The diversification discourse of Russia and its energy relations with the EU

Asia Europe Journal - The article explores the energy security relations between the Russian Federation and the European Union. The focus, however, is not on the technical and institutional aspects...     

Between NATO and a hard place: defence spending debate in Germany and Czechia

Defence spending has become a primary issue in the context of NATO. The question of fair burden-sharing and development of new capabilities in reaction to the changing security environment led NATO members to aim to spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2024. While some allies have managed to reach the level quickly, others seem not to be able or willing to do so. We know little, however, how the international commitment is reflected and referred to in individual member states. This article shows how size played a role when the 2% pledge was discussed in domestic politics, even if the resulting policy may be very similar. Based on expert and political debates in Germany and Czechia, it demonstrates that external expectations and the question of status play a crucial part in the small state’s reasoning whereas it is mainly internal drivers that shape the big state’s decisions.     

(The) Erasure – Mass Human Rights Violation and Denial of Responsibility: The Case of Independent Slovenia

The case of the erased residents of Slovenia – when approximately 18,000 people who were mostly of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian ethnicity, were erased from the permanent residence registry of the Republic of Slovenia – represents one of the most severe cases of administrative ethnic/racial discrimination and human rights violations in the post-communist East and Central Europe outside the conflict area. The erasure caused “civil death” of the people who were affected by the measure, depriving them of civil, political, social, and economic rights. In 2007, 4 years after the 2003 Constitutional Court decision, declaring the 1992 erasure an unconstitutional act of the state and requiring the legislator to adopt measures to reinstate the statuses of the erased people, the problem remains unsolved and unaddressed both systemically and individually, and the situation of erasure persists. This article presents the case and analyses of the framework that made the erasure possible in terms of the preparation of the majority of Slovenes to accept and even support the violations and politicians to renounce their political responsibility to those who have lost the right to have rights. This article is based on the insights of the research project Contemporary Citizenship: Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion (2000–2003) led by Vlasta Jalušič. The analysis of the case of erased was published in Jasminka Dedić, Vlasta Jalušič, and Jelka Zorn (eds.), The Erased: Organized Innocence and the Politics of Exclusion, translated from Slovenian by Olga Vuković and Marjana Karer (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2003), at . The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for the extensive and most helpful comments.

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Policy advice as policy work: a conceptual framework for multi-level analysis

This article argues that policy advice can be understood as a special kind of “policy work” that depends upon a diverse set of factors operating at different levels. The basic aim of the article is to disentangle this multi-level and multifaceted phenomenon into a conceptual framework that can be used for empirical analysis and theory building. In that framework, policy advice is conceptualized as a never-ending interaction among various actors in a specific institutional context, through which routines and norms are both reproduced and abolished. First, it is explained why policy advice is most fruitfully understood as a special kind of policy work, and then how it relates to other policy work activities. Second, problems with single-level approaches are discussed and the need for a multi-level approach is explained. Third, a multi-level conceptual framework is formulated and described. Fourth, some possible applications of the framework are illustrated with examples from current empirical research. The article concludes with implications for research and theory building.     

Back to the future,forward to the past: Croatian politics of memory in the European Parliament

This paper discusses the way in which a post-conflict European Union (EU) member immediately after accession both shapes and adapts to EU memory politics as a part of its Europeanization process. I will analyze how the country responds to the top-down pressures of Europeanization in the domestic politics of memory by making proactive attempts at exporting its own politics of memory (discourses, policies, and practices) to the EU level. Drawing evidence from Croatian EU accession, I will consider how Croatian members of the European Parliament “upload” domestic memory politics to the EU level, particularly to the European Parliament. Based on the analysis of elite interviews, discourses, parliamentary duties, agenda-setting, and decision-making of Croatian MEPs from 2013 to 2016, I argue that the parliament serves both as a locus for confirmation of European identity through promotion of countries’ EU memory credentials and as a new forum for affirmation of national identity. The preservation of the “Homeland War” narrative (1991–1995) and of the “sacredness” of Vukovar as a European lieu de mémoire clearly influences the decision-making of Croatian MEPs, motivating inter-group support for policy building and remembrance practices that bridge domestic political differences.     

The role of committee systems in post-communist legislatures: a case study of the Lithuanian Seimas

European parliamentary committee systems play an important role in organising the work of legislatures so as to assure the parliamentary leadership of its agenda. At the same time, the strategic positioning of committees in the legislative process provides opportunities for chairs to potentially undo the will of the leadership. We consider the degree to which committees in the Lithuanian legislature serve the private interests of legislators or those of the parliamentary leadership. We argue that while committees most often assist the leadership in obtaining preferred legislative outcomes, chairs on occasion have been able to change proposals or even frustrate the parliamentary leadership of governing coalitions.