Due to the diverse threats, from rising migration tides to violent extremism, starting from 1990s and especially after creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) by the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union has become more active in addressing the issues of conflict prevention and resolution not only in its immediate neighbourhood, but also in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, etc. Starting from pinpointing conflict prevention on the EU agenda, my paper aims to take a closer look at its role in the sphere of early warning and response to violent conflicts (EWR), as well as relevant mechanisms, instruments, and bureaucratic units.
As the EU does not operate in world politics alone but along or together with other international organizations, I further look at the cooperation structures and practices it is involved in. The paper considers inter-organizational cooperation between the EU and other ‘heavyweights’ in the field, namely the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, African Union, and outlines potential factors of influence. For this purpose, I am to analyse the primary sources originating from the organizations, including strategies, reports, statements, as well as press-releases and social media publications.
The work draws on the approaches of sociological neo-institutionalism and IR constructivism to international organizations as, from one side, autonomous actors with their own idiosyncratic features, and from the other, as being dependent on the world political environment they operate in. It represents a part of my ongoing doctoral project “Do international organizations actually cooperate? Factors influencing cooperation among inter-and non-governmental organizations in early warning and response to violent conflicts”, which focuses on cooperation structures, principles, norms, and practices among inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations engaged into early warning and response to violent conflicts from 1990 to the present day in Horn of Africa and Central Asia.
