European Union

Armenia is conducting a policy of illegal settlement across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories and recently launched a policy of resettlement of Armenians from Lebanon there. Yesterday news of a family from Lebanon resettled in the city of Shusha – a destination of utmost historical and moral significance for Azerbaijan has been posted on social media. As the world countries, including Azerbaijan, are dealing with the issue of elimination of tragedy’s consequences that befell Lebanon and offering humanitarian assistance, Armenia is exploiting this tragedy and people’s hardship, pushing their sordid agenda. Thereby, Armenia has once again demonstrated that it recognizes no moral values
I wish to emphasize that the population resettled in our occupied territories has become victim of Armenia’s reckless and adventurist policy. It must be said that the policy of illegal settlement across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories has no validity, and Azerbaijan rejects its outcome categorically.
Armenia is also using the people from Lebanon and Syria resettled in the occupied territories as mercenaries.
Armenia aims to alter the demographic situation across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories by pursuing the illegal settlement policy. The same policy is a flagrant violation of the international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention of 1949. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, the occupying power cannot transfer its civilian population into the territory it occupies.
During the 1946 Nuremberg International Military Tribunal for the Trial of Major War Criminals, two of the defendants were convicted for changing the ethnic composition of the occupied territories.
According to international law, the pursuit of illegal settlement policy by the occupying power in the occupied territories should be classified as a military crime. In this regard, Armenia’s illegal settlement policy across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories is a military crime.
Ironically, such actions are considered a crime under Armenia’s own legislation. In Article 390 of Armenia’s Criminal Code, the occupying power’s deportation of the local population and transfer of its people to the occupied territories is a grave violation of international humanitarian law, punishable by 8-12 years of imprisonment.
Armenia’s act of aggression perpetrated in the direction of Tovuz district, along the state border between the two countries this July and an attempt to carry out a subversion operation across the Line of Contact reveal that Armenia is preparing for yet another provocation and military adventurism.
Moreover, in recent days, Armenia has once again begun to declare explicitly; through the puppet regime, it installed in our occupied territories its intention to occupy Azerbaijan’s other areas and threatened to launch a missile strike on the city of Ganja.
Inflammatory rhetoric by Armenia’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister and their actions and other steps of such nature, once again confirm that the goal of the brazen Armenian leadership is to dismantle the negotiation process and secure the annexation of Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.
The responsibility for perpetrating provocations and escalating the situation lies with Armenia’s political and military leadership.
Armenia must withdraw its troops from Azerbaijan’s occupied territories to achieve progress in the resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The conflict must be resolved only and solely in line with Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of its internationally recognized borders.

Hikmat Hajiyev
Source: azertag.az/en/xeber/1582895

The post Forcible Change of Demography in Illegally Occupied Territories Amount to War Crimes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Since the lockdown was introduce in the UK in March 2020, some of the best scholars at the UK Universities and learned organisations like the Political Studies Association (PSA) and the academic association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) had organised several conferences and talks, mainly on different aspects of online teaching in the light of COVID-19 pandemic.

I gladly participated to the large part of these talks over the Summer and found them extremely useful on from ‘How are you going to get through this?’ and ‘What campus universities can learn from online/distance ones‘ to ‘Replacement or supplement: asynchronous teaching, accessibility, and methods‘ and ‘What makes a good online lecture?’

Yes, I learned substantially from these talks about:

• How academics could help each other about online teaching during a Global Pandemic,
• What forms of teaching-asynchronous or synchronous- is better suited for different learning processes- lecture or seminar/tutorial,
• How the new technology used to transfer the knowledge from an instructor to a learner,
• What software is best for online teaching; Zoom, Canvas or Panopto,
• What should be a priority in organising online-teaching; the software in hand or teaching objectives,
• What new ways could be adapted to increase students’ participation and contribution to online learning via discussion boards or forums like Vanilla, GoogleDoc and WordPress,
• How often students’ feedback should be collected.

While this is all well and good, I had a problem: during these talks is that I never turned on the camera and except on few occasions I did not use the chat boxes too, not mentioning the lack of microphone use. Therefore, when I heard from Andy O’Cain and Dave Lewis, of Open University, ‘Running an Online Seminar/Tutorial in Politics and IR’, that generally students turn their backs on microphones and cameras during virtual classes, I was able to empathise with them.

There may be plenty of reasons for why people do not turn the cameras on or use the microphones: camera-shy, lazy or multi-tasking. I believe the main issue is that the virtual environment is not a natural part of the human habitat for communication, as well as not being a conventionally accepted learning and teaching environment. Therefore, for some people, it takes longer to accommodate. It is best to be understanding each other. Nevertheless, it is one area we can all challenge ourselves to fit in and adapt our ways of learning, teaching and conferencing to the requirements of these extraordinary times.

While learning about being patient with each other, turning on the cameras from very the beginning and keep it on until the end of that session could be significantly advantageous. Think of it as going first to a meeting or a lecture and leaving last. Ultimately it develops to be about being present and making others feel your presence. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for you to feel part of the community which organised that event or the talk.

