Gwendolyn Sasse

Gwendolyn Sasse
University of Oxford | OX · Department of Politics and International Relations

PhD, London School of Economics

About

83
Publications
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Introduction

Publications

Publications (83)
Article
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The norm of minority protection is often singled out as a prime example of the political impact of European Union (EU) conditionality on the ethnically diverse states of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU's 'minority condition' is best understood as a political and social construct rooted in European security concerns. As such, it has had very 'rea...
Article
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The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is modelled on the institutional and procedural experience of the EU's eastward enlargement, although it explicitly excludes a membership perspective. It thus aims to define an alternative incentive for domestic reform in neighbouring countries, referred to as ‘a stake in the internal market’. This article su...
Article
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Crimea has been characterized as a flashpoint for future European security and is both part of Ukraine's state‐building process and a specific case in itself. Ownership of the Black Sea Fleet is but one issue: inter‐ethnic relations (including the sensitive question of the position of the Crimean Tatars), economic and social factors (such as the pe...
Article
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While estimates vary, Russia’s full-scale of invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted approximately 800,000 to 900,000 Russian citizens to leave their country. Two distinct waves of migration from Russia have been identified: the first in the spring and summer of 2022, the second after the announcement of a partial mobilisation in September 20...
Article
How can and should we analyze mass mobilization and its outcomes in authoritarian (and potentially democratizing) states as social scientists? Are there any distinctive features to the study of mass mobilization and its outcomes in Eastern Europe? And how much should we focus on comparative analyses versus context and country specificities? The cas...
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Political attitudes are generally analysed within the context of a given nation-state, even if they reflect responses to regional or global developments. Little attention has been paid to the potentially moderating role of personal transnational experiences (travel, migration, remittances) on individual attitudes. Based on two cross-sectional onlin...
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Do geopolitical orientations distinguish anti-Lukashenka protesters from non-protesters in Belarus? Employing data from an original online protest survey among 18+year-old citizens of Belarus residing in the country (MOBILISE 2020, n= 17,174) fielded 18August2020–29January2021, this paper compares protesters (n = 11,719) to non-protesters (n = 5,45...
Article
His symposium employs established social science theory to frame and place into comparative perspective the case of Belarusian mass mobilization that began in August 2020. We not only argue and explain how this is a case of mass mobilization that occurred in a competitive authoritarian context, but also that is a far more “typical” example (rather...
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Based on original survey data, this essay analyses the political attitudes of individuals displaced by the war in eastern Ukraine. We systematically compare attitudinal differences and similarities along three axes: the displaced relative to the resident population; the displaced in Ukraine relative to the displaced in Russia; and the displaced fro...
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In spite of development of international and global institutions, the modern state remains a powerful construct as the legitimate means of political organization and the exclusive location of political authority. Contemporary states went through a long process of institutionalization marked by the milestones like the Westphalian peace, age of the w...
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This paper contributes to the study of the effects of war on societies and states. Tilly's famous dictum about the close link between war-making and state-making refers to the effects of war on central state capacity and the monopoly over violence. However, wars also shape the attitudes and identities of people experiencing challenges to the territ...
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This article explores how ‘ordinary’ German migrants in the United States reflected upon their local integration and transnational belonging with reference to their language practice in the period 1820–1970. The analysis is based on approximately 8,000 letters sent by around 700 German-speaking migrants who wrote, over varying time periods, to fami...
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This article offers the first large-scale analysis of the interlinked dynamics of integration and belonging based on perceptions of “ordinary” German-speaking migrants in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our analysis draws on a corpus of over a thousand letters from the North American Letter Collection held at the Forsch...
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Analyzing the long-term dynamics of migrant integration is a significant challenge for researchers. This paper traces how 'ordinary' German-speaking migrants in the USA expressed their sense of participation and belonging throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries in the letters they wrote to their families 'back home.' We study a large collectio...
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The study of identities struggles to capture the moments and dynamics of identity change. A crisis moment provides a rare insight into such processes. This paper traces the political identities of the inhabitants of a region at war – the Donbas – on the basis of original survey data that cover the four parts of the population that once made up this...
Article
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Zusammenfassung Basierend auf einer Sammlung von 1000 Briefen deutscher Auswanderer in den USA analysiert dieser Aufsatz die Entwicklung und Bedeutung transatlantischer und deutsch-amerikanischer migrantischer Netzwerke über einen Zeitraum von 150 Jahren. Wir unterscheiden zwischen „starken“ und „schwachen“ Beziehungen, die diesen Netzwerken zugrun...
