkey have benefits to reap from maintaining a strong and close relationship founded on a more pragmatic partnership target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how practices of counter-terrorism (CT) have been perceived by legally-operating groups labelled 'extremist'. Taking the cases of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain (HTB) and Hizb ut-Tahrir Scandinavia (HTS), the paper explores how two branches of the same Islamic activist organisation have experienced CT through interviews with party members and activists. Using existing models of repression, the paper maps how counter-terrorism is perceived by activist groups, revealing new information on Hizb ut-Tahrir and providing a framework for understanding the interaction of security with groups problematised as 'extremist' within a widening 'securitised lens'. The paper finds that, whilst there are similarities in how CT has been articulated in Britain and Denmark, it has impacted on HTB and HTS differently, creating different strategies of response. In tracking these, we highlight the prominent role played by civil society actors in the UK in creating a hostile environment for Islamic activist groups. By using mechanistic models of repression, we conceptualise the impact of counter-terrorism and newer patterns of countering violent extremism (CVE) on contentious activist organisations at a moment when the so-called 'risk' of extremism is increasingly being conceptualised and responded to throughout Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contributing to the scholarly debate on the European Union's (EU) foreign policy, this paper focuses on an under-explored, yet central, subset of the latter, namely the EU's cultural relations with the Eastern Partnership (EaP). Concretely, it examines what discursive articulations the EU advances through its cultural relations with the region. To do so, it applies a poststructuralist approach to a selection of data retrieved from EU policy documents and declarations (2007–2020) and semi-structured interviews with EU officials and cultural operators. The analysis reveals that three discursive articulations of EU identity are advanced: a) 'United in Diversity', showcasing 'Europe' as a model; b) 'co-creation', promoting dialogue and mutuality with the EaP; and c) 'messaging', framing Russia as an existential threat. Despite some contradictions, the analysis detects an important tendency towards geographical othering, and notably towards the externalising of the threat location in identity production. By resorting to default conceptions of culture, EU discourse splits the EU and Russia into two organic systems of differences. Overall, EU identity reproduction within the cultural terrain – and the antagonism that comes with it – produces and nurtures the very contested world that the EU seeks to navigate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the main components, context, and sequence of the European refugee crisis' securitisation in Hungary. Building on content and discourse analysis, this study finds that Orbán, the Hungarian Head of State, successfully securitised the refugee crisis. This study further examines who Orbán's securitisation audience was and what role it played in the securitisation process. The paper's findings reveal that the Hungarian public opinion was the primary audience of the securitising rhetoric. The Hungarian public sanctioned, by large majorities, the securitising moves and measures of Hungary's ruling FIDESZ party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent paper in this journal examines the presence of convergence or divergence in terms of institutional quality among the Eurozone countries over the period 2008–17. Convergence is a long-term process. Furthermore, it may not follow a smooth and stable course since it can be affected by major episodes such as the recent crisis and the recession that afflicted Eurozone countries. Better insights can be drawn with the use of timeseries spanning over a longer period and by allowing for structural shifts in the process caused by important episodes and major events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present findings of a research project focusing on the tensions between the idea of 'Europe' and that of the 'nation' as well as on perceptions of national and popular sovereignty in times of crisis. We start from the assumption that in the context of the recent crisis, EU politics have become 'normal politics,' generating political passions, polarization, and a deeper Eurosceptic mood. Working on the emblematic case of Greece, we focus on two critical moments (referendum 2015 and Prespa Agreement 2018) so as to address the question of how the idea of 'Europe' was politicized and reconceptualized in its competitive symbiosis with perception(s) of the 'nation'. Drawing on discourse analysis and ethnographic research, we maintain that European identity, in this critical juncture, was not deconstructed but rather remodelled in constant tension with national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The megatrends of climate change, China's Belt and Road Initiative, and the Western sanctions against Russia have made the once calm Arctic an arena of geopolitical competition. Before the Crimea crisis of 2014, the Nordics were the primary advocates for a Chinese role in the Arctic when Russia was still hesitant. In 2017 Russia and China agreed to build a Polar Silk Road along the Northern Sea Route, which complements China's 21st Century Maritime Silk Road plans. Russia financially depends on China for its aspirational Arctic plans. Meanwhile, China increasingly perceives the five Nordic states as a unit to negotiate projects under the Belt and Road Initiative and suggested a 5 + 1 format. Thus, China's rising Arctic presence made the age-old Nordics-Russia relations triangular. What does the Sino-Russian strategic partnership mean for the Nordics' preference formation concerning the Polar Silk Road? This paper traces the triangular ties before and after the Crimea crisis and finds that the actors switched from liberal towards defensive neorealist perspectives. The Nordics have become worried about the Sino-Russian Arctic honeymoon, Russia's Arctic military assertiveness and China's intentions. As the triangular links are out-of-balance, the Nordics might apply complex balancing to achieve collective goods along the Northern Sea Route. