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The European Union (EU) integration project is under attack from a reassertion of national sovereignty following Brexit and the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis examines the impact that traditional forms of sovereignty and national interests will have on the conduct of EU foreign and security policy post-Brexit. We focus on the Brexit challenge to the EU mode of regulation and diplomacy in internal/external policies in Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, and Justice and Home Affairs. The article also considers key scenarios for future UK-EU security cooperation to inform analysis of likely policy outcomes for the UK and the EU. The article concludes that the EU will have a greater impact through its laws and regulations on the post-Brexit UK than vice versa and that Brexit is not an immediate threat to the EU's regulatory mode of security governance. The new realities of internal/external security governance in Europe post-Brexit will mean weakened EU–UK security arrangements, which will impact the scope and quality of European security cooperation beyond traditional defence. This is both undesirable and potentially dangerous for European security cooperation and for Europe's position in the wider world.

Has the United Kingdom(UK) Brexit referendum been a catalyst for more European Union security cooperation? How significant are post-referendum initiatives in security and defence? What are the implications of Brexit for European Union (EU) and UK security and defence? This article analyses EU post-Brexit strategic choices following the launch of the EU Global Strategy (2016). EU autonomy in security and defence requires close cooperation with third countries, including Norway and post-Brexit UK. It remains to be seen whether the EU and the UK can forge a new bespoke security and defence relationship that delivers mutual benefits through shared strategic ambitions, while also protecting their various interests. We suggest there will be serious collateral damage to UK-EU security and defence cooperation if post-Brexit trade negotiations descend into acrimony and mistrust, especially in the event of “no-deal” once the “transition period” ends. This would undermine European security and the EU’s quest for strategic autonomy in world affairs and have serious implications for both UK and EU security. We conclude that the EU needs to work with the UK on a plan to achieve global strategic autonomy, or both risk reduced influence in the wider world in the years ahead.

This article assesses the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in the Western Balkans, with a focus on EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Althea is a military operation that conducts mainly civilian functions as well as the training of the Bah Armed Forces; its 'civilianisation' is symptomatic of CSDP's orientation as a mainly civilian crisis management instrument. Althea works within the framework of the Union's 'comprehensive approach' to regional development and the accession process of the Western Balkans to the EU. I argue that the mission displays the bureaucratic modus operandi of CSDP and not a Grand Strategy approach. Nevertheless, CSDP's incremental, lowest-common-denominator, low cost, low risk bureaucratic politics have enabled a form of emergent strategy that complements the Union's multi-instrument and comprehensive approach to development throughout the Western Balkans. I further suggest that the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) and the newly activated Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) provides opportunities for EU member states to build on low key emergent strategy to ensure that CSDP develops the substance and actor ness needed to address current threats.

The question running through Petros Violakis’s account is not a new one in EU studies. How in an intergovernmental field can the European Union overcome the state-rooted barriers both psychological...

How can we best describe the operation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and how can we improve policy-making in CSDP? The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is predicated on the conviction that there are clear limits to the extent that European Union (EU) foreign and security policy can be strengthened through the restricting tendencies of intergovernmental cooperation between EU member states. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) - agreed by the European Council and 25 EU member states in 2017 - offers practical instruments towards delivering value-added capacity to the process of crisis management beyond intergovernmentalism. As a process, PESCO is analogous to the logic of OMC, including more appropriate levels of coordination at the national organisational level in order to effectively facilitate the EU's comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. The requirement for new and 'open' types of EU foreign and security policy coordination is underlined by the immense differences between EU member states in external policy, both concerning national crisis management structures and the resulting inefficient segmentation of policy at the EU level. .

The paper explores two examples of electronic media, the webinar (virtual classroom) and audio feedback. It is argued that both can enhance teaching and learning and contribute effectively to an internationalisation agenda. Real-time webinars using Wimba virtual classroom software are especially suited to widely distributed or international cohorts. The live quality of this approach and its capacity for archiving make it especially attractive to all students. There are also particular benefits to non-native speakers (NNS) as they can listen repeatedly. The use of MP3 files and podcasts is a useful enhancement to the virtual learning environment (VLE), but audio feedback on essays is of specific benefit to individual students, providing rich and detailed commentary on their work. Audio files can be extended to all kinds of tutor-student communication, enriching the possibilities for review and dialogue in the provision of formative as well as summative feedback.The paper concludes that regular appl...

In this paper we investigate how information surrogates might be useful in exploratory search and what information it is useful for a surrogate to contain. By comparing assessments based on artificially created information surrogates, we investigate the effect of the source of information, the quality of an information source and the date of information upon the assessment process. We also investigate how varying levels of topical knowledge, assessor confidence and prior expectation affect the assessment of information surrogates. We show that both types of contextual information affect how the information surrogates are judged and what actions are performed as a result of the surrogates.

Globalization is a process with a long history, arguably as long as trade itself. In recent years however, it has been dominated not simply by technological change, but by consumerism where everything is a commodity and individuals are on ‘a treadmill of glut’ (Maley 2005). Contemporary globalization is marked by the neo-liberalism favoured by the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Gray (1998) describes neo-liberalism as a political project to construct a global economy based on free market capitalism and suited to the interests of corporate America. The dominant characteristics are the privatization of public assets, free movement of capital and the liberalization of key industries, notably telecommunications and finance, sectors where the United States (of America) already enjoyed competitive advantage. This cocktail brought major changes and social upheaval to industrialized and industrializing economies alike, and while many people enjoyed material advantages, others suffered marginalization. ‘Restructuring’, ‘outsourcing’, ‘downsizing’ and ‘flexible labour markets’ became watchwords of the management gurus, while critics such as Gray (1998) and Bauman (1998) argued that globalization was fuelling job insecurity, family breakdown, crime and the burgeoning prison population in many industrialized countries.

In recent years, small screen devices have seen widespread increase in their acceptance and use. Combining mobility with their increased technological advances many such devices can now be considered mobile information terminals. However, user interactions with small screen devices remain a challenge due to the inherent limited display capabilities. These challenges are particularly evident for tasks, such as information seeking. In this paper we assess the effectiveness of using hierarchical-query biased summaries as a means of supporting the results of an information search conducted on a small screen device, a PDA. We present the results of an experiment focused on measuring users' perception of relevance of displayed documents, in the form of automatically generated summaries of increasing length, in response to a simulated submitted query. The aim is to study experimentally how users' perception of relevance varies depending on the length of summary, in relation to the characteristics of the PDA interface on which the content is presented. Experimental results suggest that hierarchical query-biased summaries are useful and assist users in making relevance judgments.

Book reviewed in this article: In Print: Reading Business English Rod Revell and Simon Sweeney. Business Across Cultures: Effective Communication Strategies Laura M. English and Sarah Lynn. Business Communications: International Case Studies in English Drew Rodgers.

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