Contemporary European Politics

Publisher:
Wiley Online Library
Publication date:
2025-10-17

Issue Number

Latest documents

  • Issue Information
  • The Interplay of Policy and Practice on Europeanisation in the Context of the European Universities Initiative

    This paper examines how Europeanisation unfolds within European University Alliances (EUAs) by analysing the interplay between EU-level policy frameworks and locally embedded academic practices. It advances a conceptually integrated approach situated at the intersection of European integration studies, international relations and higher education research, with the primary aim of explaining how Europeanisation is produced and practised at the subnational level rather than merely assessing policy implementation outcomes. The paper rests on a three-part conceptual framework combining subnational Europeanisation, paradiplomacy and science diplomacy, and explicitly links these perspectives to concrete organisational mechanisms within EUAs: knowledge-creating teams (KCTs). Subnational Europeanisation provides the overarching analytical lens, conceptualising universities as subnational actors through which European norms, values and governance logics are interpreted and institutionalised. Paradiplomacy specifies the mode of agency exercised by universities, capturing their capacity to initiate and govern transnational cooperation. Science diplomacy, in turn, explains the functional logic through which academic collaboration serves simultaneously epistemic, relational and integrative purposes. In conclusion, KCT structures are examined as sites where EU policy objectives are translated into locally embedded practices (vertical Europeanisation) while also enabling peer-to-peer learning, norm diffusion and institutional convergence across borders (horizontal Europeanisation). The analysis demonstrates that Europeanisation within EUAs is not a linear process of policy transmission but a negotiated, uneven process shaped by institutional capacities, power asymmetries and strategic interpretation. By systematically connecting the conceptual framework to specific organisational mechanisms, the paper contributes to the analytical relevance of paradiplomacy and science diplomacy to Europeanisation research, and positions EUAs as active arenas—rather than passive instruments—of European integration in higher education.

  • Beyond the Classroom: International Field Trips in Postgraduate Politics and International Relations Education

    International field trips are typically designed to meet multiple objectives. First, they serve a pedagogical value: as a form of active and experiential learning, they enhance learning and provide students with the opportunity to connect concepts and theories to real-world practice. Second, they serve a cohort-building purpose: by bringing students together with their peers over a multi-day period, they are likely to strengthen their sense of community within their programme and, in turn, enhance their overall student experience. Third, field trips can shape professional development: by giving students the opportunity to meet with a variety of practitioners in professional settings, they may get a clearer sense, or fresh ideas, about how (and where) they may use their academic experience beyond graduation and enhance the attainment of transferable professional skills. Using survey data collected before and after postgraduate study trips to Brussels, this paper investigates the extent to which academic field trips in politics and international relations (IRs) meet their intended objectives. The study highlights the importance of international study trips and how they may be most effectively designed.

  • Regulatory Power Beyond the Brussels Effect—How Data Localisation Requirements Restructure Global Cloud-Infrastructures

    The regulatory power of the European Union (EU) is commonly conceptualised as its capacity to externalise its regulations into other jurisdictions, a form of influence widely referred to as the Brussels effect. Yet, within the digital economy, scholars observe a departure from global regulatory convergence toward patterns of competition, conflict, and divergence. These developments raise the question of how changing global conditions affect the nature and scope of the EU's regulatory power in the digital economy. This paper argues that regulatory divergence foregrounds another, less explored aspect of the EU's regulatory power: its structural dimension. It contends that the global influence of European regulations not only operates through regulatory diffusion, but that regulations can also function as instruments of structural power that reshape global (infra)structural networks underpinning the digital economy. These (infra)structural changes, in turn, affect global power dynamics conditioned by those very structures. The argument builds on a two-dimensional understanding of structural power that bridges the power operating through structures and the power to shape those very structures. The paper illustrates the structural dimension of the regulatory power of the EU through an exploratory case study in the cloud sector, where European data localisation requirements trigger a market mechanism, labelled here as the ‘pull-in effect’. This mechanism restructures the topography of global infrastructure networks by provoking the establishment of ‘sovereign’ cloud capacities in the EU. By influencing the spatial architecture of these cloud infrastructures, European regulations affect global power dynamics in the data economy by mitigating strategic vulnerabilities arising from asymmetrical interdependence. The paper aims to contribute to scholarly discussions concerned with the consequences of regulatory convergence in the digital economy, changing (infra-)structural dynamics, and the geoeconomic turn of the EU.

