Working Group 3: Contestation

Working Group 3: Contestation

Our goals

EU foreign policy is normally seen as rooted in shared internal values and arrangements and as consisting in its externalization vis-à-vis third countries and multilateral institutions. This has made it difficult to conceive the EU as the venue for political conflict over fundamental normative questions of foreign policy. Yet, changing external realities – including the contestation of the international liberal order by emerging powers and the US – erode internal support for a liberal world order and multilateral global governance. Simultaneously, the normative “consensus” underpinning EU foreign policy is also being challenged from within, with the rise of right wing populism, Euroscepticism and a return to national solutions. The aim of this WG is therefore to explore the extent and the ways in which core norms that traditionally underpin EU foreign policy are being contested within the EU itself.

Our activities

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How to participate

Please contact the working group coordinators if you would like to join.

The Liberal International Theory Tradition in Europe, edited by Knud Erik Jørgensen11/01/2021 - 3:43 pm
This book examines how the liberal international theory tradition evolved in Europe. It includes nine chapters focusing on both historical and contemporary branches of liberal IR theorizing. The combined portrait of the prominent IR theory orientation shows a long and rich theoretical tradition but also a tradition that the scholarly community rarely fully recognize. It […]
Loyal at once? The EU’s global health awakening in the Covid-19 pandemic by Louise van Schaik, Knud Erik Jørgensen and Remco van de Pas31/12/2020 - 2:38 pm
The Covid-19 pandemic marks a shift in the EU’s approach to the multilateral system. Just at a time when the EU aspires to avoid being crushed between the US and China, the World Health Organization (WHO) became one of the new battlegrounds in world politics. This norm-setting international organization for health was already under pressure […]
Conceptual analytical avenues known and unknown by Knud Erik Jørgensen18/12/2020 - 2:50 pm
Conceptual history in the European space, edited by Willibald Steinmetz, Michael Freeden, and Javier Fernández-Sebastián, New York, Berghahn Books, 2017, 311 pp., $149.00/£110.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-78533-482-5In search of European liberalisms: concepts, languages, ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden, Javier Fernández-Sebastián, and Jörn Leonhard, New York, Berghahn Books, 2019, 346 pp., $135.00/£99.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-78920-280-9 Knud Erik […]
COST Action ENTER Policy Brief No. 6: December 2020 – Time to Reassess the Reliability of the Eastern Partnership: The Need for Segmentation and Micro-Regional Strategies09/12/2020 - 10:06 am
COST Action ENTER BRIEF NO. 6 / December 2020 – Time to Reassess the Reliability of the Eastern Partnership: The Need for Segmentation and Micro-Regional Strategies by Mădălin Blidaru This policy brief assesses the achievements of Eastern Partnership and recommends that the EU to adopt a strategy tailored to address Eastern Partnership countries within micro-regional […]
The EEAS navigating foreign policy paradigms by Knud Erik Jørgensen, Jonas Gejl Kaas, Tonny Brems Knudsen, Gert Tinggaard Svendsen and Laura Landorff27/11/2020 - 3:07 pm
Addressing the issue of EU foreign policy, this article analyses one of the European institutions, the EEAS, and examines how the EEAS navigates in a European landscape characterised by a handful of main foreign policy paradigms. In particular, we ask how the EEAS has adjusted its foreign policies in the light of competing paradigms. In […]
A Perceptual Approach to EU Public Diplomacy: Investigating Collaborative Diplomacy in EU-Ukraine Relations by Natalia Chaban and Ole Elgström23/10/2020 - 3:22 pm
This article contributes to the theorisation of collaborative public diplomacy by introducing a perceptual approach. Engaging with the collaborative diplomacy paradigm developed to conceptualise public diplomacy in the context of non-traditional security threats and conflicts, as well as nation building, the article explores and compares perceptions of the European Union (EU) as a public diplomacy […]