COURAGE researcher Eduard Soler (UAB-IBEI) has published the open access article With whom and how: policy learning during critical junctures in Euro-Mediterranean relations, part of the collection “Thirty Years of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership – Policy Learning and Substantive Change” in the journal of International Politics.
The article examines how structural power asymmetries and policy‑learning dynamics have shaped the EU’s choices of partners and cooperation formats in Euro‑Mediterranean relations across five critical junctures: the post–Cold War period, 9/11, the 2004 enlargement, the Arab uprisings and the post‑2020 “permacrisis”. It uses the macro/meso/micro distinction and the collaboration/power-sharing typology as analytical lenses, and, empirically, combines process training, document analysis and elite interviews.
Throughout the text, Soler analyzes who the EU treats as legitimate interlocutors, how collaboration and power‑sharing shape different types of policy learning, and why crises have tended to produce programme‑level change rather than paradigm shifts.