Schilde Speaks at CSE Works in Progress Series
The Center for the Study of Europe (CSE), an affiliated regional center at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, hosted a March 28, 2019 talk with Kaija Schilde, Pardee School Assistant Professor of International Relations, as part of the Works in Progress Series.
Schilde gave a talk entitled “Explaining EU Asymmetry: A Comparison of Borders and Asylum Policy Development,” that focused on why the EU coordinates on some policies but not others.
She began by recognizing lack of coordination or harmonization not as a failure or aberration, but as a feature, and by reconsidering the EU as a political context of asymmetry and dynamism, where policy stasis can be imperfect, differentiated, ongoing and interdependent.
Schilde also examined the uneven development of comparable policies complicating national sovereignty to consider what type of ex ante theorization could characterize the EU’s policy landscape not as problematic or malfunctional, but as equilibrium, defined by stable asymmetry and bifurcated agency. She considered three dimensions of asymmetry: power, temporal, and interests.
By aligning comparative and IR theory, Schilde identified the nexus of these asymmetries as accounting for bifurcated migration policy through comparative case study analysis. Extrapolating from migration as a representative policy area, she suggested a dynamic asymmetry approach explains uneven and arrested political development of the EU as purposeful and enduring.
Kaija E. Schilde is Assistant Professor at the Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies. Her primary research interests involve the political economy of security and transatlantic security. Her book, The Political Economy of European Security (Cambridge University Press, 2017) investigates the state-society relations between the EU and interest groups, with a particular focus on security and defense institutions, industries, and markets.
The mission of the Center for the Study of Europe is to promote understanding of Europe through its cultural heritage; its political, economic, and religious histories; its art, literature, music, and philosophy; as well as through its recent emergence as a new kind of international form through the European Union (EU). Operationally, the center provides a focal point and institutional support for the study of Europe across Boston University through coordination of teaching missions, support of research, community-building among faculty and students, and outreach beyond the University.