Frédéric Mérand - Böcker

Based on four years of embedded observation in the cabinet of a European Commissioner, this book develops a sociology of international political work. Empirically, it offers an insider's chronicle of the European Union between 2015 and 2019. The analysis traces the successes and failures of Commissioner Pierre Moscovici and his team on five issues that defined European politics between 2015 and 2019: the Greek crisis, budgetary disputes with Spain and Portugal, the rise of populism in Italy, the reform of the eurozone, and the fight against tax evasion. The aim is not to ascertain whether the Commission's policy was good or bad, but to understand how political work is done in a European Union where the 'spectacle of power' is blurred by 24 official languages, 28 national histories, a powerful technocracy, and sometimes opaque institutions. As a life-long socialist politician and former French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici was perhaps the most intensely political character in Jean-Claude Juncker's self-styled 'Political Commission'. Brandishing his leftist identity, rejecting technocratic talk, he surrounded himself with staffers sharing his ambition - but also critical of his actions. Shadowing them from the corridors of the Berlaymont, the seat of the European Commission, to Washington and Athens, The Political Commissioner throws light on the partisan struggles that shaped the Juncker Commission, tensions with the Eurogroup and the Parliament, and recurring conflicts with the Member States. It also shows how political staffers operate informally and in their interaction with the media and civil servants, as they craft and sell public policies to the public.In this ethnographic narrative, French politics is never far away. Decoding the European policy of a French, Socialist Commissioner, first under François Hollande and then Emmanuel Macron, the book investigates the dynamics that sometimes bring Brussels and Paris together, sometimes set them apart.Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars.The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

This book explains the creation of the European Union's Security and Defence Policy - to this day the most ambitious project of peacetime military integration. Whether hailed as a vital step in the integration of Europe or berated as a wasteful threat to U.S. power, European citizens are increasingly interested in the common defence policy. Today, "European Defence" is more popular than the European Union itself, even in Great Britain. Mérand addresses the fundamental challenge posed by military integration to the way we think about the state in the 21st Century. Looking back over the past 50 years, he shows how statesmen, diplomats and soldiers have converged towards Brussels as a "natural" solution to their concerns but also as something worth fighting over. The actors most closely associated to the formation of nation-states are now shaping a transgovernmental security and defence arena. As a result, defence policy is being denationalized. Exploring the complex relations between the state, the military, and citizenship in today's Europe, Mérand argues that European Defence is a symptom, but not a cause, of the transformation of the state. This book is an original contribution to the theory of European integration. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Mérand develops a political sociology of international relations which seeks to bridge institutionalism and constructivism. His careful study of practices, social representations and power structures sheds new light on security and defence cooperation, but also on European cooperation more generally.

How great powers react to their inevitable decline shapes their own destiny as well as the course of international politics. Leaders can decide to engage with others or isolate themselves; to build alliances or initiate war; to stoke up nationalism or invest in innovation; to focus on economic competition or develop their people's soft power. While some of these coping strategies foster cooperation, others provoke conflict with neighbours. In Coping with Geopolitical Decline leading political scientists, historians, and sociologists explore the strategies adopted by leaders and domestic elites to prevent, reverse, or deny the decline of their country. Analyzing four European cases (Byzantium, England, France, Russia) before turning to the contemporary debate in the United States, they argue that geopolitics is not fate. Coping strategies depend on the context, which includes cultural representations of decline, the experience of military defeat, and domestic politics. Whether elites choose to modernize their economy, bolster their diplomatic status, or launch preventive war makes a difference in the extent and speed of a country's decline. By the same token, coping strategies affect world order. A well-managed decline allows for a peaceful power transition. Some strategies, however, may preserve the peace at the expense of a country's standing, while others will stave off decline but encourage imperialist adventures or precipitate military conflicts. As the United States challenges the liberal international order, fights back China's ascendency, and reconsiders its traditional alliances, Coping with Geopolitical Decline analyzes key lessons from Europe's experience and provides comparative insight into the likely dynamics of cooperation and conflict in the twenty-first century.

