Preface

This special issue of Conflict and Cooperation marks the first decade of scholarship on normative power Europe (NPE) through a critical engagement with the concept, its influence and the wider normative turn within the literature on the EU’s role beyond its borders. In doing so, it stands at the intersection between EU studies and International Relations theory and hopes to contribute to the increasingly vigorous mutual engagement between these two realms of scholarship.

In the decade since the original article, scholars have used the concept to inform empirical work, stimulate critical theoretical interrogation of the normative basis of European integration and develop new empirical and theoretical work on the qualities, virtues and pathologies of European power as counterpoints to the notion of NPE. Against this backdrop, Manners has developed the normative power approach by continuing the longitudinal empirical investigation of his chosen issue areas and by developing the theoretical and methodological apparatus of normative power.

This of course, has not happened in a vacuum. It is little exaggeration to note that the tectonic plates have been shifting during the last decade. While global power shifts towards the Asian continent together with the rise of emerging actors from the global south have yet to amount to a true ‘provincializing of Europe’ (Chakrabarty, 2007), the EU’s power can no longer rely on its past prominence. How can the EU claim ‘normative’ power when its role in international affairs is ever less central? Further, it would be hard to deny that the euro crisis which has plagued the continent since 2009 is denting the EU’s global credibility. How can the EU claim ‘normative’ power, when its own ‘new normal’ (Keleman, 2012) often seems unfit for purpose these days, at least as perceived from the rest of the world?

Hence, this is not just an update but also a reappraisal. Contributors to our special issue have been chosen for the international reputation of their work on and beyond the EU, as well as for providing an international range of perspectives from three continents. They have been encouraged to question not only the changing implications of normative power but also its premises. Some are more critical than others, with the various analytical frames they offer (and these include hegemony, market cosmopolitanism and postcolonial power) ranging from grounds for to alternatives to normative power; and the contributions also remind us that the naming and grading of powers is not a new game among states. The common currency of the articles is that all find it fruitful to start their analytical journey with the concept of normative power.

Readers will probably be interested in different aspects of this special issue. Together, the authors provide an original survey of the rich diversity of work relevant to Europe’s alleged normative power. The special issue offers an extensive sample of the range of mainly theoretical approaches adopted by international scholarship in this regard, although empirical illustrations abound. Authors also provide an assessment of the international impact of the concept and its application including its possible appropriation by different actors, be it China or regional entities around the world. We hope that readers will also find, that taken together, the contributions offer a new research agenda for normative approaches to the EU, and one that is reflective of the maturity and diversity of scholarship around normative issues.

If there is any general argument which emerges from this set of disparate contributions, it might be the following: ‘Normative power Europe? yes, but…’ Depending on the contributors’ different analytical, ideological, ontological or prescriptive beliefs, they each have different emphasis and accents on the ‘yes’ or the ‘but’. The contributions summarized below provide variations, among many possible others.

Whitman marks the first decade of scholarship on NPE through a critical engagement with the concept, its influence and the wider normative turn within the literature on the EU’s role beyond its borders. The article argues that the theoretical approaches of international scholarship on normative power have taken the concept in directions not originally foreseen by Manners. Further, the article points to the amount of international scholarship which has internationalized the concept and has stimulated its application in a variety of ways that include engagement, reaction and counter-reaction.

Diez, in his piece, focuses on the problems in the debate on normative power Europe and seeks to suggest how these might be addressed. He identifies four key problems in the debate about normative power Europe that may be fruitfully tackled when linking it to the concept of hegemony: the debate about whether EU foreign and external policy is driven by norms or interests; the problem of inconsistent behaviour due to 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.