Some may argue that they could multitask if the camera is off. Reading a newspaper article or writing an email is not the right thing to do when you are listening to a complicated academic argument. If your attention is divided, it is highly likely that you are missing the opportunity to learn something new and meet new people with similar interests. Ultimately, seeing others on the laptop screen and having your face on the screens for others creates opportunities for eye contact between you and them. In this way, online learning and teaching could be as effective as face-to-face teaching and learning.

I decided to write this blog as I was getting ready for my two Virtual Conference presentations. Over the years, I have presented my research on countless times at the face-to-face Academic Conferences, but presenting at a virtual one was new territory.

For ‘Brexit and European integration: political, policy and legitimacy challenges’, organised by NEXTEUK, I was expected to pre-record my presentation of 10 minutes and share it with them before the Conference and speak for 3 three minutes on the Conference day. For the UACES’s 1st Virtual Conference, European Studies Conference, I was expected to have my presentation on PowerPoint and speak to it for a maximum of 15 minutes on the Conference day.

Recording my presentation was not easy. So that the end product is of an acceptable level, it is advisable to have most the relevant and advanced tech gadgets and software, and I was aware of that.

First of all, it is necessary to choose the best software that could do voice record and screencast; I found Camtasia very useful to do a pre-recorded presentation. However, when the Conference’s setup did not support it, I had to do it all over again on PowerPoint and recorded a slide show. The sound quality was much better with Camtasia than Powerpoint, and ultimately it was a learning process, and it is useful to know this now.

Secondly, before recording my presentation, there were a number of actions I had to take in the order of below:

1. Write up your speech
2. Read it out loud
3. Read it out loud until you are fully satisfied with it
4. Make the necessary additions or removals
5. Highlight and extract the essential bits you want to have on your PowerPoint slides
6. Copy and paste the highlighted parts to your PowerPoint slides
7. Go through them
8. Record your written up presentation or lecture or speech
9. Finally, depending on the recording software you use, edit and record again

Thirdly, the NEXTEUK Conference was held on Hopin, while the UACES took place on ZOOM. Hopin is an online events platform where engaging virtual events take place; the Conference was streamed live and recorded, will be available on the Conference’s Website soon. Whereas the UACES’s Conference was not recorded, but it allowed everyone, including presenters and the participants to be on the same screen if and when the cameras were on. However, with Hopin, there was a limited number of people you could have on-screen at a given time. Chatbox was popular with Hopin, while Conference participants with the UACES chose to engage through using their microphones and cameras. Softwares for events like these have varying degrees of advantages, and you can never say one is better than the other, except that you should be sufficiently versed enough about them to make an informed choice between the software which may serve your purpose best.

Through these Conference presentations, I accepted the challenge to adapt to this new virtual academic and research world that is triggered by the COVID-19;  and did and will do my part to contribute to its evolution. Of course, face-to-face teaching and learning should be the future.

 

The post Online-Teaching and Learning, and Virtual Conferences in the light of a Global Pandemic appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

EU researchers have been rather silent about rhetorical action in recent years. The current Brexit and Corona reconstruction negotiations show why they shouldn’t be, Dirk Leuffen and Pascal Mounchid argue.

Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier in London this month, for a new round of Brexit negotiations. (Photo: Ben Cawthra/Sipa USA/NTB Scanpix)

In the early 2000s, rhetorical action – the “strategic use of norm-based arguments” – was a powerfully used concept in academic debates on European integration. For instance, it was applied to explain the EU’s and NATO’s Eastern enlargement, as well as EU constitutionalization.

More recently, however, the concept of rhetorical action has largely vanished from the scene. We believe, wrongly so. The mechanism still exists, as the examples of the Brexit negotiations and the Corona recovery measures highlight.

The Helsinki effect

When properly applied, strategic norm-based arguments may rhetorically entrap opponents. In a “community environment”, actors can refer to the community’s constitutive values and norms and thereby put “social and moral pressure” on those actors who, arguably, deviate from these norms. Public shaming and blaming raise the costs for defecting actors by imposing reputation costs on them. This, in turn, enhances the probability of compliance – even against short-term interests.

If the norms are accepted in the first place, actors can be “entrapped”. Daniel C. Thomas’ (2001) study of the “Helsinki effect”, named after the 1975 CSCE Helsinki Final Act, highlights that “rhetorical entrapment” can actually make a difference. In his study, Thomas shows that dissidents used the Helsinki Final Act as a normative reference point to criticize their socialist governments’ poor human rights records. The critique did work because these governments had previously publicly committed themselves to honouring the norms codified in Helsinki.

Pacta sunt servanda – also during Brexit

The negotiations on EU-UK future relations are a telling example of applied rhetorical action. In early June 2020, in response to London’s unceasing thinning out of the negotiating dossiers, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier publicly argued:

We must stick to our commitments if we want to move forward! We engaged in this negotiation on the basis of a joint Political Declaration that clearly sets out the terms of our future partnership. This document is available in all languages, including English. It is a good read, if I may say so. This declaration was negotiated with and approved by Prime Minister Johnson. It was approved by the leaders of the 27 Member States at the European Council in October 2019. It has the backing of the European Parliament. It is – and it will remain for us – the only valid reference, the only relevant precedent in this negotiation, as it was agreed by both sides.

When accusing the UK to continuously “backtrack on the commitments it has undertaken in the Political Declaration,” Barnier points out deviations from a commonly approved normative reference point. In this particular case, the norms had even been laid out in written form. The fact that Boris Johnson himself approved the declaration puts additional normative pressure on him. Barnier thus uses a strategy of shaming to promote his negotiation agenda.

