The Internal-External Security Nexus and EU Police/Rule of Law Missions in the Western Balkans

Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) police/rule of law missions in the Western Balkans are increasingly guided by externally imposed normative agendas that respond primarily to EU internal security needs rather than functional imperatives or local realities. In line with these needs, EU police reform efforts tend to prioritise effectiveness and crime fighting over longer- term democratic policing and good governance reforms. In practice this means that police reform initiatives are technocratically oriented, yet value ridden fitting EU security concerns and needs. As a result, the police reform process can be—and often is—disconnected from the political and socio-economic reforms necessary for long-term stability and sustainable peace. Police assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been shaped by a determined albeit questionable focus on organised crime and corruption. The focus of EU police reform in Macedonia on primarily crime-fighting aspects of policing has compromised the functioning of the Macedonian police. Similarly, the politics of (non-)recognition of Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence and the intrusiveness of EULEX Kosovo's executive mandate contravene meeting local challenges

Be Free? The European Union's post-Arab Spring Women's Empowerment as Neoliberal Governmentality

This article analyses post-Arab Spring EU initiatives to promote women's empowerment in the Southern Mediterranean region. Inspired by Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, it investigates empowerment as a technology of biopolitics that is central to the European neoliberal model of governance. In contrast to dominant images such as normative power Europe that present the EU as a norm-guided actor promoting political liberation, the article argues that the EU deploys a concept of functional freedom meant to facilitate its vision of economic development. As a consequence, the alleged empowerment of women based on the self-optimisation of individuals and the statistical control of the female population is a form of bio-power. In this regard, empowerment works as a governmental technology of power instead of offering a measure to foster fundamental structural change in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) societies. The EU therefore fails in presenting and promoting an alternative normative political vision distinct from the incorporation of women into the hierarchy of the existing market society

From Financial Crisis to a Crisis of Interpellation: Unpacking Ideology Production in the European Union and Clarifying How Its Failures Affect Foreign Affairs

We identify an ideology gap in the Marxist EU (European Union) literature, which we then set out to narrow by identifying and analysing core elements of the particularising EU version of the global ideology of feel-good and ethical capitalism through which the EU interpellates certain subaltern classes towards identifying with the deepening and widening of neoliberal governance. We then show, by means of discourse analysis, how ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) secure but also occasionally undermine the ideological bloc of dominant and dominated classes. We conclude by arguing that the ideological dimension of EU foreign policy is becoming increasingly important as the EU’s self-ascribed status as a uniquely normative power in world politics offers multiple opportunities for ISAs to obscure the reality of a materially increasingly polarised EU whose internal structure has acquired pronounced imperialist properties during the recent financial crisis. This does not harbour well for international order in Europe and beyond.Published versio

From Westphalia to post-Westphalia: European integration and the debate about economic and monetary union, 1980-1991

Most current studies of the EC/EU assume that the Realist ratio scripta of international relations no longer has anything important to say about politics in Western Europe. Three propositions are widely taken for granted. First, having been written in the language of power, Realism is no longer an appropriate guide to the interaction among Community governments. Especially economic integration represents the interests of societal actors who seek to maximize their material gains in the context of interdependence. Second, the Realist warnings of the dangers of international anarchy are irrelevant in the EC/EU. There governments have stopped to distrust each others' foreign policy intentions because they have come to believe in each others' commitment to the spirit of joint problem-solving. Third, the Realist proposition that states hold fast to sovereignty in order to preserve their self-help capabilities no longer applies to Western Europe. Responding to, the popular cries for welfare benefits (broadly defined), Community governments have made their peace with the fact that the effective, management of interdependence requires that the attributes of sovereignty are shared among a number of interlocking governmental and non-governmental actors. Together these Idealist arguments support the thesis that the EC/EU has by now evolved beyond the international state of nature and become a post-Westphalian utopia: a transnational polity in which power politics, Hobbesian fear and sovereignty-consciousness play little role in shaping policy. I probe the descriptive power of this Idealist thesis in detailed case studies of the French, German and British policy debates about European monetary integration and German reunification. I find that there are important strands of Idealism in the politics of integration. Yet, the EC/EU is not (yet) the post-Westphalian utopia portrayed by many students of integration. In short, Realism is not obsolete.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat

Študije o OVSE

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has been givenlittle attention in International Relations scholarship. Against this background, 2001 was a bumper year for (English) books on the institution withfour major contributions emerging. Yet, if one turns from quantity to quality, one returns to normality. All but one of the books is descriptive, which is indicative of the state of the art. OSCE studies mostly eschew any explicit reference to analytical frameworks or theories. Such a descriptive orientation limits what can be said about the institution. This essay brings three theoretical frameworks into focus in order to illustrate the argument that research on the OSCE would benefit from a theoretical turn. It is shown how these three approaches - constructivist security studies, the Copenhagen school and Foucauldian power analysis - extend OSCE studies in previously unexplored directions, thereby opening new windows on the institution to reveal aspects of what it is and what it does that have not been brought to light before. While these three approaches do not exhaust the possibilities for theoretically informed research on the OSCE, they do point out the need for going beyond the state of the art of OSCE studies.V mednarodnih odnosih kot znanstveni disciplini je bila Organizacija za varnost in sodelovanje v Evropi (OVSE) deležna le malo pozornosti. Zato je bilo leto 2001 izjemno za (angleško) literaturo o njej, saj so izšle kar štiri študije. Vendar ko se od količine ozremo h kvaliteti, lahko zopet opazimo normalno stanje. Razen ene od študij so vse druge opisne, kar je sicer značilno za to področje proučevanja. Študije o OVSE se večinoma izogibajo vsakršnega neposrednega nanašanja na analitične okvire in teorije. Taka opisna naravnanost nujno omejuje tisto, kar je o OVSE mogoče povedati. Zato se članek osredotoča na tri teoretične okvire, da bi ponazoril trditev, koliko bi proučevanje OVSE pridobilo s teoretično osmislitvijo. Kaže, kako trije takšni pristopi - konstruktivistične varnostne študije, kopenhagenska šola in foucaujevska analiza moči - bogatijo proučevanje OVSE v še neraziskani smeri. Tako odkriva tudi nove, še nerazumljene vidike tega, kaj ta institucija je in kaj počne. Čeprav ti trije pristopi ne izčrpajo možnosti za teoretično osmišljeno proučevanje OVSE, pa poudarjajo potrebo po preseganju sedanje opisne metode pri njenem proučevanju