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This paper examines the EU and EU member states’ reactions to the 2015 refugee crisis from an ontological security perspective while arguing that these reactions are the product of three socio-psychological lenses, which have led to various responses to the perceived threat. The first reaction, ascribed especially to the Visegrad Four, is the “securitise-the-self” reaction to feelings of anxiety and ontological insecurity and involves reaffirmation of national biographical narratives and national immigration policies at the expense of supranational European policies. The second reaction is illustrated by the European Commission's response to the refugee crisis and involves “managing securitisation.” Accordingly, the Commission's reaction to ontological insecurity when faced with the challenge of unmanaged migration was to reaffirm the EU's semi-sovereign identity (collective border control competencies) while preserving a global discourse on human rights and refugee-related inclusive norms. The third reaction stemmed from viewing the crisis with the lenses of “empathy” and “desecuritisation” and is best illustrated by Germany's temporary “open door” policy on refugees that was driven by a psychological lack of perceived threat from the “immigrant-other” and a “civilian power” collective identity. The paper argues that recognising these three lenses can help us to understand socio-psychological reactions to immigration in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Eurocrisis to the migration crisis, and from Brexit to a strengthening far right, the European Union (EU) faces multiple stressors. But while crises unleash anxiety, they do not necessarily portend the worst: because they disrupt old routines, crises can open space for new political possibilities. As a self-consciously hybrid, ‘post-national’ political form, the EU would seem poised to take advantage. Instead it is stuck. In this paper, taking an ontological security approach and focusing on EU migration governance, I propose that one cause of paralysis could lie - ironically - in an aspect of the EU that is crucial to its normative power: Europe’s long peace. An ontological security perspective highlights the management of existential anxiety as crucial to identity, suggesting how different modes of anxiety management have different political effects. Applied here, EU narratives and routines preserving ‘no war’ might suppress relations of structural power; they might mimic primitive defense mechanisms; or they might be symptoms pointing to unconscious processes keeping difficult knowledge - including colonial pasts - undealt with. I suggest how migration governance might manifest these mechanisms, contributing to the difficulties of desecuritising migration and linking its governance to EU values and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally seen as an interlocutor between Europe and the US in transatlantic security relations, the UK's engagement with the training of the Afghan National Police (ANP) through the concurrent EU and NATO missions presents an interesting case of foreign policy decision-making. Although a logic based on broader British orientations about the roles of the two organisations expect that the UK's primary institution of choice would be NATO, London supported both missions in providing international policing assistance to Afghanistan. Adopting an operational overlap perspective, this article seeks to explain the UK's strategic behaviour vis-a-vis the EU and NATO training missions that have been simultaneously involved in overlapping tasks, despite the initial intention that the two missions would undertake different and complementary roles. Analysing evidence from the UK Parliament and Government, US diplomatic missions, the EU and NATO, as well as interviews with former UK and NATO officials, this article argues that while providing training to the Afghan police, London focused on these missions' practical outputs rather than preferring an organisation of choice as such. This strategy is mainly guided by the UK's concern to uphold counter-narcotics enforcement in Afghanistan and to fulfil transition tasks during the incremental withdrawal of British troops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lisbon Treaty recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. The 2009 legal text was an attempt to enhance the unity, consistency and effectiveness of the EU's action in an increasingly volatile world. And yet, the post-Lisbon time period has been characterised by multiple crises coming from the West, the East, the South, and even from within the EU. Against this backdrop, our Special Issue makes a systematic assessment of the EU's foreign policy post-Lisbon and of its evolution by focusing on the role of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP). Assessing the post-Lisbon HR/VPs provides important insights on EU foreign policy processes over the past decade. In this introduction, we discuss the three research questions that guide our collection of articles, as well as our theoretical and empirical contribution to existing scholarly literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU's relations with countries in the Southern Mediterranean have a long history as the region is of great strategic importance for the Union and its member states. The High Representatives of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy have been highly involved in shaping these relations, and this role has been officially strengthened with institutional changes brought about with the Lisbon Treaty. This article analyses the role of the HR/VPs in shaping the EU's foreign and security policy towards the region with an analytical focus on discursive practice. Drawing on insights from practice theory in IR and EU studies, the analysis traces continuity and change in how the Southern Mediterranean is described in the drafting of key strategic documents. The main finding is that EU foreign and security policy towards the Southern Mediterranean shows a high degree of continuity despite several crises and institutional changes, although the discursive practices have evolved. The article ends by highlighting a conundrum that the EU can be said to implicitly acknowledge: if authoritarian states in the Southern Mediterranean are inherently unstable, yet stable enough to quench the democratic aspirations of their people, then what should be the basis for EU actions? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the mediatised context of foreign policy provides new opportunities for political leaders to both frame and project their own leadership role to new audiences. The past ten years have witnessed a sharp rise in political leaders' use of new social media to communicate on a range of foreign policy issues. We argue that this new media context of foreign policy, combined with a bolstered leadership mandate, has been central to the construction of a more visible public leadership role for the EU High Representative in the post-Lisbon era. Departing from recent scholarship on performative leadership and new media in International Relations theory, we develop an original theoretical framework drawing on Erving Goffman's dramaturgy of impression management. We employ the concept of "leaderisation" to analyse how mediatisation shapes the leadership process in terms of personification and drama to enable new forms of interaction with followers. We apply this framework in an illustrative case study focusing on the process of negotiating the EU Global Strategy. This diplomatic process provided the High Representative Mogherini with a stage