Deadline: 25.05.2007.

The panel, which is part of a series of panels constituted around the insights of “critical approaches to security in Europe”, seeks to put forward original methodologies for understanding the complex dynamics of what is usually called the “Europe in the world” problematique.Proposed panel title: Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: When the International becomes European: the circulation of practices between European and international arenas
Proposed panel section: IPS
Panel Convenors: Stephan Davidshofer (Sciences Po/CERI, c.a.s.e collective), Julien Jeandesboz (Sciences Po/CERI, Paris, c.a.s.e collective)
Contact: stephan.davidshofer@sciences-po.org, julien.jeandesboz@sciences-po.org.

Abstract :

The panel, which is part of a series of panels constituted around the insights of “critical approaches to security in Europe”, seeks to put forward original methodologies for understanding the complex dynamics of what is usually called the “Europe in the world” problematique.

It starts from the observation that most of the approaches that deal with the question of the relations between European and international processes take for granted the fact that the European Union is a one-of-a-kind entity in international politics, albeit one with its own universal pretensions, and thus conform with the official discourses developed in the European arenas. Similarly, such approaches presuppose a distinction between a European and an international “level”, hence reactivating the issues tied to classical “levels of analysis” approaches.
 
The panel aims, in this respect, at displacing the debates from endless discussions on the specificity of the European Union as an international actor to investigations into the social games of identification and differentiation, reference and interference, circulation and fixation, which give meaning to this imagined international/European divide. It will investigate in particular the discourses and practices that structure the shaping of specific modes of government that circulate between the European arenas and other transnational settings. It will furthermore pay specific attention to a largely underdeveloped aspect of the classical Europeanization approaches, namely the processes through which practices developed in international settings (e.g. “governance”, “crisis management”, “integrated border management”) are imported into the European arenas and reframed as European. As such, then, it will study the logics, stakes, and effects of the circulation of practices of liberal governance on the European arenas.