This article argues that war as an institution of the modern state order is repositioned by the ambiguous language used by private military and security companies (PMSCs). We suggest that in order to get an analytical grip on the ongoing repositioning of war as an institution, it is useful to study language and discursive practices of PMSCs. This includes capturing emergence of new recombined vocabularies connecting PMSCs to multiple societal domains usually unrelated to war. To do so, our theoretical approach builds on sociological new institutionalism and on organizational discourse analysis, and we analyse terminology on the websites of PMSCs cooperating with the European Union (EU). Based on data from a new survey of 564 PMSCs connected with the EU, we generated a corpus of text retrieved from 22,000 webpages. To identify core themes in PMSC discourse, we use principal component analysis (PCA) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and perform topic classification and dimensionality reduction, and show patterns of recombined vocabularies across multiple domains. We complement this by illustrations of PMSCs recombined practices in the field showing that language-based repositioning of war is also complemented by its practice-based repositioning.

This chapter analyses the question of whether the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the associated structures set up in the European Union (EU) Member States in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis bring about new forms of intra-EU conditionality. Based upon a case study of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) in Slovakia – a Member State with one of the highest per capita shares of RRF funds allotted – the chapter analyses the mechanisms leading to the compliance and implementation of the pre-defined reforms. As the findings indicate, while various types of innovative practices combined with time constraints have been introduced in order to ensure compliance, some of the practices associated with the RRP can also lead to dominance – i.e., to a situation in which those governed have little or no influence on the rules by which they are governed. This opens up a series of questions regarding democratic accountability and long-term legitimacy of the reform processes associated with the NextGenerationEU fund and the RRF. Moreover, at the macro-level, it raises the question of the impacts and implications on Member State governance of a shift from "unconstrained intergovernmentalism" to "constrained supranationalism" in the management of financial crises in the EU between the 2010s and 2020s.

Does growing reliance on private military and security companies (PMSCs) lead to the re-configuration of the state as a security and defence actor in Europe? Building on the multiple-networks-approach in organisation theory (Padgett and Powell), the current paper develops an analytical approach for studying the rise of new organizational forms in interstitial spaces via mechanisms including extension and differentiation; fusion and hybridity; transposition and refunctionality; and multivocality. The empirical analysis focuses on the rules and practices of Vesper Group - a PMSC working closely with the Swedish government. Several findings are reported. First, a new organizational form seems to be emerging as a result of the ongoing multiple network dynamics - national defence entrepreneurial firm. This is a type of a firm different from mainstream PMSCs in that it is owned by venture capital companies from their home state and also in that it is closely associated with its respective state in terms of its personnel policies, expertise and operational goals and scope. Second, the case of Sweden's Vesper Group and its cooperation with the Swedish government indicates that some EU member states may also be in the process of structural and institutional mutation as providers of defence and crisis management capabilities.

This chapter forms, together with Chapter 3, the analytical framework for the volume. The main purpose of the book is to understand what is meant by differentiation and domination, with particular emphasis on how these two phenomena are related in the complex EU-setting. Both terms are multifaceted; hence there are many possible ways in which aspects of differentiation can relate to aspects of domination. An important task for this chapter is therefore to unpack each term. The chapter provides a brief summary of each of the crises in what we refer to as the EU's poly-crises. The overview of crises sheds light on how differentiation and domination are related in the EU context.

The rise of global power competition raises unique challenges for the European Union (EU) as it seeks to reconcile its security and defence aims with those of its encompassing member states while confronting both new and old types of warfare and threats on various geopolitical fronts. In this context, our study examines the role of contractors in the EU's approach to security and defence. Using new institutionalism, the study analyses changes to structure, personnel, and environment that empower and hamper the EU as it aims to enhance its capacity and role using contractors. The study finds that while organisational pressures push the EU to follow a path similar to the US in its security and defence outsourcing, the EU is charting its own path of organisational change and customising its use of contractors to align with its institutional values, mission, and processes for global engagement in security and defence.

How do citizens in European Union (EU) member states think about the EU? And what are the implications of different 'thinking styles' for citizens' preferences regarding formation of policies, politics and polity in the EU? The current article uses relational class analysis (RCA) and analyses perceptions of the EU as a political order by citizens in six selected member states. These are France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - three founding/large member states and three members of the Visegrad group (two of which represent the most notorious examples of the ongoing 'sovereignist' backlash). Using RCA, we identify two thought communities in the selected EU member states: statists and pragmatists. These are the communities of citizens sharing thinking styles that would suggest their support for particular polity types in the EU.

Adler, Paul S., Adly, Amr, Armanios, Daniel Erian, Battilana, Julie, Bodrožić, Zlatko, Clegg, Stewart et al. (2023). Authoritarianism, populism, and the global retreat of democracy: A curated discussion. Journal of Management Inquiry, 32, 3–20. Bachmann, Reinhard, Gillespie, Nicole, & Priem, Richard (2015). Repairing trust in organizations and institutions: Toward a conceptual framework. Organization Studies, 36, 1123–1142. Lounsbury, Michael, & Wang, Milo S. (2020). Into the clearing: Back to the future of constitutive institutional analysis. Organization Theory, 1. Lounsbury, Michael, Steele, Christopher W. J., Wang, Milo S., & Toubiana, Madeline (2021). New directions in the study of institutional logics: From tools to phenomena. Annual Review of Sociology, 47, 261–280. Schilke, Oliver, Reimann, Martin, & Cook, Karen S. (2021). Trust in social relations. Annual Review of Sociology, 47, 239–259. Zucker, Lynne G. (1986). Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure, 1840–1920. Research in Organizational Behavior, 8, 53–111.