According to Lenz, the ideational impact captured by Manners’ notion of NPE appears most distinct and potentially most consequential in the realm of regionalism. However, empirical research on the topic has been hampered by the overwhelming focus on EU actorness and methodological difficulties. Drawing on diffusion theory, Lenz develops conceptual, theoretical and methodological foundations for conceiving of NPE as a form of ideational diffusion. In his view, and in contrast to materially based forms of influence, Europe’s ideational impact on regionalism works in a largely indirect and often diffuse fashion, with important second- and higher-order effects. However, this rarely leads to similar practices or even comparable outcomes, as structural barriers and local appropriation logics limit the impact of such diffusion. Nevertheless, recasting the idea of ‘normative power’ in this way does open out interesting analytical and normative promise. The article illustrates these arguments with examples drawn from three prominent regional organizations in the global South: ASEAN, Mercosur and SADC.

Parker and Rosamond suggest that the concept has been used for two distinct purposes: as a distinctive ontological characterization of the EU on the one hand and as a critical approach to the study of the EU and its external projection on the other. They set out to show how these two purposes might work together in practice, even if they are incommensurable in theory. They argue that there is an ethico-political value to NPE that resides in the extent that it embodies an ontologically plural reality, which is never entirely defined. By drawing attention to a blind spot in the NPE position – the constitutive importance of economic liberalism (‘market cosmopolitanism’) to the EU’s post-Westphalian character. In drawing attention to the normative basis of market cosmopolitanism they caution that the ontological characterization is also rooted in a market cosmopolitics.

Kavalski also sees the normative agenda set by Manners as modifiable, rather than redundant. He sees the need for additional work around the issue of recognition of normative powers and suggests that normative powers are those actors that are recognized as such by others. This qualifies Ian Manners’s oft-quoted proposition that normative powers are only those actors that have the ability to ‘shape what can be “normal” in international life’. The proposition is that defining the ‘normal’ is not a task merely undertaken unilaterally by normative power, but such definitions emerge in the context of interaction with others. Recognition, in this setting, is indicated by the specific reactions of target states. Hence, the issue is not merely about being and becoming a normative power, but also about being recognized as one by others. Kavalski details this proposition through a parallel assessment of normative power Europe and normative power China. The intention of such comparison is to elicit the key elements of normative power in global life.

Keene writes in an analogous vein but to quite different purposes. In his article, he offers a different sort of context for the NPE thesis by examining the historical development of the practice of representing international actors as certain kinds of ‘powers’. He explores the origins of this vocabulary, identifies it as especially congenial to certain kinds of authors on international affairs, and looks at how classification works through the distinction between different types of power. To make this argument, he draws upon a body of literature that pre-dates the NPE thesis. This in turns allows him to expose the significance of choosing to operate within this discourse rather than the alternatives that are available.

Finally, the contribution by Fisher-Onar and Nicolaïdis provides the most critical counterpoint to the normative power frame. It sets out the challenges of rethinking Europe in a non-European world and argue that we need to strip talk of ‘normative power Europe’ of its Eurocentric connotation and prescriptions. This calls for a rather different term in theorizing on the EU and a more fundamental paradigm shift in the study of Europe and beyond than the original research agenda mapped by Manners. For Fisher-Onar and Nicolaïdis such a rupture is necessary both to make sense of our multipolar order and to reconstitute European agency therein. In order to help navigate the nexus between the empirical and the normative, Onar and Nicolaïdis propose a ‘decentring agenda’ with three dimensions: provincializing, engagement and reconstruction(s). They argue that, by applying the decentring logic to the EU’s own foundational narrative and acknowledging the inflections of colonialism in the EU project itself, the Union can reinvent its normative power as ‘postcolonial’ in the 21st century.

The special issue concludes with an overview by Manners arguing for the continuing utility of the notion of NPE and providing a new agenda for the normative study of the EU. After assessing the past decade in terms of normative power engagement, internationalization and comparison, Manners argues that rethinking power and actorness involves reassessing global theory and pouvoir normatif in action. He makes the case for the continuing utility of NPE and sets out three ways to develop the concept in its second decade through a macro-approach, meso-characterization and micro-analysis. Our next agenda, Manners argues, is to assess how the normative foundations of power in the international system need to combine a rethinking of actorness with the structural changes of a globalizing, multilateralizing and multipolarizing era. Vaste programme, as they say in France!