Normative power as hegemony

Introduction

Whether one loathes or loves it, the concept of normative power has significantly influenced the debates about the EU’s role in international politics ever since Ian Manners developed it in his famous 2002 article (Manners, 2002). Manners argued that the EU represents a novel kind of power, which pursues normative aims (as opposed to self-interested material gains) through predominantly normative means (as opposed to predominantly military and economic means). The widespread discussion of the concept that ensued (see Whitman, 2011, 2013) has focused to a large extent on the question of whether the EU corresponds to the image of a normative power on these two dimensions of aims and means.

Another question that occurs in relation to normative power Europe is that of whether the EU does indeed ‘shape conceptions of the normal’, which is central to Manners’s definition of normative power. In other words, to aims and means we ought to add the category of ‘normative results’ (Tocci et al., 2008): whether the EU does achieve its normative aims and is able to act as a ‘normative leader’, at least in its own neighbourhood, if not globally. This is a question not so much focused on EU policy as such but on its effects. It thus redirects our analyses from an internal to an external focus. Only a few works have actually addressed this issue. The body of literature on the subject has, by and large, assumed that there is some normative impact of the EU, even though it may vary among cases.

For the purposes of this article, the prevailing thrust of the body of literature on the subject will be followed and also such an EU effect will be assumed. Even cursory evidence seems to suggest that this is not unreasonable, as long as one allows for variation dependent on the context of the individual case, such as whether the immediate neighbourhood is concerned (e.g. for the Bosnian case see Juncos, 2011) or whether we are dealing with a case that is further afield (yet see Scherwitz, 2012, for the case of the United States). Instead, the question of interest in this article is whether the idea of normative power does not actually belittle the ‘power’ aspect, and whether it should therefore not be replaced with the concept of ‘hegemony’. Thinking of normative power as hegemony, as proposed below, would reconceptualize the many tensions between EU rhetoric and foreign policy practice, as well as among several EU foreign policy practices, which have been the focus of the debate about normative power Europe so far. Furthermore, it would turn attention further towards the effects of EU foreign policy practice, and the extent to which the EU has, indeed, the power to change what is considered normal beyond its own boundaries.

That one may see normative power as hegemony has already been floated at various points in the debate (e.g. Diez, 2005; Figueroa, 2010; Haukkala, 2011). However, the idea has yet to be fully explored, perhaps because Manners himself, assuming a realist notion of hegemony as outlined by Hyde-Price (2006), is rather dismissive of its use in the analysis of normative power and sets normative power against ‘the hegemony of the imperial powers’ (Manners, 2006: 172; but see also Diez and Manners, 2007: 174). Yet if one follows a Gramscian rather than a realist conception of hegemony, and therefore shifts the focus from the power of brute force to the power of ideas and consensus, the power to shape conceptions of the normal seems to be at its heart. Can normative power, therefore, be replaced with hegemony?

In this article, it is argued that the answer to this question is ‘yes’. In fact, while the author would not want to equate normative power with hegemony, the author does want to propose that using the concept of hegemony does serve to address some of the core problems of the normative power concept as they have been identified in the body of literature on the subject. At least four such problems may be fruitfully tackled when bringing in the concept of hegemony: the debate about whether EU foreign and external policy is driven by norms or interests; the problem of inconsistent behaviour as a result of competing and contested norms; the question of the role of state and non-state actors in EU foreign and external policy; and the problematic standing of normative power as an academic engagement, in particular in regard to whether the theory is of primarily explanatory, descriptive or normative value. The kind of resolution of these problems that the concept of hegemony offers does not necessarily consist of siding with one or the other option in the existing readings of normative power. Instead, many of the problems identified in the debate originate in the drawing of boundaries and oppositions that do not allow scholars to appreciate the complexities of the power relations involved in the EU’s external relations, and the concept of hegemony puts these boundaries and oppositions into question.

The normative power concept does not only apply to the EU (Diez, 2005: 620–623). To that extent, wherever one may speak of normative power, linking it to the concept of hegemony may draw attention to the conflation of norms and interests and the effects – both positive and negative – of normative discourses on the identity and preferences of actors within a normative power’s sphere of influence. Having said that, normative power has been developed as a concept in relation to the EU, and so discussion will be kept to this particular context, even though the point to be made is of a more general concern.

