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Yes / The African continent is a sleeping giant which will increasingly be a player to be reckoned with on the global stage. At the same time, its migration potential will be multiplied by Africa’s forthcoming demographic explosion. Consequently, the EU and Africa have a shared interest in working together towards making African development sustainable. African integration will be key towards speeding up this process. This paper first evaluates the stakes of the African challenge for the European Union. It considers the economic potential that can be unleashed by speeding up integration processes in Africa. Second, it argues that Africa will be ‘the China of the 21st Century’, and that any development, positive or negative, taking place there will have large repercussions in Europe, and that therefore the EU and Africa are communities of destiny in need of a joint approach towards African industrialisation. Finally, it provides a roadmap of important steps that Europe needs to consider in its endeavour to support African development.

M.A. / Since the end of the Cold War era, peace and security have been the first priority of the African states. Africa has been afflicted by armed conflicts, wars and genocide since the African states gained their independence in 1960s. Presently, there are still some countries that are involved in conflicts including Sudan and Somalia. Armed conflicts undermine Africa's social and economic developments. Furthermore, this situation threatens African political stability in particular, peace and security. The international community is actively engaged in promoting peace, security and stability in Africa. So far, the United Nations (UN) has conducted eighteen peacekeeping operations and it still leads eight peacekeeping operations in Africa. It was found that peacekeeping operations are crucial to sustain peace and stability on the continent. The focus and aim of this study is to investigate cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) with regard to peacemaking and peacekeeping in Africa. It was found that cooperation between the EU and AU has increased since the first EU-Africa Summit in Cairo in 2000. Both the EU and the AU have recently strengthened their relationship in a wide range of activities including human rights and governance, economic growth as well as peace and security. Importantly, the second EU-Africa Summit was held in Lisbon, in December 2007. At this, the EU highlighted the importance of a comprehensive, robust and long-term framework for its relations with the AU. The EU and Africa are connected by strong historical, trade and colonial links and the EU has a deep interest in a prosperous and stabilised Africa. Meanwhile, armed conflicts not only paralyse the African continent's, but also the European states' interests. Thus, the EU has reinforced its relationship with the AU in the fields of peace and security.

Energy policy in the European Union (EU) is a patchwork of diverging interests and preferences. While the European Commission pushes for a common energy policy, Member States are responsible for their own separate energy policies. These divergences in interests and preferences might create a conflict situation between the Commission and Member States. This thesis explores the Commission’s behaviour vis-à-vis the Member States, investigating the conditions under which the Commission is likely to try to deviate from Member States’ preferences in the external dimension of the EU internal energy market. Adopting a Principal-Agent Model (PAM), this thesis conceptualizes the Member States as principals and the Commission as their agent. A qualitative case study approach and process-tracing method are applied to appreciate the variety of preferences of the actors involved, and provide a means to study the various shades of post-delegation agent’s behaviour. This thesis looks at four in-depth case studies: 1) Decision 994/2012 on establishing an information exchange mechanism with regard to intergovernmental agreements between Member States and third countries in the field of energy; 2) Directive 2009/73/EC on common rules for the internal market in gas; 3) Energy Community Treaty; and 4) Energy Charter Treaty. These were selected based on their relevance to the research question. Findings suggest that two factors are likely to affect the Commission’s deviation from Member States’ preferences: a) the preference alignment among the principals and b) the preference alignment between the principals and the agent. This thesis suggests that when the preferences between the agent and the principals are heterogeneous, the agent is more likely to deviate from the preferences of the principals. This thesis also suggests that the preference alignment among the principals only has a secondary effect on the agent’s deviation. Finally, this research contributes to the further development of the PAM offering a possible categorisation of post-delegation agent’s behaviour going beyond the dichotomy of deviation and non-deviation.

The thesis examines the European Union as a mediator in the case of Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. It tends to discover which factors led to lower mediation effectiveness after 2015, by EU's mediation strategy, leverage and coherence. The thesis is designed as a qualitative case study which compares three different stages of the case by implementing a combination of congruence method and process tracing. Drawing for the content and document analysis as well as four interviews conducted and two personal communications, the thesis analyses the factors which influenced effectiveness and compares them throughout three different phases of the mediation. In the end, the analysis shows that while strategy remained the same, levels coherence and leverages changed and concluded that it was the weaking of EU's leverage strength that influenced mediation effectiveness the most.