While rhetorical action could hardly be more explicit, we still do not know whether the UK will feel rhetorically entrapped and therefore succumb to the argumentative strategy. In general, however, meeting rooms can be left more easily than commonly constructed identities and value schemes.

From austerity water to Keynesian wine

The exogenous shock of the Corona pandemic severely affected not just all EU member states’ health systems, but also their economies. At the same time, the impact was asymmetrical: a great variation emerged at both the medical and the financial playing fields, revealing growing inequalities between EU member states.

An interesting fact is that Germany – before the crisis amongst the EU’s strictest defenders of austerity – turned to Keynesianism back at home. Although less affected by the medical crisis, Germany – according to estimates by Bruegel – plans to spend more than 1,600 billion euros to boost its national economic recovery, thereby largely extending other member states’ ambitions.

Germany’s shift in domestic economic policy preceded its shift in European policy. The Franco-German proposal of May 18th 2020 to establish a European recovery fund containing 500 billion Euro of grants, leaves the austerity measures of the Eurozone crisis behind, possibly heralding a new conciliation of procedural and distributive justice in the EU.

One way to explain the notable policy shift consists in pointing out that in a community environment double standards are likely to undermine legitimacy. Drinking Keynesian wine back at home, while preaching austerity water in Europe, reduces credibility, as Christian Breunig and one of the authors argued in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Reputation costs, in fact, proved to be on the rise in polls documenting growing anti-German resentments after the first weeks of the Corona crisis.

Frugal failure

With Brexit, the frugal states in Europe’s North had lost the most outspoken supporter of an economically liberal EU. Germany’s position shift towards higher intra-EU transfers constituted another major blowback. Losing Germany made the position of the frugal four or five (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland) weaker – both in power terms as well as on normative grounds.

Preceding the Corona crisis, Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz in a Financial Times editorial (February 16th 2020), published with Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, Mette Frederiksen, prime minister of Denmark, and Stefan Löfven, prime minister of Sweden, , had defended their frugal approach with reference to their commitment to the EU. For Kurz et al. “[s]tanding up for common values does not have a price tag, and the single market, a considerable driver of European competitiveness, is not a costly endeavour.”

However, as we know after the European summit of July 17th to 21st 2020, the Corona crisis ended up being a game changer. Described by Belgian Finance Minister Alexander De Croo as an “existential battle for Europe”, the negotiations on the recovery fund highlighted that the Single Market, in fact, was at stake. According to BBC,  President Macron reportedly “banged his fists” on the table, telling the frugal states that he thought they “were putting the European project in danger”. Likewise, Italy’s Giuseppe Conte not just referred to community and solidarity norms, but also criticized the frugal four for threatening the existence of the Common Market. The community environment was stressed by Spain’s Foreign Ministre Arancha González Laya comparing the EU to a “family’s relationship”.

The negotiation strategy of the recovery funds supporters was thus twofold: references to a community ethos were larded with undisguised warning about the future of the commonly supported Single Market. At the end even the reluctant Northern member states agreed to a Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2021 to 2027 and the recovery fund – Next Generation EU – together totalling over €1.8 trillion and including issuing common debt at the EU level.

Rhetorical action and the battle for norms

Whether the reference to the EU’s community norms, or rather the insight that the Single Market really was at danger, finally led to concessions, is up to speculation or historical analysis, once the archives are open. Notwithstanding, references to norms again played an important role during the recovery fund negotiations.

It should be noted, however, that during the negotiations of the recovery programme, the ‘frugal states’ repeatedly also referred to the treaty basis to back their argument that uncontrolled spending would violate EU norms.

That highlights an important point: can we say ex ante, which norms dominate, or is the proof in the pudding? While this remains a challenge for rhetorical action, it should not stop us to revitalize the concept, but make us more curious about the mechanisms of how norms and justificatory strategies shape EU politics today.

The post Bringing Rhetorical Action Back In. Brexit and the Corona crisis show the strength of norm-based arguments appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 10 September, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold an exchange of views with Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs for European Affairs of Greece and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey on the current tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Members will also welcome Avdullah Hoti, the Prime Minister of Kosovo for a debate on the situation in the country and the EU-facilitated dialogue with Serbia.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The Monthly Highlights publication provides an overview, at a glance, of the on-going work of the policy departments, including a selection of the latest and forthcoming publications, and a list of future events.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Length of video : 137'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Entry into office of a new Advocate General at the Court of Justice

Length of video : 69'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Centraal Israëlitisch Consistorie van België and Others
Agriculture and fisheries
AG Hogan proposes that the Flemish Law prohibiting slaughter of animals without stunning including those subject to particular methods of slaughter prescribed by religious rites is not permitted under EU law

VG Bild-Kunst
Freedom of establishment
According to Advocate General Szpunar, the embedding in a webpage of works from other websites by means of automatic links (inline linking) requires the authorisation of the holder of the rights in those works

MEPs and representatives of institutions, governments and NGOs will gather on 14-17 September to debate the challenges the pandemic poses to democratic systems.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