In the following section, the debate about normative power Europe will be summarized with a particular focus on the four problems identified above. A brief outline of the concept of hegemony will then be provided, before suggestions are made as to how this concept may help tackle the problems of normative power.

Normative power Europe and its problems

A short definition of normative power has been provided in the introductory paragraph. Yet the concept becomes clearer if set against two other concepts: that of a traditional great power and that of a civilian power. In international society, a great power has traditionally been recognized as such primarily on the basis of its military capabilities. This is not to say that military capabilities as such are sufficient to become a great power; rather, such a status is conferred upon a state by other states, and is therefore largely discursive in nature (Bull, 1977; Buzan, 2004). However, it is difficult to think of a case in which such a great power status has been conferred upon a state without the existence of substantial military capabilities, which therefore seem to be a necessary if not sufficient condition for recognition as a great power. In contrast, while it would be wrong to say that EU Member States are a minor military player in international politics, there continues to exist what Chris Hill (1993) once famously called the ‘capabilities–expectations gap’ when it comes to EU military power, more recently reconceptualized by Asle Toje (2008) as the ‘consensus–expectation gap’. In short, the EU has until now, and despite the development of the Common Defence Policy and the deployment of military missions under the EU flag, remained a disappointment to those who would like to see it develop into a military might. The EU does not build its power on the availability and use of military means, and the use of such means is narrowly circumscribed (Sjursen, 2006). Clearly, it would be difficult to argue that EU power is primarily military power, and in that sense the EU is different from a traditional great power.

The second point of comparison is civilian power. François Duchêne (1971, 1973) described the EU in the 1970s as such a civilian power, a power that pursues its interest by non-military means and that aims to ‘civilize’ international politics in the sense of making war a non-acceptable instrument. Manners’s conception of normative power was developed in part as a resurrection of this idea of civilian power, but very much stressed that a normative power does not act in only its own interest but binds itself to international norms, whether they are in its interest or not, and that its main influence is not merely through non-military (mostly economic) means, but through the force of ideas (see Diez and Manners, 2007: 175).

This comparison is more difficult to judge. First, it is possible to read ‘civilian power’ in a way that focuses on its ‘civilizing’ mission and thus essentially makes it a kind of normative power. Second, it is difficult if not impossible to empirically differentiate between foreign policy that is motivated by norms and foreign policy that is motivated by interest. Thus, there are, for instance, numerous studies that try to demonstrate that EU support for international ‘deep trade’ norms is in fact strongest when it comes to exporting EU norms so as to minimize trading disadvantages that such norms would entail for the EU if they were not applicable globally (e.g. Lightfoot and Burchell, 2005; Young, 2007; Young and Peterson, 2006).

This brings us to the problems of the concept of normative power. The academic and policy discussion on this topic has been multifaceted and extensive. Therefore, this article focuses on four issues in particular, for which the author believes that the concept of hegemony can make a difference.

First, there is the interest/norm problem that has just been introduced. This has been raised in various contexts apart from the argument of EU interest in maintaining specific production standards in order to avoid competitive disadvantages. Thus, the EU has been said to act differently towards Russia (Zimmermann, 2007), which it needs predominantly for reasons of energy security, if compared with the smaller central and eastern European states (Haukkala, 2008). EU ‘humanitarian’ interventions in Africa seem to depend on the geostrategic interests of EU Member States (Gegout, 2009). There is also the use of normative arguments to rationalize EU interests in trade with the Global South (e.g. Langan, 2012), and the criticism of EU arms exports into countries with a poor human rights record (Erickson, 2011) and generally of variances in EU human rights policy and democracy promotion (Lerch and Schwellnus, 2006; Youngs, 2009). However, it is perhaps the democratic uprisings in the Arab world that are most challenging to the normative power concept: while claiming to promote democracy on the one hand, the EU, especially in its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), on the other hand has supported authoritarian rulers in the Arab world for the sake of holding back migration across the Mediterranean or safeguarding oil supplies (Hollis, 2012; Pace, 2007).