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This article presents the successful application of several geophysical methods in archaeological prospection with integration of LiDAR data and examination of historical documents. The locality of interest is situated in an urban area of Bratislava city on the Danube River where no previous archaeological research has been undertaken. It comprises the oldest public park in Central Europe which is surrounded by a fortification system dating to the Napoleonic siege of Pressburg (Bratislava) in 1809. Urban areas are often challenging for conducting archaeo-geophysical investigation due to limited access and existing obstacles of modern origin. For the purposes of this investigation shallow geophysical survey methods were applied including magnetometry, ground penetrating radar (GPR), 2D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and electrical resistance survey. Magnetometry was used to obtain a general view of the survey areas and to help to target the following surveys. ERT and GPR were used to explore detected features in more detail and obtain information about their shape and depth. The results of the survey show the importance of the combined approach using multiple geophysical methods while also highlighting their benefits and limitations. The survey was successful in investigating the basic elements of the fortification system which includes a rampart, a ditch and a bastion. The results have revealed information about the current state of the ramparts as well as their original construction. Also, the previously unrecorded remains of a bastion were identified along with previous phases of the fortification. The results obtained reveal the archaeological potential of this historical locality and help to better understand its extension, which is essential for its future protection and development.

Perceived risk crowds out trust? Trust and public compliance with coronavirus restrictions over the course of the pandemic Ben

This article proposes a complementary approach to analysing destabilization of the liberal international order (LIO) and argues that such challenges are related to endogenous institutional processes within the LIO. Faced with constraints of the core norms, rules and institutions of the LIO, states use interstitial organizations (INTOs)—new organizational forms recombining resources, rules, practices and structures from multiple institutional domains—allowing for innovative ways of delivering foreign policies. Using organization theory and new institutionalist approaches, the article outlines a three-dimensional analytical framework to the study of emergence of interstitial organizational forms and interstitial institutional change of international institutions. It applies this framework to the study of two types of INTOs—the European External Action Service (EEAS) and private military companies (PMCs)—both of which are shown to have transformational impacts on two core primary institutions of the modern state order, namely diplomacy and war. The article argues that reliance on INTOs can both enhance and constrain states' ability to promote the core principles of the LIO and concludes with a discussion of two possible paths of adaptation of this order.

Spaces structure interactions between communities in post-conflict settings. They are governed by particular institutional logics, which can foster boundary building and boundary transgression. This article proposes an extended version of the concept of 'everyday peace' including a focus not only on micro-level individual actorness in social interactions but also on an important meso-level dimension in the analysis of social behaviour and variation in institutional logics governing spaces where social interactions take place. We apply these concepts to the study of perceptions and practices around bridges in Mitrovica in Kosovo.

The European Political Science Review (EPSR) publishes high quality scholarly research in political science, focusing on the most important debates in the discipline and demonstrating the highest possible standards in conceptualisation, theorisation and methodology.Submissions should emphasise why they are of interest to a broad readership across sub-disciplines and should engage with central theoretical debates in political science.EPSR welcomes empirical papers based on either qualitative or quantitative methodologies.These papers should be placed in the context of larger (theoretical) debates in the discipline.EPSR also welcomes conceptual and theoretical papers as well as contributions from the field of normative political theory.EPSR is not concerned solely with European political issues nor is it conceived as exclusively for European scholars.Submissions dealing with global issues and non-European topics are very much welcome.We wish the journal's readership to be as wide and diverse as possible, including both scholars and practitioners.Therefore articles should be written in an accessible manner with a minimum of jargon and insider language.

This article analyses the dynamics of differentiated integration in EU defence. It contributes to assessing what Pernille Rieker (2021) terms ‘broader European capacity on the global stage’ involving both the EU’s defence structures and processes as well as those beyond the EU’s formal remit. The main argument in this article is that Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) is bringing about two different and mutually complementary dynamics of integration: organizational field formation and segmentation. The preliminary practical result is a dual dynamic of growing standardization of the EU’s defence industries across all twenty-five PESCO Member States in defence project development and continued reliance on Western European defence industrial actors (including the UK after Brexit) in defence R&D and production. This means that while PESCO provides space for new joint defence projects across the participating Member States, the established structure and capacities of defence industries in the EU today set up conditions for what may be termed structural leadership by Western European defence industrial actors. Overall, this means that there is a particular – segmented – kind of differentiated integration in the field of EU defence industries in today’s EU (This article is an output of the EUFLEX project, which has been funded by the Research Council of Norway (project number 287131).).PESCO, differentiation, organizational field, segmentation

It is widely recognized that the EU that emerged from the financial and refugee crises of the last decade has become more differentiated. Such a development brings forth important questions about the nature and character of the EU as a political system, and the kinds of processes and mechanisms that drive its development. An important problem is that neither differentiated integration nor differentiation say much about the positive character or the distinguishing features of the EU as a political system. The claim that we set forth in this paper is that the notion of the EU as a segmented political system provides a more apt and precise characterisation of the EU as a political system. In addition, the notion of segmentation helps to capture some of the distinct dynamics that propel the EU’s development.

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Civic engagement in times of economic crisis: a cross