Pressing the reset button in Euro-Mediterranean security relations?

Almost two decades after the Barcelona Declaration, the European Union (EU) is still struggling to engage positively with its southern neighbours. Security has been the key concern in this relationship, with the EU putting forward a short-term agenda, often inconsistent with the policies, institutions and long-term goals of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. This article argues that the so-called Arab Spring has induced a soul-searching process within the European institutions that has opened the possibility for Brussels to reinvent its relations with the Middle East and North Africa countries, particularly in the field of security

Visibility and politics: an Arendtian reading of the US drone policy

This article analyses the critical connections between drones as lethal technological devices, visibility, and the very possibility of politics. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s core postulates on politics, modern security and society, it problematises the political implications of using drones as a prominent security instrument in contemporary life. This reading is unpacked through the concept of visibility as a critical reference to analyse how security policies are dealt with politically. It suggests that drones have operated as an instrument of double invisibility, both to those living in the contexts where they are employed, and to those under whose name they are being used. The consequences of this invisibility for political life and the practice of security are also discussed in the light of the policy under the Obama administration

Drones and the uninsurable security subjects

This paper engages with the security dynamics underlying the use of drones and their impact on security subjects – individuals and groups that are the ultimate recipients of specific security policies, regardless of whether these have beneficial effects on them. Using Mark Duffield’s distinction between the insured Global North and the non-insured Global South, this paper discusses how drones generate a radical dissociation between the intervener and the intervened that ultimately produces new security environments at the margins of the international system. These new security environments are defined by the articulation between space, technologies and bodies: bodies of invisible subjects; bodies that are uninsurable

Debates críticos: os estudos de segurança e o futuro dos estudos da paz e dos conflitos

Irredeemably connected by the proximity of their research objects, Security Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies were constituted and developed throughout the Cold War as antagonistic disciplines. This was a division mostly operated in Europe, where Galtung and his disciples directed the study of peace and war to a clearly normative and critical agenda, while the study of security remained mostly policy oriented. As argued in this article, there was, by the end of the bipolar conflict, a role inversion, with Peace and Conflict Studies accommodated to an empiricism void of any explicit normativity, whilst Security Studies, at least in Europe, opened up to new approaches of a more critical stance. It is here suggested that such inversion should provide important lessons for Peace and Conflict Studies, namely on the centrality of theory for the definition of a new critical agenda that could also contribute to bring both disciplines closer to each other

A Turquia de Erdogan: o início do fim ou somente o fim do início?

2014 was a year of paradoxes in Turkey. Internally, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's power was reinforced by winning the two elections, local and presidential, with comfortable margins in spite of the antigovernmentprotests and the corruption scandals involving the government. This was a scenario feared by many who see Erdogan an increasingly authoritarian leader. Externally, Ankara had to face the escalation of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and the rise of the Islamic State, in a period in which Turkey seems to lack a coherent foreign policy strategy

Progressive realism and the EU’s international actorness: towards a grand strategy?

The EU lacks a coherent strategy to guide its international actions.This is a problem that has been amply discussed in both academic and policy-making circles, but that remains to be fully addressed. The December 2013 European Council recognised the issue, and the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini is in charge of a strategic review that will lead to a global strategy by June 2016. Most arguments in favour of a grand strategy rely on utilitarian arguments that highlight the EU’s potential for a more efficient foreign policy. By linking a progressive realist approach to the importance of an EU grand strategy, this article intends to demonstrate the normative need for such a guiding document. As it will be argued, a grand strategy is a necessary step in the consolidation of the EU as a pluralist postnational polity that has in the fulfilment of its citizens’ interests its raison d’être

Introduction:strategy in EU foreign policy

The point of departure for the special collection is provided by the observation that the growing complexity of the crises in the neighbourhood and the internal ones faced by the Union provides a sense of urgency to any type of strategic thinking that the EU might embrace. Against this backdrop, the recent shift towards geopolitics and strategic thinking is contextualized and the understanding of key aspects of ways in which the shift is translated into strategies by EU actors is put forward. The analysis recognizes the recent developments within the institutional dimension of EU’s foreign and security policy, yet it confirms the fundamental meaning of the member states’ willingness to invest resources and harmonize their foreign policy strategies at the EU level

Spatial distribution of Madeira Island Laurisilva endemic spiders (Arachnida: Araneae).

Madeira island presents a unique spider diversity with a high number of endemic species, many of which are still poorly known. A recent biodiversity survey on the terrestrial arthropods of the native forest, Laurisilva, provided a large set of standardized samples from various patches throughout the island. Out of the fifty two species recorded, approximately 33.3% are Madeiran endemics, many of which had not been collected since their original description. Two new species to science are reported ? Ceratinopsis n. sp. and Theridion n. sp. ? and the first records of Poeciloneta variegata (Blackwall, 1841) and Tetragnatha intermedia Kulczynski, 1891 are reported for the first time for Madeira island. Considerations on species richness and abundance from different Laurisilva locations are presented, together with distribution maps for endemic species. These results contribute to a better understanding of spider diversity patterns and endemic species distribution in the native forest of Madeira island