Constructing the self and changing others: Reconsidering 'normative power Europe'

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 613-636

  Diez, Thomas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 22244453606     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298050330031701     Document Type: Review

References (119)

1. François Duchêne, 'Europe's Role in World Peace', in Europe Tomorrow: Sixteen Europeans Look Ahead, ed. Richard Mayne (London: Fontana, 1972), 43.
2. Ian Manners, 'Normative Power Europe: a Contradiction in Terms?', Journal of Common Market Studies 40, no. 2 (2002): 235-58.
3. Kagan, Robert, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York, NY: Knopf, 2003).
4. Mark Leonard calls the EU a 'transformative power'. See Leonard, 'Ascent of Europe', Prospect 108, March 2005, 34-37.
5. Manners, 'Normative Power', 239-240.
6. Technically speaking, the EU's foreign policy is part of the CFSP pillar of the EU, while external relations include relations that fall under the supranational first pillar (e.g., trade relations). In practice, the difference between the two becomes increasingly blurry, and I am using both terms in this paper more or less interchangeably.
7. See, for instance, EUBorderConf, The European Union and Border Conflicts: The Impact of Integration and Association, Annual Report 2004 (Birmingham: The University of Birmingham, Department of Political Science and International Studies, 2005).
8. François Duchêne, 'The European Community and the Uncertainties of Interdependence', in A Nation Writ Large? Foreign-Policy Problems before the European Community, eds. Max Kohnstamm and Wolfgang Hager (London: Macmillan, 1973), 19.
9. Knut Kirste and Hanns W. Maull, 'Zivilmacht und Rollentheorie', Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 3, no. 2 (1996): 300, my translation. Despite this state-based definition, Maull sees civilian power as a specific kind of actor, role and instrument, all of which are part of the above definition.
10. See Maull, DFG-Projekt 'Zivilmächte': Schluβbericht und Ergebnisse (Trier: Universität Trier, Lehrstuhl für Außenpolitik und Internationale Beziehungen, 1997), 21.
11. For an earlier rendition of the concept, see Maull, 'Germany and Japan: the New Civilian Powers', Foreign Affairs 69, no. 5 (1990): 91-106.
12. On the centrality of norms for the concept of civilian power, see also Henning Tewes, 'Das Zivilmachtskonzept in der Theorie der Internationalen Beziehungen: Anmerkungen zu Knut Kirste und Hanns W. Maull', Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 4, no. 2 (1997): 349.
13. Manners does note that 'Duchêne was also interested in the normative power of the EC as an idée force', but he does not develop this further. See Manners, 'Normative power', 239, emphasis in original.
14. Hedley Bull, 'Civilian Power Europe: a Contradiction in Terms?', Journal of Common Market Studies 21, nos. 1-2 (1982): 149.
15. Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
16. On the differences between a trading state and civilian power, see Christina Schrade, 'Machtstaat, Hanelsstaat oder Zivilmacht? Deutsche Entwicklungspolitik nach dem Ende des Ost-West-Konflikts', Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 4, no. 2 (1997): 261-2.
17. Duchêne, 'Uncertainties of Interdependence', 19.
18. Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Robert Howse, '"This is my EUtopia...": Narrative as Power', Journal of Common Market Studies 40, no. 4 (2002): 770-771.
19. Manners, 'Normative Power Europe', 252-253.
20. Richard Youngs, 'Normative Dynamics and Strategic Interests in the EU's External Identity', Journal of Common Market Studies 42, no. 2 (2004): 422.
21. On the development of human rights as a part of EU foreign policy, see also Karen E. Smith, 'The EU, Human Rights and Relations with Third Countries: "Foreign Policy" with an Ethical Dimension?', in Ethics and Foreign Policy, eds. Karen E. Smith and Margot Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 186-8.
22. Manners, 'Normative Power Europe', 241, emphasis added.
23. I b i d.
24. It is noteworthy in this context that the 2003 European Security Strategy places heavy emphasis on international law. See A Secure Europe In a Better World: European Security Strategy, Brussels, 12 December 2003, 9-10.
25. Manners, 'Normative Power Europe', 243, 252-253.
26. Ibid., 252.
27. See Ole Wæver, 'Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-war Community', in Security Communities, eds. Emanuel Adler and Michael J. Barnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 104.
28. Youngs, 'Normative Dynamics', 252.
29. See also, for instance, Richard Rosecrance, 'The European Union: a New Type of International Actor, in, Paradoxes of European Foreign Policy, ed. Jan Zielonka (The Hague: Kluwer Law International), 22.
30. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Europe, a Civil Power: Lessons from EU Experience (London: The Federal Trust, 2004), 8.
31. Kagan, Paradise and Power.
32. For a summary of the discussion of Kagan's argument, see Elizabeth Pond, Friendly Fire: The Near-Death of the Transatlantic Alliance (Pittsburgh, PA: European Union Studies Association, and Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004), 2-6.
