Academic interest for the study of the various aspect of the EU has grown and still being growing in last decades with an increasing speed which could be attributed to the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy in the 1990s and the consequential attention given to the discussions on the ‘EU actorness’. As Helene Sjursen argues, in fact the foreign policy of the European Union has been a kind of puzzle to the students of International Relations with the questions on the existance of foreign policy of a unity which is neither a state nor a state-like actor on the one hand; and with the emprical observations as for the extent of the influence exerted by the EU in the international era on the other. [1] It is given that the logic of the foreign policy is no longer associated with the policy of protecting territorial integrity of a unitary state as in traditional Westphalian terms. On the contrary, foreign policy is changing as the domestic and foreign policy are intertwined and actors other than states exercise a form of foreign policy which decreases the ability of the states to control the international activity its citizens and direct them more to referring international norms, rules and outside actors during the foreign policy formulation .
Different theories from different disciplines produce different explanations to the questions on EU actorness leading to large debates in the literature. As for the collective identity formation at EU level, the constructivists argue through a process of intense foreign policy cooperation and institutionalisation shared standards of behaviour, a common identity are developed which brings about the collective action at the end, while liberal institutionalists puts more emphasis on the extent of international interdependence as the catalisator for the collective action. [2] The intergovernmentalists focus on the shared and overlapping interests of the member states as against the realists who argue that external threats and powers lead to collective action and alliance formation.[3] Not only the motivations for the collective action at the EU level but also the limitations to it have constituted divergence in the academic literature. The fist and the famous ‘capabilities-expectations gap’ theory of Christopher Hill reveals the gap between the expectations of collective EU action and the EU’s capacity to deliver it, while Stanley Hoffman with ‘logic of diversity’ argument focuses on the diverging interests of the member states which are difficult to reconcile. The bureaucratic politics between the institutions in Brussels or the pillar structure has been proposed as hurdles for the collective action while David Allen links the foreign policy to the idea of state with a set of interests identified by a government .[4] Realists see EU as incapable of using coercive military force due the the inability of the member states to act collectively on hard core policy issues where national interests can not coverge which as in Kagan’s words is the result of a Hobbesian international system as against to the Kantian one.[5]
As the questions on the existance of European Foreign Policy are invalidated with the behavioural evidences on the influence of the EU in world politics, more attention needs to be directed towards the issue of what exactly EU foreign policy is, what it stands for, what it does, or in other words taking the existance of EU foreign policy as given then what is its raison d’etre.[6] In order to find the right answer to the question at hand, it is necessary to understand the evolution of the EU foreign policy system including the institutions, the formal rules, norms; the policy making process and the impact of common policies on the system itself, on EU member states, on the world, as well as the its justifications.
European European has develeoped as civilian power from the very beginning especially institutionalised Europe has been successful in excluding force as an element in interstate relations and been called as zone of peace since the demolition of Berlin Wall which continued until the post-cold war era where European governments and leaders faced with the challenge of justifying their public expenditures on military forces. The conecpt of ‘civilian power Europe’ developed in 1970s by Duchene focused on mainly the division of labor between US focusing on force and Europe spreading prosperity and democracy. European Union’s self image was constructed around the seperation of soft-civilian power reinforced by trade incentives and financial assistance from hard military power. Institutionalised Europe has been associated with the force for good, spreading civilized values across the globe, promoting human rights.[7] Altough most of the literature on the EU’s foreign policy is explained on the definite results it produces to the collective or individiual interests of the EU member states, the notions of ‘eurocentric power or normative power’ EU are necessary to be employed for justifying EU’s foreign policy with a referrence first to common values, second to universal principles. While Manners puts the argument that EU can be conceptualized as a normative power which is normatively different and promotes universal norms and principles in its relations with non-members[8], another argument has been raised by Bretherton and Volgler on the tendency of the EU to reproduce itself in its relations with non-members referring to patterns of interdependence ‘through the external projection of internal solutions’.[9]
Paralell to normative or civilizing connotations of the EU foreign policy, the logics underpinning the EU foreign policy were a matter of discussion. As Sjursen and Smith says EU foreign policy can be explained as an effort to find efficient solutions to concrete problems; or as a reference to what is considered as appropriate given a particular group’s conception of itself and what it represents ; as well as set of principles mutaually recognized as morally acceptable and just by all parties.[10] In fact the detailed analysis of different waves of the enlargement and different conditionality terms put forward through both enlargement and neighbourhood policies will reveal the fact that EU is not en entity to be limited within the boundaries of a specific approach and logics. All three elements are present in the logics underpinning the EU foreign policy and EU carries elements of both civilizing power projecting its understanding of norms to the rest of the world and normative power promoting universal norms.
