Latest Blog Posts

Universities not only produce Europe’s intellectual elites and scientific knowledge, but they are also key actors in science diplomacy, regional innovation ecosystems and cultural reproduction. The European Union (EU) is increasingly recognizing this and engages in the steering of European universities, for example through its funding programmes.

Readers of the Journal of Common Market Studies may be surprised and perhaps confused to see references to the speculative fiction (SF) film Arrival and ‘planetary politics’ in this symposium of the premier journal for the study of the European Union (EU). What can we learn from a SF film or the unheard-of politics of the planet in our study of EU politics? might be a good question.

Over the past decade, the European Union has increasingly experimented with novel forms of public engagement, most recently as part of a New Push for European Democracy. A paradigm of deliberative and participatory innovation that envisages unmediated forms of citizen involvement is advocated by a network of political actors, civil society organisations, and academics. The […]