  • The Island of Ireland and the European Union: Past, Present and Future

    This Special Collection explores the evolving relationship between the island of Ireland and the European Union (EU) against a backdrop of profound political, economic and geopolitical change. Brexit, shifting EU security priorities, growing global trade uncertainty and other challenges have disrupted long-standing patterns of Irish engagement with Europe, with distinct consequences for both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Addressing themes ranging from crisis governance and external relations to peacebuilding, taxation and identity politics, the contributions highlight the diverse ways in which Ireland's European future is being reshaped. Organised around the dual contexts of the Republic and Northern Ireland, and complemented by cross-border analyses, this Special Collection highlights the importance of an all-island perspective. Collectively, the articles shed light on broader questions concerning small states in the EU, the management of crises, the long and demanding journey of building peace and the interplay between domestic and European change, while emphasising both Ireland's vulnerabilities and its agency as it navigates an uncertain European and global order.

  • From Conflict to Synergy? Climate Policy Coherence in EU External Energy Policy Towards Natural Gas Suppliers

    As climate change has become central to EU policymaking over the last decades, questions have emerged about the extent to which climate objectives have reshaped the EU's external energy policy (EEP). This article investigates the evolution of EU's EEP towards major gas suppliers and identifies the institutional, material, and ideational conditions underpinning its coherence with climate goals. The analysis reveals increasing alignment with climate objectives, initially driven by commercial and geopolitical interests, and later reinforced by stronger climate-related institutional and discursive enablers, albeit unevenly across the cases—reflecting the relevance of supplier-specific characteristics. Overall, the study suggests that the geography of Europe's future energy relations will increasingly reflect the intersection of environmental imperatives and strategic considerations, and that EEP coherence with climate objectives is attainable when the EU pursues stringent climate action.

  • Norm Transformation in EU Research Security: A Pragmatist Approach

    This article examines the recent development of a research security policy agenda in the EU. In responding to changes in the geopolitical environment, the EU has adapted its research and innovation policy by subjecting it to security concerns. At stake in this development is the norm of openness in international science, and more broadly, the status of the liberal values and principles on which the EU rests. To examine this development, this article mobilises pragmatist norm transformation theory, which, in brief, proposes that norms transform through the reorientation of conventions and the creative adaptation to changing political circumstances. Through this theoretical lens, the article analyses key policy documents about research security coming out of the EU from 2021 to 2024 and finds that the norm of openness in international research was transformed through the negotiation of two main discursive tensions: open/safe science and national/global security. These tensions were ultimately reconciled, moreover, as the EU framed international research cooperation as ‘open and safe’ and in need of ‘derisking, not decoupling’.

  • Issue Information
  • Imagining Climate and Environmental Transformation in the European Union

    The EU is clearly committed to its response to the climate and environmental crisis. Transformative policy solutions and targets have been set within the Union to restore 90% of degraded ecosystems and reach climate neutrality by 2050. The EU also remains one of the biggest donors of climate and environmental development aid. Green growth, good governance, adaptation and mitigation strategies, technology, corporate social responsibility, and other locales of change are intended to lead toward a more sustainable, secure and equitable future. These policies are commendable, but what potential do they have as transformative capacities? This article examines the underlying value systems that legitimise current EU climate and environmental policy for the purpose of critically reflecting on the Union's ability to effect fundamental changes to social, political and economic systems. Via a discourse and visual analysis on speeches, policy documents and images, the outcome suggests that policy development ought to reflect on human-nature interconnectedness to overcome the limitation of its eco-modernist and utilitarian value system.

  • What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Euroscepticism? Relaunching the Conceptual Debate About a Contested Term

    Euroscepticism has become a mainstream phenomenon in European politics since the concept's first appearance in The Times of 11 November 1985. The post-Maastricht Treaty period was an important initial turning point, but Euroscepticism became especially visible during the crises that hit the European Union more recently. Along the way, ‘Euroscepticism’ has become a catch-all label referring to a broad range of positions. Our work engages with the resulting conceptual confusion. Since Taggart's famous 1998 article on the concept, ‘Euroscepticism’ has been examined from different perspectives. However, despite initial conceptual discussions following the publication of Taggart's article, conceptual work on Euroscepticism has become rare. Our paper presents an argumentation for relaunching this conceptual debate. We introduce our idea of ‘concept’ as a theoretical problem deriving from the necessity to face an unknown, blurred entity, and make a case for treating Euroscepticism as a sensitising concept. To illustrate our argument, we discuss a historical timeline to show that Euroscepticism cannot be disconnected from the history of the European project. We also present three generations of Euroscepticism research and how they deal with the phenomenon. We conclude with suggestions for new conceptual endeavours in the study of Euroscepticism.

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