The second problem concerns the question of whether the EU is in fact effective as a normative power – towards both the outside and the inside. In other words, are the norms promoted by the EU indeed influencing the behaviour of third parties (e.g. Barbé et al., 2009)? Perhaps even more critically, are these norms influencing the EU’s own behaviour? The record in this regard is mixed, and fraught with empirical difficulties, in particular as the EU is often only one among many factors that explain change. EU influence from other influences therefore remains a major challenge for any analyst. In relation to the author’s own work on the EU’s impact on conflict resolution, for instance, it is notable that the impact of the EU proved to be mostly dependent on local developments outside the control of the EU (Diez et al., 2006, 2008). To cite a particularly instructive example, the prospect of EU membership has not directly caused regime change in Northern Cyprus, but instead the EU served as a reference point to legitimize the opposition and provide political alternatives once a banking crisis sparked mass demonstrations against Turkey and the old Denktash regime (Diez and Tocci, 2010).

Perhaps the clearest influence on third parties has been in enlargement situations, but, as Haukkala (2011) and others have noted, even the ENP is running into difficulties as an instrument to exercise normative power (Romaniuk, 2010; Stewart, 2011). Yet, as argued in the introduction, this does not imply that the EU has no effect at all. This impact can be gauged not by solely looking at direct forms of compulsory power (see Barnett and Duvall, 2005), but rather by assessing the diffuse consequences of EU programmes and practices that establish new governmentalities (i.e. instilling new ideas and norms about how governance is conducted) and work towards the inclusion of some and the exclusion of other societal actors from political processes (Juncos, 2011; Merlingen and Ostraukaite, 2006; Mühlenhoff, 2013). In other words, qualifying the statement that the EU has normative power (as opposed to acts as a normative power) does not mean to deny any impact at all. There are two possible avenues to further explore this. In a more traditionalist fashion, we need further studies on the conditions under which the EU can successfully wield compulsory power. It would be in line with the more diffuse consequences of EU interference, however, and of greater relevance to the question of normative power to think through more thoroughly the underlying conception of norms that the EU is supposed to impose on others, and how these norms inform the political process. It is this latter avenue that will be taken when discussing the possible benefits of using the concept of hegemony.

Third, the EU may well do all sorts of good in the world, but what about its Member States? While EU foreign and security policy cannot be seen as a purely intergovernmental exercise (Glarbo, 1999; Howorth, 2000: 36, 2012; Jørgensen, 1997; Øhrgaard, 1997), it remains the case that Member States continue to exert considerable influence in the EU foreign policy system, so, at the very least, EU foreign policy is an example of multilevel governance (Smith, 2004). Analyses of normative power in the EU therefore always need to take into account several levels of actors (see Balducci, 2010, for the interaction between levels in the case of EU policy towards China). Yet, adding to this, what about private actors? Can the export of weapons by commercial actors be ignored, or is it relevant only because state actors need to approve such exports? Are non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other civil society actors engaged in EU projects towards third parties, part of EU normative power (see, for instance, the role of NGOs in EU food aid, Reimann, 2006: 51–52)?

Last but not least, there is also the question of the academic standing of normative power as a theoretical concept. The problem arises in part because Manners from the start combined three theoretical purposes in his work: a description of the international role of the EU (the EU is a normative power), an explanation of EU foreign policy (the EU acts in such a way because of its normative institutionalization) and a critique as well as a normative engagement with EU foreign policy (the EU ought to behave as a normative power) (Manners, 2002; see also Parker and Rosamond, 2013, who see NPE as a ‘ontological reality’ and a ‘critical ontology’). This may not be in accordance with the rules of positivist social science, but Manners did not intend his piece to be part of such an endeavour (see Manners, 2011). Nowhere is this clearer than in the starting lines of his 2008 piece for a special issue of International Affairs: ‘The EU has been, is and always will be a normative power in world politics’, Manners (2008: 45) writes, and continues, ‘This is a strong claim with a critical aim: to promote normative approaches to the study of the EU in world politics’. This poses the question of how we can maintain the critical impetus of the normative power argument and at the same time contribute to an analysis of the EU’s global role.

The point of this article is not to extensively explore the various details of the debates about these problems. Instead, the argument presented is that the concept of hegemony speaks to all of them and, while perhaps not providing a solution, it allows us to transform these problems in such a way that we can think in new ways about normative power.

The concept of hegemony

The debate about normative power emerged out of a discussion about the actor qualities of the EU. To be a normative power, the EU does not have to be a sovereign actor in the international system. In fact, as Manners (2002) details, the EU can have normative power both in its actions – in the way ‘it asserts itself’ (Keene, 2013) – and by way of its mere existence. Similarly, European integration can have an effect on border conflicts both through EU actions aimed at transcending the conflict and through the uncontrollable impact of the integration process as such (Diez et al., 2006, 2008).

