WVPU Hosts Central and Eastern European Actorness Workshop

Webster Vienna Private University (WVPU) hosted a workshop examining new research focusing on the actorness of Central and Eastern European (CEE) European Union (EU) member states in global politics.

The International Relations Department hosted the event, entitled “Central and Eastern European Actorness in International Relations,” which brought together scholars from several CEE nations and from the Vienna-based IR community.

Although CEE countries have been members of the EU and NATO for more than two decades, their actorness — their ability to shape agenda and deliver on foreign policy goals — has been rather limited. In some cases, CEE countries have been struggling with populist governments developing national-sovereigntist agendas.

CEE countries have faced challenges in developing coherent EU-level policies, a problem particularly apparent in the realm of the EU’s foreign and security policy. Moving beyond macro-level analyses of actorness on the level of governmental strategies, the workshop explored underlying factors influencing the CEE countries’ actorness in international relations. These include long-term identities and perceptions, recognition, established role conceptions and socialization of foreign policy elites. The workshop presented a new perspective on the CEE actorness.

A group of international relations scholars from Vienna were invited as discussants to the workshop including local colleagues from the University of Vienna, Diplomatic Academy and the Central European University. The workshop thus contributed to networking and academic knowledge exchange of the Vienna-based international relations scholarly community with international colleagues.

Participants included:

• Jozef Bátora (WVPU)
• Karolina Pomorska (Leiden University)
• Magdalena Góra (Jagellonian University Krakow)
• Anatoly Reshetnikov (WVPU)
• Thomas Fetzer (CEU)
• Markus Kornprobst (DA Vienna)
• Konstantinas Andrijauskas (Vilnius University)
• Gergana Noutcheva (Maastricht University)
• Patrick Müller (DA/University of Vienna)
• Tomáš Weiss (Charles University Prague)
• Stefan Cibian (IFRI/Chatham House)

By fostering dialogue on these pressing topics, the workshop highlighted WVPU’s commitment to promoting critical inquiry and cross-regional engagement in international relations and provided a platform for scholarly discussions on CEE actorness. The outcome of the workshop will include a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs, a leading international scholarly journal.

Support from the Culture Department of the City of Vienna is gratefully acknowledged.