Rather than assuming that external threats automatically generate centralization, the conference asks under what conditions geopolitical pressures produce cooperation, differentiated integration, supranational capacity-building, or renewed reliance on national instruments. It also foregrounds the distributional and democratic foundations of these choices inquiring into who bears the costs of these transformations, which territorial and social divisions emerge, and when publics authorize deeper EU involvement in core state and economic security domains.

By connecting work on security threats, alliance dependence, strategic autonomy, economic vulnerability, enlargement, and public opinion, the conference seeks to advance a broad account of Europe’s geopolitical transformation. Its central premise is that Europe’s ability to act geopolitically depends not only on external pressure, but on the political and economic coalitions through which new capacities are built and sustained.

Abstract

The conference on European Geoeconomics: The Political Economy of Geopolitics in Europe shall convene researchers working on the transformation of European economic governance under renewed geopolitical pressure. Russia’s war against Ukraine, uncertainty surrounding transatlantic security guarantees, and intensifying economic competition have challenged the institutional and political foundations of Europe’s economic model. Europe’s geopolitical turn is therefore not only a question of foreign policy or military strategy. It raises fundamental political economy questions about how external threats are translated into new forms of European capacity-building, economic protection, resource pooling, and public legitimation.

Chairs

• Ioana-Elena Oana
• Brian Burgoon