In this thesis, the norms used in Sweden’s counterterrorism strategy will be compared to the norms that are used in the European Union’s counterterrorism strategy. Sweden has been criticized by scholars and parties of the parliament for not implementing laws that are strict enough so that Sweden can sentence those who have travelled and joined terrorist groups like ISIS. The EU sets out strategies and directives as guidelines that its member states should adopt. The aim of this research is to see if Sweden’s is regressive in relation to the EU, or if Sweden’s way of handling counterterrorism is in line with the directives and strategies that EU set out for its member states. To be able to study this, content analysis is used to analyze material from Sweden and the EU that focus on how the work of counterterrorism should be done. With the use of norm theory, the central norms in the material is recognized, and the norms which Sweden uses is compared with the ones used within the EU. The comparison shows that there are differences in how the norms are used. Sweden has adopted norms from the EU and changed them to fit in the Swedish context which repeatedly refers to the importance of the norm’s compatibility with human rights.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / In the process of the European implementation of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) at Maastricht in December 1991 until the Franco-British declaration on European defense at Saint-MlÌ o in December 1998, the EU's European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) etched out the initial concept of a European Pillar within the framework of NATO expressed in NATO's European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI). The Franco-British declaration at Saint- MlÌ o demonstrated the willingness of some EU member states to promote autonomous military capabilities within the EU that enables the EU to act outside of NATO's framework. The further development of ESDP led to concern among NATO officials and US diplomats regarding ESDP's potential challenging appearance to NATO. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed this concern about a growing EU opposition to the transatlantic policy of alliance. In January 2003, during the Iraq Crisis, Mr. Rumsfeld labeled France and Germany as the "Old Europe". The relation of ESDP to NATO is strongly affected by the national interests of leading European actors like France and Germany. The development of ESDP as either a competitor or support arm of NATO depends on whether the French or the German approach to European security becomes dominant. / Major, German Air Force

The purpose of this research project is to analyse the opportunities and challenges that the foreign and security policy research institutes face in transnational cooperation across wider Europe. By specifically examining the capacities of non- and quasi-governmental actors to operate and cooperate at transnational level, the research informs the choices presented by the ongoing restructuring of the foreign and security policy sphere. The increasing deterritorialisation of foreign and security policy issues calls for transnational or multinational approaches to resolve them. As nation states fall short of the appropriate capacities, it is of interest to investigate how non- and quasi-governmental actors can contribute to transnational interaction. Therefore, their tools and capacities to operate and cooperate in the transnational sphere need to be established in the first place. In this context a broader geographical focus is chosen in order to study a more differentiated situation, instead of the already relatively integrated case of the European Union. The thesis first studies cooperation among research institutes in broader terms under consideration of their socio-political environment. It outlines differences in their organic development dependent on the geographic affiliation of the institutes, and identifies their tools as well as several defining characteristics. This is followed by an analysis of the fieldwork, discussing processes, opportunities and challenges in transnational cooperation as perceived by staff in research institutes. Subsequently, the thesis takes a more detailed look at applied cooperation among research institutes. Here it traces patterns and formats of interaction, and then delves into a case study on project- based cooperation that provides functional insights regarding research institutes cooperation across borders. In studying cooperation among research institutes from various perspectives, the research enables to investigate the integration among the different narratives. The study integrates a range of issues and concepts in an original manner, therefore it contributes to several significant debates. On the face of it, the thesis adds to the identification of a role for non- and quasi-governmental actors in an increasingly deterritorialised foreign and security policy sphere, using the example of research institutes. To address this aspect, the study considers both the broader implications of socio-political and economic interrelations for cooperation, as well as the detailed functional level of interaction. Moreover, based on the choice of geographical focus, the research project contributes to the literature on EU-Russia relations. Herein it adds to the extant literature by offering a perspective which acknowledges the implications of high politics but emphasises the role of non- and quasi-governmental actors. Beyond that, the thesis contributes to the theoretical debate on foreign and security policy in choosing a non-traditional approach to examine a non-traditional issue. Post-structuralism serves to facilitate a critical review of the construction of cooperation among Russian and EU-based public policy research institutes.

Thesis advisor: Jennifer Erickson / This thesis examines institutional enlargement for both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). Both organizations added new members to their ranks during the Cold War and in the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War, NATO and the European Community (EC) had informal membership criteria, but once the Cold War ended, the two institutions implemented explicit membership requirements. The research question centers on whether both institutions admitted new members that did not satisfy some of the membership criteria. I find that the two organizations both admitted new states that only partially complied with the criteria. In this thesis, I analyze why NATO and the EU added new member states even when these states' membership applications were incomplete. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.