Väitös (valtio-oppi): YTM Tyyne Karjalainen

YTM Tyyne Karjalainen esittää väitöskirjansa ”European joint agency in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine: A role-theoretical analysis of the shifts in European security policies and the European Union’s enlargement policy” julkisesti tarkastettavaksi Turun yliopistossa perjantaina 20.11.2026 klo 13.00 (Turun yliopisto, Educarium, Edu1-luentosali, Assistentinkatu 5, Turku).

Vastaväittäjänä toimii professori Sebastian Harnisch (Heidelbergin yliopisto, Saksa) ja kustoksena professori Henri Vogt (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen. Väitöksen alana on valtio-oppi.

Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:

European external action is characterised by a fundamental dilemma: joint action is necessary, yet difficult to achieve. This dilemma became visible in the European response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. No European state could alone isolate Russia, sustain Ukraine’s defence effort, or utilise the European Union’s enlargement policy to support Ukraine. European states therefore acted collectively, but not without problems. Decoupling from Russia remains partial, military support to Ukraine has often been slow, and the accession processes of new candidate countries have been delayed.

This dissertation applies and develops a role-theoretical framework to analyse the challenges of European joint action. It finds that, although the EU has collectively committed to enlargement, the process remains contested as member states, candidate countries, and external actors perform conflicting roles. In the field of security policy, European agency has similarly been constrained by role conflicts. In particular, the dissertation explains restraint in European military support for Ukraine by pointing to conflicting roles: these include European states’ prioritised partnerships with Russia, their interpretations of the logic of “international society”, active security roles in other neighbourhoods as well as conflicting conceptions of Ukraine. Finally, the dissertation argues that European states do not need to share identical objectives or perform similar roles for joint action to occur. Rather, joint agency can emerge when objectives overlap sufficiently and diverse contributions are accommodated.

The dissertation contributes to scholarship on EU enlargement, European security policy, and the evolving European security order. By further developing interactionist role theory, it also provides conceptual tools for investigating the structural sources of recurring challenges in international relations more broadly.

--

Pääkuva: Ulkopoliittinen instituutti/UPI