This article investigates how the small liberal Nordic states - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - have adapted their foreign and security policy roles in the Arctic in response to a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. Departing from the concept of contextually induced role change, we trace the evolution of Nordic national role conceptions before and after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a turning point that marked the transition from a liberal, rules-based order to intensified great power competition. Prior to 2022, the Nordic states balanced multilateral cooperation and national interests, acting as facilitators of cooperation in the Arctic while also pursuing distinct national roles. The post-2022 context, however, has seen a convergence of Nordic Arctic policies, with a pronounced shift towards prioritising military security, particularly through NATO. The analysis demonstrates that the increasingly hostile Arctic environment has constrained the agency of small states, compelling the Nordics to adopt new roles focused on security provision, while multilateral strategies have become less viable. This contextually induced role change underscores the challenges faced by small liberal states in navigating a more competitive and unpredictable Arctic and highlights the importance of both structural conditions and agency in shaping foreign policy roles.
This article examines the Russia-Ukraine war as an empirical stress test for dominant theoretical assumptions about cyber warfare. Drawing on a quantitative analysis of cyber incidents reported by Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team and structured qualitative assessment of the conflict's most significant operations, it identifies a paradox: Russian offensive cyber activity has been quantitatively prolific yet strategically marginal when compared to conventional kinetic means. Even the most destructive attacks produced effects that were temporary, reversible and localised, whereas kinetic strikes against the same categories of targets caused permanent, systemic damage. The article identifies four mutually reinforcing explanations: the structural constraints inherent to offensive cyber operations, the effectiveness of Ukraine's whole-of-society defensive ecosystem built through prior preparation and international cooperation, the functioning of cross-domain deterrence in conditions where attribution ambiguity dissolves and Russian organisational dysfunction in cyber-kinetic integration. The findings challenge the assumption that offensive cyber operations alone can generate effects comparable to those in the traditional domains of warfare. However, the analysis also reveals that defensive cyber operations have contributed materially to Ukraine's wartime survival, suggesting that the strategic value of the cyber domain lies primarily in enabling resilience and intelligence collection rather than in independent infrastructure destruction.
This paper examines the role of knowledge-based expert institutions - specifically, international peacekeeping training centres - in shaping security governance through the production and diffusion of expertise. Drawing on empirical fieldwork in two training centres in Ghana and Italy, this paper explores how knowledge politics influence security assistance, shaping behavioural norms and legitimising institutional authority. I argue that both centres construct legitimacy through a dual strategy combining rationalist and affective modes of authority. They deploy technocratic languages of metrics, data and international "best practices" to demonstrate credibility and meet donor expectations, while also appealing to shared values, moral responsibility and the emotional weight of peacekeeping. Trainees are taught not only rules and norms but also to "embody" ideals such as impartiality, restraint and service through storytelling, rituals and immersive exercises. By blending technocratic and affective strategies, these centres navigate tensions between formal governance and the lived realities of peacekeepers, highlighting the contested, situated and performative nature of security knowledge and institutional authority.
International security dynamics are increasingly studied within the analytical framework of strategic narratives. We offer a methodological contribution towards analysing the rhetorical mechanisms of legitimation and delegitimation in strategic narratives projected by perpetrators of wars of aggression. Building upon insights from critical discourse studies, we propose an analytical distinction between narratives that primarily function to legitimise the aggression and those that delegitimise the critics of the aggression. A further distinction is made between four kinds of identity narratives: those that primarily focus on either (1) the target of aggression, (2) the aggressor, (3) the allies of the target of the aggression or (4) the allies of the aggressor. We also suggest that legitimations in strategic narratives fall under three broad analytical categories: (1) authorisations, (2) moralisations and (3) rationalisations. These distinctions are useful as they help to think more systematically about how different strategic (de)legitimation narratives may target particular audiences - an idea that could be explored further by drawing on the concept of "Model Reader". We illustrate this approach by analysing a specialised dataset of English language social media content published by the Russian government during its attack on Ukraine in 2022.
This article examines how the European Union's turn towards research and knowledge security reflects a transformation in its geopolitical identity. Moving beyond the language of "technological sovereignty", it conceptualises this shift as the emergence of an epistemic form of sovereignty that governs the conditions of knowledge production and exchange. Drawing on Balzacq's (2010) practice-based theory of securitisation, the study introduces the notion of securitisation through governance to capture how security rationales are embedded in bureaucratic and regulatory instruments rather than enacted through exceptional measures. Empirically, the analysis traces EU and national policy developments between 2013 and 2025, examining how supranational frameworks are translated into national practice in five Member States: the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Italy, and Hungary. The findings show that securitisation unfolds as a multi-level process of coordination, translation and adaptation, producing a distinctly European form of geopolitical pragmatism that seeks to reconcile openness with protection, values with interests, and academic freedom with strategic control. By showing how security becomes embedded within routine research governance, the article argues that the EU performs its geopolitical actorness not through coercion but through the regulation of vulnerability, governing knowledge as both a strategic resource and a risk.
