Recently conducted events

Taking into account the increasing dependence of EU politics from the domestic context of member-states, this theoretical essay suggests that we need to rethink the legitimacy of EU referenda both at national and supranational levels, and in accordance to the type of the referendum. Unlike most research on EU referenda informed by direct democracy, the paper employs the approach of agonistic democracy due to the latter’s normative imperative for citizens to have an effective say in the way they are ruled. Discussion proceeds as follows. The first section critically comments on some of the most representative literature on legitimacy in the EU. The section that follows presents the basic features of agonistic democracy, and its value-added for assessing the legitimacy of EU referenda. The third section explores the recent Greek and British EU referenda to demonstrate ensuing legitimacy problems at national and supranational levels. The concluding remarks take as starting point the present analysis to raise broader reflections on legitimacy issues in the EU.

Research has shown that ethnic minority women, by being members of two marginalized groups, might either face double barriers or experience a complementarity advantage in the representational process. Studies so far tend to focus on the role of parties in hindering or fostering the representation of minority groups through their selection process. Hence, research tends to overlook the role of voters in the election process. In this paper, we investigate how candidates’ ethnicity and gender interact to shape parties and voters’ behaviour in open-list systems, where both list composition and voters’ choice are crucial for candidates’ election. Our objective is double. First, we aim to investigate the existence and extent of a party vs. voters’ bias in the representation of ethnic minority women. Then, we want to understand how context factors, such as the geographical concentration of ethnic groups and partisanship, play a role in influencing these actors’ strategies.

As we come to the end of our three-year JPI Urban Europe Innoviris project, we would like to share some of the results and reflections that we have made. Our final conference will bring together different stakeholders in the debates on urban sustainability, collaboration and technology to discuss how we can act in coherent, complementary and positive ways to increase awareness of and mitigate the impact of our environmental behaviour on the city we live and work in.

The conference will take place over one and a half days, and provide opportunities for policymakers, researchers, civil society organisations and citizens to share their thoughts on how to tackle environmental and energy challenges in urban settings.

English version included - Hoewel defensie lange tijd het politieke debat in België maar weinig kon beroeren, staan de fundamenten van onze nationale veiligheid vandaag ter discussie. Het valt dan ook niet langer te ontkennen dat België niet ontkomt aan de gevolgen van slepende conflicten en groeiende spanningen wereldwijd. Welke antwoorden kan het Belgische defensieapparaat hierop bieden? Zijn nieuwe investeringen nodig? Indien ja, waar moeten de prioriteiten liggen? En hoe kan de volgende regering haar internationale engagementen nakomen in tijden van budgettaire schaarste? Zijn middelen en doelstellingen nog wel goed op elkaar afgestemd? Of zal een slinkend personeelsbestand op lange termijn problemen geven? Over deze onderwerpen gaan Hendrik Bogaert (CD&V), Philip Claeys (Vlaams Belang), Melissa Depraetere (Sp.a), Wouter De Vriendt (Groen), Theo Francken (N-VA) en Tim Vandenput (Open Vld) op 23 mei in debat.

What does it mean and take to feel politically represented? How the social inequalities are reproduced through the unequal access to political power that is founded on such inequalities? During this EDGE Seminar, the necessary revival of these classical issues of political sociology (Almond & Verba, 1963; Gaxie, 1978; Verba & Nie, 1987; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995) will be discussed.

IES researcher Jamal Shahin will present a paper that analyses how the internet has emerged as one of the key spaces for experimentation in future modes of governance, as different stakeholders in the global governance of the internet's infrastructure try to find different ways of interacting with each other. The paper focuses on the European Commission's approach to governing the internet, and shows how it has linked domestic economic considerations to global governance practices through its Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. The main thesis is that the European approach to Internet Governance has relied on a vague notion of "multistakeholderism", which evokes notions of a new form of democratic governance, but in reality leaves (non-)decision-making power in the hands of large (economic) actors.

Discussing EU-African cooperation on migration most often happens from a Eurocentric perspective, emphasizing the EU’s core interest of having orderly and managed migration. But what do African states want in the migration field? What are their interests and positions vis-à-vis the EU’s agenda? The UNU-CRIS project ‘African Migration: Root Causes and Regulatory Dynamics (AMIREG)’ has explored this. Building upon extensive field-work and numerous interviews conducted in Ghana and Senegal, it elaborates on what drives African actors and African migration. This Policy Forum will present and discuss the key findings of the project with African policy-makers and civil society representatives.