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ABSTRACT
To prevent violent conflict and governance breakdown abroad, the European Union (EU) needs anticipatory analysis and preventive action at the EU and member state level that follow a coherent approach. The EU’s resilience agenda can complement early warning risk analysis for prevention, but it is unclear to what extent it has been operationalized. We compare the role that resilience plays in crisis early warning in diplomatic services at the EU and member state level in France and Germany. Drawing on the literature on Europeanization and diffusion, we seek to explain different levels of convergence regarding a resilience approach in early warning at the levels of strategy, analysis and action. We find that the diffusion item’s specificity, the number of sources and particular institutional contexts impact the resulting level of convergence. Member states see value in complementing risk analysis with a resilience perspective, but the EU has failed to provide a sufficiently clear source model. Our results contribute to the literature on EU foreign policy diffusion and coherence and show that the EU has not exhausted its potential to promote resilience as a tool for more coherent and effective conflict prevention.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editors of this special issue and participants of an author workshop for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Carnegie Commission, Preventing Deadly Conflict; Nanlohy et al., “Quantitative Atrocity Forecasting”.
2 Cf. Meyer et al., Warning about War, 1–2; 21.
3 See e.g. MEAE, “Prevention, Resilience and Peace,” 22; FFO, “Preventing Crises,” 127
4 See Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building” in this issue.
5 See e.g. Bourbeau, “Resiliencism”; Dunn Cavelty et al., “Resilience and (in)Security”; Wagner and Anholt, “Resilience EU Leitmotif”; Mälksoo “EU Global Strategy”.
6 See e.g. Barbé and Morillas, “EU Global Strategy”; Joseph and Juncos, “Resilience Turn”; Tocci, EU Global Strategy.
7 EU, Global Strategy, 23, for a discussion see Tocci, EU Global Strategy
8 See Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building” in this issue for further details and a graphical illustration of the conceptual framework.
9 EU, “Strategic Approach to Resilience,” 19–20.
10 See Bourbeau, “Resiliencism”; Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building”; Wagner and Anholt “Resilience EU Leitmotif”.
11 Barbé and Morillas, “EU Global Strategy”; Joseph and Juncos, “Resilience Turn”.
12 Fabbrini and Puetter, “Integration without Supranationalization”; Tocci, EU Global Strategy; Wagner and Anholt, “Resilience EU Leitmotif”.
13 On defining early warning systems see Meyer et al., Warning about War, 23–4.
14 EU, “Conflict Early Warning,” 4.
15 EU, “Conflict Early Warning,” 3; see EU, “Strategic approach to resilience”.
16 See EU, “Factsheet”; EU; “Conflict Early Warning”.
17 See Bengtsson et al., “European security and warning”. On anticipation in French policy planning see Jeangène-Vilmer, “Centre d’analyse et prévision”.
18 See Bock, “A Firmer Footing,” 104; Davis, “Betwixt and Between”; Hegre et al., “Forecasting in Peace Research”; Nygård et al., Predicting Future Challenges; Meyer and Otto, “How to Warn”; Meyer et al., Warning about War.
19 Juncos and Blockmans, “EU’s role in conflict”; EU, “Strategic approach to resilience”.
20 See e.g. Kim and Porteux, “Adapting Violence”; Tezcür, “Democracy Promotion”.
21 See Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building” in this issue.
22 Cf. Chandler, “Beyond Neoliberalism,” 50; See Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building,” in this issue.
23 Cf. Bressan, “Deepfakes Threatening Peace”.
24 See Bargues-Pedreny and Morillas “From Democratization to Resilience”; Kakachia et al., “New Global Strategy”; Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building”; Ozcurumez, “Eastern Mediterranean Migration Quandary” [and other contributions] in this issue.
25 See note 10 above.
26 Joseph and Juncos, “Resilience Turn,” 304.
27 See Joseph and Juncos “Resilience Turn”. Researching EU peacebuilding abroad, the authors treated human agency and local capacities separately, but for the purpose of early warning that takes place in EU capital bureaucracies, we merge them.
28 Bressan and Rotmann “Looking ahead”.
29 Berglund and Brucker, “Technological Challenges”. On local perceptions in conflict forecasting see Nygård et al., “Predicting Future Challenges”.
30 Bargués-Pedreny et al., Resilience permeate foreign policy; cf. Joseph, “Resilience in Security Strategy”; “Resilience in German Development”; Varieties of Resilience.
31 Moumoutzis, “Europeanization of Foreign Policy,” 607. Conceptualizations of Europeanization are manifold, for overviews see for example Börzel and Risse, “Europeanization” or Featherstone and Radaelli, The Politics of Europeanization.
