Suchergebnisse

This article explores the empirical relevance of researching outside-in politicization processes in European studies. To this end, it examines to what extent and how civil society organizations (CSOs) have contributed to the politicization of EU policies towards Western Africa in two cases: the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements and the EU's engagement with the G5 Sahel. CSOs were strongly engaged in the trade negotiations, while they were largely excluded from the G5 Sahel process. In both cases this was due to CSOs' own initiatives, or the absence thereof, with these strongly linked to being either invited or discouraged by official actors. The article argues that authority transfer and the domestic context – including state fragility and state–society relations – are relevant to explaining the (non-)involvement of CSOs in outside-in politicization.

This special section seeks to extent our knowledge on teaching innovative methods in European Union (EU) Foreign Affairs in time of challenges, politicisation, and digitalisation. It shares the experience of established and early career colleagues on how they designed, implemented, and applied specific innovations in their teaching. The section focuses on these experiences and aims to provide guidance on how specific ideas were put into practice in a hand-on and reflective manner. It seeks to tip into what works and why and how we as educators deal with challenges. Contributions engage with teaching EU foreign policy via Problem-based learning (Tonra 2020), research-led teaching by linking policy briefs and employability (Lightfoot 2020), responsive teaching in times of radical change (O´Mahony 2020), and synchronous teaching among 13 universities (Plank and Niemann 2020). They offer insights into increasing the ownership of students, raise awareness of their subjectivity, stimulate critical thinking, or enhance student´s media skills as well as to foster their employability. All contributions showcase the added value of the applied innovations, but also discuss obstacles that need to be considered in the conceptualisation and implementation of the proposed active approaches.

AbstractThis article concludes this special issue on the European Union as international mediator that set out to advance our theoretical and empirical knowledge aboutEUmediation. Providing a comprehensive reflection ofEUmediation activities and the diverse settings where they take place, this concluding article identifies some connection points between the articles and discusses their findings on the motives/drivers, roles/strategies, effectiveness and institutional capacities ofEUmediation. It discusses the implications of these findings for policymaking, focusing on the conditions forEUmediation effectiveness, the advantages of the multi-layered nature ofEUmediation and the need for flexible adaptation of mediation strategies. Finally, the article sets the scene for future research endeavors onEUmediation by identifying three future research avenues that focus on the politics, domestic effects and comparative advantage of theEUas international mediator.

"The chapter by these authors assesses the EU's role in international climate change policymaking. It does this by comparing the EU's degree of goal attainment at two conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These are the Conference of the Parties (COP) negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010. Comprised as building Blocks, three explanatory factors, coherence, opportunity structure and politicization, are applied to enable the authors to examine whether the EU managed to attain its goals as well as the divergent outcomes for the EU of both negotiations. In the conclusion, the Durban negotiations of 2011 are briefly highlighted." (author's abstract)

This article compares the degree to which the European Union (EU) managed to play a leadership role at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009 and the Cancún negotiations in December 2010. Our notion of leadership is composed of (a) direction (i.e. the degree to which an actor pushes towards a recognised collective purpose), and (b) goal-attainment (which is explained by three factors: coherence, the opportunity structure, and politicisation). The outcomes of the Copenhagen negotiations have been rather disappointing for the EU in terms of its substantial ambitions and leadership expectations. At Cancún, the Union had a firmer hold on the outcomes, but its goals have also been less ambitious compared to the Copenhagen negotiations.

Im Jahr 1993 änderten der Deutsche Bundestag und der Bundesrat das Grundgesetz und führten unter anderem eine sehr restriktive Version des Konzeptes der "sicheren Dritt- bzw. Herkunftsstaaten" ein, das das Recht auf Asyl einschränkte. Bis Mitte 1992 schien eine Zweidrittelmehrheit für eine solche Verfassungsänderung im Bundestag kaum erreichbar. Parallel zur innerdeutschen Debatte wurde auf europäischer Ebene über die Abschaffung der Binnengrenzen und gemeinsame Asylstandards verhandelt. Wie war es nach Jahren des Streits möglich die Zustimmung für die Grundgesetzänderung zu bekommen und welche Rolle spielte die europäische Ebene bei der Legitimation der Verfassungsänderung? Der Beitrag erklärt das Zustandekommen des Asylkompromisses von 1993 mithilfe des Konzepts des Zwei-Ebenen-Spiels. (ICB2)