Conference Program

In a world in flux, the European Union finds itself in flux too. Is it still a power center in the international system? Is it still the "Voluntary Empire" to which nations flock in droves? Is it still a community of values reinforcing it within and looked up to without? To stay relevant and agile in a wolrld in flux, the European Union seeks to reform itself. All the reform proposals put forth hitherto insist on affirming and consolidating common European values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, as set out in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union. The paper will analyze how the fostering of common understanding of those values contributes to the success of the European integration.

The aim of the article will be to analyze the foreign policy of the European Union treated - on the one hand, as a means of expressing the EU's identity in international relations and - on the other hand, as an instrument through which it wants to shape specific norms and values in the international space. This approach will allow us to answer the question: what are the normative foundations and instruments of the EU foreign policy and how do they evolve under the influence of changes taking place in international relations; What strategies does the European Union develop in the context of external relations and what would express its ability to normalize international relations? The study will be embedded in the mainstream of social constructivism. It is assumed that the image of its external policy that the European Union creates within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy is the result of internal conditions as well as changes taking place in its external environment.

The paper aims to assess the vision of the EU future proposed by so-called ‘Eurorealists’, exemplified by the views of representatives of the academic community associated with Polish authorities in 2015-2023. The thesis of the paper is the assumption that their ‘vision’ cannot be treated as a ‘concept’ contributing to the development of the theory of integration. The research question concerns the positioning of the Polish ‘Eurorealist’ vision against the background of other intergovernmental approaches (Hoffmann’s classical intergovernmentalism, Moravcsik’s liberal intergovernmentalism, and the new intergovernmentalism proposed by Bickerton, Hodson, and Puetter). Two hypotheses are subject to preliminary verification. According to H1, the Polish ‘Eurorealism’ does not have sufficient paradigmatic roots because it was not created as a result of the evolutionary development of well-established views typical of the intergovernmental trend. According to H2, the Polish ‘Eurorealism’ has no explanatory value, being a strictly normative approach resulting from the adoption of a deeply Eurosceptic ideology. The paper methodology is based on decision-making, factor, and comparative analysis.

For a brief period after the Second World War, UNESCO sponsored the development of the academic study of international relations through its association with the International Studies Conference (ISC), a hybrid academic-official body that had existed during the inter-war period under the auspices of the League of Nations.

This paper considers two things. First, it investigates why UNESCO became associated with the ISC, what the association with the ISC produced and why UNESCO in effect pulled the plug leading to the demise of the ISC. Second, it examines the academic discussions in the ISC during this period regarding the nature, scope and prospects of International Relations as an academic subject. While some in the ISC pushed for disciplinary status for IR, there was evidently a lack of consensus on the nature of the study of international relations within but particularly across national academic communities. Ultimately, the UNESCO-funded period which ended in 1954 contributed to an undoing of the discipline of International Relations.

The paper is based on archival research that allows me to track some of the decision making and discussions of the time. While an exercise primarily in disciplinary history, this paper will also contribute to international theory as it will draw lessons from this period of dramatic change in so-called real world international relations as well as academic IR for the understanding and organization of our current collective academic project.