Contemporary European Politics最新文献

Resilience is frequently used in EU and NATO policies; policy interventions have been designed to make subjects and objects more resilient. This article critically examines the articulation of resilience as an ‘empty signifier’ in EU and NATO policies, drawing on poststructuralist theory to problematise what resilience is represented to be. A critical methodology to policy analysis allows to question why resilience moved up the EU's and NATO's policy agenda in times of existential crises. This article contends that resilience signifies a controlled loss of control. Seemingly paradoxically, resilience stands for an unfulfilled demand. The EU and NATO frame resilience as the antidote to internal vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities have been publicly disclosed after recent exogenous shocks: the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine. The emptiness of resilience makes it a powerful discursive tool, enabling a wide range of policy interventions to materialise.

In view of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the global climate emergency, a strengthening of the common energy policy of the European Union (EU) seems more urgent than ever. Already in the decades before, the EU had repeatedly announced ambitious objectives to provide secure, competitive, and sustainable energy to businesses and consumers. To date, however, it often falls short of meeting such objectives. This article scrutinizes the main obstacles in the definition and realization of a common energy policy. It argues that two key factors—different national preferences and conflicting policy objectives—account for the difficulties. The article, relying on a careful assessment of primary documents like European Council conclusions and communications by the European Commission, documents the relevance of these two factors and how they have played out over the past 50 years of European energy policy.

This article introduces the concept of political long-termism, defined as the conscious choice to prioritise the future consequences of today's political actions over their short-term benefits and emphasises its relevance in the realm of European Studies. It contends that the European Union (EU), in theory, possesses the potential to address creeping crises more effectively than its member states, while acknowledging the varying degrees of support for political long-termism within different EU institutions. The article advocates for additional research to explore the EU and international organisations' role in fostering political long-termism, an area that has seen limited empirical investigation. To do so, it proposes five research questions as a starting point to establish political long-termism as a subdiscipline of European Studies. As such, it aims to set the agenda by shedding light on the intertemporal aspect of EU politics.

Various studies have highlighted the considerable regulatory influence of the European Union (EU) on digital platform (DP) firms. However, the role of stakeholders in individual competition cases remains underexplored. To fill this gap, this article draws on the conceptual framework of Market Power Europe and contends that the main sources of the European Commission's influence in this field are not only the EU's market size and regulatory capacity but also relevant market information provided by stakeholders such as consumer groups, business associations, and the target firm's competitors. Market information helps the Commission alleviate the problem of information asymmetry and effectively regulate complex and fast-moving areas such as DP markets. A close analysis of three Google antitrust cases concluded between 2017 and 2019 provides initial empirical evidence supporting this conclusion. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on EU competition policy and greater understanding of the global political economy in relation to DP firms.

This article provides an analysis of the relationship between the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and the European Union (EU) focusing on its purposes and functions, by exploring the literature on interregionalism through the perspectives of three distinct schools of thought: neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism and constructivism. Considering the functions theoretically fed by these theories behind interregional relations-balancing, institution-building and collective identity-building-, the paper attempts at providing a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing the past and current purposes and functions of Mercosur-EU relations and holds the potential to anticipate future trends. Our central argument underscores the enduring relevance of the setting of rules and norms and the focus on material gains in shaping the core of the relationship, particularly regarding the trade agreement, while the ideational function of sharing collective identity and values has experienced certain erosion. Nevertheless, increasingly crucial will be the geopolitical purpose, concerning balancing and counterbalancing external actors, given the current era of geopolitical upheaval where binary narratives fall short. We are not concerned with forecasting the future of the relationship as a whole; instead, we aim to analyse which functions will hold greater significance.

Marchese, M. & Tortola, P.D. (2024) Political violence in far-right memory: Fratelli d'Italia's remembrance of the Primavalle arson. Contemporary European Politics, 2, e9. https://doi.org/10.1002/cep4.9

A new reference, [King, 2019], was added to the article and introduced in the main text.

King, A. (2019) Italy's secular martyrs: The construction, role and maintenance of secular martyrdom in Italy from the twentieth century to the present day (PhD thesis, The University of Bristol). Available from: https://hdl.handle.net/1983/6c811f79-7e86-46c8-827a-ae388d63d772

The relationship between the (populist) far right and the past is the subject of increasing scholarly interest. The deployment, reassessment and at times manipulation of historical memory, in particular, is an important factor in the politics and mainstreaming of the European far right. The latter has a lot to gain from any shifts in collective memory placing nations' dark and shameful past in a more benevolent light. At the same time, far-right actors play an active role in such shifts, by routinely (ab)using the memory of the past for electoral gain. This article contributes to the research agenda on the memory politics of the far right by examining how Fratelli d'Italia – Italy's foremost far-right party – remembers and narrates the ‘years of lead’, a tumultuous and hotly contested chapter in the country's political history. More precisely, our analysis zooms in on the powerful trope of ‘secular martyrdom’ attached to the memory of that period, and looks at how this idea is mobilised by Fratelli d'Italia via the examination of a particularly tragic episode of the years of lead, namely, the 1973 Primavalle arson.

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) has progressively expanded its international footprint by collaborating with non-European Union (EU) partners to enhance the management and security of the EU's external borders. This article examines the development of Frontex's external relations through a two-level experimentalist governance lens and considers its impact on the EU's externalisation policy. The article contends that Frontex has enhanced its international profile in a context where EU policy actors' allocated goals have remained vague. The agency has had considerable autonomy in implementing these goals and has actively broadened its operational scope. The accountability dimension of Frontex's external relations, however, remains an important concern. To address this challenge, the article advocates greater transparency and disclosure, along with increased parliamentary and public oversight of Frontex.