From 2018 to 2020, the Wiener-Anspach Foundation supported the research project “Conflicts of Sovereignty in a European Union in Crisis (SovEU)“, aimed at testing the hypothesis that ” the existential crisis faced by the EU over the last decade is not the product of a conflict between national sovereignty and supranational institutions, but rather the result of conflicts at the national level between different conceptions of national sovereignty, specifically the struggle between popular and parliamentary visions of national sovereignty.”
In the framework of this project, led by Professors Nathalie Brack, Ramona Coman and Amandine Crespy (Department of Political Science, ULB) and Professor Chris Bickerton (Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge), Julia Rone was hired as a postdoctoral researcher for two years. Dr Rone is currently Research Associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge.
Resulting from this fruitful collaboration, a new book edited by Julia Rone, Nathalie Brack, Ramona Coman and Amandine Crespy – Sovereignty in Conflict Political, Constitutional and Economic Dilemmas in the EU (Springer 2023) – explores the many facets of this topical issue.
Abstract
This edited volume brings together leading international researchers in an attempt to disentangle and understand the multiple conflicts of sovereignty within the European polity in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. While most research on sovereignty focuses on its international dimensions, what makes this volume distinctive is the focus on the mobilization of sovereignty discourses in national politics. Contrary to tired paradigms studying clashes between national and supranational sovereignty, the various chapters of the volume offer a provocation for the readers – what if these old vertical conflicts of sovereignty are increasingly complemented by horizontal conflicts between executives and parliaments at both the national and international level?