As I’ve sat down to write this, I’ve just reminded myself that I said only a short time ago that a leading indicator of heading to an agreement on the Future Relationship would be a de-escalation of the rhetoric. Make of that what you will, both in regard to Brexit and to me. This past week has been an absolute bloodbath for diplomatic niceties and for any rational modelling of the negotiations. The rolling breaking news on the language of the Internal Market Bill – which turned out to be even worse than expected – was joined by the non-announcement of a UK state aid policy to produce something that looks very like a de facto statement of non-engagement with the Future Relationship talks by the UK. As I noted on Monday, there are vanishingly small upsides to the IM Bill move, as summarised here: PDF version: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic37 It’s not only bad for the negotiations, but also for the UK reputation in current and future negotiations with other parties, which runs against any plans for ‘Global Britain’. I’m hardly the only one to note all this, but it does then raise the question of why do it? As with the extension debate, asking why people aren’t acting in their own apparent best interests is important, mainly because it suggests you’ve not understood their perception of their interests. In this case, there really only three options available to explain this diplomatic equivalent of taking a leak on the head of the other side: rupture; bigifying; and ignorance. The Rupture view is simply that this is the end of the Future Relationship and of pretty much any preferential relationship with the EU. The UK is setting its own course, and burning the one bridge it has left in place, the Northern Ireland Protocol. Consequences be damned, it’s off. This counts on a degree of no-one else minding too much, possibly because of the excellent trading opportunities that would be on offer with the UK (seventh-largest, etc, etc) and possibly because this move might make the EU throw a complete strop, so allowing the UK to foist the blame on to them for not engaging. Stuff of Telegraph editorials this might be, but it also doesn’t stack up. Most obviously, if you don’t care about any of this, then why only serve up a very precise dis-application of the protocol? As the ERG note, the IM Bill doesn’t go far enough in that regard. More generally, the UK isn’t notifying formally that it’s stopping negotiations and is accepting the emergency meeting of the Joint Committee today; hardly moves to bolster a ‘we’re off’ approach. Even the softer version of this – make it so the EU throw in the towel – doesn’t really stand up, given the technical progress that’s been reported up to very recently on both protocol implementation and the FR negotiations. So perhaps it’s bigifying: kicking up some dust to show how tough the UK government is? This has two elements: domestically, it reaffirms Number 10’s credentials as delivering a proper Brexit to backbenchers, while in negotiations it shows the UK is serious about walking away if it doesn’t get what it wants. The general consensus has been that the EU arm of this is a busted flush: the EU long ago calculated that the costs of non-agreement would fall very much more heavily on the UK than themselves, so while everyone would lose from failed to reach a deal, that would be much more London’s problem. Walking away from a negotiation is only credible and effective if the other side think you’ve got a better alternative and/or if they themselves have no viable alternative but to keep you in. Neither applies here. But the domestic aspect does have legs. Remember these backbenchers might well have to ratify a Future Relationship deal in short-order this autumn, so maybe flashing your teeth and then claiming to have beaten the EU down to a world-beating deal might be worth it. This I have more time for, not least since it’s what Johnson did last autumn with the same Withdrawal Agreement his spokesman is now claiming he negotiated too quickly. Add in the self-denying decision not to extend transition and you have a recipe for needing to make sure you don’t lose control of your party at all. Of course, as the ERG move shows, the problem with teeth-flashing is that it makes people hungry, especially if you then claim you have extracted something with it: why not do more? Ratification is going to be very awkward for all involved. Johnson needs his own party to comply, because opposition parties are likely to take the view that since even the intended Future Relationship is going to come with disruption, they won’t want to get it over the line, because Johnson will then blame them for it. So Tory rebels might only need to deprive the government of its majority to stymie the ratification Bill, and with so little time even a small delay might be enough to crash the bus for 31 December. So the possible gain of this week on this front is already in doubt. Which leaves ignorance. Again, as a general rule, I dislike this as an explanation, since everyone’s got enough sense to know what’s what. The protocol’s effects on state aid were clear during negotiation and the entire time since, and the Johnson government was always clear about disconnecting state aid during the current talks, so if we might channel our inner Theresa Mays: nothing has changed. Yes, there might be a feel that all this reads like someone finally joining the dots, but even then it’s a remarkable antagonistic way of resolving it, as evidenced by the departure of Jonathan Jones showed. Which brings us back to bigifying and all the issues which that comes with.

The post Bus-crashing as a negotiation technique appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Star Taxi App
Approximation of laws
According to Advocate General Szpunar, a service that puts taxi passengers directly in touch, via an electronic application, with taxi drivers constitutes an Information Society service

Slovenia v Commission
Agriculture and fisheries
The General Court dismisses Slovenia’s action for annulment of the delegated regulation pursuant to which the designation ‘Teran’ may be used on the labels of Croatian wines

Length of video : 130'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

What is the role of knowledge today when almost every aspect of our lives is affected by the global pandemic? What changes does this radically new situation bring to politics and policies of science, technology and higher educattion?  These and other questions were discussed at the Knowledge Politics and Policies Section of the first virtual General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 24-28 August 2020. At this year’s conference the ECPR not only celebrated its 50th anniversary but also addressed some of the most pressing topics of our times such as gendered impact of Covid-19 crisis and decolonisation of curriculum and political practice. The conference connected some 2200 researchers to discuss 1804 papers in 72 sections and 443 panels.