This paper examines how EU internal security cooperation is sustained through the everyday maintenance of the Schengen Information System's (SIS) code tables, the classificatory system that enables cross-border information exchange throughout Europe. Drawing on extensive expert interviews, the analysis shows how officers, technicians, and database specialists work towards what I call epistemic stabilisation. By this I mean a socio-technical process in which practitioners align heterogeneous national knowledge systems and periodically reconstitute categories so that information can circulate across divergent environments. Analytically, epistemic stabilisation captures both the labour required to keep shifting realities in sync with classificatory order and the performative effects of this work, as decisions about which distinctions matter directly shape what can be recorded and governed through the SIS. By tracing how practitioners negotiate the boundaries of categories, incorporate emerging object types, and adapt classificatory regimes in response to infrastructural reforms, the paper shows how stability in EU internal security is a provisional and ongoing task. In doing so, it positions the SIS code tables and their governance as a profoundly political site in which the epistemic foundations of European internal security are continually worked towards.
This article contributes to the literature on European policies on refugees and on the EU as a liberal actor. I use the normative literature on migration and refugees and international law, to assess the extent to which European policies towards Syrian refugees since 2011 can be considered liberal. I suggest an ideal liberal actor should provide not only security to refugees in transit and on its territory, but also dignity with access to legal justice. The article recognises the hypocrisy of European actors towards refugees, with policies not matching rhetoric. However, unlike most of the literature on EU policies on migrants and refugees, I offer more nuance and highlight that European actors have at times adopted a remarkably liberal attitude. Sweden and Germany played a notable role in providing both security and dignity to almost two million refugees, although their policies are changing. I also argue that a European liberal approach is emerging in terms of providing legal justice to Syrian refugees, including justice for crimes committed in Syria. The EU's Court of Justice, EU institutions and national courts in most European states - especially France, with the possible prosecution of former President Assad- are at the forefront of this.
The participation in military coalitions in the post-Cold War era has sparked an intense debate among realist bandwagon theory and liberal theories about the motivational drivers behind coalition partners' decision to join US-led interventions. Based on recently declassified material, this article reevaluates the dominant explanations, including those attempting to synthesise the explanations. Based on an in-depth case study of the Danish decision-making process, which is combined with a probing of the decision-making process in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Greece leading up to the NATO intervention in Kosovo, the article produces new knowledge about the balance between competing realist and liberal motivational drivers and their relations under shifting scope conditions. Utilising a combination of process tracing, Bayesian inference logics and historical methods, we find that liberal order motives clearly become secondary to realist bandwagon motives in the crucial phases of the central decision-making moments following an increase in US pressure on its NATO allies. The conclusions demonstrate that alliance concerns, coupled with fear of marginalisation and loss of alliance protection, played a much more vital role for coalition partners than previously recognised.
This article examines the activation of the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) during the 2024 floods in Spain, situating its operations within the framework of Europeanisation and multi-level disaster governance. Using Europeanisation theory, it explores crisis integration through three dimensions: (1) the influence of national administrative and political cultures on the activation and reception of EU assistance; (2) interactions between domestic and EU institutional logics and (3) top-down and bottom-up dynamics of multi-level governance affecting coordination during large-scale emergencies. The study is a qualitative single-case analysis, combining eleven semi-structured interviews with EU civil protection actors, local responders and partner agencies, along with documentary and digital sources. Findings show that the UCPM enabled rapid cross-border mobilisation and enhanced operational coordination. Nevertheless, delayed activation, complex domestic governance structures and political constraints limited efficiency. The Spanish case demonstrates how national administrative cultures and organisational arrangements shape the embedding of supranational capacities. Adopting a confirmatory empirical approach, the study clarifies how multi-level governance, integration and coordination function within the UCPM. Rather than generalising, it highlights the interaction between EU institutions and national authorities, showing how institutional strengths and domestic contexts combine to produce concrete operational outcomes.
Amid Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, immersive media have emerged as a new instrument of strategic communication. This article examines how Ukrainian state-affiliated and civil-society actors deploy virtual reality (VR) to shape perceptions of the conflict, defend cultural heritage and mobilise transnational solidarity. Conceptually, this article advances a dual framework that understands VR as both a digital repository and a performative communicative practice. As a repository, VR produces durable and verifiable representations of cultural loss that counter historical revisionism. As a performative medium, it reconfigures audience engagement by enabling embodied witnessing. Empirically, this study draws on a mixed-method analysis combining close examination of three VR documentaries with audience survey data. The findings show that immersive exposure intensified affective engagement, heightened awareness of cultural targeting, and stimulated information-sharing and seeking. Participants attributed these effects not simply to content, but to VR-specific affordances such as spatial presence and the sensation of "being there", suggesting that VR alter how meaning is encountered rather than merely what is communicated. This article argues that VR expands the repertoire of strategic communication beyond discursive framing toward experiential meaning-making, with implications for European security and digital diplomacy.