COVID-19 sparked the largest global crisis of the 21st century, extending well beyond public health. For some, the impact was swift and dramatic, with the pandemic pushing tens of millions into poverty and creating extreme food insecurity; for others, the transformations are still bubbling under the surface. Efforts to arrest the spread of COVID-19 entailed far-reaching forms of government intervention and the extensive use of new technologies. Questions thus remain as to whether the societal changes brought about by COVID-19 will endure in the post-pandemic period. The return of geopolitics, along with the war in Ukraine and tensions in Asia, have further complexified an already complex global situation._x000D__x000D_Since March 2020, there has been an explosion of analyses about the short-term impacts and future global consequences of COVID-19. Parallels to the 1930s collapse of Europe have been made, as recounted by Stefan Zweig in his famous memoir, The World of Yesterday. While most commentators are pessimistic, some are looking for positive change. Faced with this unprecedented crisis, we have been propelled to think about how, in the “next world,” we can strengthen economic prosperity, social justice, the environment, gender relations, public health, and political institutions—or at least ensure that these features of our world do not continue to deteriorate._x000D__x000D_In The Afterworld, 50 professors from four Montreal universities, among the foremost experts in their fields, propose progressive, pragmatic, and social science-based ideas with the potential to improve international cooperation, security, human rights, and sustainable prosperity beyond the pandemic.

When thinking about relations between Europe and Russia, International Relations scholars focus on why conflict has replaced cooperation. The "geostrategic debate" excludes the possible coexistence of cooperation and conflict. Tracking the evolution of conflict and cooperation patterns in three zones of contact (Estonia, Kaliningrad, and Moldova) between 1991 and 2016, this edited volume argues that, although the standard narrative remains compelling, local patterns of cooperation and conflict are partly autonomous from the geostrategic level. To account for the coexistence of cooperation and conflict, the first chapter elaborates a theoretical proposition distinguishing fluid, rigid, and disputed symbolic boundaries, which have different impacts on the ground. The subsequent chapters address distinct dimensions of Euro-Russian relations, paying attention to local reality in Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, or Kaliningrad, different sectors from energy to peoples’ movement, and across institutional contexts such as the EU and NATO. They confirm that the standard narrative holds in most cases, but also that Euro-Russian relations vary in crucial ways according to the interests and representations of actors immersed in specific geopolitical fields. Despite a deterioration of geostrategic relations between Europe and Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, Cooperation and Conflict between Europe and Russia explores the intriguing coexistence of conflict and cooperation at the local level and across sectors and institutions. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal East European Politics.

When thinking about relations between Europe and Russia, International Relations scholars focus on why conflict has replaced cooperation. The "geostrategic debate" excludes the possible coexistence of cooperation and conflict. Tracking the evolution of conflict and cooperation patterns in three zones of contact (Estonia, Kaliningrad, and Moldova) between 1991 and 2016, this edited volume argues that, although the standard narrative remains compelling, local patterns of cooperation and conflict are partly autonomous from the geostrategic level. To account for the coexistence of cooperation and conflict, the first chapter elaborates a theoretical proposition distinguishing fluid, rigid, and disputed symbolic boundaries, which have different impacts on the ground. The subsequent chapters address distinct dimensions of Euro-Russian relations, paying attention to local reality in Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, or Kaliningrad, different sectors from energy to peoples’ movement, and across institutional contexts such as the EU and NATO. They confirm that the standard narrative holds in most cases, but also that Euro-Russian relations vary in crucial ways according to the interests and representations of actors immersed in specific geopolitical fields. Despite a deterioration of geostrategic relations between Europe and Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, Cooperation and Conflict between Europe and Russia explores the intriguing coexistence of conflict and cooperation at the local level and across sectors and institutions. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal East European Politics.

There have been dramatic changes to the landscape of European security in the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The essays in European Security Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall collectively take stock of how approaches to security in Europe have changed, both in practice and in theory, since the end of the Cold War.Organized into three sections, this collection begins with an exploration of the broad changes in Europe's security environment relating to issues such as terrorism and the rising importance of energy security. The second section describes the adaptations of Europe's institutional framework, including the transformation of NATO and the evolution of European armed forces, while the closing essays examine regional security issues with the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia. Covering a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches and written in a clear, engaging style, European Security Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall will illuminate European security debates for years to come.

There have been dramatic changes to the landscape of European security in the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The essays in European Security Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall collectively take stock of how approaches to security in Europe have changed, both in practice and in theory, since the end of the Cold War.Organized into three sections, this collection begins with an exploration of the broad changes in Europe's security environment relating to issues such as terrorism and the rising importance of energy security. The second section describes the adaptations of Europe's institutional framework, including the transformation of NATO and the evolution of European armed forces, while the closing essays examine regional security issues with the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia. Covering a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches and written in a clear, engaging style, European Security Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall will illuminate European security debates for years to come.