on which she could frame herself in a central leadership position vis-à-vis European citizens to mobilise greater legitimacy for the EU as a global actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-communist states today are dealing with conflicting sources of ontological insecurity. They are anxious to be perceived as fully European by “core” European states, a status that remains fleeting. Being fully European, however, means sharing in the cosmopolitan European narratives of the twentieth century, perhaps the strongest being the narrative of the Holocaust. Influencing the European Union’s own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to resolve these insecurities by undergoing a radical revision of their respective Holocaust remembrance where the memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust become appropriated to represent crimes of communism. By rejecting the cosmopolitan European narrative of the Holocaust, post-communist states have also removed anti-fascist resistance from the core memory of the Holocaust, allowing for a revival and ideological normalisation of contemporary fascist ideological movements. I illustrate the argument with an overview of contemporary Holocaust remembrance practices in the EU’s youngest member, Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the narratives that social actors tell and use can provide us with some insight into how they have understood the world around them, when and how they should act and why. The argument about narratives and ontological security in the EU will make three points when examining two European stories: the EU's foundational narrative and that of united in diversity. First, the EU seeks ontological security generated through narratives. Second, the EU's narratives are not that different from those of national experiences. Third, and relatedly, narratives that attempt to construct ontological security for the EU may increase ontological insecurity in other actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the core principles of EU interventions under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has been local ownership. While the EU takes pride in fully respecting this principle, the existing research suggests that the implementation has been far from smooth. However, we still know very little how this principle is conceptualised and operationalised, let alone why its implementation has been so difficult. Drawing on document analysis and 27 in-depth interviews, the article makes 3 arguments. First, ownership is increasingly construed in the EU policy rhetoric as a middle ground between imposition and restraint. Second, in practice, ownership is operationalised as an externally driven, top-down endeavour, resulting in the low degree of local participation. Third, in addition to the obstacles normally faced by other peace-builders, the EU’s efforts to implement ownership are constrained by the politics and policy-making of CSDP. The arguments are illustrated in a case study of the European Union Mission on Regional Maritime Capacity Building in the Horn of Africa (EUCAP Nestor). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on fragile Georgia since the early 2000s, the article takes a country-centred perspective on EU–NATO inter-organisationalism. It outlines the regional strategies of these core Western security institutions and assesses their complementarity and overlap across three sets of tasks: defence and empowerment, crisis management, and security sector reform. While there is hardly functional overlap in the first and second sets, in the third the EU and NATO intersect to a considerable degree. Also, there is no significant inter-organisational cooperation over Georgia. One key conclusion is that while field-level overlap clearly jeopardises institutional effectiveness, overlapping toolboxes – as in crisis management – allow for institutional flexibility when one international organisation setting offers reputational or practical advantages. Against this backdrop, a case can be made contra propositions of merging the Common Security and Defence Policy and NATO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Arab uprisings of 2011 put into question previously held understandings about the stability of authoritarian regimes in North Africa as well as the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with countries in its southern neighbourhood. Despite early calls on behalf of the EU to change its policies, the Union’s responses in the early stages seemed mostly characterised by continuity. This article claims that certain dispositions and background knowledge developed over several decades vis-à-vis EU’s Mediterranean policies served as a baseline from which EU officials and diplomats acted. Drawing on insights from practice approaches, the article argues that the practical understandings on what the EU can (and cannot) do vis-à-vis partner countries in North Africa create a kind of power politics of practical dispositions. The article focuses on the European Neighbourhood Policy - the EU’s flagship initiative - and builds on a unique set of data that combine policy documents and interviews with about 30 EU officials and national diplomats from before and after the Arab uprisings. In this way, it illustrates how practice relates to change in that even though the EU’s responses drew on an established repertoire of practice, enacting it in a new context opened up new possibilities for action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contrary to some expectations, the Baltic states’ accession to the EU in 2004 was not followed by an improvement in their relations with Russia. Instead, the Baltic states became known as the “troublemakers” of EU–Russia relations. This was commonly explained by their history and national identity, which contributed to an understanding of the Baltic concerns as marginal. The Ukraine crisis brought a reaction of “I told you so” by the Baltic states that for many years had been warning the West about Russia’s expansionist ambitions. This article explores the ideational underpinnings of the gap between the Baltic states’ perceptions of and relations with Russia on the one hand and mainstream views in Europe on the other. It identifies liberal interdependence, democratic peace, and realist geopolitics as key ideas that have framed the EU’s and Baltic states’ perceptions of Russia. In the vein of constructivist foreign policy analysis, these ideational structures are seen to condition the EU’s and Baltic states’ interests and policies vis-à-vis Russia. An analysis of the “Baltic factor” helps to illuminate the contradictions and shortcomings in the EU’s Russia policy and review its ideational basis which is now in need of a strategic rethink. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

States with limited statehood such as Somalia can cause transnational security challenges. The emergence of an insurgent group with links to Al Qaida and piracy emanating from its coast are cases in point. In this article, we tackle the question of whether the EU's comprehensive approach toward Somalia is working. To do this, we analyze its effectiveness, its legitimacy, and the influence of power by appraising three characteristics of the security governance concept in a critical manner. We conclude that the result is mixed. Even if the EU's comprehensive approach were perfect in a technical sense, it would still face restraints, because any solution has to come from Somali themselves. Not only should they be an integral part of it, they should become the real owners of the state-building process in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]