Normative Powers and European Foreign Policy in a Minilateralist World

Abstract

This article examines the state of the European Union with a particular emphasis on European foreign policy. It does so by theorizing three concepts―“normative power (Europe)”, (European) “foreign policy” and “multilateralism”. I work with these concepts in a particular fashion―esp. by expanding their uses compared to how they have come to be understood in the context of International Relations discourse in general and the study of European Union politics in particular. The purpose of this move is to arrive at an alternative description of contemporary European politics in a world which is increasingly considered by many observers as being “out of joint”. First, rather than associating “normative power” (in the case of the EU) with a “force for the good” I argue that a usage which emphasizes the ability of some actor to define what passes for normal (Manners 2002) has the advantage of refocusing the political struggles in which the EU engages with other actors. In this understanding “Normative Power Europe” is currently stuck, among others, in political struggles with “normative power Russia” and “normative power Islamic State” over what should (or: what must not) pass for normal. Second, in contrast to intergovernmental politics among (and decision-making vis-à-vis) nation states the practice of boundary drawing as political performance is identified as a more useful core of the concept of “foreign policy” because he helps to problematize shifting notions both among EU member states and the EU’s collective outside about who is treated as “foreigner” or one of “us”. Third, minilateralism―the practice of getting together “the smallest possible number of countries needed to have the largest possible impact on solving a particular problem”, Naim 2009) is problematized as a spreading habit of inter-state cooperation which has also infected cooperation within the EU and which seriously threatens to undermine its multilateralist foundation of existence. Together the three concepts help to pinpoint the core predicament of the European Union by identifying the key political struggles among competing normative powers which effectively redraw boundaries between EUropean (and/or “Greek” or “German”) insides and outsides in such a way that fundamental institutional routines and established practices of the EU are seriously undermined.