Suchergebnisse

This volume recasts how we understand international relations through an examination of how the human evolutionary predisposition to be 'ultrasocial' as a species impacts which political ideas succeed, transform, manipulate, and inspire on a global scale. At a time when pessimism about our current world order is at an all-time high, this book overturns widespread assumptions that international relations is mainly about conflict, power, and national self-interest.

At a time when many observers question the EU's ability to achieve integration of any significance, and indeed Europeans themselves appear disillusioned, Mai'a K. Davis Cross argues that the EU has made remarkable advances in security integration, in both its external and internal dimensions. Moreover, internal security integration-such as dealing with terrorism, immigration, cross-border crime, and drug and human trafficking-has made even greater progress with dismantling certain barriers that previously stood at the core of traditional state sovereignty. Such unprecedented collaboration has become possible thanks to knowledge-based transnational networks, or "epistemic communities," of ambassadors, military generals, scientists, and other experts who supersede national governments in the diplomacy of security decision making and are making headway at remarkable speed by virtue of their shared expertise, common culture, professional norms, and frequent meetings. Cross brings together nearly 80 personal interviews and a host of recent government documents over the course of five separate case studies to provide a microsociological account of how governance really works in today's EU and what future role it is likely to play in the international environment. "This is an ambitious work which deals not only with European security and defense but also has much to say about the policy-making process of the EU in general."--Ezra Suleiman, Princeton University

This article analyses the origins and development of the relationship between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the EU space program as separate, but related processes of European integration. For over fifty years the ESA has been separate from the EU institutionally despite having nearly all of the same Member States, and its role in uniting European countries in a common outer space endeavour has been significant. The ESA embraces the motto 'United Space in Europe'. The EU's interest in space has only emerged in the last twenty years, but has grown rapidly. As such, space has become a case of informal (i.e., outside of EU structures) differentiated integration. While it may be easy to assume that the ESA is outside of EU structures because Member States have wanted to keep space policy intergovernmental, the author argues that fundamentally different ideas about the role and use of space between the EU and the ESA have been the main, underlying driver. A long-standing spaceflight idea – mainly, the peaceful use of space for all of humankind – is embedded in the ESA's DNA, while this is not the case for the EU (This article is an output of the EUFLEX project, which has been funded by the Research Council of Norway (project number 287131)).
European Space Agency, EU Space Program, differentiated integration, NASA, spaceflight, ESRO, ELDO

The European Defence Agency (EDA) was founded in 2004 with the aim of improving the EU's defence capabilities through promoting collaboration, common initiatives, and innovative solutions to the EU's security needs. This article examines the nature of the relationship between European Union Member States and the EDA a decade after its founding. The agency has solidified a clear body of norms that it seeks Member States to implement. To a surprising extent, Member States have publically embraced these norms as necessary for the future viability of European security. But they at the same time resist implementing these norms in certain fundamental ways. Building upon the framework article of this special issue, the author applies the concepts of 'public' and 'hidden' transcripts to shed light on how Member States simultaneously embrace and resist norms in a climate of supranational pressure.

Many theories attempt to explain European Union (EU) integration-the gradual and voluntary transfer of national sovereignty to the supranational level of governance-but few studies have addressed this phenomenon from a grassroots perspective. The books under review shed light on the human dimension of EU integration, utilizing sociological and ethnographic approaches. In particular, these recent studies show how sociological approaches to political science can breathe life into a debate that is oftentimes too academic and theoretically inconclusive. They address a number of questions about the future of Europe, including the extent to which EU citizens identify with Europe and the legitimacy of EU integration in the eyes of European citizens. Adapted from the source document.

The recent advent of the European Union (EU) External Action Service (EEAS) represents a major step towards a new kind of diplomacy in the international arena. However, while the construction of such a large, supranational corps of diplomats is wholly unprecedented, the EU's successful track record in its own internal diplomacy contains many lessons for its future external diplomacy. If these lessons are implemented well, the EEAS will be coherent and effective, transforming the EU's foreign policy landscape and catapulting it onto the world stage. If not, this new institution risks becoming a weak bureaucratic experiment that could end up working at cross purposes with the diplomatic apparatus of the Member States already in place. Specifically, this article focuses on the recruitment and training of EU diplomats and the challenges of fostering a strong esprit de corps, sense of collective identity, as well as a high level of professionalism, expertise, and flexibility. The author uses constructivist theory and argues that this approach has much to offer policymakers when it comes to understanding the nature of norms as well as how and why they change.

The recent advent of the European Union (EU) External Action Service (EEAS) represents a major step towards a new kind of diplomacy in the international arena. However, while the construction of such a large, supranational corps of diplomats is wholly unprecedented, the EU's successful track record in its own internal diplomacy contains many lessons for its future external diplomacy. If these lessons are implemented well, the EEAS will be coherent and effective, transforming the EU's foreign policy landscape and catapulting it onto the world stage. If not, this new institution risks becoming a weak bureaucratic experiment that could end up working at cross purposes with the diplomatic apparatus of the Member States already in place. Specifically, this article focuses on the recruitment and training of EU diplomats and the challenges of fostering a strong esprit de corps, sense of collective identity, as well as a high level of professionalism, expertise, and flexibility. The author uses constructivist theory and argues that this approach has much to offer policymakers when it comes to understanding the nature of norms as well as how and why they change. Adapted from the source document.

Smart power is defined as the effective combination of both hard and soft power. The concept is increasingly used in policy and academic debates, yet a clear understanding of what it actually means is still lacking. As a result, there is little serious consideration of how smart power can contribute to long-standing debates about power in international relations. This article seeks to clarify the meaning of smart power through first analyzing its main components -- hard and soft power -- separately; and second bringing these components together to re-conceptualize smart power. The aim is to make smart power more analytically useful, and to outline the various ways in which hard and soft power can be combined effectively. The author considers the case of Europe to argue that it is mainly a soft power and sometimes a smart power. Adapted from the source document.