The literature discussing the European Union foreign policies and external actorness has comprehensively analysed the EU abilities, successes and challenges when trying to diffuse its norms, policy practices and institutional solutions to other actors around the world. However, we are missing an independent research agenda discussing how EU external actorness evolves because of such interactions. A reinforced EU external actorness agenda should look at how EU norms and policy practices get to interact with each other. Moreover, it should account for how the agency of non-EU actors contributes to the evolving EU external actorness. This analytical approach has the potential to unpack the EU learning journey when translating norms into new policy practices. The current article showcases the importance of this agenda while proposing an exploratory pilot quantitative methodology based on an EU aid budgets analysis. It hypothesises instances of EU policy interpretation and discusses the case of interregionalism and delegated cooperation as examples of interacting EU policy practices.

Do citizens and Members of the European Parliament agree on the format and future of the EU? While the literature has emphasized the gap between pro-European elites and increasingly Eurosceptic electorates, this article relies on a novel dataset to explore the implications of measures of such (in)congruence at the EU level. We compare the preferences of elected representatives and of voters on a wide range of issues: democracy at the supranational level, the reform of EU policies, as well as institutions. The empirical analysis relies on a citizen survey and on an MEP survey conducted in the framework of the RECONNECT project. We evidence that the level of congruence varies across issues and that it is the representatives, not the citizens, who drive polarization.

Political theorists and scientists have published extensive scholarship on the political representation of the marginalised. Some notable and widely cited scholars include Jane Mansbridge, Anne Phillips, Iris M. Young, Suzanne Dovi, and Melissa Williams. They have mostly focused on the importance of representation of women and argue that such representation enhances the functioning of representative democracies. This strand of literature has made significant contributions to contemporary research, especially on studies showing how and why political representation matters. Underdiscussed, nonetheless, is how such classic studies should be taught in a classroom in the context of global movements, namely #BlackLivesMatter, #StopAsianHate, and #MeToo, where various marginalised identities intersect when subjected to oppression. We contest and strengthen some of these ideas in extant scholarship promoting diversity politics by taking intersectional and decolonial approaches. We advocate for prioritising intersectionality over diversity and for decolonising teaching political representation by centring the feminist works of BIPOC and Global South scholars. By challenging both the absence of minoritised women as political actors as well as scholars—as a matter of the production of knowledge and as political activism—we create an inclusive learning environment. We enable both the educators and students to reflect on their positionalities and furthermore achieve the long-term goal of equality in the classrooms, political institutions, and beyond.

While traditional and non-traditional issues of security are at the very top of the policy agenda, security studies has been subject to much criticism. These concerns have often been framed in terms of challenges to the field’s relevance. This paper seeks to further the debate on relevance in security studies. Specifically, the paper examines the field in three major dimensions of relevance: responsiveness, diversity, and intellectual pluralism. Unlike previous disciplinary investigations, which have solely focused on United States (US) security studies, this paper examines trends pertaining to relevance in security studies in the USA as well as in Europe. The paper finds some evidence of responsiveness, a slight trend toward a more equitable share of female authors, and conflicting evidence when it comes to intellectual pluralism. The paper suggests that the field appears more as a ‘broad church’ than ‘irrelevant cult’ when its output in the USA, as well as in Europe, is taken into account.

Between 2010 and 2019, five Eurozone governments in economic difficulty received assistance from international lenders on condition that certain policies specified in the Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) were implemented. To what extent were those conditions implemented? After conditionality, to what extent have governments rolled back changes pursued under external constraint? Do we find variation across governments regarding implementation and reversals, and if so, why?. This paper presents a database allowing the answers to those questions, the Data Base on EcoNomic Adjustment Policies (ENAP) database. We codified all policies and reforms included in the MoU’s, and whether those were subsequently fully or partially implemented. We also codified all decisions taken by bailed out countries since the beginning of the financial crisis and verified whether those had been kept or fully or partially reversed until December 2019. For each condition or policy, a series of explanatory variables were coded: policy sector, type of reform, timing and type of reversal, origin of reversal and number of veto players. The ENAP shows that in all countries, MoU’s were largely implemented and are resilient.

Political science has not remained on the side of the internationalisation road. While continental European political science was criticised for not being internationalised enough in the beginning of this century, much progress has been done since then. This symposium discusses the state of play of the internationalisation trend(s) in European political science. Building on the data collected within the COST programme PROSEPS, the contributions show that we have made progress toward building a scholarly community across Europe. European political research has, on a number aspects, become a more collective endeavour deployed across Europe. Opportunities for cumulative knowledge-building and intellectual exchange are, partially at least, supported by internationalisation. These opportunities have significantly increased over the last two decades. We are, nevertheless, not there yet. The articles shed light on a number of challenges and pitfalls on the path towards a truly Europe-wide political science.