33. Ibid., 20.
34. Manners is aware of this and notes that 'historical empires and contemporary global powers', too, have attempted to spread their own norms and values, although he does not follow this up. See Manners, 'Normative power Europe', 241.
35. Tewes, 'Zivilmachtkonzept', 353.
36. Helene Sjursen, 'Changes to European Security in a Communicative Perspective', Cooperation and Conflict 39, no. 2 (2004): 122;
37. and Annette Jünemann, 'Repercussions of the Emerging European Security and Defence Policy on the Civil Character of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership', Mediterranean Politics 8, nos. 2-3 (2003): 40.
38. Richard Youngs even writes of the 'mutually conditioning nature of normative liberalism and power politics'. See Youngs, 'Normative Dynamics', 419.
39. Michael Cox, 'The Empire's Back in Town: or America's Imperial Temptation - Again', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 32, no. 1 (2003): 8-9.
40. See also David Campbell, 'Contradictions of a Lone Superpower, in The American Century: Consensus and Coercion in the Projection of American Power, eds. David Slater and Peter J. Taylor (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 223.
41. The importance of Frederick Turner's frontier credo of 'expansion, individualism, and democracy' for US foreign policy was established by William Appleman Williams, 'The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy', Pacific Historical Review 24 (1955): 379-395 (quote from p. 383).
42. Menon, Nicolaidis and Welsh, 'In defence of Europe', 7.
43. See Felix Berenskoetter, 'Mapping the Mind Gap: a Comparison of US and European Security Strategies', Security Dialogue 36, no. 1 (2005): 75-76, 86.
44. Cox, 'The Empire's Back', 9.
45. Secretary of State Charles Hughes cited in Werner Link, Der Ost-West-Konflikt: Die Organisation der internationalen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1988), 68.
46. The classic account of Wilson's internationalism as a tactic to further the power of the American empire is William Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. However, Williams, too, acknowledges the importance of the particular normative discourses that Wilson and other American 'idealist imperialists' were engaging in and arguing from. See Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Delta, 1962), 63, 79.
47. A comparison of the US and European Security Strategies is instructive in this respect. For such a comparison, see Berenskoetter, 'Mapping the Mind Gap'.
48. Manners, 'Normative Power Europe', 241.
49. See Sjursen, 'Changes to European Security', 108, 119-120.
50. See also Anand Menon, Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Jennifer Welsh, 'In defence of Europe - a Response to Kagan, Journal of European Affairs 2, no. 3 (2004): 8-9.
51. See, for instance, Penska and Mason, 'EU Security Cooperation', 256, 262;
52. Christopher Hill, 'Renationalizing or Regrouping? EU Foreign Policy since 11 September 2001', Journal of Common Market Studies 42, no. 1 (2004): 156-157;
53. and Jünemann, 'Repercussions', 42-3, 48.
54. This is a common saying about US-EU relations, taken here from Susan E. Penksa and Warren L. Mason, 'EU Security Cooperation and the Transatlantic Partnership', Cooperation and Conflict 38, no. 3 (2003): 256.
55. For a more positive phrasing, see Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, 'Looking to Europe: American Perceptions of the Old World', Cooperation and Conflict 39, no. 1 (2004): 74.
56. Robert Cooper, The Postmodern State and the World Order, 2nd ed. (London: Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre, 2000), 23.
57. Ibid., 34-5.
58. Ibid., 39.
59. Robert Cooper, 'The European Answer to Kagan', Transatlantic Internationale Politik 4, no. 2 (2003) [www.weltpolitik.net/print/ 008.html] (24 August 2004).
60. Sjursen, 'Changes to European Security', 122.
61. For an excellent review of cases indicating inconsistency, see Smith, 'The EU, Human Rights', 193-8.
62. Hill, 'Renationalizing or Regrouping?', 150.
63. Smith, 'The EU, Human Rights', 196-8. The EU's trade relations with developing countries are another example that one could cite for inconsistencies in the implementation of norms.
64. Youngs, 'Normative Dynamics'.
65. Ibid., 424.
66. Ibid., 427, 429.
67. Nicole Deitelhoff and Harald Müller, 'Theoretical Paradise - Empirically Lost? Arguing with Habermas, Review of International Studies 31, vol. 1 (2005): 167-179.
68. Youngs, 'Normative Dynamics', 429.
69. Ibid., 430.
70. Stefano Guzzini, 'The Concept of Power: a Constructivist Analysis', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, this issue.
71. Nicolaïdis and Howes, 'EUtopia', 782.
72. Ibid., 773.
73. Ibid., 783, 788.
74. I should note that Nicolaïdis and Howse, too, refer to the lack of a 'self-reflexive dimension' in the Commission report on 'Europe's contribution to world governance. See Nicolaïdis and Howes, 'EUtopia', 783.
