How the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy came home
After leaving the EU, the UK needed to rethink its place in the world. Kristin Haugevik and Øyvind Svendsen examine the aspirations and meanings underpinning the “Global Britain” narrative and argue that its scope and ambitions have changed significantly in the years following the Brexit referendum.
Introduction. Focus: War and Research
Russia’s attack on Ukraine on February 24 came as a surprise to many observers. This triggered several debates in the media, where analysts and academics criticized each other for not having seen what was emerging; for showing too much understanding for the Putin regime positions; and to let their political attitudes colour their analyses. In this Fokus column we will try to elevate these discussions to an academic level. Not to allocate blame, but to learn professional lessons. In this introductory text I will, inter alia, point to the need for more analytical breadth, to focus on both language and materiality, and to be extra aware of your own attitudes when one moves into a normative political debate.
Policy brief summarising the EU and other stakeholder’s prevention strategy towards violent extremism in the region, Middle East
The EU-Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Preventive Violent Extremism (PvE) co-operation is wide-ranging, and has been since a formalized partnership between the EU and MENA countries was outlined in the 1995 Barcelona Declaration. It has nevertheless received added attention following numerous terrorist attacks within the EU during the last decade; and European foreign fighters have been linked to the attacks in Paris in 2015; in Brussels, Berlin, and Nice in 2016; and in Manchester, London, and Barcelona in 2017.
Policy brief summarizing the EU and other stakeholders’ prevention strategy towards violent extremism in the Maghreb and the Sahel
What is the European Union (EU) doing to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE) in north-western Africa, specifically in the Maghreb and Sahel region? Building upon the EU Counter Terrorism Strategy (EU Council 2005), the EU Strategy for combating radicalization and recruitment to terrorism has increasingly emphasized the ‘internal-external security nexus’ and the need to strengthen co-operation with key third countries in the fields of counterterrorism, anti-radicalization, prevention, and countering of violent extremism (EU Parliament 2015; EU Parliament and EU Council 2017). The fight against violent extremism has thus become one of the most prominent objectives in EU external action, especially as far as the (enlarged) neighbourhood is concerned (Durac 2017). Yet scientific inquiry into the EU’s role in this
Working Paper on enabling environments, drivers, and occurrence/nonoccurrence of violent extremism
Why does violent extremism not occur in enabling environments? Based on recent field work in the Sahel and the Maghreb region this is the main question we seek to understand in this working paper. To understand non-occurrence and thereby the foundations of social and individual resilience, we also need to understand the drivers of violent extremism and why they gain traction among some populations while others show much higher degrees of resilience. To achieve this, we will zoom in on cases in Mali, Niger, Tunisia and Morocco, showcasing different trajectories of occurrence and non-occurrence.
Policy brief summarizing lessons learnt on the EU’s measures to prevent violent extremism in the region
How do EU initiatives that are geared to help prevent and counter violent extremism in North Africa and the Sahel match the underlying drivers of radicalisation? This PREVEX Policy Brief offers a reading of EU strategies in the backlight of our findings, which stem from fieldwork that was conducted in cases of both occurrence and non-occurrence of violent extremist escalation across North Africa and the Sahel. As scholarly literature lays emphasis on how phenomena such as violent extremism are highly context-dependent, it is crucial to understand regional and local dynamics of social change and intermediation. This brief therefore provides an overall assessment of EU P/CVE policies and projects in North Africa and the Sahel, focusing on key contextual policy issues: democratic governance, rule of law, education, gender, reintegration. It argues that EU’s emphasis on rule of law is particularly appropriate, while there is room for greater engagement in the fields of education and reintegration – provided that conflict-sensitive lenses are carefully applied. In the fields of democratic governance and gender, instead, a mismatch between general strategies and on-the-ground implementation can be observed. Targeted research in these critical areas of intervention and assistance is highly needed. Overall, our analysis invites to consider radicalisation processes not as social pathology but as ongoing social phenomena that take place in a space where several actors rival for material and ideational resources, and therefore require careful assessment and multi-scalar prioritisation, including at the regional and transnational level.
Policy brief summarizing lessons learnt on the EU’s measures to prevent violent extremism in the region
While most research on violent extremism (VE) focuses on why people turn to violence, this policy brief looks at the issue the other way round. We sum up the lessons learnt from our findings on why the majority of those living in enabling environments often choose not to get involved in violence and, against this background, to (re-)consider the EU’s measures for prevention and countering of violent extremism (P/CVE) in the Western Balkans (WB).
Working Paper on enabling environments, drivers, and occurrence/nonoccurrence of violent extremism
Based on extensive desk research and fieldwork, the present paper aims to analyze the various drivers of violent extremism (VE) in the contemporary Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Republic of North Macedonia, and Serbia) and the elaboration of a refined, nuanced and context-sensitive understanding of the concept of ‘enabling environment’, i.e., the cluster or combination of various factors in a given society that renders the emergence of violent extremism likely. When approaching the varying impact of ideological radicalization and hate speech, we seek to make a distinction between contexts, where radicalization morphs into violence (“occurrence”), and contexts, where it does not (“non-occurrence”). Thus, the paper seeks to provide an analytical explanation of the central question of why some communities tend to be more resilient to violent extremist ideologies than others, despite identical “enabling” conditions. Given the geopolitical significance of the Western Balkan region, an approach that prioritizes non-occurrence of violence may respond more adequately to the strategic need for strengthening resilience to radicalization, extremism and terrorism there.
Working Paper on ´enabling environments´, drivers and occurrence/nonoccurrence of violent extremism in the region
There are a number of grievances attributed as drivers of violent extremism. Poverty, autocratic governance, human rights violations, precarious masculinities, or the lack of education, mentioning just some, all create what we may term “enabling environments”. Still, the majority living in such enabling environments and who experience such grievances do not engage in any acts of violence or join any violent extremist organizations. This begs the question, why do some communities display far greater resilience to violent extremist ideologies than others? Based on in-depth fieldwork in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, we study and analyze four cases of the non-occurrence of violent extremism in the Middle East to further our understanding of enabling environments, community resilience, and the decisive moments pushing people to, or away from, violence.