This discussion is relevant to the concept of hegemony as there are different conceptions of hegemony, in particular in international relations. Two of them mark the two extreme poles of the debate. A neorealist notion of hegemony emphasizes the role of a great power as a regional hegemon that provides order through setting up institutions and providing, as well as policing, norms (Gilpin, 1981). Such a conception does therefore involve norms, but the spread of these norms is tied to the economic and military capabilities of the (traditional) great power, which can use them to enforce norms by threatening to apply military force. Important to such an understanding of hegemony are therefore capabilities and the influence that builds upon them (Krahmann, 2005: 533). Following this conception of hegemony, the EU would turn into a hegemon if it was to use the threat of military or economic force (for instance in the form of sanctions) in order to enforce its own norms in a regional or global order.

Against this stands a conception of hegemony which is derived above all from the work of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci’s starting point is not international relations of course, but the failure of revolutions in southern European societies in particular. Given this, the notion of a hegemon as an actor makes much less sense than in relation to international politics. There is therefore a discursive and relational rather than an actor emphasis in the Gramscian conception of hegemony. In that sense hegemony ‘is a relation, not of domination by means of force, but of consent by means of political and ideological leadership’ (Simon, 1982: 21). It is, in other words, a relation in which those subject to hegemony consent to the same conceptions of society, broad problem definitions and principled solutions. This brings hegemony close to Manners’s definition of normative power as being able ‘to shape conceptions of the normal’ (Manners, 2002).

Hegemony is, however, not without its agents (and indeed, in Haukkala’s rendering of the subject, this is one of the reasons why he opts for hegemony as the central concept, although it remains unclear why he thinks the EU is rather passive in normative power; see Haukkala, 2011). For Gramsci, these are social forces and particularly classes (see Simon, 1982: 22). These social forces are engaged in a constant struggle over hegemony, but they do not ‘own’ hegemony: they can acquire hegemonic status, but they cannot become hegemons in the actor sense that neorealists employ. To the extent that they can achieve hegemonic status at all, they need to provide leadership in economic and broader social discursive terms in what Gramsci called an ‘historic bloc’, in which particular societal meanings and power relationships become fixed for a limited period (see Simon, 1982: 27). The degree to which Gramsci moved away in this conception from economic determinism is a matter of some dispute. In the famous interpretation of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), hegemony is largely stripped of its economic content. Others, in particular those in critical international political economy, have emphasized the economic, class-based character of hegemonic struggles (e.g. Bieler and Morton, 2001, 2004). These different interpretations are largely a consequence of Gramsci being less than consistent on this point: while the general drift of his argument undermines the old Marxian economic determinism, he nonetheless uses terminology such as base and superstructure with their economic connotations (Simon, 1982: 27).

For the following discussion, a few points are worth noting that clearly speak to the problems identified above with the concept of normative power:

Transcending the interests/norms divide

The first problem with normative power identified above concerns the question of whether the EU advocates norms for its own sake or because it is in the interest of its Member States. This would undermine the normative power argument significantly as its core idea is that normative powers pursue norms even if they are not in their interest. In all of the cases mentioned, the main empirical evidence against the EU as a normative power relies on inconsistencies in the EU’s behaviour. Yet this is a problematic argument (see Diez, 2005). At best, it can draw plausible inferences from the inconsistency of behaviour. However, in most cases, a normative argument can explain behaviour as much as an interest-based argument, as norms and interest are ultimately ontological categories that are next to impossible to prove. Thus, what may look like inconsistencies can often be explained by competing norms (on which there is more below) or competing paths to realize norms, and the cases in which we can construct persuasive counterfactuals or are able to reconstruct the true motivations behind policies (often even after the opening of archives) are few and far between.

Take EU policy towards the Maghreb, for instance. The insistence on migration control in ENP agreements may well be in the interest of Member States (Geddes, 2005; Lavenex, 2006; Lavenex and Wichmann, 2009), yet its normative assessment is much more problematic, as there is no undisputed norm in favour of migration. The judgement on this issue will therefore always be essentially a political one, and depend on the analyst’s normative views, however honourable they may be. Likewise, engagement with authoritarian regimes is less easy to judge than it is often made out to be: a classic liberal strategy to achieve change through such engagement stands against calls for a clear distancing. A strict correlation between engagement and Member State preferences may represent a way out by way of proxy, as would an analysis of the justifications of policy moves, which would not be able to uncover the real motives of actors, but would at least demonstrate the different rationales provided for policies.

