"...[T]he current ISAF force laydown looks very similar to the one in 2006, when the extension of ISAF forces to the entire country was completed. While the security environment has changed profoundly since then, contributing countries have remained largely in charge of the same areas, handed down between units from the same country. In other words, there's no coordination between armies to match the strengths or weaknesses of their units to regional needs. Time and again, combat-intensive units have been sent where soldiers are supposed to do humanitarian delivery duties, while logistics units are sent into more intense combat areas."

This article seeks to explain the relationship between the European Union (EU) and one of its Middle Eastern neighbors: Lebanon. By conducting an in-depth empirical single case study and engaging in competitive theory testing, this article shows that the EU in Lebanon behaves at the same time as a normative and a realist power. This article challenges both the scholarship on the EU that sees the EU as a normative power as well as scholarship that focuses on structural neorealism to explain the EU's role in its neighborhood.

Amy Verdun and Chiara Ruffa are the guest editors of Comparative European Politics' special issue: South East and Eastern European Countries EU Accession Quandary?

Chiara Ruffa, International Security Program research fellow, discusses her passion for international relations, the importance of field work, and civil-military interaction with communications intern Brittany Card.

With an interest in international events and medicine in high school, Chiara Ruffa dreamed of joining Doctors without Borders.  A fear of surgeries kept her from becoming a doctor, but it did not stop her from crossing borders.  Now, a fellow with the International Security Program at the Belfer Center, Ruffa’s extensive travels inspire her research of complex humanitarian emergencies, specifically the interaction between local populations and intervening actors.

"Italy is a place full of contradictions. It is a country with quality education but poor career opportunities; extraordinary culture and beauty but poor protection of its artistic and natural treasures. It is one of the Group of 8 most industrialized countries, but with regard to women it seems stuck in the Middle Ages."