RESEARCH AGENDA
(from 2021 onwards)
European Digital Diplomacy
I am currently working on developing my research agenda on Digital Diplomacy. With over 2.7 billion Facebook users and 330 million on Twitter worldwide, digital connectivity has become increasingly important for diplomatic actors as they discover that they need to engage foreign publics by explaining policy, listening to feedback, and facilitating the export of information and services, via social media. The objectives of this agenda are:
- to identify and demonstrate how far the development of digital technology has become embedded into the DNA of the diplomatic actors.
- to analyse and evaluate how the nature of diplomacy, its processes and practices are adapting to these new realities.
I am specifically interested to examine in the way the European Union makes use of digital diplomacy tools; and how the latter help the EU achieve its foreign policy objectives in Eastern Europe. The aim of my research agenda is to evaluate the digital diplomatic practices of the European Union (EU)’s diplomatic actors, namely:
- European Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs)
- their respective embassies
- the European External Action Service (EEAS) and
- their EU Delegations.
This research agenda builds on the three research projects that I have been working so far: EU Diplomacy, Evaluation of EU Performance and Democratization in the ENP. Through these projects, my research addresses questions related to foreign policy and diplomacy and to organisational management and performance specifically in European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries.
The Practice of EU Diplomacy in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus, 2010-2015
The result of this research project culminated with my PhD. My work was the first to examine the topic of EU diplomatic practice and performance in Eastern Europe through the lens of the ‘practice turn’ in international relations and based on interviews with diplomats from the field. It breaks empirical new ground on the relationship between the EU and national diplomatic services in Eastern Europe, and therefore uncovers the dimensions of everyday diplomatic practices in these countries.
The aim of my doctoral thesis (2012-2018) was to critically assess the practice and diplomatic performance of the EU in its neighborhood, namely in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus after the inauguration of the European External Action Service (EEAS). Drawing on conducted fieldwork between 2013-2016 this research showed how different European embassies and EU delegations present in the three countries identify a common approach for diplomatic cooperation on the ground.
Findings showed that the EU delegations became central actors in representing the EU, became communication hubs on the ground and took the lead on the cooperation with the EU member states’ embassies. Empirical evidence on the latter revealed that, in practice, the Delegations continue to conduct aid-driven diplomacy, as a legacy from former Commission representations. While being prescribed to cooperate on the ground under the Lisbon Treaty, diplomatic practice indicated that the current coexistence of national and EU diplomacy opts out of the common approach in favour of parallel actions by the individual member states. The Delegations in these countries have grown in size and, most importantly, have diplomats as staff members; however, the development of the Delegations also came with the so-called Brussels ‘turf-war’: an institutional issue on the ground that echoed Brussels inter-institutional dynamics. As result, EU leadership on the ground remains under question, coupled with the lack of direction in relation to a strategic approach between the EU and its member states.
This research embraced an interdisciplinary character as it derived performance criteria from three sets of literature: diplomacy, the ‘practice turn’ in IR and EU studies and organisational performance. With a focus on the ‘practice turn’ in IR and EU studies, the thesis underlines the activity-centred dimension of EU diplomacy and details the everyday practices of the EU Delegations and the member-state (MS) embassies that form and shape EU’s performance. The focus of the analysis is not so much on the diplomatic relationship with these countries per se, but rather on uncovering to what extent the cooperation between EU and MS diplomatic representations adds to the EU’s aim of achieving a stronger, more efficient and coherent European Union in external relations.
Excellence 100 Doctoral Prize Award
Based on the results of this research project I was entered the Excellence 100 two-year scheme at the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance (IDIG) at Loughborough University, London campus. From 2019 till end of 2021 the strategy focuses on consolidating the ‘practice turn’ in IR and EU studies as a research agenda in EU diplomacy and, hence creating synergies between organisational management, diplomatic studies, and the practice approach.
