The global context within which European integration takes place is changing. The rise of China continues and the leadership of the USA has come under strain, while the global economy remains trapped in a phase of stagnation. We argue that, to capture these dynamics, EU studies would benefit from tracing the interactions between global order and contemporary dynamics within the EU. European integration has been decisively shaped by two phases of US-led global order in the past. However, we argue that a new global disorder has emerged. The decentring of globalization, geopolitical turbulence, monetary and financial instabilities and ideological fluidity are reshaping the context within which EU integration unfolds. This presents an old European question but under a new set of volatile conditions: how to secure a degree of relative autonomy within a rapidly changing global political economy.

Within and outside of the discipline of International Relations, Frankfurt School Critical Theory faces a ‘crisis of critique’ that is affecting its ability to generate analyses and political interventions that are relevant to the present world-historical conjuncture. This article seeks to identify the theoretical origins of this predicament by investigating the meta-theoretical architecture of the prevailing Habermasian framework of critique. I contend that the binary ontology and methodology of society that lies at the heart of the Habermasian paradigm has effected an uncoupling of normative critique from substantive social and political analysis and resulted in a severe weakening of both Critical Theory’s ‘explanatory-diagnostic’ and ‘anticipatory-utopian’ capabilities. Thereafter, I discuss the determinate ways in which these issues have manifested in critical theoretical interventions on international politics by exploring both Habermas’s own writings on the post-national constellation and Andrew Linklater’s theory of cosmopolitanism and the sociology of global morals. Both projects, it is argued, rely on a reductive, functionalist analysis of global political dynamics and express a political perspective that lacks a definite critical content. Ultimately, the article contends that a revitalisation of Critical Theory in International Relations must necessarily involve a clarification of its fundamental categories of analysis and a recovery of the orientation towards totalising critique.

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Brexit creates an opportunity for alternative European financial centres. However, no comprehensive empirical analysis of the strategic positioning of actors within these financial centres has been conducted. In this article we outline findings from an extensive research project which we conducted in Frankfurt and Paris, two of the main ÔrivalsÕ to the City of London, in the aftermath of Brexit. We outline the core findings from this project and argue that the emerging competition between Frankfurt and Paris is shaped through four related axes: diversity, path dependency, territory and regulatory stability. Our analysis has implications for two bodies of literature within EU studies. First, inter-governmentalist and supra-nationalist approaches would benefit from interrogating more closely the contested sub-national politics of financial centres. Second, our analysis adds to a growing body of literature on European disintegration by interrogating the interaction of fragmentary and integrative dynamics in the sphere of European finance.

opportunities for alternative financial centres located inside the remaining EU member states. In this article, we assess the strategic positioning of private and public actors within two European IFCs-Frankfurt and Paris-in the period following the Brexit vote. Agents within these centres are seeking to differentially benefit from Brexit in two vulnerable financial subsectors away from the City and by domestic and European regulatory reforms. In light of these findings we argue that existing approaches to financial centre relations-in particular-should engage with the ways in which political actors shape European financial relations and regulatory convergence after Brexit, new competitive orientations are also in evidence as political actors seek to privilege their territories relative to rival spaces. *Manuscript without author identifiers (ensure filename does not include author name) Click here to download Manuscript without author identifiers (ensure filename does not include author name): Manuscript.docx Click here to view linked References Highlights