However, this whole discussion rests on the assumption of a distinction between norms and interests, which is problematic itself. While there are, on the one hand, undoubtedly different logics of actions on an ontological level, on the other hand, norms and interests cannot so easily be separated, and both are infused by each other (see also Manners, 2011, for a similar argument). It is on this basis that discourse theorists tend to question the materialist/idealist divide. And it is on this basis that, in the Gramscian conception of hegemony, there is an emphasis on both economic and cultural discursive factors, and that cultural and political factors are not simply determined by an economic base. Rather, norms and economic interests form one whole: norms shape interests; interests shape norms.

Seen from such a perspective, the findings of Young and Peterson (2006) mentioned in the second section of this article, for instance, are therefore not at all surprising; rather, it would be odd to observe the opposite, i.e. that the EU would pursue environmental norms that run counter to its interests. It is true that Manners argues that normative powers also go against their interest, if it conflicts with the norms that they subscribe to, and of course the force of the argument would be strengthened if one could demonstrate a radical case of such a mismatch. Yet this buys into the distinction between norms and interests, which is problematic in itself. Instead, even in such presumed radical mismatch cases, chances are that competing interests are tied up with competing norms. The example that Manners (2002) gives (EU protest against the death penalty in the USA) does not really help his argument, as the preferences coming out of economic interest for the EU in this case are rather weak, if they can be determined at all.

Using the concept of hegemony rather than normative power would therefore circumvent the endless discussions about the consistency or inconsistency of EU behaviour with certain norms, which is ultimately a matter of judgement. It would instead focus on discursive positions that entail both norms and interests in an inseparable complex (see also Haukkala, 2011), yet it would still emphasize the idea that is at the heart of normative power, the shaping of conceptions of the normal. It would not be as bold in its argument as normative power, as it removes the ‘acting against interest’ part; this is at least an unhelpful if not untenable part of the normative power concept.

Emphasizing hegemonic struggles and normative contests

The second problem with the concept of normative power identified above was that normative power may actually not work, at least not beyond enlargement. This is most likely a problem of the glass being half empty or half full. It would be surprising if the EU could have its own way everywhere across the globe, or even within only its own neighbourhood, but it would be equally strange to see the EU not being able to ‘shape conceptions of the normal’ at all. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. This is, essentially, because we are witnessing a contest over norms at several levels. The focus in the debates about normative power is mostly on the struggle between EU norms and competing norms in international society (see Kavalski, 2013, on China). It is, however, worth reminding ourselves that the basis of these EU norms, according to Manners (2002), lies in the basic inner principles of the EU as laid out in the Treaties, which are themselves the outcome, and indeed the continued subject, of hegemonic struggles within the EU.

Yet there are at least two more dimensions to these struggles over the preponderance of norms. The first one is to do with the fact that norms are always, albeit to different degrees, contested (Wiener, 2007, 2008). Parker and Rosamond (2013), for instance, highlight the market liberalism underpinning the cosmopolitan norms of the EU, which are often neglected in NPE debates, not least because they sit uneasily with the ‘positive’ associations of the EU as the source of a new international order. Likewise, Hansen and Williams (1999) have pointed to the rationalism underpinning European integration, yet at the same time this very rationalism may be undermining its legitimacy. EU norms are therefore not simply passed on to third parties, but need to be reinterpreted in the process so as to write out the tensions at the core of the integration project. This also means, however, that there may well be conflicting interpretations of norms among EU Member States, and other EU actors – the freedom of press and the dispute over its interpretation between Hungary and other EU Member States being only one of the more recent prominent examples. Second, there may be competing norms within the EU, and these may especially come into tension if applied to a specific context. Examples of this include the questions of stability and democracy, or order and justice (Diez, 2012; Powel, 2009). EU norms may also not be competing only with the interests but also with the norms of other international actors (Kavalski, 2013; Stewart, 2011), which may all too often see EU norms as impositions on a ‘mission civilisatrice’ that in their lack of reflexivity undermine their very aim (Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis, 2013; Nicolaïdis and Howse, 2002). Such tensions between norms are not new, and have been explored in relation to international society particularly in the context of the English school (e.g. Bull, 1977), but they do have particularly problematic effects when characterizing an actor as a normative power.