 

This is the ninth time when a section dedicated to the topics of politics and policies of higher education, science and innovation is organised at the ECPR General Conference. It is endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and Policies which brings together more than 200 researchers from arounmd the world. Some 30 papers were discussed in the eight panels of this section covering topics from geopolitics of knowledge and science diplomacy to policies for emerging technologies and higher education.

 

Politics and Policies of Artificial Intelligence

The panel ‘Politics and Policies of AI, Big Data and Algorithmic Governance’ kicked off our section. In recent years, the fast development of these emerging technologies has presented major opportunities and challenges as well as proliferation of dedicated policies to facilitate beneficial effects and mitigate concerns. Papers in this panel addressed political and policy dynamics in Europe, the United States and Asia and examined emerging patterns of global collaboration and competion. Nora von Ingersleben-Seip (Technical University of Munich) presented her joint research with Andrea Renda (College of Europe) on great power competition among the European Union, the US and China. In another collaborative paper, Pertti Ahonen (University of Helsinki) and Tero Erkkilä (University of Helsinki) examined questions of algorithmic decision-making as a challenge and opportunity to openness and transparency in the Finnish political context. In her contribution, Raluca Csernatoni (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) discussed artificial (in)security and the politics of hype in Europe through buzzwords, myths and imaginaries. Continuing the topic of AI and the EU, Inga Ulnicane (De Montfort University) traced elements of Normative Power Europe and Market Power Europe in emerging EU policies, ethics guidelines and regulation in the field on AI. In the final paper in this panel, Jongheon Kim (University of Lausanne) explored the evolution of discourses on AI in South Korea.

 

While the topic of politics and policies of AI is relatively new, it is attracting an increasing interest. One of attendees shared on social media that he has come to this panel ‘purely out of curiosity’ but has managed to follow it and has realised ‘what a central issue will be for the future of politics!’ All panel participants agreed that it would be beneficial to undertake comparative research on AI politics and policies.

 

Academic Time

How have changes to the higher education sector around the world shaped the profession of political science? The panel ‘Conceptualising Academic Time’ addressed this question through the lens of ‘academic time’. While time in the academy has been traditionally measured by tasks an academic performs (i.e. research, teaching, and service), its allocation is increasingly complex as requests for today’s academic labour grow from within and beyond the university. Tero Erkkilä (University of Helsinki), Meng-Hsuan Chou (NTU Singapore), and Niilo Kauppi (University of Helsinki) kicked off the panel with ‘Conceptualising Academic Time’. The paper reviewed how scholars of political science and higher education studies conceptualised time that ultimately revealed the elusive character of academic time as an object of study. Simona Guerra (University of Surrey) followed with ‘Crashing Time? The Contemporary Experience of Time’, and showed that the ways in which time is valued in the UK very much depended on the role that an academic occupied (senior, junior), as well as the financial, institutional, and individual resources available ‘at the time’.

 

Dorota Dakowska (University of Lyon 2) continued with ‘In Search of Lost Time. The Academic Profession Under Pressure’ that examined how the profession has evolved in Poland and France through the analytical lens of time. She demonstrated how the two cases confirmed that research time has become a scarce resource and how conflicting temporalities threatens research time—the very essence of the academic profession. By calling attention to the symbolic violence of ‘time stolen’ in ‘The Social Suffering of Some Homo Academicus(es): Digital Time Machine and Time Control’, Didier Bigo (Sciences Po Paris) discussed how public-private management narratives have invaded the world of universities, depicting higher education institutions as branded companies. In ‘Time, Space and Academic Identity’, Christopher Pokarier (Waseda University) argued that the transformation of academic work can be usefully examined from the perspective of time, space, and resources. By inviting us to study the temporalities and spatiality of academic work, he emphasised the interdependence between time and our physical worlds. James Mittelman (American University) and Heidi Mauer (University of Bristol), panel co-discussants, animated the discussions by asking the participants to consider how and why the analytical lens of academic lens is needed now. Some similar topics where further discussed in the panel ‘Time-scales and Time Policies in Higher Education’.

 

Knowledge and Global Challenges

Several panels highlighted global dimensions of knowledge politics and policies. The panel ‘Science Diplomacy and Global Challenges’ explored different aspects of science diplomacy as both an academic concept and a term of practice in foreign policy. The first paper ‘The Promotion of European Studies in China. A Case of European Soft Diplomacy?’ by Silvana Tarlea (University of Basel) looked at how the EU exercises soft power in its promotion of European Studies in China, finding that its influence was diminishing for two reasons, first because of its perception by China as a powerful global actor, and second, due to a misplaced focus with its grants on universities rather than think tanks, which the author shows are the key actors particularly in regards to the diffusion of knowledge into the foreign ministry. The second paper, ‘Knowledge as Power: Global Challenges and the Development of European Foreign Policy’ by Mitchell Young (Charles University), explored the ways in which knowledge could be understood as a form of power in international relations, and particularly questioned whether the EU could be depicted as a powerful knowledge actor. Finally, Muhammad Adeel (Murdoch University) presented a paper on ‘Application of Science Diplomacy for Regulation of Genome Editing’ which traced the efforts to regulate genome editing, and the policy narratives that have become engaged in these debates through a variety of diverse stakeholders, particularly he focused on the question of whether Crispr should be considered genetic modification or not. A lively discussion followed the papers.

