Ideas on Europe

Politics & Public Policy

A dialogue on Europe, but with whom?

Simon Usherwood |

We are a few weeks past Andy Burnham’s speech about wanting to re-open the question of the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU. Since then, there has been a fair amount of (sometimes hyperventilated) comment and discussion about what this relationship might look like, usually in flavours of Why My Prior Preference Was Right Then […]

ECPR Knowledge Politics and Policies 2026

Europe of Knowledge |

The 2026 edition of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference took place at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), 8-11 September. Over four conference days more than 2000 participants presented in over 500 panels discussing some of the most important topics of our times including democratic backsliding and resilience, radicalisation, climate change, and […]

Party conferences and the EU

Simon Usherwood |

A short post this week, partly because I’ve got other things on, more because my cunning plan to summarise where parties are on ‘Europe’ came a bit unstuck. Either they’ve kept quiet on the matter or they’ve offered much talk. Probably only the LibDems of the national parties have both adopted a new policy objective […]

"And there are different options"

Simon Usherwood |

Well, it feels like I picked a good time to start trying to blog more. Andy Burnham’s speech to the Labour party conference has fired the gun on something that felt pretty unlikely just a few weeks ago: a debate about the UK’s relationship with the EU. Given that one month ago I myself was […]

Today in motivated reasoning news

Simon Usherwood |

It’s party conference time, so everyone’s pushing their ideas into the public domain, hoping they will get picked up by the faithful (and the media) just at the point that policy might get changed. The IPPR have a useful report on the costs of not having mutual recognition of conformity assessment with the EU, highlighting […]

Will this do?

Simon Usherwood |

I’ve been spending the week at the UACES conference in Prague, talking about lots of things to do with European Studies. However, one the things that didn’t come up very much was UK-EU relations. It’s almost as if most people don’t have it on their minds. The moment it did come up was during the […]

Not even a new 'reset': The minimalist Burnham agenda on the EU?

Simon Usherwood |

The arrival of the seventh Prime Minister in Number 10 since the 2016 referendum is an opportunity to try once again to get to grips with British European policy. In practice, this is not a problem of wrestling Lots of Things, but instead more about trying to work out whether the absence of visible activity […]

We Can Steer This: How the European Parliament Told the Story of AI

Europe of Knowledge |

Anne Goldmann When the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act was finally adopted in 2024, most of the public debate had already moved on from how the Act regulates to whether it should. Headlines focused on the moments when it looked as if everything might still fall apart: the dispute over facial recognition and law enforcement powers1, […]

University Autonomy and Organizational Identity: What's the Story of Regional Universities in Kazakhstan?

Europe of Knowledge |

Danagul Yembergenova In 2018, Kazakhstan granted public universities greater institutional autonomy, encouraging them to become more entrepreneurial, internationally competitive, and responsive to societal and economic needs. But autonomy reforms do more than change governance arrangements; they reshape how universities understand themselves. Rather than asking whether universities have become more autonomous, our recent research asks a […]

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