As indicated above, there is then also a broader struggle over norms in the EU (as in any other society), and the attempt to impose norms on outsiders may also be an attempt to settle disputes over norms within the EU, or to construct new meanings of the social. In other words, ‘normative power’ in relation to others is also part of a struggle over hegemony within the EU. The ‘experience’ of normative power is therefore best seen as a transversal struggle over societal norms, in which different actors interact on different levels – as opposed to the unidirectional and uncontested imposition of norms, which would only replicate the problems of the old top-down models of Europeanization (see, among many others, Börzel and Risse, 2000; Diez et al., 2005).

This is where the Gramscian notion of hegemonic struggles fits much better than the notion of normative power that emerges from a pre-given set of norms. While the existence of an EU-wide public space may be much disputed, there are nonetheless continued attempts to settle the future political, societal, cultural and economic direction of the EU, which a variety of social forces, from labour unions to the European’s Women Lobby, from individual companies to the European Roundtable of Industrialists, from classes to parties, from churches to think tanks, are engaged in. Often this struggle takes the form of equating the European integration project with a particular political aim (such as in the struggles over the interpretation of the Single Market; see Bieler, 2003; Van Apeldoorn, 2002). Yet, by being able to fix an external representation of the EU, these social forces may also push a particular interpretation of norms inside the EU. This is the case in advancing liberal market norms as much as in democracy promotion. The most well-known example of this is of course the inclusion of minority rights in the Copenhagen Criteria, over which there had previously been no consensus among Member States. Indeed, there is arguably still no consensus on this matter (the dispute over the treatment of Roma in various Member States, including France, is just one case illustrating this; see Simhandl, 2006), but by including minority rights in the Copenhagen Criteria, it became impossible for Member States to ignore these rights, and policies detrimental to minorities now require special justification.

Seeing normative power as hegemony thus leads us to emphasize the politics of ‘normative power’. Power in this sense is not the capability of a specific actor, but it is a ‘productive’ power (see Barnett and Duvall, 2005: 20–22) that emerges out of a contest between different worldviews and normative visions.

Integrating civil society

As the discussion of the last point has already illustrated, putting the concept of hegemony at the centre of our analysis also refocuses our perspective away from the EU as a whole and allows us to see normative power not only as the property or a characteristic of relations between states and state-like actors, but as part of a struggle among a great variety of social forces. This struggle takes place on the EU level, and it takes place at Member State level. These two levels often spill over into each other so that governments, representing particular social forces, try for instance to settle policy disputes on the EU level, which then restrains policy-making options within Member States (Moravcsik, 1994). Likewise, social forces can try to build historic blocs within Member States and push for the pursuit of particular policies within the EU in line with their preferred norms, through having ‘captured’ the government, or in order to compete or undermine EU policies beyond EU borders.

This addresses the problem of the EU’s ‘actorness’, from which the concept of normative power wanted to move away, but which it did not quite manage to leave behind. Focusing our analysis on multilayered hegemonic struggles clarifies that (a) the EU is engaged in such struggles as a whole; (b) there is a struggle over hegemony within the EU; and (c) social forces try to achieve hegemonic status by pushing their normative agenda on several levels, including the EU and national levels. This brings the Member States back into the picture as much as it widens our gaze to the social fabric as a whole.

In particular, the Member States in such a conception do not figure simply as inducing inconsistency, but as playing an important role in the struggle over normative power. Furthermore, the role of civil society actors has so far been hardly addressed in the body of literature on normative power Europe. However, from a Gramscian hegemony point of view, this is more than problematic, in particular as Gramsci, in the concept of the integral state, sees civil society organizations and the state not as opposites, but as a whole (Tepe, 2012). It is therefore important in our analyses not to lose sight, for instance, of private development agencies, from NGOs to banks, and of the NGOs that receive funding from the EU as part of democracy promotion projects. To what extent are these part of the hegemonic struggle that the EU is engaged in? And to what extent do they take part themselves in the hegemonic struggles within the EU?

This shift from state actors towards a more encompassing list of actors, and particularly NGOs and other non-state actors, seems to reflect the essence of normative power much more appropriately than most existing accounts that focus on the EU or on the EU and Member State levels. NGOs have played an increasingly important role in the foreign policies of a variety of states and state-like organizations, including the EU, whereby – apart from agenda setting and influencing the policy process through lobbying and the provision of expertise – money is being channelled through NGOs in the implementation of a variety of policies from development to human rights (Reimann, 2006: 51–52).

