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Studying EU-Russian relations: an overview in search for an epistemic community
Abstract
The article introduces a special issue on studying EU-Russian relations. It overviews Russian- and English-language academic research to identify whether there is sufficient dialogue on issues studied, theories applied and categories used for a transnational epistemic community to emerge. This latter would allow the academic world to better contribute to the resolution of the present crisis in EU-Russian relations. Although an overlap is identified in issues, theories and categories the article exposes multiple differences in how they are approached in English- and Russian-language academic writings. These findings challenge the existence of a transnational epistemic community in EU-Russian relations. The article concludes by discussing steps to make for this community to develop, and introduces contributions to the special issue.
... Using more generic meta-level theorisations of hegemony, this comparison showed the differences and similarities between EU and Russian practices. In doing so, it broke with the cultural biases inherent in EU and Eurasian studies disciplines, thereby bringing together two separate epistemic communities (Romanova 2018). The aim was not to test the explanatory power of the theory. ...
This chapter establishes a conceptual framework for comparing the influence of the EU and Russia in their shared neighbourhood using the more generic concepts of hegemony and power. It develops three ideal-typical mechanisms of hegemonic power: coercion, prescription, and co-optation, based on existing literature. Coercion involves overt conflicts of interests and threats to influence target states' actions. Prescription operates through the imposition of rules and standards, shaping behaviour based on a sense of obligation. Co-optation involves reshaping ideas, values, and beliefs, ensuring compliance through consent rather than coercion. The chapter also outlines the research design and introduces the cases of Moldova and Armenia, explaining how these mechanisms are applied and examined. This structured comparison allows for a nuanced analysis of the similarities and differences in EU and Russian influence, providing a comprehensive understanding of their hegemonic power dynamics in the region.
... This methodological choice should reduce the danger of preconceived theoretical assumptions about the nature of the EU and Russia as international actors -a potential source of analytical bias (Gunitsky and Tsygankov 2018;Romanova 2019). Reviewing constructivist literature on the ENP, Kratochvíl and Tulmets (2018) show that such predetermined differences are common: often, the EU members and non-members (ENP countries) are studied as actors of a different kind (normative vs. rational). ...
This paper traces the evolution of the European Union’s (EU) and Russian Federation’s discourse on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) along four frames – economic, (geo)political, normative, and security. We discover the dynamic of the EaP discourse in Brussels and Moscow, developing from an economic and political initiative to an adversarial security understanding, underpinned by logics of geopolitical and normative competition. With this study, we illuminate the misalignment of the EU and Russia’s interpretations of neighbourhood policy and show how it underpinned mutual mistrust and the clash over the future of the region.
... The number of Jean Monnet projects in Russia passed the 100 mark in the period 2015-18, compared with 22 in 2007-14 (Deriglazova and Makinen, forthcoming). The extent to which academic cooperation contributed to the emergence of a transnational academic community remains contested (Romanova, 2019). The EU also carried out a project on public diplomacy, which involved experts' dialogue on EU-Russian relations as well as support for various academic exchanges and study visits to Brussels. ...
The aim of the article is to demonstrate how science and research cooperation may help to reintegrate the Baltic region in the 21st century with the participation of Russia. This is done through the analysis of documents and strategies of Baltic Sea regionalism in the context of the regional knowledge regime. Attention is paid to different positionalities of the regional actors and their narratives. The theoretical framework is secured by an analysis of critical junctures drawing on case studies from the years 1989-91 and 2014 and the subsequent reconfiguration of the power / knowledge nexus. The analysis shows that this reconfiguration actively contributes to creating and changing the content and context of the Baltic Sea regionalism as based on new symbolic , economic, and political capitals. The conclusion points to the potential of Russia' s involvement in the co-creation of the regional knowledge regime and defines the conditions and methods of possible cooperation. Streszczenie: Celem artykułu jest wskazanie na współpracę naukowo-ba-dawczą jako sposób reintegracji regionu bałtyckiego w XXI wieku z udziałem Rosji. Dokonane zostaje to przez analizę tekstów dokumentów i strategii re-gionalizmu bałtyckiego w kontekście regionalnego reżimu wiedzy. Zwróco-na zostaje uwaga na różną pozycjonalność aktorów regionalnych i wytwa-rzanych przez nich narracji. Teoretyczną osnowę pracy stanowi analiza teorii zwrotów krytycznych (critical junctures) w kontekście studiów przypadków z lat 1989-91 i 2014 oraz następujących po nich rekonfiguracji relacji władzy i wiedzy. Analiza wykazuje, że przyczyniają się one aktywnie do tworzenia i zmieniania treści i kontekstu regionalizmu bałtyckiego w oparciu o nowe kapitały symboliczne, ekonomiczne i polityczne. W konkluzji artykuł wskazuje K. Musiał, The integrative potential of science and research cooperation for suturing the Baltic Sea Region in the 21 st century,
There is a Socratic problem in international politics that refers to the impossibility of constructing an authentic image of states. Instead, states are narrated and imagined in various ways by the national self and others. This chapter discusses the problem of representing the state mimetically and introduces a narrative approach to examine how states are represented in international politics. The distinction between firsthand observations and second-order representations is much blurrier than often suggested and cannot resolve the problem of authenticity. An aesthetic approach towards representation, which is described in the chapter, accepts that it is impossible to depict the state as it really is. The analytical gaze should be turned towards the techniques, styles, and forms of representation.
