Amidst the second Trump presidency and the continued Putinist invasion of Ukraine, European Union (EU) discourse has taken a ‘security turn’. The strengthening of rearmament due to the need to defend ‘European constitutional values’ is not coupled with public oversight and boosts market influences, exemplified by the rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs). Using the so far – in the EU context – neglected Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), this article explains the limits of formal regulations of defence in the EU by refining the concept of ‘normative deficiency’ and applying it to the European Union. ‘Normative deficiency’ highlights the inefficiencies in the structure of the legal norms that limit their ability to address conditions they were meant to address. These structural inefficiencies stem either from the substantive core of these norms – for instance, the limited capacity of the legal construction to address the social phenomenon – or else from the perspective of the subjects upon whom the norms are made applicable.

We argue that TWAIL, through the emphasis on ‘normative deficiency’, enriches existing critical approaches to the study of the EU due to its sensitivity towards the blurring of the state-market enmeshment, and towards the anti-democratic implications that the lack of recognition of the market-based forces brings for the capacity of building global alliances including in common security and defence. The de-centering of European security with the help of TWAIL enables to draw the contours of ‘Third World Approaches to EU Law’ (TWAEL) that can strengthen the capacity of the EU to live up to its constitutional values amidst global de-democratisation. The added value of TWAEL emerges from highlighting that the lack of democracy is futile to overcome without regulators taking seriously both public participation in lawmaking, and the impact and responsibility of such laws vis-à-vis the ‘non-EU world’, especially the Global South. PMSCs, which largely escape democratic accountability, form a pivotal challenge for regulators in this respect.

While explorative in nature, our study yields support for scholarship advocating for the equalisation of knowledge transfers instead of a universalised transfer from ‘West’ to the ‘rest’ on the basis of recognition of ongoing injustices. Ultimately, it encourages a frame for thinking about regulatory practices in the longer term and beyond PMSCs.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, increasing hybrid threats and polarisation have made many European countries to change their thinking around trust and psychological resilience of societies, realising that official institutions will not reach goals alone. Thus, this research addresses a little-studied direction focusing on the role of the private sector (businesses) in strengthening psychological resilience and strategic communication. Employing a sociological institutionalism lens, the author develops a research framework to evaluate companies from different industries in Latvia and tests their capabilities and motivations towards strengthening these soft dimensions.

For the empirical study, semi-structured interviews are used to explore the motivation of companies. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of activities, as well as analysis of public communication of companies, are used to explore their contribution towards psychological resilience and strategic communication. Additionally, the study examined strategic documents of Latvian defence sector to get a deeper insight in the institutional environment.

The study outlines that a) the role of the private sector within the Latvian national defence framework is growing, but not in the relation to psychological resilience and strategic communication b) many private companies possess and implement institutionalization practices that contribute to strengthening psychological resilience and strategic communication, c) motivation to act most often is a choice grounded in strategic business ambitions and cultural values rather than deliberate involvement in achieving national defence goals.

The study finds that the private sector, in many cases, can be a valuable contributor – businesses can establish norms, create values, and provide bonds that unite people - aspects that are crucial in psychological resilience building. Thus, the analysis opens the discussion on the need for a strategic shift regarding how European countries engage external stakeholders, including businesses, to strengthen national comprehensive defence efforts via dimensions of psychological resilience and strategic communication.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is widely framed as a wake-up call for European defence. Nevertheless, the question remains how European national parties’ defence preferences have changed after the war in Ukraine. Understanding national parties’ defence preferences matters because they co-constitute governments in European party-centric democracies, which, in turn, adopt defence policies. One possibility is that parties, regardless of ideology, adopt more militaristic positions and converge on defence policy, following a rally-round-the-flag logic. Alternatively, partisan divisions may persist or even increase due to the growing salience of defence, in line with the dynamics of issue ownership. However, research has yet to systematically examine which of these scenarios has materialized and how international factors, such as a rise in geopolitical threat, impact partisan debates. Hence, this article fills that gap by mapping changes in defence preferences across ten European democracies, chosen for geographic distribution and differing military capabilities (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). We analyse party manifestos between 2010 and 2025 to track shifts in the salience of defence, positional change, and inter-party contestation following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The results show that heightened geopolitical threat can reconfigure parties’ defence preferences. Regarding defence salience, right-of-centre parties increase their emphasis on defence, whereas left-of-centre parties decrease it. In terms of positions, nearly all parties shift towards a more pro-defence stance, with the exception of radical left-wing parties. Hence, parties diverge in how much they emphasize defence, combined with a convergence on what they ultimately say. These findings help us understand how European countries—and therefore Europe as a whole—are dealing with current security threats, as Europe's defence policy remains dominated by national governments and their constituting parties.