This review article explores the profound transformation of international relations brought about by emerging digital technologies during the current Technological Revolution 4.0. It examines how innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI), Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and big data are reshaping global power dynamics. It addresses the central question of whether these technologies foster interconnectedness or contribute to fragmentation and asymmetries between state and non-state actors. The study discusses how new digital infrastructures increasingly serve as both tools of influence and sources of vulnerability for both state and non-state actors, redefining the very nature of international relations. By reviewing three key studies regarding this problematic, the review article hypothesizes that the current technological revolution generates a dual dynamic: it enables unprecedented connectedness while simultaneously intensifying asymmetries, dependencies, and rivalries. By examining the digitalisation of international relations, this study underscores the importance of understanding the emerging forms of influence in global politics.
Following the collapse of the authoritarian regime and the dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic in 1993, the Czech Republic entered three interrelated processes: domestic transformation, association with the European Union (EU), and eventual accession. Transformation paths in Central and Eastern Europe were not uniform but varied according to historical context and prior institutional experiences. Throughout this period, European partners played an important role in supporting the Czech Republic's trajectory toward EU membership by clarifying the rights and responsibilities of accession and by promoting reforms consistent with the rule of law, democratic governance, and a market economy. In this framework, institutional resilience proved more decisive than economic wealth alone. Association and accession operated as external anchors that accelerated democratisation and strengthened state capacity. Pre-accession negotiations, together with extensive use of EU assistance instruments, contributed to institution-building, the gradual adoption of EU norms, and a deeper understanding-and "domestication"-of Europe within domestic political and administrative practices. Consequently, the EU's role evolved from an external influence on an internalised component of the Czech transformation process. The Czech case offers lessons that may inform future enlargements and enhance their prospects for long-term stability and prosperity.
This article presents a political-history analysis of the transformations in cultural governance and the processes of (re)integration into the European cultural space. In doing so, it contributes to the (re)interpretation of European history in the 1990s-a decade regarded as a pivotal period for the reconceptualisation of contemporary debates on the future of European Union (EU) enlargements, and, more specifically, on the role of cultural agenda within the enlargement process. The study focuses on the case of Czechia (formerly Czechoslovakia) to illustrate the principal shifts and debates that accompanied democratisation and the pre-accession Europeanisation processes preceding EU enlargement in the cultural domain, both internally and externally, after 1989. The paper contrasts this national trajectory with the concurrent evolution of cultural governance within the European Union following the end of the bipolar international order. The study underscores the significance of a specific, though implicit, dimension of the enlargement agenda-the cultural one-even though it is not articulated as a distinct pillar within the framework of pre-accession hard conditionality. It argues that the marginalisation of the cultural agenda-both during the transition to democratic governance and throughout the Europeanisation process (including the absence of culture as a motivating factor for EU membership) -has left a lasting imprint on the prioritisation of culture-related policies and strategies in Czechia as a new EU member state. Furthermore, the article concludes that the technical and "getting connected" approach, adopted by the EU in the 1990s within the cultural sphere, prevailed over the pursuit of a consensual understanding of cultural diversity and content focus within a broader European community during this formative decade.
Abstract This article examines Europe’s legacy of 1989 in light of contemporary geopolitical shifts. Taking a historical perspective, it explores the challenges to European Union (EU) decision-making in security and defence, as well as the closely related risks to EU enlargement, within the context of the early 1990s. The article revisits the historical context of the EU in the post-1989 period and examines the significant political, economic, and societal changes in Western and Eastern European societies. It argues that the interlinkages between the EU’s political and economic transformation, formalised in the Maastricht Treaty, have a long-lasting impact on the EU’s capacity for collective decision-making – a challenge that remains pertinent in the new geopolitical context. The article demonstrates how the legacy of the 1990s continues to influence the EU’s current security and defence challenges in international affairs. Finally, it argues that these historical lessons are essential for understanding the EU’s new ‘geopolitical’ tendency to reinvent its normative role, and it suggests further avenues for research.