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A ZOiS survey conducted in the Donbas in December 2016 provides insights into life and attitudes across the frontline between the Kyiv-controlled Donbas and the occupied territories, the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR). The two-part survey reveals the differentiated public opinion in the DNR / L...
Data
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This article investigates the drivers and mechanisms of emigrants’ electoral and nonelectoral political engagement with their homeland. Our analysis concentrates on the diverse experiences of Polish migrants in the UK. By utilizing original mixed-method data, including a large-N survey of Polish migrant voters across the UK, in-depth interviews wit...
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The Maidan protests provide us with insights into Ukrainian society and the dynamics of mobilisation more generally. Based on the EuroMaidan Protest Participant Survey, on-site rapid interviews with protesters, interviews with politicians, activists and journalists, and focus groups with ordinary citizens and activists, this essay maps the actors,...
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In this article, we not only extend the concept of linkages and leverage to the realm of conflict studies, we also add an important linkage – ideas about political power which we call power ideas – and we expand on the causal mechanisms that turns linkages into leverage in a conflict situation. We examine the impact of the power ideas of nationalis...
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What explains varying levels of emigrant transnational engagement in home-country politics? The well-known difficulties in obtaining migrant profile data and restriction to a few destination countries have resulted in a lack of systematic empirical investigation of this question. We expand nascent efforts to fill this gap by offering a new theoreti...
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We examine the salience among migrants of a pervasive type of political identity neglected in the interdisciplinary scholarship on transnationalism and migrant political behaviour—homeland regional identities. Using migrants' regional background in their homelands as a proxy for their regional political identities, we estimate its effect on migrant...
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The EU's eastern neighbourhood with its considerable divergence in regime types is a more challenging testing ground for democracy promotion than Central and Eastern Europe. This article explores the diversity of the international linkages in the eastern neighbours (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and the role these linkages play in...
Article
This chapter places the issue of minority rights in the wider legal and theoretical context of rights and classifies them as political rights. Drawing on the experience of Central and Eastern Europe, it then analyses the politics involved regarding the rights of national minorities. Constitutionally enshrined rights are both a traditional safeguard...
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Although Ukraine’s regional divisions are often thought to be detrimental to state-building and democratization, they have in fact been a source of strength and helped to prevent tilts to the political extremes.
Article
Ukraine shows that regional diversity can strengthen a young state in upheaval. Diversity reins in political excess and can contribute to the correction of an authoritarian turn. Contrary to theoretical assumptions, regional differences that structure political mobilisation and consensus building thus contribute to stability and democratisation. Es...
Chapter
The eastern neighbours of the enlarged EU have provided an important impetus for the conception and ongoing formulation of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Ukraine and, to some extent, Moldova have defined the shape and pace of the ENP. Both countries have declared EU membership their strategic objective, and they are trying to turn the ENP...
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Conflict management is an area in which the EU has only recently begun to develop a profile, in particular through its involvement in the Western Balkans. The development of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has added a momentum to the management or resolution of the unresolved conflicts in the Former Soviet Union. This is a potentially risky...
Chapter
The project of European integration now spans Europe, but in becoming bigger and broader the European Union has brought on itself significant criticism. As the EU becomes deeper, wider, and more ambitious, so opposition and scepticism become more prominent for citizens and more problematic for elites. Concerns about a ‘democratic deficit ‘ and the...
Chapter
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has been an attempt to formulate a coherent EU-wide approach to the Union’s neighbouring countries. It expresses three related concerns of the member states and the EU as a whole: a concern for political stability on the EU’s borders, the wish to counter perceived or real negative implications of the recent r...
Book
Regional diversity such as Ukraine’s often embodies potential for friction and conflict, in particular when it involves territorialized ethnicity and divergent historical experiences. Political elites interested in stability and conflict prevention must find ways either to accommodate or control this diversity. In the early to mid-1990s, the Wester...
Chapter
The accession of eight Central and East European countries (CEECs) in May 2004 marked the beginning of a more direct and equal interaction between the political, economic and legal orders of the old and new Member States within the framework of EU policy-making. It also shifted the emphasis to the implementation and sustainability of the institutio...
Article
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Minority rights have been a paradoxical issue during the EU's eastward enlargement. While 'the respect for and protection of national minorities' was enshrined in the first Copenhagen criterion and is often singled out as a prime example of the EU's positive stabilising impact in CEE, the EU has in fact promoted norms which lack a foundation in EU...
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Minority and migration issues tend to be framed either in terms of security and control or rights. Rather than lamenting the securitization of these issues in the academic and policy debate and advocating a focus on rights as an alternative, this article calls for the re-conceptualization in terms of a 'security-rights nexus'. It is argued here tha...
Chapter