The most effective instrument of the EU’s foreign policy over the past 30 years has been the promise of enlargement conditional on the acceptance of some political and economic criteria by the candidate states. During the cold war EU membership was not a matter of concern since the membership of the states other than the west European countries was not on the agenda while the other west European countries were not so interested in EU membership. When we come to 1970s first enlargement wave to Britain, Ireland and Denmark were realized without the membership criteria. Infact till 1978 the conditionalty did not become a matter of concern when the European Council declared that ‘respect for and maintenance of representative democracy and human rights’ in each memberstate are essential elements of membership as a clear signal to Greece, Spain and Portugal to proceed with democratisation. In fact the clarification of democracy as a membership criteria was crucial in terms of showing that the European integration is not only an economic project but linked to deeper values with the first signals of its normative connotation.[11]
Bichi while classifying theoretical approaches and arguments about the EU, talks about mainly two broad criteria of inclusiveness nad reflexivity and labels the cases where EFP is neither inclusive nor reflexive as civilizing power. He also makes a referrence to the tendency of institutions to export institutional isomorphism and defines EU unreflexively eurocentric. [12]
According to Manners and Sjursen, normative value of EU rests on the universal character of the principles it promotes; i.e. EU acts normatively when it promotes values that empower actors affected by EFP. Shortly, normative power of EU shall be capable of giving voice to people outside Europe. The issue of reflexivity is not free of division which sharply divides between rationalist and sociological institutionalism. While rationalist and sociological institutionalist portray EU as eurocentric with no room for outsiders, constructivists draws a more inclusive picture for EU. Rationalists argue that EU intentionally exports norms from which it benefits with only enough attention to the receiving end for the beneficial effect to occur which rests on the logic of consequentionalism and expected outcome of the rational choices. This argument that EU promotes its norms because it expects to benefit from their adoptation as a reflexive and eurocentric entity, is being supported by Youngs and Hyde-Price. Young says that promotion of human rights is a part of EU’s general strategy of consolidating regimes and taking third party support fot the EU. Also Haddadi puts forward a similar argument saying that EU promotes the human rights in Maghreb countries to provide security and stability in the area. Moreover, Hyde and Price define EU as a regional hegemon trying to shape the external area by using both soft and hard power.[13]
More radical argument belongs to sociological institutionalists who mainly focus on the institutional isomorphism as a rule for the EFP where norms are exported unreflexively with a single model promoted to all its partners regardless of their context. EU’s projecting its own identity of democratic polity into its relations with third countries is explained by Bözel and Risse’s words as ‘one single cultural script’ or ‘one size fits all’ attidue.[14]
Contrary to the eurocentrism put emphasized by the rationalists, for constructivists EU promotes norms of universal value as an inclusive entity. As the time passes, the line between reflexivity and unreflexivity blurs and an intentional behaviour at the beginning will be a routine which is quite close to the famous ‘path dependency’ argument of historical institutionalism according to which the repetition of communications and practices lead to a standardisation of practices and an eventual change in actor’s reciprocal disposition. In this sense, constructivists focus more on the inclusive character of EU’s foreign policy with the norms and values having universal character.
Whether the diversity of approaches and debates on European Foreign Policy is a signal for the health in the literature or rather a ‘cacophony of dissonant voices’ is a matter of discussion as Walter Carlsnaes argues. He focuses on the need for an emprical research on the EU international actorness instead of giving effort to find a dominant approach explaining the evolution and working of the system.[15] EU as a sui generis entity different from the socalled international actors as states, state-like actors, without any government but with a form of governance, can not be easily explained within the boundries of the ‘foreign policy actorness’ legal definition. On the other hand as the behavioural observations indicate EU compared to many states or state-like actors exerts more influence on the international arena even affecting in a direct or indirect way the policy decisions executed within the third countries as well as the reforms taken through the famous notion of ‘conditionality’ as it was the case in Turkey. As the constructivist argument says, there occurs an emotional environment between the EU and third countries within which both sides form expectations from eachother through some policy tools, hence EU at the end appears as en entity unique to be investigated over which foreign policy actorness should be redefined as against the traditional terms.
Rather than limiting the analysis to the justification of EU’s actorness on one of these aproaches, or giving effort to explain EU’s foreign policy within the boundaries of the selective approaches, it is better to base the analysis on the emprical and historical research of the evolution of EU foreign policy system (the institutions, the formal rules, the informal norms), the policy-making process and impact of common policies or the failure to agree common policies on the system itself, on EU member states as well as on the world.[16] This emprical research will lead us to approach from a broader perspective to the question ‘Is the EU a normative power, promoting universal values or is it a eourocentric civilizing power projecting its own understanding of norms onto the rest of the world or both? While capturing the answer the policy tools employed by the EU and its impacts vis a vis member states, candidate countries and the rest of the world should be the subjects of emprical analysis, namely enlargement and neighbourhood policies of the EU. The emprical analysis of EU foreign policy around those policy tools will bring us to the logics underpinning the EU enlargement and neighbourhood policy.
Diğdem Tümtürk
[1] Helene Sjursen and Karen E. Smith, “Justifiying EU Foreign Policy: The Logics Underpinnig the EU Enlargement “, p.1.
[2] Alexender Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State”, American Political Science Review, 88, 2, 1994, pp. 389-390.
[3] Roy Ginsberg, The Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989).
[4] David Allen, “The European Rescue of National Foreign Policy?”, in Hill, ed., The Actors in Europe’s Foreign Policy, p. 303.
[5] Robert Kagan, “Paradise and Power: America and Europe in New World Order”, (London: Atlantic Books, 2003)
[6] Ibid.
[7] William Wallace, “Is There a European Approach to War?”, European Foreign Policy Unit Working Paper, 2005, 2, p. 2.
[8] I. Manners, “Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 2002, 40, p. 241.
[9] Bretherton, C. and Volgler, J., “The European Union as a Global Actor”,(London: Routledge, 1999), p.249.
[10] Sjursen and Smith, op.cit., p.3
[11] Federica Bicci, “Our Size Fits All”, European Foreign Policy Unit Working Paper, 2005/3, p.7.
[12] Ibid., p. 201.
[13] Ibid., p. 207.
[14] T.Börzel and T. Risse, “One Size Fits All! EU Policies for the Promotion of Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law”, Workshop on Democracy Promotion and the Rule of Law, 4-5 October, Stanford University.
[15] Walter Carlsnaes, “Where the Analysis of European Foreign Policy Going”, European Union Politics,5, 4, 2004, p.495.
[16] Karen E. Smith, “The EU in the World: Future Research Agendas”, European Foreign Policy Unit Working Paper, 2008/1, p. 3.
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