Rosa Balfour’s Post

EU seminar on  Eager enlargers, reluctant reformers? Central and Eastern European perspectives on EU’s institutional reform. With Jan Váška, Charles University Prague   When: Friday 26 April at 15:00 Venue location: PJ Veth 1.01   After a decade-long hiatus, Russia’s war on Ukraine has reinvigorated the European Union’s enlargement plans. Scholars and practitioners alike agree, however, that in its present shape the EU is not fit to cope with the challenges of another enlargement. Any step in that direction will thus require reforms of the EU’s institutional setup, decision-making procedures, and budget. As the geopolitical challenge mounts, taboos are being broken and unorthodox strategies discussed. Where do the Central and Eastern European member states stand in these debates, what are their stakes and red lines, and what are the implications for the Union as a whole?   About the speaker Dr Jan Váška is the deputy head of Department of European Studies, Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czechia. His teaching portfolio covers history and contemporary developments in western Europe, British history and politics, and European integration. He has published on British foreign and European policy, contemporary British politics, EU institutions and, most recently, on Czechia‘s efforts to improve its status in international organizations.

💻 For those who couldn't attend the book launch, you can find the transcripts below, or 📓 download the book here: https://lnkd.in/dQr7iNZ6 👇 In short, a piece of my talk at the online roundtable: "This is not a book about the peripheries written by scholars working on peripheries, but it’s completely the opposite. It’s a book written from the peripheries by authors who are working and writing in and from the peripheries. I think this is extremely important to avoid the growth of redundancy among the so-called “experts” of the European Union, writing tons of publications from Brussels, Berlin, London, and Paris; with due respect, they are introducing nothing new in the scholarship. I think this is also a very good critique that the book is conveying to the scholarship – we need to change the language, the scholarly language, of addressing the problem of peripheries [and at the same time conveying] a very strong political message that peripheries are now at the center, and they have become a new paradigm to look at Europe and the European Union in particular."

https://www.euia.eu/theme/ The EUIA 2025 conference calls for submissions from established academics, practitioners, early-career researchers and doctoral candidates. Scholars from non-EU countries are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. The programme is open to a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, as well as to interdisciplinary fields, in order to advance the debate on the EU's future priorities in the external dimension of its policies. Thematic areas for panels and papers include but are not limited to: the EU’s role in diplomacy, multilateral organisations, global governance, and international trade and investment and corresponding value chains; the international dimension of EU policy-making and its implementation (such as security, trade, monetary policies, energy, climate, gender, migration, digital governance and space); tools of European formal and informal foreign engagement (such as development aid, sanctions and migration arrangements) the EU’s relations with its neighbourhood as well as with other regional organisations around the world; actions and perspectives of non-European actors towards the EU

Are populists unilateralists? Populist governments are often considered a threat to multilateralism & international organizations 🌐. In our new #openaccess article in International Affairs, Agnese Pacciardi, Fredrik Söderbaum and I take a closer look at how exactly they challenge international institutions: https://lnkd.in/dpZg8FpP In their analyses of populist governments, #InternationalRelations researchers & pundits often focus on a few high-profile cases of withdrawals from multilateral institutions, such as #Brexit & the #Trump administration's exodus from several UN bodies & the Paris agreement on climate governance. It is true that populist governments often disengage from international institutions - but, as we show based on an analysis of the Trump administration 🇺🇸 & Hungary under Viktor Orbán 🇭🇺 , complete withdrawal is relatively rare when looking at the broad range of different institutions they participate in. Mostly, populist disengagement comes in other forms: rhetorical criticism, obstruction or extortion. Rather than presaging exit, such practices are mainly used strategically to induce reform, obtain concessions, or signal a commitment to populist ideology to domestic audiences. So: Instances of disengagement should not be read as proof of populists' unilateralism, but rather as attempts to reshape the landscape of international cooperation to suit what we call the populist script of cooperation (see also our book with Cambridge University Press https://lnkd.in/dNysWRSm 📕). According to the populist script, international institutions should be controlled by leaders, prioritize symbolic politics & allow à-la-carte cooperation according to domestic agendas. It thus goes against important features that researchers see as making institutions effective: independence, technocratic expertise & agenda-setting power. Therefore, our argument that populists are not unilateralists is not to say that their contestation of international institutions is inconsequential or unproblematic, to the contrary. But those invested in supporting existing institutions need to be extra sure they understand the motivations behind populist challenges in order to address them effectively. The journal issue contains a whole Special Section on "The Effects of Global #Populism", put together by the fantastic editorial team, Daniel F. Wajner, Sandra Destradi & Michael Zürn. Make sure to check out the other contributions as well! https://lnkd.in/dmWRy9Tc

This coming conference is quite interesting. If someone else is interested, let's cooperate on a joint submission. I am keen to contribute by analyzing Political Economy theory from Digital Governance perspectives. 17𝒕𝒉 𝑨𝒏𝒏𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝑬𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒐𝒎𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑶𝒓𝒈𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 (𝑷𝑬𝑰𝑶) January 23-25, 2025 – Havard University, Cambridge MA, USA We invite submissions for the seventeenth annual conference on the Political Economy of International Organization. The conference is hosted by Harvard University on January 23-25, 2025. The conference brings together economists and political scientists to address political economy issues related to international organizations such as the World Trade Organization, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union, and others. We also consider submissions on topics more broadly related to international organization, such as foreign aid, international agreements, and international law. https://lnkd.in/gq3Wg7f8.

THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY: Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776 - PDF: https://lnkd.in/gmPvinAj Little over 200 years ago, a quarter of a century of war fundamentally reshaped the European international order. That conflict was triggered by the advent of popular doctrines in revolutionary France, and fears that it might seek to export ‘all the wretchedness and horrors of a wild democracy’, as the British ambassador Lord Auckland described it at the time. In stark contrast, today ‘rogue regimes’ are defined by the fact that they are not democratic. In the intervening period a remarkable series of revisions took place in the way democracy was understood and valued in international society. In a relatively short space of time, popular sovereignty went from being a revolutionary and radical doctrine to becoming the foundation on which almost all states are based, while democratic government, long dismissed as archaic, unstable and completely inappropriate for modern times, came to be seen as a legitimate and desirable method of rule. Put differently, this study is structured around the historical contrast between, on the one hand, the high degree of acceptance and legitimacy that democracy now holds, and on the other, the strongly negative perceptions that defined democracy when it reappeared in the late eighteenth century, which should have seemingly limited the possibilities of it becoming understood so positively. The book seeks to throw new light on a central feature of the current international order, in which  democracy has become a ‘universal value’, having ‘achieved the status of being taken to be generally right’ . It explores the remarkable reversal that took place, accounting for democracy’s rise from obscurity to its position as a central component of state legitimacy. In contrast to the influential accounts of liberals, who too easily universalise democracy’s current meaning and suggest its ‘triumph’ was somehow inevitable, this book illustrates the opposite: just how unlikely this outcome was. Indeed, the success of these changes is reflected in the extent to which they go unquestioned today. There has been a longstanding tendency to reify, if not deify, democracy. Consequently, we often forget that its recent ascendance is not a natural or inevitable condition, but the result of political and sociological processes that have led to a certain set of ideas and institutions prevailing. In this regard, the book uses history as a resource for better understanding the contemporary challenges democracy faces, and in doing so, it develops a normative defence of democracy based on its uneven and contingent past. It reminds us that a world in which democracy is the dominant form of government is not the norm, but a historical anomaly, which in turn should promote a sense of humility.

☀️ Don't know what to do this summer? Submit a paper or panel for #EUIA25: Europe in a Fragmenting World The conference offers 5 thematic areas for submission: - the EU’s role in diplomacy, multilateral organisations, global governance, and international trade and investment and corresponding value chains; - the international dimension of EU policy-making and its implementation - tools of European formal and informal foreign engagement - the EU’s relations with its neighbourhood as well as with other regional organisations around the world; - actions and perspectives of non-European actors towards the EU 📅 21 - 23 May 2025 📍 Brussels ✍️ Conference details and submissions 👉 https://lnkd.in/eBUqXQjs Looking forward to seeing topics from the international dimension of the EU's climate and environmental policies to the broader implications for global governance and sustainability. If you want to engage & network with experts, policymakers, and academics the #EUIA25 conference will be the place to be!

The experience of Eastern Europe shows that autocratic threats are often misread, diagnosed only belatedly, and overlooked until they are deeply entrenched, write Seán Hanley and Licia Cianetti. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism, many specialists were deeply pessimistic about the region’s democratic prospects and foresaw rapid democratic breakdown. But it soon became clear that the nightmare vision of democratic failure for Eastern Europe was not materialising. Academic agendas increasingly viewed democracy in Eastern Europe as consolidated and safe, albeit flawed and poor quality. However, just as regime change seemed complete with EU accession, new concerns about threats to democracy emerged in the mid-2000s. The main architects of this belated assault on post-communist democracies were not nostalgic ex-communists, but radicalised mainstream right parties, such as Hungary’s Fidesz or Poland’s Law and Justice. Politicians of the left, like Slovakia’s Robert Fico or Czechia’s Miloš Zeman, later realised that nationalism and populism could benefit them electorally and in office. The realisation that new forms of autocratisation could reverse the political direction in a region once considered the success story of the post-communist world upended notions that the EU could or would have deep and lasting transformative power. Instead of European integration democratising Eastern Europe, it seemed possible that Eastern Europe might trigger a chain reaction autocratising the EU. Learning, it seems, does not necessarily move from West to East. https://lnkd.in/gQASWfED

☀️ Don't know what to do this summer? Submit a paper or panel for #EUIA25: Europe in a Fragmenting World The conference offers 5 thematic areas for submission: - the EU’s role in diplomacy, multilateral organisations, global governance, and international trade and investment and corresponding value chains; - the international dimension of EU policy-making and its implementation - tools of European formal and informal foreign engagement - the EU’s relations with its neighbourhood as well as with other regional organisations around the world; - actions and perspectives of non-European actors towards the EU 📅 21 - 23 May 2025 📍 Brussels ✍️ Conference details and submissions 👉 https://lnkd.in/eBUqXQjs Looking forward to seeing topics from the international dimension of the EU's climate and environmental policies to the broader implications for global governance and sustainability. If you want to engage & network with experts, policymakers, and academics the #EUIA25 conference will be the place to be!

☀️ Don't know what to do this summer? Submit a paper or panel for #EUIA25: Europe in a Fragmenting World The conference offers 5 thematic areas for submission: - the EU’s role in diplomacy, multilateral organisations, global governance, and international trade and investment and corresponding value chains; - the international dimension of EU policy-making and its implementation - tools of European formal and informal foreign engagement - the EU’s relations with its neighbourhood as well as with other regional organisations around the world; - actions and perspectives of non-European actors towards the EU 📅 21 - 23 May 2025 📍 Brussels ✍️ Conference details and submissions 👉 https://lnkd.in/eBUqXQjs Looking forward to seeing topics from the international dimension of the EU's climate and environmental policies to the broader implications for global governance and sustainability. If you want to engage & network with experts, policymakers, and academics the #EUIA25 conference will be the place to be!