The seminar deals with the evolution of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) from its inception in 1998 to the present day, in the shadow of the war in Ukraine. Using the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism, Professor Koppa examines both the successes and failures of the CSDP. Drawing on a series of interviews with officials and researchers from various EU institutions, NATO, and diplomatic missions of EU member states, she assesses what has instigated changes in the CSDP, and why some events have proven more determining and influential than others.

The representation of far-right parties in European parliaments has grown exponentially over the past decade. While there are positive signs from Poland and other countries that their rise can be halted, most European countries are still struggling to find an adequate response to far-right challengers. Encouragingly, empirical research into the causes of the success of far-right parties and the prevalence of the socially intolerant attitudes that seem to fuel their electoral rise is multifaceted and interdisciplinary.

Pot-banging has been a common feature of protest in Spain over the last decade. In this paper I will discuss how we can historicise the emergence of political pot-banging through a focus on episodes of carnivalesque noise-making since the 1970s. I argue that while ‘traditional’ charivari disappeared, pot-banging was appropriated from Latin America in the 1980s.

Digital market regulations respond to technological changes and global dynamics, but also to how political actors shape markets. Focusing on the Digital Markets Act, this article explains the EU’s marketcraft as the result of a struggle in the EU’s policy field between political actors promoting competing economic ideas in a rapidly evolving technological and geopolitical context.