The article analyses how Russian and European scholars have studied EU-Russia cooperation in the field of higher education. Cooperation in this field occupies a small share of scholarship on EU-Russia cooperation but has been evaluated as ‘the least conflicting’ among all areas of cooperation and the least affected by crises in EU-Russia relations. We first review the phases of cooperation and argue that cooperation has transformed from technical aid in the 1990s towards a more equal partnership since the mid-2000s. We present our analysis of previous studies in this field by looking at how scholars, often practitioners of cooperation themselves, have presented the objectives, results and challenges of cooperation and its future prospects. In particular, we are interested in whether cooperation has been presented as something between equal partners or as an asymmetrical relationship, and the binaries ‘donor-recipient’ or ‘master–pupil’ applied. We argue that these roles given by different actors are relevant to understanding the past and current of EU-Russia. Our findings confirm that the shared objective of the nature of cooperation is that of being between equal partners. Cooperation is also viewed as beneficial to both Russia and EU member states at the national/supranational, institutional and individual levels.
Political scientists are increasingly exhorted to ensure their research has policy ‘impact’, most notably via Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact case studies, and ‘pathways to impact’ statements in UK Research Council funding applications. Yet the assumptions underpinning these frameworks often fail to reflect available evidence and theories. Notions of ‘impact’, ‘engagement’ and ‘knowledge exchange’ are typically premised on simplistic, linear models of the policy process, according to which policy-makers are keen to ‘utilise’ expertise to produce more ‘effective’ policies. Such accounts overlook the rich body of literature in political science, policy studies, and sociology of knowledge, which offer more complex and nuanced accounts. Drawing on this wider literature, this paper sets out four different approaches to theorising the relationship: (1) knowledge shapes policy; (2) politics shapes knowledge; (3) co-production; and (4) autonomous spheres. We consider what each of these four approaches suggests about approaches to incentivising and measuring research impact.
Owing to the tendency of discursive institutionalists to conflate the notion that “ideas matter” for policymaking with the “power of ideas”, little has been done to explicitly theorize ideational power. To fill this lacuna, the paper defines ideational power as the capacity of actors (whether individual or collective) to influence other actors' normative and cognitive beliefs through the use of ideational elements, and – based on insights from the discursive institutionalist literature – suggests three different types of ideational power: power through ideas, understood as the capacity of actors to persuade other actors to accept and adopt their views through the use of ideational elements; power over ideas, meaning the imposition of ideas and the power to resist the inclusion of alternative ideas into the policymaking arena; and power in ideas, which takes place through the establishing of hegemony or institutions imposing constraints on what ideas are considered.
This article maps out the field of study known as discursive institutionalism while exploring the range of ways in which scholars in this field explain the dynamics of change (and continuity). In so doing, it examines theoretical issues related to the timing of change, including crisis-driven or incremental approaches to change in policy, programmatic, and philosophical ideas; the content of change not only in different levels of ideas but also in different types, cognitive and normative, and in different forms of discourse; the processes of change via ‘sentient’ agents in different discursive spheres, whether the coordinative discourse of policy actors or the communicative discourse of political actors with the public; and the context of change, not only the meaning context of ideas and the forum for discourse but also the formal and informal institutional structures that are the focus of rationalist, historical and sociological institutional approaches. The article seeks to demonstrate that only by understanding discourse as substantive ideas and interactive processes in institutional context can we fully demonstrate its transformational role in policy change. Speaking of change, in other words, rather than just thinking it, is key to explaining the actions that lead to major policy transformations.
Seeking to amend historical institutionalism, this article draws on the political science literature on ideas and the sociological literature on framing to discuss three ways in which ideational processes impact policy change. First, such processes help to construct the problems and issues that enter the policy agenda. Second, ideational processes shape the assumptions that affect the content of reform proposals. Third, these processes can become discursive weapons that participate in the construction of reform imperatives. Overall, ideational processes impact the ways policy actors perceive their interests and the environment in which they mobilize. Yet, such processes are not the only catalyst of policy change, and institutional constraints impact the politics of ideas and policy change. This claim is further articulated in the final section, which shows how national institutions and repertoires remain central to the politics of policy change despite the undeniable role of transnational actors and processes, which interact with such institutions and repertoires.
