Transboundary crises and political development: why war is not necessary for European state-building

Kelemen and McNamara (2022) have reinvigorated the debate on European state-building. Adopting a 'bellicist' perspective, they argue that the European Union is 'incomplete, uneven, and dysfunctional' due to the historical lack of an existential military threat. We take issue with this claim. War, in our view, is not a necessary condition for European political development, and 'transboundary crisis' acts as its modern-day functional equivalent. Whether a polity can uphold its provision of public goods in the face of such crises, and whether it does so more effectively than its competitors on the 'market for governance', decisively affects its further development. European integration, too, has progressed substantively in response to recent non-military threats. We demonstrate this on the Euro and Covid-19 crises, in which the EU has engaged in incremental and issue-specific capacity-building aimed at preserving and consolidating the regulatory state rather than approximating the Westphalian nation-state. The resulting capacity-building shores up the EU's crisis prevention and crisis management capacities, without overcoming its fundamental regulatory nature. It is misleading to dismiss the resulting political development from a bellicist perspective that takes the nation-state as its implicit point of comparison.

Performing Crisis Management: National Repertoires of Symbolic Action and Their Usage during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe

The role of the symbolic is often overlooked in the public policy literature. Yet, it is a key component of public action, particularly in crisis management. During the Covid-19 pandemic, all democratic states needed to carry out cognitive and emotional work to persuade their citizens to show solidarity and comply with heavy restrictions. The near-simultaneous occurrence of the pandemic?s first wave (March?May 2020) allows us to compare the patterns of symbolic crisis management across four European countries (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). Our analysis finds significant variation in governments? usage of the symbolic. We analyse leaders? performances (wordcraft and stagecraft) as they try to reassure citizens, unite the nation, and legitimise themselves and their decisions. Our article shows not only that national leaders pay great attention to the symbolic in the management of crises, but also that their performances differ systematically in line with their personas and distinct national political cultures.

Treatment delay and tumor size in patients with oral cancer during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: We set out to investigate how the ongoing coronavirus pandemic affected the size of tumors and the duration of treatment delay in patients with surgically treated oral squamous cell carcinoma. METHODS: Patients with surgically treated oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma were assessed retrospectively and divided into two groups depending on when they had first presented at our clinic. Patients presenting from 2010 to 2019, that is, before COVID-19 onset (n = 566) were compared to patients presenting in 2020 (n = 58). RESULTS: A total of 624 patients were included. Treatment delay was significantly longer in 2020 (median = 45 days) versus 2010-2019 (median = 35 days) (p = 0.004). We observed a higher pathological T classification in 2020 (p = 0.046), whereas pathological N classification was unchanged between groups (p = 0.843). CONCLUSIONS: While extraordinary efforts continue to be made in the context of the pandemic, it is imperative that this does not lead to significant disadvantages for many people with oral cancer.