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little doubt that supply-side populism associates with radical platforms of the left and the right. However, few empirical analyses have focused on the connection between left-right ideological radicalism and populism at the individual level, even less in countries where populist discourses are not only associated with the radical right. This paper considers the association between populist attitudes and ideological radicalism in two countries where left-wing populist parties exist: France and Spain. For that, it uses an approach to political ideology that distinguishes political-economic issues and political-cultural ones. Main results show that radically minded individuals, located at the left and the right of the ideological axis, display stronger populist attitudes in France and Spain. However, differences between the two countries exist that highlight the relevance of context-dependent associations between populism and other (thick) ideologies in the electoral arena. In France, individuals located at the extreme right of the cultural dimension tend to show stronger populist attitudes than those located at the far left. In contrast, in Spain, individuals located at the extreme left of the economic and cultural dimensions display stronger populist attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British referendum on EU membership was both the result and the cause of major ruptures and reconfigurations of the British political order. It also marked the climax of the politicization of European integration, as highlighted by the post-functionalist theory. The UK Independence party (UKIP) is pivotal in this process: it is both a product of this politicization and one of its major agents. As such, from a European viewpoint, UKIP stands as a case in point, an illustration of the potentially disruptive impact of such parties on national and European arenas. Building on Putnam's two level-game, on Tsebelis' nested games and on Reif and Schmitt's first and second order, this article aims to show that UKIP stands as the very embodiment of the interaction between these two arenas – between first- and second-order games. It perfectly illustrates the fact that the referendum reconfigured the national game that created it. This paper will therefore explore those two aspects: how UKIP impacted the first-order game, and conversely how the referendum impacted UKIP. Finally, the paper will analyze the disruptive impact of UKIP's successor, the Brexit party, on the British and European arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the enormous inflow of international assistance to the Western Balkans over the last 25 years, the intended state-building efforts have only had partial success and great concerns have been raised over the problems of state capture, weak governance, poor rule of law and widespread corruption at a high level throughout the region. The paper identifies the patterns of international assistance and examines the extent to which donor aid allocations have been driven by concerns for recipients' need and merit, or by donor self-interest. The analysis reveals that while donor allocations have on the whole reflected need, they have not reflected merit to the same extent, suggesting that international assistance may have facilitated domestic political elites' engagement in practices of rent-seeking and state capture. With a few exceptions, EU donors and EU Institutions have not allocated their aid to motivate adherence to EU norms in candidate and potential candidate states in the region. The paper concludes that the 'Samaritans dilemma' is alive and well in the Western Balkans, and that donors have chosen to mostly overlook poor governance behaviour among recipients in order to prioritise assistance to the neediest countries while pursuing their own foreign policy concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional Organizations (ROs) have become a central pillar of governance beyond the nation-state. This paper investigates why European states turned into architects of regional regime complexity: they have created and joined numerous different ROs and equipped them with a broad range of different policy competencies. Thereby, European states – some more than others – have increasingly duplicated identical policy competencies in multiple ROs. The phenomenon is puzzling as it is potentially costly and might undermine the effectiveness of regional cooperation especially if incompatible regional rules trigger non-compliance. Therefore, we ask why states differ in the extent to which they cover identical competencies in different ROs. Drawing on a unique dataset and analyzing cross-sectional temporal variation, we show that both indirect factors, such as late accessions and the number of states in Europe, as well as direct factors, such as state power and democracy, drive regional regime complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]