When the EU first acknowledged that those associated CEECs that ‘so desire’ could become members, at the Copenhagen European Council meeting in June 1993, it expressed the political and economic conditions for membership in vaguely worded and normative statements of intent in the ‘Copenhagen criteria’. As we discussed in Chapter 1, the criteria lai...
Chapter
For conditionality to be credible, it must be clearly benchmarked and be applied with consistency. Similarly, commitment to conformity and compliance with conditionality must be fairly evaluated. Regular monitoring was chosen by the EU as the means to communicate the criteria of accession and assess progress and to highlight shortcomings in adaptat...
Chapter
Studies of transition generally focus more on the immediate events and processes and less on the historical background which shapes it. Nevertheless, historical legacies and the extent to which a transition state has a ‘usable past’ are generally recognized as having an important bearing on the transition outcome.1 The term ‘historical legacy’ and...
Chapter
During the EU’s eastward enlargement the notion of ‘capacity’ has been of paramount importance for the Commission and the EU’s governing institutions more broadly. As we have seen in Chapter 4, the Commission employed the term as a generic label for the parts of the acquis that required new institutional structures, management and organizational ar...
Chapter
During the initial post-communist transition years in most CEECs the issue of local government reform was high on the political agenda as a central theme of democratic state-building. As discussed in Chapter 2 most countries introduced democratizing and decentralizing changes to the structure of local government (see Table 2.1). In formulating thes...
Chapter
Despite the importance of conditionality during the current EU enlargement, there are few theoretical or empirical studies of the concept. The study of EU enlargement conditionality is characterized by a concentration on the analysis of its correlation with macro-level democratization and marketization, rather than empirically tracking clear causal...
Chapter
The two most widely employed concepts in the framing of the debates about EU enlargement and European integration are ‘Europeanization’ and ‘conditionality’. Yet, both concepts are employed rather nebulously and lack coherent explanatory frameworks. The term ‘Europeanization’ has been stretched to encapsulate phenomena beyond its original locus in...
Article
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Human and minorities map an area in which the EU's external relations have pushed for a (partial) rethinking of the EU's internal values, objectives and policies. While minority issues have been at the forefront of the enlargement rhetoric and are often singled out as a prime example of the EU's positive stabilising impact in Central and Eastern Eu...
Article
The asymmetrical relationship between the EU and the new member states, and the latter's institutional weakness, mean that we can expect there to be considerable room for manoeuvre in EU conditionally and convergence between institutions and policy fields in Eastern and East-Central Europe. Subnational reforms have an important role to play in EU r...
Article
Studies of EU conditionality assume one basic premise: that it exists and works because there is a power asymmetry which enables the Commission to impose the adoption of the "acquis" on the CEECs as a precondition of their entry to the Union. Thus this literature posits that there are clear causal relationships in the use of conditionality to ensur...
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The issue of minority protection is an extreme case for analyzing the problem of linkage between EU membership conditionality and compliance by candidate countries. while EU law is virtually non-existent, EU practice is divergent, and international standards are ambiguous, the issue has been given high rhetorical prominence by the EU during enlarge...
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A major challenge for EU enlargement is how to communicate the benefits of membership to electorates. Given the weak penetration of party systems in the Central and East European countries, subnational elites have an important role in shaping voter preferences. Attitudes among subnational elites to EU enlargement are examined in three leading candi...
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Ukraine's post‐Soviet state‐building has been characterized by two simultaneous, yet contradictory trends: the strengthening of the political institutions of the central state and a process of selective autonomization in Crimea. The Crimean issue with its different ethnic, historical, regional and international dimensions posed a considerable chall...
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This article uses the results from formal network analysis to test hypotheses about the character of Russia's post-communist transition, taking decision-making elites at the sub-national level as the unit of analysis. From the transition literature, the hypothesis generated is that city politics retains elements of its pre-democratic structure; fro...
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The process of European eastward enlargement is increasingly understood as one involving Europeanization, that is to say the spread and inculcation of EU regulatory norms, practice and capacity into the governance systems of the Central and Eastern European candidate countries (CEECs). EU membership conditionality, notably the adoption of the acqui...
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This comparative study of post-Soviet conflicts stresses the role of political-institutional changes and adjustments to Soviet legacies made during transition in the causation, prolongation and accommodation of ethnic and regional conflicts. The main theoretical assumptions of the diverse literatures on transition, ethnic conflict and regionalism,...
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Post-Soviet Ukraine is composed of regions which historically have never been united within one independent state. The contribution argues that the 'new' Ukraine has had to face several regional rather than clear-cut ethnic challenges since gaining independence in 1991. Rather than being a destabilizing factor, the regionalization of Ukraine's poli...
Chapter
In building any home location is key. Geography is widely regarded as the single most important reason why the post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe (CEECs) can realistically aspire to inclusion in a common European home that is democratic and prosperous (Przeworski, 1991: 190–1). This hypothesis may have sound structural foundatio...

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