The concept of adversity and the focus on the Union’s response have been the innovative elements of the EU-IANUS project. This analytical framework operationalises the change in multilateral institutions and identifies the expected response strategies of the Union: accommodation, as a promoter of multilateralism, or entrenchment, as a normative power.
The empirical work involved applying the analytical framework to ten well-defined representative case studies from diverse fields: climate change (Oriol Costa), reform of and loans from the International Monetary Fund (Robert Kissack), governance of energy resources (Gonzalo Escribano), trade negotiations (Patricia García Durán and Montserrat Millet ), child labour (Jean Grugel), transnational crime (Juan Pablo Soriano), women in armed conflict (Esther Barbé), the International Criminal Court (Gemma Collantes), the Energy Charter Treaty (Anna Herranz-Surrallés) and nuclear non- proliferation (Benjamin Kienzle ). The outcome of the first presentation and discussion of the case studies was the monograph The EU and international order: accomodation or entrenchment (2014), published by the Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals.
The analytical framework and the case studies have also been presented and discussed at international conferences. The group organized panel discussions in ISA and UACES as well as a round-table discussion at EISA. These provided relevant feedback for the final publication of the project, the collective book EU Policy Responses to a Shifting Multilateral System (Palgrave 2016), edited by Esther Barbé, Oriol Costa and Robert Kissack. Articles in various international journals have also been published, such as an article by Michal Natorski in the European Journal of International Relations (2015).
Title
EU-IANUS: The EU in an unsettled international system: crisis, polarity and multilateralism.
Principal investigator
Esther Barbé
Institution
Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI).
Project funding
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Plan Nacional I+D+i).
Project duration
From 2013 to 2016
Researchers
Oriol Costa, Patricia García Durán, Juan Pablo Soriano, Martijn Vlaskamp, Gemma Collantes, Anna Herranz-Surrallés, Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués, Benjamin Kienzle, Robert Kissack, Michal Natorski, Raül Hernández Sagrera, Jean Grugel, Montserrat Millet, Gonzalo Escribano and Jordi Mas Elias.
Entities involved in the project
Real Instituto Elcano, Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, European Council of Foreign Relations and Secretaria d’Afers Exteriors de la Generalitat de Catalunya.