32 Radaelli, “Europeanization of Public Policy,” 41.
33 Börzel, “Approaches to European Integration,” 11.
34 For an overview, see Wong and Hill, “Introduction”. For specific case studies, see e.g. Müller, “Europeanization German Foreign Policy”; Robinson, “Europeanization Portuguese security policy”.
35 Radaelli, “Europeanization of Public Policy,” 33; Risse, “The Diffusion of Regionalism,” 88.
36 Gilardi, “Transnational diffusion,” 454.
37 Börzel and Risse, “From Europeanisation to Diffusion,” 2.
38 Klingler-Vidra and Schleifer, “Convergence”.
39 Ibid., 269–70.
40 Ibid., 271–2.
41 Börzel and Panke, “Europäisierung,” 227–30.
42 Klingler-Vidra and Schleifer, “Convergence,” 268–9.
43 See note 30 above.
44 Radaelli, “Europeanization of Public Policy,” 41.
45 Moumoutzis, “Europeanization of Foreign Policy,” 615.
46 Ibid., 617.
47 All interviews were conducted in the first half of 2020.
48 Beach and Pedersen, Causal Case Study Methods, 269–301.
49 Major, “Europeanization and Security Policy,” 183–5; Moumoutzis, “Europeanization of Foreign Policy,” 608.
50 Moumoutzis, “Europeanization of Foreign Policy”; for the application in other policy areas also see Moumoutzis and Zartaloudis, “Europeanization Mechanisms and Process Tracing”.
51 Gilardi, “Transnational Diffusion,” 459.
52 Beach and Pedersen, Causal Case Study Methods, 269–301.
53 Ibid., 273.
54 MEAE, “Prevention Resilience and Peace,” 31.
55 Federal Foreign Office (FFO), “Preventing Crises,” 111.
56 All three diplomatic services dispose of additional anticipatory analysis capacities, e.g. in the form of foresight and horizon scanning in policy planning units, which operate under a broader mandate. The French MEAE is also responsible for development policy, but the early warning system considered here had no link to this policy area.
57 EU, “Strategic Approach to Resilience,” 3.
58 The German FFO defines resilience as “the ability of people and institutions – whether individuals, households, local communities or states – to cope with acute shocks or chronic stress caused by volatile situations, crises, violent conflicts and extreme natural events, and to adapt and recover quickly without compromising their medium and long-term outlook on life”; FFO, “Preventing Crises,” 70. The French prevention strategy states that “Resilience, which concerns both states and societies, is defined as the ability to absorb and recover from shocks. Such capacity for resilience varies greatly, ranging from simply absorbing shocks to adapting and even going as far as transforming the system so that it can withstand any impact.” And “in a broad sense since it encompasses not only the states’ capacities to absorb but also to adapt and transform with a view to making sources of resilience sustainable and more robust”, MEAE, “Prevention Resilience and Peace,” 21–2.
59 MEAE, “Prevention, Resilience and Peace,” 22; FFO, “Preventing Crises,” 127.
60 FFO, “Preventing Crises”.
61 See note 30 above for further reading.
62 EU, “Strategic approach to resilience,” 19.
63 For an overview of the EU EWS, see EU, “Conflict Early Warning”; EU, “Factsheet”. The quantitative component (Global Conflict Risk Index or GCRI) is developed at the EU’s Joint Research Center, which is developing dynamic models that have not been included in the EU EWS at the time of writing. See Halkia et al., “Global Conflict Risk Index”.
64 French: “la capacité d’un système, une communauté ou une société exposée aux risques de résister, d’absorber, d’accueillir et de corriger les effets d’un danger, en temps opportun et de manière efficace, notamment par la préservation et la restauration de ses structures essentielles et de ses fonctions de base” (Interview #3, translated by authors).
65 Equation: Risk = hazard × exposure × vulnerability × (1 − resilience).
66 Cf. Bundestag, “Vernetztes Handeln,” 14–17.
67 FFO, “Preventing Conflict,” 88.
68 MEAE, “Prevention Resilience and Peace,” 21.
69 Cf. Bundesregierung, “Praxisleitfaden,” 6–7.
70 Klingler-Vidra and Schleifer, “Convergence,” 271.
71 See note 10 above.
72 See Stollenwerk et al., “Theorizing Resilience-Building” [and other authors] in this issue.
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Sarah Bressan
Sarah Bressan is a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, where she contributes to the institute’s work on peace and security in a changing global context. Her research focuses on political violence, security sector governance, European foreign and security policy as well as conflict early warning, forecasting and foresight.
Aurora Bergmaier
Aurora Bergmaier was a researcher at Freie Universität Berlin while conducting research for this article. She worked on knowledge exchange between research and foreign policy institutions, in particular in collaboration with the German Federal Foreign Office. Her research concentrated on conflict management and its institutional solutions, with a focus on stabilization practices. Now, she is a desk officer at the German Federal Foreign Office.