Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Twenty years ago, in the pages of the, Journal of Common Market Studies, Hedley Bull launched a searing critique of the European Community's "civilian power" in international affairs. Since that time the increasing role of the European Union (EU) in areas of security and defence policy has led to a seductiveness in adopting the notion of "military power Europe". In contrast, I will attempt to argue that by thinking beyond traditional conceptions of the EU's international role and examining the case study of its international pursuit of the abolition of the death penalty, we may best conceive of the EU as a "normative power Europe".

Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?

Twenty years ago, in the pages of the Journal of Common Market Studies, Hedley Bull launched a searing critique of the European Community’s ‘civilian power’ in international affairs. Since that time the increasing role of the European Union (EU) in areas of security and defence policy has led to a seductiveness in adopting the notion of ‘military power Europe’. In contrast, I will attempt to argue that by thinking beyond traditional conceptions of the EU’s international role and examining the case study of its international pursuit of the abolition of the death penalty, we may best conceive of the EU as a ‘normative power Europe’.

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The creative efforts of the European integration process have changed what passes for ‘normal’ in world politics. Simply by existing as different in a world of states and the relations between them, the European Union changes the normality of ‘international relations’. In this respect the EU is a normative power: it changes the norms, standards and prescriptions of world politics away from the bounded expectations of state-centricity. However, it is one thing to say that the EU is a normative power by virtue of its hybrid polity consisting of supranational and international forms of governance; it is another to argue that the EU acts in a normative (i.e. ethically good) way. The focus of this article will be on the ways in which we might judge the normative ethics of the EU in world politics by critically discussing the principles that it seeks to promote, the practices through which it promotes them, and the impact they have.1 The EU has been, is and always will be a normative power in world politics. This is a strong claim with a critical aim: to promote normative approaches to the study of the EU in world politics. This aim is built on the acknowledgement in critical theory that ‘theory is always for someone and for some purpose’, since ‘theory constitutes as well as explains the questions it asks (and those it does not ask)’.2 There is a simple temptation to attempt to analyse EU policy and influence in world politics empirically without ever asking why the EU is or is not acting, or how we might best judge what the EU should be doing in world politics. A

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The normative ethics of the European Union

The idea of being civilian, military, and civilizing at the same time is undoubtedly very seductive to the armies of academics now writing on EU military force. It is tempting to think that the EU can have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too in militarizing its normative power. In contrast, in my reconsideration of normative power Europe I suggest that militarization of the EU need not necessarily lead to the diminution of the EU's normative power, if the process is characterized by critical reflection rather than the pursuit of ‘great power’. However, I will further argue that militarizing processes beyond the crossroads provided by the European Security Strategy are already weakening the normative claims of the EU in a post-11 September world characterized by the drive towards ‘martial potency’ and the growth of a Brussels-based ‘military-industrial simplex’.

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Normative power Europe reconsidered: beyond the crossroads1

This book presents a fresh examination of the values and principles that inform EU foreign policy, exploring the implications of these values and principles on the construction of European Union identity today. 
The authors show how current debates on European Union foreign policy and on European identity tend to be kept separated, as if the process of identity formation had only an internal dimension or it was not related to the external behaviour of an international actor. Conceiving EU foreign policy in its broadest context as a set of political actions that are regarded by external actors as ‘EU’ actions, the book focuses on both Pillar I and Pillar II policies, involving EU and member state actions and material political actions and less material ones such as speech acts. 

Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective and drawing on political science, political economy, sociology, environmental science and women’s studies, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of European studies and politics.

Ian Manners

Papers

Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?

Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?

The normative ethics of the European Union

Normative power Europe reconsidered: beyond the crossroads1

Values and Principles in European Union Foreign Policy