The European Union's normative role in the evolving geopolitical context calls for renewed research perspectives on the interpretation of European history since 1989. Recent geopolitical shifts, growing tensions in EU-transatlantic relations, and the need to reassess the EU's position as a collective global actor underscore the importance of fresh scholarly inquiry and evidence-based insights into the transformative events of the early 1990s. Revisiting this period can deepen our understanding of contemporary challenges from both theoretical and empirical standpoints. This Special Issue re-examines key lessons from the early 1990s, particularly regarding the development of the EU's foreign and security policy, the closely intertwined enlargement process that culminated in the 2004 accession of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, and the legitimisation strategies underpinning Europe's collective identity. By reassessing these foundational developments, the issue seeks to illuminate how historical trajectories continue to shape the EU's current normative aspirations and constraints. Bringing together scholars from both Western and Eastern perspectives, this Special Issue critically engages with the EU's ideological project before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It situates political and economic transformations of the early post-Cold War period within broader debates on foreign and security affairs, democratisation, and Europeanisation. The contributions also reflect on the implications of these transformations for the EU's role in today's increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape. Through a series of interdisciplinary contributions, the issue explores the political, economic, and social transformations that unfolded across Eastern and Western Europe after 1989. These processes- ranging from state consolidation in post-war contexts to the role of European integration in memory politics, the institutional impact of the Maastricht Treaty, to the evolving roles of political parties and member states in collective EU decision-making -have left important gaps in our understanding of the EU's present normative positioning. By proposing new historical interpretations of democratisation and Europeanisation in the early 1990s, this Special Issue advances EU studies and contributes to ongoing debates on policymaking, security and defense integration, and the Union's capacity to act as a coherent normative power in the contemporary geopolitical environment.
"This article explores the role of collective memory in the EU enlargement process through the lens of the Baltic States. It argues that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have only partially aligned with the EU's dominant memory regime centred on the Holocaust, due to their distinct historical experiences of Soviet occupation. Using Norbert Elias's concept of figuration, the article introduces 'memory figuration' as a tool to analyse the dynamic interactions between national and European memory communities. It shows how Baltic actors acted as 'memory entrepreneurs', simultaneously adopting and reshaping EU narratives by promoting moral equivalence between Nazi and Soviet crimes. Through strategic use of the European Parliament, they embedded their memory struggles within EU institutions, linking them to broader concerns about security and Russian disinformation. The article concludes that EU memory politics are increasingly multi-nodal, shaped by asymmetries, contestation and strategic adaptation-features that will intensify with future enlargements."
Long celebrated as the European Union's (EU) most successful foreign policy tool, enlargement's transformative power was put to the test in the 1990s and 2000s, a period in which the Union more than doubled in size. Enlargement then disappeared from the EU's agenda until February 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine raised the possibility of another round of expansion, driven by geopolitical urgency and moral obligation. This article argues that such an expansion is unlikely to take place, owing to divisions within the EU, the difficulties faced by all current candidates, and to the unfavourable international context. The EU, coming up against very real limits to its actorness, avoids decisive political action on enlargement by retreating into proceduralism. Thus, Ukraine, alongside the other Eastern candidates, appears likely to follow the path of the Western Balkans-engaging in an ever more attenuated accession process, while full EU membership remains distant.
The integration process in Europe was founded by six West European states that espoused the values of liberal democracy and free market economics. While there were initially no formal criteria for states seeking to join, there was an unspoken rule that Member States had to be democratic. As a dozen Central and East European (CEE) states began to express interest in acceding following the collapse of Communism in Europe, the European Union (EU) finally formalised the requirements that would-be members must be functioning democracies, with periodic free and fair elections, respecting human rights and the rule of law. The prospect of membership was expected to bring about democratic transformation and consolidation. The European Commission went so far as to claim that enlargement was the Union's most effective tool of foreign policy. Yet the post-Cold War experience of the CEE states that joined in 2004 and 2007 does not show a one-way trajectory of Europeanisation and democratisation. The initial attempts to reunite Europe through democratic means have been overshadowed by political fragmentation and democratic backsliding-and not just in Central and Eastern Europe. The article will conclude that rather than there being an East-West cleavage in European politics, the drift towards fragmentation, illiberalism and Euroscepticism which appears to characterise politics in CEE is increasingly becoming the norm in Western Europe.
