ABSTRACT The notion of digital sovereignty, also often referred to as technological sovereignty, has been gaining momentum in the European Union’s (EU) political and policy discourses over recent years. Digital sovereignty has come to supplement an already substantial engagement of the EU with the digital across various security policy domains. The goal of this article and of the overall Special Issue is to explore how the discourse and practices of digital sovereignty redefine European security integration. Our core argument is that digital sovereignty has both direct and indirect implications for European security as the EU attempts to develop and control digital infrastructures (sovereignty over the digital), as well as the use of digital tools for European security governance (sovereignty through the digital). It is thus essential to further explore digital sovereignty both in terms of European policies and of a re-articulation of sovereign power and digital technologies – what we suggest calling digital/sovereignty.

ABSTRACT Strategic narratives now face unrealistic expectations as to what they can achieve in the military field. This article asks when and how such narratives lose traction during protracted military interventions. To address these questions, which are crucial at a time when so much modern warfare takes place in the “fourth” dimension, this study develops a conceptual framework that focuses initially on the weakening of a narrative’s content and, subsequently, on its loss of normative resonance and verisimilitude. The latter two factors are beyond the control of even the most skilful strategic narrator, particularly where narratives are required to appeal to audiences with different norms. Our framework is applied to the case of France’s military operations in Mali (Serval) and the Western Sahel (Barkhane). It finds that, whereas France’s compelling Serval narrative was congruent with strong French and Malian public backing, its Barkhane narrative weakened over time, resonating less with prevailing societal norms, becoming less attuned to events on the ground and ultimately coinciding with a sharp decline in public support in France and Mali. It concludes that strategic narratives afford agency to policymakers but are constantly open to contestation and struggle to cope with diverse audiences and deteriorating “evenemential” contexts.

ABSTRACT Entangled logics, which attribute meaning to security, characterise the contemporary security field, bringing about broad comprehensions and ambiguous concepts. Civil defence has (re)surfaced as one such concept that is broadly conceived in the official discourses produced by decision-makers. Since security is ultimately enacted by practitioners, alias decision-takers, their interpretations of concepts significantly shape policy actions. Therefore, this article moves from decision-makers’ discourses to decision-takers’ interpretations and explores the divergent understandings of the concept of civil defence in Sweden. Applying a discursive approach to data gathered through official documents and interviews with 21 national agency representatives, organised under five societal sectors, it finds that two main interpretations emerge, across and within sectors. These are conceptualised as “territorial civil defence” and “societal civil defence”, linked, respectively, to logics of “territorial security” and “societal security”. These differences, as is argued, potentially challenge agency collaboration and eventual policy coherence in terms of policy aims, governance and venues for cooperation. Hence, the study highlights the complex constraints that contemporary security discourses set in the policy sphere. It concludes that in order to effectively meet and capture the complexity of contemporary security, disentanglement of the field’s concepts, both in theory and in practice, is needed.

ABSTRACT In the triangle of relations between major EU powers, the relationship between Germany and the UK remains historically under-examined. Its implications for the future of European defence cooperation are, however, vital and gradually more decisive. The article examines indices on the direction of this relationship to model the shape and impact of this missing link among the more thoroughly investigated relations of Germany-France and UK-France. As both the UK and Germany were forced to formulate clear positions during the Brexit process, their pronounced interactions offer a unique insight into the development of their bilateral defence cooperation, both present and future, and its impact on multilateral UK-EU defence relations. The central question that arises is whether sufficient progress has been made towards a stronger bilateral defence relationship between these two actors to warrant the designation of a trend towards new bilateralism. The article explores this within three major sectors: (1) official defence cooperation; (2) military cooperation; (3) defence industrial cooperation and finds that overtures and initiatives launched in the examined period are insufficient to alter the relationship toward new bilateralism.

ABSTRACT The European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) is considered as a key element in the quest for a European Security and Defence Union. The EDTIB strategy initiated in 2007 aimed to lead to greater integration of the fragmented national defence industries of EU member-states, achieve economies through the coordination of defence industrial policy, the pooling of resources in the production and acquisition of weapons systems and better serve the political objectives of European defence. The paper examines the extent to which EU27 member-states satisfy their demand for arms through the procurement of EDTIB origin defence inputs. Moreover, it explores whether a process of convergence is present in terms of the share of EDTIB origin imports in the total arms imports of the EU member-states. The presence or not of a convergence process is examined empirically using β- and club convergence methodologies. In broad terms, the findings point to a process of convergence albeit at different speeds, as indicated by the club-convergence analysis.

ABSTRACT The cosmopolitan character of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is not immune to the growing surge in the contestation of international institutions. The African Union’s reaction to the ICC decision to indict the then sitting heads of state of Sudan and Kenya, and the actions undertaken by the Trump Administration against the Court over possible investigations into Afghanistan and Palestine, are cases in point. This article explores what that surge has meant for intra-EU debates on its position towards the ICC. We present a two-fold argument based on an empirical analysis of key moments in the institutional development of the Court that coincide with the pre- and post-rise phases in the politicisation of international institutions. First, the level of agreement on the ICC within the EU has been grossly exaggerated. Second, despite bouts of disagreement, patterns of political conflict over the ICC within the EU remain constant. That is, there is recurrent polarisation, with a range of opinions on the intractable debate about Westphalian sovereignty vs. cosmopolitan justice, but no change in the other two dimensions of politicisation (salience and actor range).

ABSTRACT Contestation and politicisation are two concepts of increasing relevance to European foreign and security policy (CFSP) scholars and practitioners alike. However, reasonable doubts can be raised as regards this growing literature: first, political conflict has always been part of CFSP, and national and European politics have traditionally been at the centre of research in this field. Second, exploring how the two concepts relate to European foreign, security and defence policies is complicated by the fact that foreign affairs more broadly do not meet all the criteria set by the literature on politicisation, which usually requires that some form of mass mobilisation takes place, or at least a high degree of salience. This article addresses these concerns by looking at the changing politics of CFSP. As the introduction to the special issue, we explore the hypothesis that contestation of European foreign, security and defence policy is now more in line with the broader way in which political conflict is being re-structured in Europe. If this is so, political conflict over CFSP will more easily be associated with issues that have an appeal beyond the narrow community of its practitioners and observers.

ABSTRACT This paper asks: to what extent can a dedicated or special committee with access to classified information empower parliaments to oversee major defence procurement decisions? These decisions often involve a mixture of political, military, economic and societal interests. Particularly after episodes of contestation or controversy, questions tend to arise about how to empower parliaments. The central argument in this paper is that being institutionally empowered and incentivised does not guarantee rigorous oversight. The availability of expertise is an oft-ignored factor in studies of parliamentary oversight. An analysis of oversight behaviour by the Belgian Federal Parliament during the acquisition of new fighter jets (2015–2018) shows that members of parliament also need to be capable of mobilising the necessary expertise in order to translate technical information in such a way that it allows them to influence decision-making, which is often executive-dominated. In this way, this paper contributes to managing expectations about the capacity of parliaments to cope with complex military problems.