 

The panel ‘Knowledge and International Relations’ explored the relationship between the international relations and knowledge policy domains. The first paper focused on how the re-emergence of nationalist ideas and the re-closing of borders (to a large extent spearheaded by right-wing parties) challenges the trend of intensifying internationalisation of higher education. The empirical setting in focus was Denmark and Katja Brøgger (Aarhus University) linked the various developments in Danish higher education, including significant reductions in English-speaking programmes, with the overall shift towards protectionist and inward looking migration and welfare policies. Sarka Cabadova Waisova (University of West Bohemia) discussed in her paper the concept of expert knowledge and how diffusion thereof has been and could be studied. She particularly discussed the promises and pitfalls of actor-network theory, social network analysis, and other approaches utilized in international relations literature, as well as bibliometrics, qualitative historical analysis, topography and topology.

 

Geopolitics of Higher Education

Papers in the panel ‘The Geopolitics of International Higher Education’ explored international dimensions of higher education within the altered global context of emerging powers, shifting international and regional relations, and growing populism and nationalism. Natalia Leskina (Ural Federal University, Russia) and Emma Sabzalieva (University of Toronto, Canada) presented their research on higher education region-building in Central Asia. Their paper is a comparative analysis of activities in the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union and Chinese led Belt & Road Initiative and how these activities have been received and are being shaped by Central Asian policymakers. Bowen Xu’s (University of Cambridge, UK) paper focussed in on China’s efforts to create an educational community using the Belt & Road Initiative, helpfully bringing policy initiatives to an English language audience.

 

Huili (Stella) Si presented a co-authored paper with Miguel Lim (both University of Manchester, UK) again centring China but from the perspective of the rise and decline of joint programmes and institutes with other states. Hannah Moscovitz (University of Cambridge, UK) continued the focus on international linkages in her paper on the role of international student recruitment for nation branding in Québec and Canada. These are contexts where nationalisms compete and where sovereignty is shared, underscoring a differentiated process of nation branding in majority and minority nations. Taken together, the papers opened up new approaches at sub-national, national and supra-national levels to explore the changing impacts of geopolitics on higher education. They help to lay the groundwork for new kinds of research on higher education that are grounded not in Eurocentric approaches but explore different framings and geographies.

 

Participants found exchanges in this panel fruitful. One of them said: “It was my first time to attend ECPR, and it was a great experience for me. Having conversations with like-minded scholars help me to grow both intellectually and socially. I’d love to have this continued and looking forward to next year.” Similarly, another panellist who is a 2nd year PhD student told: “It is very meaningful to meet so many fantastic researchers through ECPR. ECPR provides a brilliant platform for researchers to communicate and share with insights. The comments and feedbacks from my peers are very valuable not only to my research but also to my future development.”

 

Higher Education Policy

Several panels examined issues of higher education policy. In the panel ‘Competition and Agentification in Funding Research and Innovation’, Ivar Bleiklie (Universitetet i Bergen) presented the co-authored paper ‘Policy Making by Dialogue?’ which introduces a new mode of policymaking that has emerged in Norway’s process of university mergers. It is identified as a ‘managerial’ mode, as it is based on direct dialogue with the leadership of organizations and their strategic positioning. The authorship collective included several other members of the SG, Svein Michelsen (Universitetet i Bergen), Nicoline Frølich (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education) and Mari Elken (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education). A second paper was presented by Anastasia Steinbrunner (Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, Universität Erfurt) which examined the policy process around tuition fees in France and Germany. The paper, co-written with several other researchers at Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, ‘Agenda Setting and Policy Diffusion: Exploring Higher Education Tuition Fees in France, Germany, and the United States’ applied a multiple streams analysis to the contentious and unstable issue of fees and their rationale.

 

The final panel in this section ‘The Politics of Higher Education Policy – Lessons from Western Europe, Canada and the USA’ chaired by Jens Jungblut (University of Oslo) brought together four papers that discussed different elements of the politics of higher education policy. All of the contributions are part of an upcoming volume that compares the policy-making dynamics in higher education policy in Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada. In the first contribution, Martina Vukasovic (University of Bergen) presented her work on the role of interest groups and intermediary organizations for higher education policy in Europe. In her paper, she not only provided a concise overview on the literature but also a detailed mapping of the interest group ecology in the higher education sector in multiple European countries. A key finding of her work is that most European countries show corporatist characteristics in their higher education interest group arrangement.

 

Meng-Hsuan Chou (Nanyang Technological University) presented in her paper an analysis on the use of the concept of policy framing in higher education policy. The results of her detailed literature review showed that the use of the concept of framing became more prominent in the literature especially after the year 2001. Moreover, she identified three clusters in the literature focusing on “The European story”, “When Europe hits home”, and “the national story”. In his contribution, Julian Garritzmann (Goethe University Frankfurt) presented a concise overview of the politics of higher education finance literature, highlighting the differing explanatory approaches that are used in the literature. In addition, he used new public opinion data to show how different factors influence public opinion towards tuition fees. Finally, Jens Jungblut (University of Oslo) presented the literature on the politics of higher education governance reforms. Focusing on the role of political parties for changes in the governance of higher education, he presented an analysis of party manifestos from six West European countries to highlight differences between party families regarding their preferences for the relationship between higher education and the state.