Abstract Recent scholarly research into public policy has stressed the role of knowledge in the policy process. The variety of concepts and approaches to the study of knowledge seems puzzling. However, this article argues that the different theoretical approaches have some common ground and that a ?knowledge perspective? on the policy process has many advantages. It is suggested that such fields as evaluation research, epistemic communities, diffusion of economic policy paradigms, agenda?setting and policy learning contribute to a new view of the policy process, in which power and knowledge perform complementary functions. The conclusions discuss the main implications for further research in the analysis of the policy process.
While speaking truth to power has long been a major theme in political science and policy studies, commentators are increasingly skeptical about whether modelers and scientists are capable of developing truth, and whether power ever listens to them anyhow. This paper asks when does power listen to truth, and what lessons may be drawn from the last thirty years of multilateral environmental governance for improving the prospects for scientific advice for sustainable development? It focuses on the limited notion of truth called 'usable knowledge' and elaborates the political and institutional channels by which usable knowledge may be developed and better circulated and applied by policy-makers.
The growing technical uncertainties and complexities of problems of global concern have made international policy coordination not only increasingly necessary but also increasingly difficult. If decision makers are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a specific problem, how do they define state interests and develop viable solutions? What factors shape their behavior? Under conditions of uncertainty, what are the origins of international institutions? And how can we best study the processes through which international policy coordination and order emerge? While a variety of analytic approaches have been used to address the problems of international cooperation, the approaches have yielded only fragmentary insights. At its core, the study of policy coordination among states involves arguments about determinism versus free will and about the ways in which the international system is maintained and transformed. Among the overlapping topics of debate are whether national behavior is determined or broadly conditioned by system-level factors, unit-level factors, or some complex interplay between the two; whether state policymakers can identify national interests and behave independently of pressures from the social groups they nominally represent; and whether states respond consistently to opportunities to create, defend, or expand their own wealth and power, to enhance collective material benefits, or to promote nonmaterial values.' A related question of
Resilience is increasingly discussed as a key concept across many fields of international policymaking from sustainable development and climate change, insecurity, conflict and terrorism to urban and rural planning, international aid provision and the prevention of and responses to natural and man-made disasters. Edited by leading academic authorities from a number of disciplines, this is the first handbook to deal with resilience as a new conceptual approach to understanding and addressing a range of interdependent global challenges. The Handbook is divided into nine sections: Introduction: contested paradigms of resilience; the challenges of resilience; governing uncertainty; resilience and neoliberalism; environmental concerns and climate change adaptation; urban planning; disaster risk reduction and response; international security and insecurity; the policy and practices of international development. Highlighting how resilience-thinking is increasingly transforming international policy-making and government and institutional practices, this book will be an indispensable source of information for students, academics and the wider public interested in resilience, international relations and international security. © 2017 selection and editorial material, David Chandler and Jon Coaffee. All rights reserved.
The end of the Soviet system and the transition to the market in Russia, coupled with the inexorable rise of nationalism, has brought to the fore the centuries-old debate about Russia's relationship with Europe. In Russia and the Idea of Europe Iver Neumann discusses whether the tensions between self-referencing romantic nationalist views and Europe-orientated liberal views can ever be resolved.
Drawing on a wide range of Russian sources, Neumann outlines the argument as it has unfolded over the last two hundred years, showing how Russia is caught between the attraction of an economically, politically and socially more developed Europe, and the attraction of being able to play a European -style inperial role in less-developed Asia.
Neumann argues that the process of delineating a European "other" from the Russian self is an active form of Russian identity formation. The Russian debate about Europe is also a debate about what Rusia is and should be.
The improved relations between Russia and the European Union (EU) in the 1990s were followed by a rise in tension since 1999. This article argues that constructivism can provide important insights into the basis of continuing difficulties. Drawing on the nature of the two actors, the author argues that the foreign policy identities of both actors are in a formative process, and thus the construction of inter-subjective meanings has the potential to be a particularly transformative element in the relationship. Both the Russian Federation and the EU are relatively new as regional and global actors, and both are in the process of forming their foreign policy identities, although in quite different contexts. Neither the EU nor Russia has developed a strategic conception for the relationship, and political discourse often obstructs communication rather than furthering the generation of inter-subjective meanings. The article argues that a constructivist analysis can help to expose the deep interconnections between normative disagreements, conflicting constructions of interests and differing concepts of governance.
This study applies constructivist insights to an analysis of Russia's relations with the European Union (EU). Demonstrating the emergence of a post-Soviet identity based on the principles of democracy and market relations, I argue that, since relations between the two parties were established in 1991, Russia has been looking to the EU for recognition of its new identity. This development, in turn, is explained by the ideational weight of the EU it is widely seen as the epitome of Europe. The study also argues that Moscow will continue to attach great importance to this part of its relationship with Brussels; the combination of continued domestic reforms and an enlarging EU makes it even more imperative for Russia to be recognised by this organisation as a state adhering to Western norms. Any failure on part of the EU and other European security organisations to extend this recognition in response to real changes may jeopardise reforms as the Russian population, rather than seeing rewards for its efforts, is subjected to continued rejection.
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