The final section will then consider that if the EU cannot be considered a normative power, what is a more appropriate conception of it as an international actor? I will use examples of EU intervention in proximate third countries to deduce whether the EU is a normative power and argue that the more pragmatic approach of the English School based on solidarist and pluralist thought is a more pertinent conception of the EU as an international actor (Aggestam 2008: 5). Issues of sovereignty and developments in its European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) suggest it is receding from normative power. Then, I will analyse whether Manners’ argument of normative power is achievable in world politics and if the EU is moving closer or further away from this conception. It may portray itself as one, but does it act in a manner befitting its given conception? However, to assess whether the EU is a normative power, it is necessary to consider some of the EU’s actions and analyse whether other conceptualisations of the EU as an international actor, including neo-realism and the English School, are more applicable.įurthermore, is being a normative power achievable? What is a ‘global common good’ and is it possible to diffuse it universally? I will begin the essay by identifying the key aspects that Manners cites as central to the EU as a normative power. This then allows for analysis of whether the EU is a normative power. He defines this as the way ‘it changes the norms, standards and prescriptions of world politics away from bounded expectations of state-centricity’, which ‘are generally acknowledged, within the United Nations system, to be universally applicable’ (2008: 45-46). Ian Manners has long argued that the EU is a normative power. That is a fitting way of describing the EU’s global role and ambition’ (Aggestam 2008: 6). Former High Representative Javier Solana commented: ‘The EU has responsibility to work for the ‘global common good’. The debate has moved from the individual member state level of analysis to an analysis of the EU as a distinct institution, which has allowed for an increased critique of its conceptual role in world politics (White 2004: 17). Amid the Yugoslavian debacle, the signing of the Treaty on European Union in 1992 signalled a more coherent outlook for an EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which bound its members to common policies over issues including humanitarian aid and peacekeeping, in addition to other policies such as trade and cooperation agreements, conflict prevention and economic sanctions, to the point where it is the only genuine supranational power in world politics (Smith 2005: 171). The collapse of the Soviet Union left a number of states in Eastern Europe grappling for national sovereignty Civil War in Yugoslavia erupted the United States entered the Gulf War and West and East Germany were reunited. After nearly fifty years of a bi-polar superpower dominated world, with Europe as the epicentre, the EU (European Community prior to 1993) was suddenly presented with a multitude of challenges that needed to be addressed for it to be considered a power in the international system. Following the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the subsequent upheaval in Europe, scholars in the field of Politics and International Relations have sought to conceptualise the European Union (EU) as an international actor.
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