Practice and performance: EU Diplomacy in Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus after the inauguration of the European External Action Service, 2010-2015
I am transforming my PhD into a manuscript on the practice of EU diplomacy that will examine EU diplomacy in Eastern Europe with focus on the relationship between the EU and national diplomatic services in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus.
The emphasis on good performance is a recurrent theme in the EU’s policies, treaties and strategies that highlight the need for an enhanced coherence, internal coordination, coupled with projecting more efficiently the EU’s values and interests externally. Discussing and measuring performance from a research perspective is a challenging endeavor. The aim of this research project is to develop performance criteria that facilitate evaluating EU performance, in both policy and diplomacy.
EU diplomatic performance: in my PhD, after acknowledging the difficulties of examining performance, three criteria are operationalized through linking, in the analytical framework, organizational studies, EU international actorness studies, the practice of diplomacy and the practice turn in international relations (IR) and EU studies. In this research, looking at performance implies examining and evaluating EU diplomatic practices against pre-set goals as well as understanding how everyday practices inform the EU’s actions.
I adapt the commonly used indicators from the organizational studies literature and identify 3 criteria, namely effectiveness, relevance and capabilities. Looking at performance implies examining and evaluating EU diplomatic practices against pre-set goals (effectiveness). It also allows us to learn about the relationship between the national and EU levels in the new post-Lisbon setting, where the EU delegations perform traditional and new diplomatic functions: representing the European Union and also cooperating with national embassies (relevance). Finally, it allows us to conduct a screening of capabilities and to understand how these pertain to the diplomatic realm (capabilities).
EU policy performance: The European institutions have placed great emphasis on the performance and ultimate effect of their policies. In several peer-review articles I conduct a performance exercise on EU’s ENP policy. This entails learning to the same extent about what is working and what is not. This ultimately may lead to improving (the policy and the policy process) which comes with the capacity to adopt and adapt as a performance exercise explores the variety of organisational practices. The aim here was to build analytical and empirical bridges between the growing literature on performance and performance measurement, and the study of the ENP. To do so I have developed five indicators for performance measurement – relevance, cohesion, effectiveness, impact and resilience – and apply them in the context of the ENP.
EU Performance Assessment Research Network
In 2020 I have established an international cooperation research network to conduct a 10-year performance assessment exercise of the Eastern Partnership (EaP). This academic endeavour involves researchers from 8 different academic institutions from the European Union and from EaP countries. We are currently developing a Special Issue that has operationalises the performance framework based on five criteria – relevance, cohesion, effectiveness, impact, and resilience. By testing these concepts empirically in all 6 EaP countries the Special issue shows what the EU achieved and how it performed vis-à-vis its Eastern neighbours ten years after the EaP was launched.
My research projects on EU diplomacy and EU performance in Eastern Europe also inform my research project on democratization processed in ENP countries such as Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. The aim of this research is to assess EU’s good governance agenda by analysing ENP’s countries implementation of democratic reforms; and to conceptualize what hampers democratization progress in Eastern Europe.
EU’s good governance agenda: I analyse the level of Moldova’s integration with the EU and domestic support for such integration. I have been part of a working group on the ENP organised by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs where we worked on analysing whether the ENP and the EaP work as security community-building instruments. My research has also been of interest in other policy-oriented forums where I presented how the EU could more effectively support the development in Moldova to ensure stability, prosperity and security at the Workshop on EaP policy organised by the Swedish Institute for International Affairs.
Fish Out of Water! Between Norm Acceptance and Norm Contestation: what is Post-Sovietness?
I am currently working on conceptualising ‘post-Sovietness’. While examining the extent to which there is norm contestation in Moldova as result of the export of (EU) external norms, collected data from interviews pointed at the fact that in countries like Republic of Moldova there is a merger in both politics and society of EU norms with the former Soviet ones. Hence, I am now discussing in my forthcoming research outputs post-Sovietness takes place and its dynamic in the political and social spheres in Moldova.