Will Crimea herald a new post-Cold War era world? EPC Commentary, 7 April 2014

The end of the Cold War twenty-five years ago brought about a difficult but manageable world in which Russia, the US, and European countries cooperated to manage common problems. There have been difficult times, with the break up of former Yugoslavia, the NATO intervention for Kosovo, and in 2008 when Russia’s intervention in Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkahzia nearly led to a head to head with the West. On the whole, the cooperation between old foes which framed the end of the Cold War, resisted these tests. The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and the agreement not to redraw the map of Europe was never so evidently ignored as today

Renewal through international action? Options for EU foreign policy. CHALLENGE EUROPE Issue 22 - Challenges and new beginnings: Priorities for the EU’s new leadership. September 2014

The time has come for the EU to become more curious of the world around it, open and receptive to different ideas, and more articulate and thoughtful about its own. This is a somewhat anthropomorphic description of what would be needed to 'mature' into a global actor. The EU has promoted and managed globalisation while pretending that its political dimension would not require attention. This has led to it punching below its weight globally. Now it is abundantly clear that the systemic weaknesses of globalisation require international action and that the management of internal affairs cannot be divorced from the external context: decision time has come

Spotlight-Europe - March 2015: The EU neighbourhood in shambles. Some recommendations for a new European neighbourhood strategy

Executive Summary. An “arc of instability” stretching from the European Union’s (EU) eastern borders down to the Mediterranean basin has undermined its flagship European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). This policy was designed to deliver prosperity, stability and democracy to countries surrounding the EU. It has manifestly failed and needs to be radically rethought. Starting with a tabula rasa, the EU should abandon the very concept of a heterogeneous “neighbourhood” in the face of glaring differences among the 16 countries affected, not least because some are uninterested in reform; others may even be failed states. EU member states are themselves pursuing divergent interests and goals. A fundamental review of the ENP should lead to more differentiated, targeted measures to promote “transformational change” within neighbouring states ready to accept it. The EU should offer revised incentives such as participation within the proposed “energy union” or freer trade designed to aid local economic development. It should embrace a wider range of actors, including civil society, promote entrepreneurship and help reform countries’ police and military forces. The review should reassert common EU institutions in negotiating and working with neighbours and give them a central role in preventing and resolving conflicts as well as promoting democratic reform and economic stability. This revised ENP should help underpin the EU’s efforts to forge a genuine Common Foreign and Security Policy

What are think tanks for? Policy research in the age of anti-expertise

What role can and should think tanks play in a ‘post-truth’ world? In this Strategic Update, Rosa Balfour argues that to meet complex policy challenges think tanks need to improve their diversity, innovate, and re-focus on their core mission

Arab views on democratic citizenship – and on EU support. Arab Citizenship Review No. 11

Arab views on democratic citizenship – and on EU support Much has been said about the EU’s general response to the Arab spring. And much has been written about regimes’ resistance to the far-reaching reform demanded by protestors across the Arab world. We have been engaged in a project (www.euspring.com) exploring one very specific dimension of these political trends and social debates: the question of how citizens in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) understand the concept of democratic citizenship. Within our project, our local affiliated research organizations ran throughout 2014 a series of focus groups in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia with a range of civic stakeholders. The aim of these meetings was to explore how citizens in the three countries understand democratic citizenship and how they view EU efforts to support political reform

Report on democracy assistance from the European Union to the Middle East and North Africa. EUSpring Report, 18 May 2016

Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, European Union (EU) assistance has nominally targeted more resources to supporting democracy movements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The EU has better equipped itself institutionally, financially and conceptually, by strengthening its bottom up grassroots approach to democracy support; resources earmarked for supporting civil society have been increased, the budget for the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) has been beefed up, and the strengthened EU Delegations have be come more empowered to reach out to groups at the local grass roots level behind democracy activities; The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) was created with the mandate to support individuals and organizations in neighbouring countries that work for democracy. Whether this translates into a more effective strategy for democracy support, however, remains to be seen. In this report, Rosa Balfour, Francesca Fabbri and Richard Youngs present a detailed overview of the support given to civil society in the MENA region by the EU, with a special focus on the various financial instruments used

Human rights and democracy in EU foreign policy: The cases of Ukraine and Egypt.

This thesis empirically analyses the role that human rights and democracy have played in European Union foreign policy towards Ukraine and Egypt since the end of the Cold War. It departs from the dominant approach in international relations theory that conceptualises the pursuit of such aims as an illustration of the EU's sui generis actorness, to trace empirically the sources of the rhetorical inclusion of human rights and democracy in foreign policy and their implementation. The thesis argues that the 'logic of diversity' provides the most powerful means to understand the 'push' factors that led to the integration of human rights and democracy in EU foreign policy and the 'brakes' in their implementation. Whereas scholars have suggested numerous ways in which such 'normative' positions are overridden by other strategic concerns, my research findings conclude that the EU increased its 'normative' coordination in parallel to pursuing further engagement with third countries on key interests, making the dilemma between 'principles and interests' more acute. Notwithstanding the finding that EU action has been, mostly but not exclusively, limited to declaratory positions, the single most important factor jeopardising a stronger policy can be located in the intergovernmental politics within the Union. Human rights and democracy have thus been pushed up the EU agenda thanks to the 'policy entrepreneurship' of some member states, at times succeeding in persuading other more reluctant EU actors. Their 'institutionalisation' has also helped raise the costs of non action. The motivations can range from instrumentalist rationality to cognitive views about the legitimacy of such principles. However, these are trumped not just by conflicting 'interests', but also by different cognitive understandings of the opportunity to pursue human rights and democracy. Action is thus the result of bargaining between different 'constituencies' within the EU on the basis of both rationalist arguments as well as ideational views

New forms of democratic citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa: an alternative approach for the EU and the United States. Euspring Working Paper No. 3 July 2016

The Arab Spring and its truncated aftermath raise many important questions about political reform. Citizenship and rights, in particular, form an important area of concern in light of the obstacles to wholesale democratization and to the reform of formal institutional structures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As most regimes have pushed back strongly against societal pressure for political opening, many reformers hope that active citizenship can compensate for the lack of progress in other areas. One of the few enduring legacies of the flowering of democratic activism in 2011 is citizens’ search for more active involvement in decisions that affect their day-to-day lives — even as the prospect of democratization has receded in most states. This has engendered much debate over how citizens across the region understand rights — and whether they seek a concept of citizenship that is distinct to the region

The National Politics of EU Enlargement in the Western Balkans

European enlargement has often been viewed from an institutional perspective. The academic literature in the field has tended to focus primarily on how the Commission or the Council has addressed the issue of EU expansion. Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of individual member states. This article considers the way in which domestic political concerns and national politics affects the way in which EU members approach enlargement to the Western Balkans. It does this by examining studies conducted on seven countries: Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Greece and Cyprus. It shows that there are in fact a wide variety of factors that shape individual member state attitudes towards enlargement. These factors include economic and commercial goals, ties to the region and to individual accession states, concerns over immigration, general foreign policy priorities and national ideological approaches towards the future shape and orientation of the European Union