https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/24656 Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:02:48 GMT 2026-04-28T11:02:48Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/24759 Conceptual framework Börzel, Tanja A.; Risse, Thomas EU-LISTCO starts from the assumption that Europe’s internal and external environment is characterized by two risk factors, which represent challenges for the external action of the EU and its member states: - Areas of limited statehood (ALS), in which central government authorities and institutions are too weak to set and enforce rules and/or do not control the monopoly over the means of violence. Such areas of limited statehood are ubiquitous. They characterise large parts of the regions surrounding the EU in the East and in the South. However, areas of limited statehood are neither ungoverned nor ungovernable. Some ALS are reasonably well governed by a whole variety of actors – state and non-state, domestic/local and international, while others are not. The challenge for EU foreign policy is to foster good governance in areas of limited statehood. - Contested orders (CO), in which state and non-state actors challenge the norms, principles, and rules according to which societies and political systems are or should be organised. At the global and regional level, powers such as Russia and – somewhat less aggressive – China call the liberal and law-based order into question. The Trump administration in the United States adds a new dimension to order contestations by appearing to turn away from the liberal international order which the U.S. itself was instrumental in creating. Finally, and domestically, Western and non-Western societies struggle with the rise of actors that question their current political and legal order from the inside as well as from the outside. The challenge for EU foreign policy is to foster conditions in which order contestations remain peaceful and do not contribute to governance breakdowns in areas of limited statehood. Neither limited statehood nor contested orders will go away. They create vulnerabilities and pose risks, but they do not in themselves amount to threats to the EU. Only if and when areas of limited statehood and contested orders deteriorate into governance breakdowns and violent conflict, do the risks turn into threats to the security and stability of the EU, its member states, and citizens. The main research task of EU-LISTCO is to investigate the “tipping points” at which risks of limited statehood and contested orders turn into threats leading to governance breakdowns and violent conflict. Two factors are decisive in affecting such tipping points: - Global, diffuse, and regional risks, such as nuclear proliferation, transnational terrorism, economic crises, aggressive powers, cyber threats, and climate change, are likely to promote governance breakdowns and violent conflict in areas of limited statehood and contested orders. - Resilience is likely to help societies to sustain good and effective governance at the local/domestic as well as regional levels. We understand resilience as the “capacity of societies, communities and individuals to manage opportunities and risks in a peaceful and stable manner, and to build, maintain or restore livelihoods in the face of major pressures.” (European Commission & High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2017, 3). In other words, the various risks, on the one hand, and resilience, on the other, affect tipping points in opposite ways. Whether or not risks turn into threats for European security then depends on the extent to which resilient societies can successfully contain these risks through effective and legitimate governance at the local, domestic, and regional levels. Last but not least, we use three indicators to measure degrees of resilience: - Social trust in societies and local communities; - Legitimacy (or social acceptance) of governance actors and institutions at the various levels; - Institutional design of local, domestic, and regional governance arrangements including what is left of central state institutions. Research in EU-LISTCO – particularly Work Packages 2, 3, and 4 – will focus on exploring the relationships between the various factors outlined above which affect the tipping points between risks and threats. The remainder of this paper introduces the various concepts used in the framework in more detail, namely areas of limited statehood, governance, contested orders, threats, resilience, as well as the three factors fostering the latter. Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/24759 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/26358 Does resilience permeate foreign policy? Bargués-Pedreny, Pol; Bergmaier, Aurora; Bicchi, Federica; Buchwald, Amelie; Eickhoff, Karoline; Morillas, Pol; Sanchez, Gabriella; Schmauder, Anna This paper explores how the idea of resilience has made its way into the external action of the European Union (EU) and selected member states (Germany, France and Italy) as a means to address areas of limited statehood and contested orders. It examines the debates informing the development of the EU’s external action and current concerns in economic, political, and migration instruments. The main findings are that the EU’s economic and political instruments have become gradually dominated by resilience framings, with an emphasis on multilateralism, adaptation, and long-term and bottom-up responses. Resilience also increasingly drives the humanitarian assistance and development cooperation policies in Germany and to a lesser extent France, which have gradually moved away from top-down administrative and centralized models of governance. The EU and member states like Italy, however, have been more reluctant to foster resilience to address migration issues. Instead, they have prevented flows of irregular migrants into Europe by means of containment strategies such as improving border management, policing, and surveillance and combating smuggling networks. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/26358 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/26356 Forecasting and foresight Bressan, Sarah; Nygård, Håvard Mokleiv; Seefeldt, Dominic In this paper, authors Sarah Bressan, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, and Dominic Seefeldt present the evolution and state of the art of both quantitative forecasting and scenario-based foresight methods that can be applied to help prevent governance breakdown and violent conflict in Europe’s neighbourhood. In the quantitative section, they describe the different phases of conflict forecasting in political science and outline which methodological gaps EU-LISTCO’s quantitative sub-national prediction tool will address to forecast tipping points for violent conflict and governance breakdown. The qualitative section explains EU-LISTCO’s scenario-based foresight methodology for identifying potential tipping points. After comparing both approaches, the authors discuss opportunities for methodological advancements across the boundaries of quantitative forecasting and scenario-based foresight, as well as how they can inform the design of strategic policy options. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/26356 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/28010 GLOBAL AND DIFFUSE RISKS IN THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP COUNTRIES Kakachia, Kornely; Lebanidze, Bidzina This paper explores the extent to which global and diffuse risks impact the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries of the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood and identifies tipping points at which risks can turn into immediate threats for the EaP countries, with implications for the EU. We apply five major risk categories to the EaP area that cover the majority of global and diffuse risks and suggest their prioritization based on temporality, probability of occurrence, and potential multiplication effects. We identify 28 tipping points which may exacerbate the impact of global and diffuse risks in EaP countries and result in governance breakdowns or new violent conflicts. The evidence suggests three global risks ‒ geopolitical rivalry, unconventional security risks and global economic and financial risk ‒ as most probable and with the most destabilizing impact on the EaP area in the short term. Disease outbreaks can be equally destructive, but with less certain probability. In terms of actorness, a majority of global risks seem to be linked to Russia and its assertive agenda, whereas others are diffuse in nature and hard to locate. Finally, in terms of resilience and mitigation of risks, societies in the EaP area seem to possess a basic degree of governance capacity which needs to be further strengthened by the EU to better cope with global and diffuse risks. Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/28010 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z