Reinstating critical purpose

Over time, much of the discussion of normative power has focused on an empirical debate about whether the EU is or is not a normative power. Yet, as stated above, one can trace three different epistemological standings in Manners’s original argument: normative power as an ontological category for classification, as an explanation of EU foreign policy and as a normative aim and critique of the present. In a recent article, Manners (2011) himself yet again stressed the last of these three strands in his argument, and situates normative power within a broader normative argument (see also Manners, 2007, 2008).

Clearly, lumping these different epistemological strands together is more than problematic, and so it is perhaps not all that surprising that most mainstream scholars have jumped on the descriptive, classificatory purpose of Manners’s theory. In his 2011 piece, Manners suggests, as a possible way out of this conundrum, the study of the principles, actions and consequences of EU external and foreign policy, so as to arrive at a normative critique through a detailed analysis of the different aspects of normative power. Another reading of the original 2002 piece puts the counterfactual assumption of normative power into focus. Such a reading would agree that EU foreign policy is not consistent, but at the same time, it would recognise broad agreement that the EU ought to be a normative power. This would then allow us to see the focus on the death penalty campaign as a reminder to EU actors of their image and aspirations, which would serve to strengthen the normative power position within the EU.

The author’s suggestion is that a turn to the concept of hegemony may again help us find our way out of this maze. The purpose of the study of hegemony is to problematize how we got to where we are, and how certain concepts become seen as natural and logical. This then opens up the debate for discussions about alternative futures (such as in the reconstruction of normative power in Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis, 2013), but it also serves to help understand better the present results of our past. This no doubt involves a shift in the analysis of normative power, away from the ‘what is’ question, and towards the interrogation of representations as well as instantiations of normative power. From a Foucauldian point of view, Michael Merlingen (2007) has suggested a similar endeavour in his analysis of EU engagement in police missions in the Balkans, and, without having the space to get into more detail, a Gramscian notion of hegemony is compatible, at least in this respect, with the Foucauldian view of governmentality that Merlingen uses in his research (see Ekers and Loftus, 2008).

Thus, a focus on hegemony would reinstate the critical purpose that, in the author’s reading as well as arguably in Manners’s own reading of Manners, the concept of normative power has always had. It would then denaturalize the norms that are brought into association with the EU so as to get to the social forces and the struggles in which they are engaged, and the particular interpretations and exclusions of meaning that emerged as a consequence of these struggles. Normative power would then be treated as what Laclau and Mouffe (1985) call a ‘nodal point’, a core concept in the political debate through which social forces try to temporarily fix a particular complex of meaning within the wider societal discourse. This would then also clearly dissociate work on normative power from the idea that the EU is ‘a force for good’ in international politics (see Pace, 2008), and it would put the politics of normative power at centre stage.

Conclusions

This short piece has tried to take up the suggestion made by Haukkala (2011), the present author (2005) and others that we make more use of the concept of hegemony when analysing normative power. Indeed, the article has gone as far as to suggest that we may wish to replace normative power with hegemony. The article has outlined four advantages that the concept of hegemony may have and which may solve some of the puzzles surrounding the concept of normative power, especially as it was developed in relation to the EU. These advantages are:

The author would not want to even pretend that such a move towards hegemony would be without a loss from a normative power perspective. One such possible loss that has been addressed is the idea that a normative power would pursue global norms even if they are against its own material interests. The author has, however, argued that this is an argument that seems rather untenable both in light of empirical evidence and out of principled ontological considerations.

Finally, one may argue that ‘normative power’ is a concept that is easier to swallow for the mainstream (thus its success) than hegemony with its leftist, post-Marxist associations. Also, the whole idea of bridging the distinctions underlying the normative power concept makes empirical research, in the form of assessing whether it is norms or interests that explain EU foreign policy, more difficult if not impossible. This may well be the case, and so Manners’s move was of course a clever one in branding a concept to make it successful across the disciplines. Yet the impossibility of conducting such research is not a result of the reconceptualization of normative power as hegemony, but originates in the problematic assumptions underpinning the normative power concept and how it has been used in the first instance. Thus, the author’s hope is that he has been able to clarify the analytical purchase of the concept of hegemony in relation to the EU’s role in international society, and that this will make the concept attractive to analysts from a variety of backgrounds.