 

Excellent Paper Prize and future plans

To share official news, future plans and informally discuss how pandemic has affected our work and lives, our Standing Group met for the business meeting and social hour. The key highlight was celebration of the excellent paper award from an emerging scholar which this year was awarded to Justyna Bandola-Gill (University of Edinburgh) for her paper ‘Knowledge exchange repertoires: Producing and translating knowledge for policy’. This was the fourth time that our Standing Group awarded this prize. The new call for applications will be published soon and we will be celebrating the next winner at the 2021 ECPR General Conference which hopefully will take place in Innsbruck (Austria).

The post Virtual ECPR Knowledge Politics and Policies 2020 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Vor wenigen Monaten hat der Deutsche Bundestag offiziell beschlossen, dass ab 1.1.2021 das neue Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten (BfAA) mit Sitz in Brandenburg(Havel) gegründet wird. Hier trage ich zusammen, was wir bislang alles wissen und was noch nicht (alles) auf der Wikipedia steht.

Warum mich das interessiert?

Zum Einen wohne ich seit einigen Monaten hier in der Stadt Brandenburg, unter anderem um eine neue Wissenschafts- und Forschungsorganisation zu gründen. Als Fast-Nachbar des neuen Amts und als Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaftler verfolge ich daher den Aufbau eines neuen Amts natürlich mit großer Aufmerksamkeit.

Aber wer meine Forschung der letzten Jahre verfolgt hat, weiß, dass ich mich natürlich auch inhaltlich für die Arbeit des BfAAs interessiere. Laut der Webseite des Auswärtigen Amts ist eine der Aufgaben des Amts nämlich das “Management von Fördermitteln und Zuwendungen, zum Beispiel für humanitäre Hilfsprojekte“.

In meiner Forschung rund um die Finanzierung des UN-Systems habe ich mich zuletzt intensiv mit Fragen der humanitären Finanzen befasst, inklusive von Organisationen wie dem UN-Flüchtlingshilfswerks UNHCR oder dem UN-Hilfswerk für Palästina-Flüchtlinge UNRWA. Da ist das Amt genau in meinem Themenbereich unterwegs.

Interessanterweise wird laut den lokalen Medien (hier Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, MAZ) der ehemalige deutsche Botschafter in Beirut (Libanon), Georg Birgelen, wohl der erste Leiter der neuen Amts werden.

Das ist insofern spannend, weil der kleine Staat Libanon in großer Zahl Geflüchtete aus Syrien aber auch eine eine signifikante Zahl Palästina-Flüchtlinge aufgenommen hat und damit ein wichtiger Empfänger von multilateraler Hilfe über Organisationen wie UNHCR und UNRWA ist. Birgelen hat also vermutlich vor Ort gesehen, was das Management von Hilfsgeldern direkt und indirekt bedeutet.

Was genau das neue Bundesamt alles tun soll ist allerdings noch nicht im Detail bekannt. Im Kern soll es nicht-politische Verwaltungsaufgaben des Auswärtigen Amts übernehmen.  Wobei das natürlich nicht heißt, dass es hier um unwichtige Aspekte geht.

Im Gesetz heißt es (§2 Abs. 2):

“Das Bundesamt unterstützt den Auswärtigen Dienst auf dem Gebiet der Auswärtigen Angelegenheiten bei der Verwaltung und Infrastruktur, dem Fördermittelmanagement sowie im Rechts- und Konsularwesen. Das nähere regelt das Auswärtige Amt.”

Außerdem können dem Amt noch weitere auswärtige Aufgaben übertragen werden, inklusive aus anderen Ministerien und Bundesbehörden (§2 Abs. 3). Man könnte sich also vorstellen, dass es irgendwann nicht nur die Verwaltung der auswärtigen Fördermittel des AAs sondern auch anderen Ministerien übernimmt. Z.B. wird wohl auch die Verwaltung des Auslandsschulwesen auf das BfAA übertragen (siehe weiter unten).

Die ungenaue Aufgabenbeschreibung des BfAA wurde im Februar vom Bundesrechnungshof in einem Einzelbericht zum neuen Amt kritisiert:

“Welche Aufgaben das neue Bundesamt übernehmen soll und was demgegenüber der für die politische Steuerung des Auswärtigen Amts zuständigen Zentrale vorbehalten bleibt, lässt der Gesetzentwurf offen. Er enthält auch keine hinreichend genauen Angaben zu den mit dieser Organisationsmaßnahme verbundenen haushalts- und insbesondere personalwirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen. Weder lässt der Gesetzentwurf erkennen, wie die Personalausstattung des neuen Bundesamtes genau ausfallen soll noch wie sich die Neugründung auf die Personalausstattung der Fachabteilungen der Zentrale auswirkt.“

Die Begründung zum Gesetzesentwurf sprach übrigens von einem “geplanten schrittweisen Aufwuchs des Personalstamms des Bundesamts auf 700 Beschäftigte“.

Wir haben es hier also nicht mit einer kleinen Behörde zu tun, sondern in ihrer angestrebten Größe mit einem signifikanten Akteur in einer Stadt mit knapp über 70.000 Einwohnern. Und auch ein Akteur, der mit Sicherheit einiges im Auswärtigen Amt verändern wird, wenn dadurch tatsächlich Stellen eingespart oder verlagert werden.

