Article: Countries on the geographic peripheries of Europe construct Europe differently

Visiting Professor Andrey Makarychev has co-authored an article "Estonia and Portugal in Europe: escaping peripherality, capitalizing on marginality" with Sandra Fernandes from the University of Minho, Portugal, published in Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

The article discusses the cases of Estonia and Portugal as examples of small states who are both located on the fringes of Europe, relying on the European and Euro-Atlantic integration to compensate for their peripherality. The authors find that both countries develop similar policies to institutionally associate themselves with the Western core, especially in security domain. However, the two countries differ from each other in their discursive construction of Europe. For Portugal, the financial gains surpass political values, whereas for Estonia, it is the norms and principles of Western solidarity that trump material considerations. This explains the strong Euro-centrism of Estonia in comparison to Portugal whose diplomacy aims at striking a balance and finding points of conjunction between Atlantic, European, Lusophone and multilateral commitments.

Full reference: Sandra Fernandes & Andrey Makarychev (2019): Estonia and Portugal in Europe: escaping peripherality, capitalizing on marginality, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2019.1635438.