My research examines how political communities and institutions respond to insecurity, contestation, and systemic transformation. Situated at the intersection of political science and security studies, my work seeks to understand how political order is sustained, adapted, and reinvented under conditions of uncertainty.
The question increasingly driving my research is both empirical and conceptual: how can a non-state actor effectively perform statecraft and develop a security strategy?
My focus is on the European Union and the path that has led it to redefine its strategic identity and expand the realm of what is politically and geopolitically possible. Long understood primarily as a civilian and regulatory power, the EU is increasingly operating in a world shaped by war, geopolitical rivalry, and strategic interdependence. Yet the European Union’s actual practice of geopolitics – and anything resembling grand strategy – remains less familiar and often misunderstood. Finding coherence in statecraft is difficult in times of stability, let alone in moments of international disorder and transformation. That challenge is even greater when the political actor in question is state-like, but not a state.
I develop this research agenda through my current book project, provisionally titled Total Defence: An EU Grand Strategy for the 21st Century. The book investigates the emergence of a European theory of security built not around conquest or territorial ambition, but around resilience, preparedness, and the protection of democratic political order. My argument is that the EU is developing a form of total defence adapted to the realities of twenty-first century insecurity – one that increasingly blurs the boundaries between civilian and military instruments, internal and external security, and economic and geopolitical governance.
This agenda builds on two longstanding strands of my research.
The first concerns international organisations and European integration. My work has examined how the European Union adapts to crises, governs enlargement, manages strategic interdependence, and responds to geopolitical pressures. In publications such as Why the EU Is a Geopolitical Power and From Club to Commons, I began conceptualising the institutional and geopolitical toolbox the EU deploys internationally, as well as the distinctive logic of risk management that follows from its unique governance model.
The second strand focuses on domestic politics and democracy. Earlier work examined democratic resilience, political contestation, and the interaction between domestic institutions and political actors, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. These projects explored how democratic orders become vulnerable, how institutions adapt under pressure, and how political conflict reshapes governance from within.
These two trajectories – international organisations and domestic politics – increasingly converged around a broader concern with political order and security. The questions that emerged from studying democratic fragility and institutional adaptation at the domestic level reappeared, at a different scale, in the study of European integration and geopolitical transformation.
This broader agenda also informs the collaborative projects I lead and co-develop. Through the Global Risks to the EU Survey and the Horizon Europe project CitiSense, I examine two defining questions for Europe’s future: how the European Union responds to geopolitical insecurity, and how democratic societies sustain resilience and legitimacy under conditions of profound strategic change.
Across these projects, my work explores how institutions govern uncertainty, how political communities prepare for disruption, and how Europe is adapting to an era increasingly defined not by peace as a default condition, but by the management of persistent insecurity.
See the list of my publications here.
Dr. Veronica Anghel 