Damit ist laut Presse auch klar, dass die zunächst angemieteten Räumlichkeiten in der Kirchhofstraße in Brandenburg wohl nicht ausreichen werden und es möglicherweise einen Neubau für das Amt geben könnte.

Die Lage in der Kirchhofstraße ist aber für Mitarbeiter*innen des BfAAs, die aus Berlin oder Potsdam einpendeln, insofern vorteilhaft, als dass man in nur 5-10 Minuten zu Fuß vom Bahnhof dort ist. Von Berlin fährt der RE1 halbstündlich in ca. 50 Minuten von Berlin Hbf nach Brandenburg Hbf (zurück auch). Ab 2022 wird der Takt sogar von halbstündig auf 20-minütig erhöht.

Was für Mitarbeiter*innen werden gesucht?

In einer Stellenausschreibung des AAs für den gehobenen Dienst vom August 2020 hieß es zum Beispiel:

“Wenn es Sie reizt, am Aufbau einer neuen, international ausgerichteten Bundesoberbehörde, dem zentralen Servicezentrum für außenpolitische Verwaltungsaufgaben im Geschäftsbereich des Auswärtigen Amts engagiert mitzuarbeiten, Sie hohe Teamfähigkeit und Einsatzfreude sowie die unten aufgeführten Anforderungen mitbringen, freuen wir uns auf Ihre Bewerbung.“

Die Aufgaben in dieser Ausschreibung waren ganz klar an der Mittelverwaltung angesiedelt:

• • “Bewilligung von Zuwendungen nach § 44 Bundeshaushaltsordnung einschließlich der Prüfung von Finanzierungsplänen und der Beratung zu Projektvorhaben im Ausland
  • Abschluss von zivilrechtlichen Verträgen mit im Ausland sitzenden Zuwendungsempfängern, einschließlich Kommunikation in Wort und Schrift mit den Zuwendungsempfängern in englischer Sprache
  • Prüfung von Ausgaben im Rahmen von Verwendungsnachweisen
  • Projektbegleitung und Bewertung von Sachberichten einschließlich der Dokumentation von Beanstandungen und der Durchsetzung von Rückforderungen Mittelbewirtschaftung“

Auch die Visa-Vergabe soll demnächst hier Brandenburg geschehen, wobei juristisch das Verwaltungsgericht in Berlin zuständig bleibt — formal werden die Entscheidungen also wohl in der Zuständigkeit es Auswärtigen Amts fallen, nicht hier.

Darüber hinaus deuten weitere Stellenausschreibungen darauf hin, dass auch Aufgaben des Bundesverwaltungsamts in Bereich des Auslandsschulwesens auf das BfAA übergehen:

“Derzeit wird die Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen durch das Bundesverwaltungsamt betreut. Mit Einstellung dieser Tätigkeit beim BVA übernimmt das Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten diese Aufgabe voraussichtlich zum 01.01.2021.“

Weiterhin werden wohl Aufgaben in der Buchführung und Rechnungslegung des AAs an das BfAA ausgelagert. Auch Expert*innen im Tarifrecht werden in der Zentralabteilung des BfAA gesucht. Auch braucht das BfAA natürlich eine neue IT, so dass Stellen für das Auswärtige Amt in diesem Bereich schon seit Anfang 2020 mit der Möglichkeit der Versetzung nach Brandenburg ausgeschrieben wurden.

Hier in Brandenburg ist also einiges in Bewegung. Wenn die ersten 2-300 Mitarbeiter*innen hier im Laufe des nächsten Jahres ihre Arbeit beginnen, wird das in Brandenburg(Havel) sicher einiges in Bewegung setzen.

Dem neuen Amtsleiter Birgelen kann man nur viel Erfolg wünschen, denn beim Aufbau einer neuen Behörde kann ja einiges gut aber auch einiges schief laufen. Als Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaftler wäre beides interessant zu beobachten, aber als Bürger der Stadt hoffe ich auf ein gutes Zusammenwachsen von Bundesamt und Brandenburg.

The post Das Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten (BfAA) in Brandenburg: Was wir wissen appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Azerbaijan is currently actively working with several companies to bring the COVID-19 vaccine to the country.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said this during the opening of a modular hospital of the Health Center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for the treatment of coronavirus patients.
Azerbaijan will be among the first countries to receive the vaccine in this area. But the main condition is that the vaccine should go through all the stages of testing. Doctors are well aware that any new vaccine goes through several stages and only then is released to the market and used to vaccinate people. Therefore, Baku aims to bring this vaccine to the country after all the stages of research have been conducted by companies and after international certification has been completed. After that, it will be possible to say that this terrible situation is over.
“Currently, 100 to 200 people are infected in our country every day. This is certainly a better result than in previous months. However, daily monitoring is and will be carried out to keep the situation under control. At the same time, mitigation steps should be taken in such a way that the number of patients does not increase sharply. This is the key issue, and we will certainly take our steps very carefully”, Mr. Aliyev noted.

Editor

The post Baku is actively working with several companies to bring the COVID-19 vaccine to the country appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Weekly schedule of President Charles Michel 28 August - 4 September 2020