75. For a more mainstream constructivist analysis of CFSP and identity, see Ben Tonra, 'Constructing the Common Foreign and Security Policy: the Utility of a Cognitive Approach', Journal of Common Market Studies 41, no. 4 (2003): 743-6.
76. See, for example, William E. Connolly, Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
77. Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: 'The East' in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999);
78. and R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
79. Richard K. Ashley, 'Untying the Sovereign State: a Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17, no. 2 (1988): 227-262.
80. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
81. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 158.
82. For instance: Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap deWilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
83. The classic reference is Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979).
84. This strategy is discussed in connection with the global governance debate by Richard K. Ashley. See Ashley, 'Imposing International Purpose: Notes on a Problematic of Governance', in Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s, eds. Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), 251-290.
85. For a discussion, see Andrew Linklater, 'Dialogic Politics and the Civilising Process', Review of International Studies 31, no. 1 (2005): 141-154.
86. See also Bahar Rumelili's argument that 'the discursive dependence of identity on difference does not necessarily entail a relationship of Othering between self and other'; by which she essentially means what I have described here as the fourth strategy of representing the other as different. Rumelili, 'Constructing Identity and Relating to Difference: Understanding the EU's Mode of Differentiation', Review of International Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 36.
87. Nicolaïdis and Howes, 'EUtopia, 782.
88. Youngs, 'Normative Dynamics', 419.
89. Michael C. Williams discusses a similar logic regarding the democratic peace argument and liberal state identities. See Williams, 'The Discipline of the Democratic Peace: Kant, Liberalism and the Social Construction of Security Communities', European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 4 (2001): 537. There is indeed some overlap between the articulation of 'normative power' and 'democratic peace', this however needs to be bracketed for present purposes because of space constraints.
90. Nicolaïdis and Howes, 'EUtopia', 774.
91. Antje Wiener, 'Contested Compliance: Interventions on the Normative Structure of World Politics', European Journal of International Relations 10, no. 2 (2004): 205.
92. Barcelona declaration adopted at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference, 27-28 November 1995 [www.europa.eu.int/comm./external_relations/ euromed/bd.htm] (23 August 2004).
93. Jünemann, 'Repercussions', 38-39.
94. Barcelona declaration, 'Political and Security Partnership'.
95. Manners, 'Normative Power', 243.
96. On the Mediterranean as the other of the EU, see also Michelle Pace, 'The Ugly Duckling of Europe: the Mediterranean in the Foreign Policy of the European Union, Journal of European Area Studies 10, no. 2 (2002): 195-6, 209,
97. and, 'The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the Common Mediterranean Strategy? European Union Policy from a Discursive Perspective', Geopolitics 9, no. 2 (2004): 292-309.
98. On the EMP more widely, see also Pace, 'Euro-Mediterranean Partnership', 294.
99. Barcelona Declaration, 'Partnership in Social, Cultural and Human Affairs'.
100. Ibid., 'Political and Security Partnership'.
101. Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, 'Looking to Europe: American Perspectives of the Old World', Cooperation and Conflict 39, no. 1 (2004): 74.
102. See also Timothy Garden Ash, 'The great divide', Prospect 84 (2003): 25.
103. On the following, see also Thomas Diez and Bahar Rumelili, 'Open the Door', The World Today 60, no. 4 (August/September 2004): 33-35.
104. Rumelili, 'Identity, Difference and the EU', 44.
105. Dietrich Jung with Wolfango Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East (London: Zed, 2001);
106. and Dietrich Jung, 'Wie europäisch ist die Türkei?', Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 43, no. 4 (1998): 410-414.
107. For a discussion of this issue in relation to EU enlargement, see also Karen M. Fierke and Antje Wiener, 'Constructing Institutional Interests: EU and NATO Enlargement', Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 5 (1999): 721-42;
108. and Frank Schimmelfennig, 'The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union', International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 47-80.
109. See Thomas Diez, 'Incarnation of the Other: Haider and Europe's Peace Community', Jetlagged News, 30 November 2000 [www.jetlaggednews.com/number/04-11.30.2000/07b.html] (25 August 2004).
110. Campbell, Writing Security.
111. Wæver, 'Insecurity, Security, Asecurity', 90.
112. For examples, see Thomas Diez, 'Europe's Others and the Return of Geopolitics', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 2 (1994): 325-6.
113. For an elaboration of this argument see Diez, 'Europe's Others', 331-3.
114. See, for instance, Thomas Christiansen, Knud-Erik Jørgensen and Antje Wiener, eds., The Social Construction of Europe (London: Sage, 2001).
115. On the EU as a 'postmodern' polity, see, for instance, John Gerard Ruggie, 'Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations', International Organization 47, no. 1 (1993): 172.
116. Youngs 'Normative Dynamics' is an example.
117. In particular, A Secure Europe, 7.
118. For the latter assessment, see Berenskoetter, 'Mapping the mind gap', 76.
119. Similarly: Menon, Nicolaidis and Welsh, 'In defence of Europe'.