Other News

The European Union is experiencing considerable turbulence, both in the domestic politics of its member states and in its international environment. A key characteristic of this turbulence are the close linkages between what is seen as ‘domestic’, ‘European’ and ‘international’, with many tensions and disputes rooted in at least two of these domains. This round table event is designed to explore these linkages and their political consequences with a focus on one area of concern: borders and their maintenance or modification. The event takes place on Thursday 18th May, at 6pm, in OC0.04, The Oculus.

Despite ideas of a ‘borderless world’ that have gained currency as part of globalization, there is no doubt that borders retain substantial symbolic and practical importance, and that if anything this has increased in recent years. The tension between borders as barriers and as crossing-places can be seen in a range of European and international processes:

• Peace-building and conflict transformation
• Integration and disintegration
• Migration and its management
• Movement of goods and capital

In this round table, we focus especially on issues relating to peace-building and conflict transformation, and migration and its management. Speakers will present a range of views focusing on the politics of North/South relations in Ireland, of Scotland’s place within the United Kingdom, of Cyprus and of migration into the EU and its member states, with the aim of uncovering the conceptual and political dimensions of border management in a turbulent EU.

Dr George Christou, PAIS
Dr Dallal Stevens, Warwick Law School
Francie Molloy, MP (Mid-Ulster, Sinn Fein)
Don Flynn, Founder and Former Director of Migrants' Rights Network
Chair: Professor Michael Smith, PAIS

Register for the free event here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/europe-in-question-round-table-crossing-borders-in-a-turbulent-european-union-tickets-33208758290

PAIS GEM Fellow has published the most recent peacekeeping profile of Italy in Providing for Peacekeeping. Providing for Peacekeeping is an independent research project of the International Peace Institute, the Elliott School at George Washington University, and the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the University of Queensland.

Italy’s profile is available here: http://www.providingforpeacekeeping.org/2017/04/13/peacekeeping-contributor-profile-italy-2-2017/

'The Epistemology of Counterterrorism' Event - 12th May - Scarman House

Colleagues and PhD students are welcome to attend this free event on the epistemologies and suspect assumptions which underwrite the War on Terror, run by Prof Quassim Cassam (Philosophy) and Dr Charlotte Heath-Kelly (PAIS). The event is funded by Professor Cassam's AHRC leadership award on intellectual vices.

The program can be found here: https://epistemologyofcounterterrorism.wordpress.com/about/ 

Places are free, but limited. Please register your interest by emailing Professor Cassam: q.cassam@warwick.ac.uk

Speakers include Professor Ruth Blakeley, Professor Richard Jackson, Dr Andrew Neal, Dr Lee Jarvis, and many more!

The Warwick speakers include Prof Jon Coaffee (PAIS), Prof Andrew Williams (Law), Prof Quassim Cassam (Philosophy) & Dr Charlotte Heath-Kelly (PAIS).

March sees publication of the fifth revised and updated edition of the popular Oxford University Press textbook Politics in the Developing World. The textbook is edited by Professor Peter Burnell, Lise Rakner and Vicky Randall, together with publication of Peter’s chapter ‘From supporting democracy to supporting autocracy’ in the fourth revised and updated edition of Daniele Caramani’s highly successful Oxford University Press book Comparative Politics (at chapter 25, pages 437-52).

Peter’s new research paper in the CSGR Working Paper series, International Party Assistance by ‘Bad Guys’ has also been published.

The Working Paper develops an agenda for researching international support for political parties and politicians in other countries by so called leading autocracies, and for comparing the findings with the political party support that is provided within the context of international democracy promotion. Although framed largely within the context of autocracy support to countries that are not consolidated liberal democracies, the Paper has relevance to the currently much publicised issue of Russian interest in political parties in some European countries and the United States too.

The paper can be read here: www.warwick.ac.uk/csgr/papers/283-17.pdf

Professor Richard Youngs has published a new book on the Ukraine conflict, titled 'Europe's Eastern Crisis: The Geopolitics of Asymmetry.'

In recent years, a series of crises have erupted on the European Union’s eastern borders. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine presented the EU with a major foreign policy challenge, both in Ukraine and across the other countries of the Eastern Partnership. In response, the EU has begun to map its own form of “liberal-redux geopolitics” that combines various strategic logics. This book traces the effect of these crises on the foreign policy of the EU, examining the changes in policies toward the countries on its eastern borders, the EU’s review of the Eastern Partnership, as well as the EU’s relations with Russia overall. It goes on to uncover whether the EU has contained the crisis or if it has set up new conditions for more instability in the future.

Reviews for this publication

“Richard Youngs’s new account of the complex geopolitical context in the Eastern Partnership region provides a nuanced, sophisticated, and empirically rich study that is invaluable in taking into account the opinions of diplomats, policymakers, and civil society in the EaP states themselves.”
—Eka Tkeshelashvili, head of EU Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine, former Georgian foreign minister, and president of the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies

“Ukraine and other states between these two ‘empires’ feel the heat again, and Richard Youngs’s book expertly maps a complex mosaic of power, ambition, and brinkmanship. Youngs’s engaging and balanced analysis is indispensable reading for everyone trying to comprehend the ongoing geopolitical turn and the evolution of the EU’s foreign and security policy.”
—Jan Zielonka, professor of European Politics, University of Oxford

The book is available to purchase through Cambridge University Press.