This paper examines whether UK naval power, designed to depend on US support, can meet doctrinal requirements if that support is withdrawn. Using an open-source, scenario-based audit, it maps dependencies, tests replacements within the UK force structure and evaluates sovereignty options. Across nine requirements, 51 US enablers were identified. None meet thresholds without US support. Four lack credible alternatives within policy timelines. The study formalises "dependence by design" and offers a replicable audit and sovereignty plan. We argue that proportional scaling can improve at the margins but not operational capability. UK naval outputs remain US-conditioned, yet those outputs are becoming ever more vital just as the US retrenches its support.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has increasingly supported its battlefield operations with covert actions against Kyiv’s European supporters. Executing many such actions are cheap and plentiful low-level agents who provide Russia with considerable geographic reach and plausible deniability. Using a new dataset of 145 low-level agents, this study combines descriptive and inferential statistics with social network analysis to explore their demographics, roles, deployment patterns, and organisational structure. Findings indicate that low-level agents are predominantly male, in their mid-thirties, drawn disproportionately from Ukrainian, Russian, Moldovan, and Bulgarian populations, and quite frequently re-used. Networks appear structurally hierarchical and compartmentalised, and seem designed with plausible deniability in mind. However, inconsistent operational security by Russian intelligence officers limits Moscow’s ability to claim ignorance. The findings provide empirical insights into an ongoing European security threat, informing policy responses and further scholarship.
Europe is taking the lead in positioning itself at the forefront of digital governance with the accelerating transformation of global digital markets, which is reflected in policies that have frequently addressed digital sovereignty in their communications. However, the lack of conceptual agreement on the fundamental objectives of digital sovereignty leads to diverse interpretations by different actors within the European jurisdiction, expanding its scope but narrowing the intensity with which it is enforced. This article aims to solidify the concept of sovereignty in cyberspace in response to the digital insecurity in Europe amid increasing geopolitical tensions by examining the fundamental objectives of the European Union (EU) within its notion of digital sovereignty. It uses Gioia methodology [Gioia et al., 2013. Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology. Organizational research methods, 16 (1), 15-31] as a theoretical approach towards qualitatively examining 79 legal documents selected via a rigorous screening process to identify six dimensions of the EU's strategic and digital goals while discussing its relevance to digital sovereignty. By analysing these dimensions, we provide actionable insights on digital sovereignty from the EU legislation grounded in empirical evidence and highlight the gaps in its implementation.
What explains variation in burden-sharing during international conflicts? We analyse the crucial case study of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022 to test military burdensharing theories, exploring both domestic and international factors. Data show significant and counter-intuitive variation between countries. We employ a nested research design that combines a cross-national quantitative analysis of 35 countries' military contributions to Ukraine between 2022 and 2024 with a qualitative case study of Denmark, an unlikely case that contributes much more than predicted by theories. Our findings challenge prevailing assumptions in the burden-sharing literature by demonstrating the significant explanatory and enabling power of domestic determinants, especially public opinion, executive autonomy and government ideology. In contrast, international determinants, with the exception of strategic location, prove less influential. The case of Denmark further illustrates how overperforming burdensharing behaviour is the result of a combination of strategic incentives, such as countering the regional threat Russia poses and status-seeking behaviour, with enabling domestic conditions that allowed for high levels of aid provision. By highlighting the domestic political realities behind international contributions, this study calls for a more nuanced understanding of fair burdensharing: one that reflects both capability and willingness. The new word count is 193 and now meets the word limit.
Conflict management and resolution (CM-R) has evolved significantly with the growing influence of authoritarian actors. While the existing literature highlights how alternative actors contest the liberal peace order, this study examines how the European Union (EU) responds to challenges posed by illiberal CM-R approaches. The article examines the EU's adaptation strategies in three cases with varying degrees of competition with a key non-Western actor, the Russian Federation: Mali (high), the CAR (medium) and Mozambique (low). Drawing on primary and secondary sources, including interviews with EU officials, it identifies three distinct approaches shaped by the interplay of geopolitical, identity and pragmatic goals. In Mali, the EU adopted a resistance strategy that prioritised the identity goal, emphasising human rights and democracy while pragmatically leveraging development and humanitarian aid to retain minimal influence. In the CAR, the adjustment approach reflected stronger pragmatism, as the EU compromised its normative commitments to align with rival offers. In Mozambique, the evolution approach balanced geopolitical, identity and pragmatic goals, consolidating influence through security-driven interventions and long-term peacebuilding. The article contributes to understanding how international competition shapes CM-R strategies and offers insights into the future of the field amid political fragmentation.
Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union's (EU) role in defence is receiving growing political and scholarly attention. The EU has responded to the war with a plethora of new defence initiatives. Nonetheless, the Union's potential to advance European defence cooperation remains contested. Traditionally, the EU's defence dimension has been seen as the domain of member state governments and their competing national interests. However, more recently, scholars have also emphasised the emergence of the European Commission as a supranational policy entrepreneur, evident in the genesis of initiatives such as the European Defence Fund (EDF). In this paper, we go beyond the classic intergovernmental-supranational divide and apply governance concepts from international relations and EU integration studies to EU policymaking in defence matters. Instead of a unitary European defence agenda or model, we argue that the EU's defence dimension consists of several distinct albeit partly overlapping governance modes with somewhat different trajectories, rationales, logics and actors. It is these different modes of defence governance - and the interplay between them - that shape the EU's approach to defence policy and condition its possibilities to strengthen European defence.
The past decade has seen the resurgence "total defence" across Nordic and other European states. This whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to national security involves civilian, military, public and private actors in large-scale collaboration across sectoral and organisational boundaries. Despite growing scholarly interest, the structural and regulatory dimensions shaping these collaborative arrangements remain underexplored. Drawing on organisational sociology and theories of inter-organisational relations, this article examines how key institutions in Sweden, Norway and Denmark are formally structured for total defence and how they relate across the civilian-military spectrum. Through comparative, theory-guided analysis, we assess the formalisation, centralisation and complexity of each country's total defence concept. The analysis reveals substantial variation in governance structures and actor configurations, illuminating conditions that facilitate or constrain inter-organisational collaboration. These findings contribute to current debates on Nordic defence integration, institutional design and future research on whole-of-society defence models in an evolving European security landscape.
Democratic resilience has emerged as a central theme in academic debates in response to growing threats to contemporary democracies, yet little attention has been paid to resilience capacity to external stressors. This article conceptualises electoral integrity as a key democratic resilience capacity and examines how central actors in the Swedish electoral administration make sense of, and navigate, foreign election interference. Drawing on institutional logics theory and qualitative interviews with Swedish county governors, the article demonstrates how governors approach resilience through a logic of trust: interviewees view trust as both a core democratic resource and a target of foreign adversaries. Assuming the role of guardians of trust, governors rely on institutional practices of transparency, impartiality and standardisation as central tools. By positioning foreign election interference as a key external stressor and electoral integrity as a resilience capacity, the article contributes to the growing literature on democratic resilience. By providing insight into the work of the electoral administration, it also adds a novel resilience perspective to security studies scholarship on foreign interference. Finally, the article indicates a need for future comparative studies on electoral integrity as a resilience capacity in the context of external stressors across settings with diverging levels of trust.
This article examines how European Union (EU) institutions discursively construct EUropean agency in their social media communication on the war in Ukraine, interrogating the legitimising strategies that constitute the Union's evolving role as a security actor. Grounded on poststructuralist understandings of discourse, legitimation and performativity, the study develops a novel model of EUropean agency attribution that accounts for its multi-actor fluid nature. This model is then applied to a large dataset of X posts published between 2022 and 2024 by the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU/European Council. The findings reveal profound institutional divergences: the European Commission deploys expansive and multilateral attributions of agency, performing a self-authorised role of a geopolitical orchestrator; the Parliament foregrounds itself and its members as the primary agents of response and the Council privileges abstract invocations of "the EU" as a unitary actor. Citizens and member states, by contrast, are largely absent as discursive agents, indicating a centralisation of symbolic authority at the institutional level. These patterns underscore the plural and contested nature of EUropean agency with broader implications for debates on EU legitimacy and symbolic authority in the security domain.
After joining the EU and NATO, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe transitioned to professional armed forces. They anticipated membership benefits without making adequate defence contributions. The war in Ukraine, renewed Russian military buildup, and the US focus shifting away from Europe have made reforms urgent. Europe must prioritise building a unified defence strategy and increasing its strategic autonomy, engaging effectively with both allies and competitors. Modernising all-volunteer forces should be the first step. Romania and Poland are central to these efforts. Improving their joint defence capabilities is vital for Europe's security. Currently, aggregated national data reveal inconsistencies in recruitment patterns. Generational differences persist in attitudes towards public service, especially concerning the military draft. To fill this gap, this research complements national surveys with focus groups and interviews at the meso level. It examines recruitment-related factors within a sample of Romanian individuals of pre-recruitment age. Respondents ranked conscription below voluntary and reserve service. A two-phase qualitative process introduced incentive-based enlistment scenarios. About two in ten would consider voluntary enlistment under better conditions. The findings suggest that a hybrid voluntary-mandatory system could improve recruitment and retention. The article recommends expanding recruitment, boosting retention and preserving the option to reintroduce conscription.
