Is normative power cosmopolitan? Rethinking European unity,norm diffusion,and international political theory

Introduction: normative power and political theory

Since the early 2000s, research on the European Union (EU)’s normative power has established itself firmly as an integral part of mainstream international relations (IR) scholarship in Europe. Ian Manners’ Normative Power Europe (2002) – the normative power research programme’s central text – has garnered over 4300 citations since its publication in 2002, becoming one of the most cited academic articles on the subject. Manners’ call for a ‘Normative Power Europe’ has generated a vibrant research programme encompassing scholars of different methodological and epistemological orientations (see de Franco, Meyer and Smith, 2015; Lenz, 2013; Manners, 2006; Manners and Lucarelli, 2006; Whitman, 2011; Wagnsson and Hellman, 2018).

The meteoric rise of the normative power research programme, however, has been accompanied by attendant criticism. These critiques highlight at least three main theoretical deficits in the prevalent literature on the topic. First, empirical scholars have shown that, though the EU’s normative power – defined by Manners as the ‘ability to shape conceptions of normal in international relations’ (Manners, 2002: 239) – is supposed to be wielded by employing normative means toward normative ends, its actual practice relies heavily on material incentives in the form of EU membership prospects and/or trade agreements. It is in this sense that the centrality of normative instruments to EU foreign policy has been called into question (Smith and Youngs, 2018). Second, realist scholars contend that the EU is ‘a realist actor in normative clothes’ (Seeberg, 2009), employing normative means toward geopolitical ends (Hyde-Price, 2006: 227). Richard Youngs found that EU policy often allocates aid in line with its geopolitical priorities, and that its ‘focus on the ideational dimensions of the EU’s international presence has unduly diverted attention away from the persistence of power politics instrumentalism’ (Youngs, 2004: 415). Third, critical scholars argue that, even when the EU demonstrates consistency in pursuing normative ends through normative means, this process of norm promotion tends to lack sensitivity to local contexts, resulting in a foreign policy that is perceived – at least by local actors – as being ‘Eurocentric’ and a form of cultural imperialism (Sjursen, 2006: 248; Pace, 2007: 1056). ¹ Such policies of ‘normative empire’ (Del Sarto, 2016) or ‘normative imperialism’ (Pänke, 2015) generate unintended consequences that could undermine the overall credibility and attractiveness of the EU as a whole (Larsen, 2013; Zielonka, 2013).

Though these critiques have been invaluable in highlighting important deficits within the normative power research programme, they fall short of a closer examination that addresses the ontological assumptions of normative power. While there appears to be a fairly well-established consensus that the EU’s normative power embodies a Kantian or cosmopolitan approach to world politics (Kagan, 2004; Menon et al., 2004: 9; Manners and Lucarelli, 2006), this article demonstrates that such a consensus is typically presupposed by scholars and EU foreign policymakers, rather than being critically examined by them. The question of whether the EU institutionally qualifies as a cosmopolitan polity (Manners, 2013) or a Kantian ‘pacific union’ (Brown, 2014) has been systematically explored; however, the cosmopolitan qualification of normative power remains undertheorized. Is normative power cosmopolitan? By placing the concept of normative power within a wider historical context and grounding it firmly in insights derived from international political theory, this article argues that the EU’s normative power – through its emphasis on normative homogenization – can be interpreted as being anti-Kantian in its theory, practice, and intellectual aspirations.

This is because the aspiration to build a normatively homogenous political space was a defining characteristic of pre-Enlightenment politics. In the realm of transnational politics, Vatican and Christian civil society actors relentlessly pursued a transnational vision of one Europe united by the common, fundamental, and universal values of res publica Christiana – a value-based community constructed by the discourse of ‘normative unity’ (Phillips, 2011: 73). In the realm of domestic politics, Thomas Hobbes proposed the idea of the Leviathan as guarantor of a peaceful commonwealth, whose viability and resilience hinged on normative unity. While these two political visions differed in many respects, they were nonetheless consistent in the assertion that the construction of a peaceful community could be achieved only through normative homogenization, behavioural conformism, and moral unity. In this vein, the Vatican’s res publica Christiana and the Hobbesian commonwealth were envisioned to be developed and consolidated through the exercise of normative power. It was against this backdrop that Enlightenment and Kantian philosophy emerged as an escape from normative power, as it was an attempt to rationalize politics by setting aside the aspiration to build a normatively homogenous polity. In particular, Enlightenment thinkers considered power wielded through normative means toward normative ends to be the most corrosive of all powers, and hence actively preached pluralism over homogenization, conformism, and unity. ²

In the views of pre-Enlightenment theologians and theorists, normative disagreements were a vice and a threat to the viability of a value-based community. As I will show in the pages to come, this assumption seems to underlie many contemporary studies on normative power, which are superficially assumed to follow Kantian cosmopolitan political theory. What these studies tend to neglect is the fact that, for Kant and many other Enlightenment thinkers, normative disagreements constituted a virtue to be celebrated, as they formed a fundamental basis for perpetual freedom. It is in this sense that the supposedly ‘Kantian’ orientation of EU normative power needs to be reconsidered and problematized.

Before proceeding with my argument, I wish to make three caveats. First, while this article highlights different politico-theoretical perspectives articulated by Kant and Hobbes and their implications for the theorization of normative power, it must be emphasized that the analytical juxtaposition used in this article should not be taken as a suggestion to view Kantian and Hobbesian perspectives in stark opposition to each other (see Airaksinen and Siitonen, 2004; and Williams, 2003, for more nuanced comparisons of Kantian and Hobbesian theories). This caveat also applies to other distinctions used throughout the article (such as pre-modern/modern, and medieval unity/Enlightenment pluralism) which might not accurately capture complexities and continuities embedded in political developments in Europe, but are nonetheless used as ideal-typical reference points to magnify their key differences for analytical purposes.

Second, due to limitations of space, this article does not fully engage with a critical deconstruction of Kantian and cosmopolitan political theories. For instance, the ‘global’ qualification of Kantian theory has been problematized. In a Japanese edition of Perpetual Peace, the translator cynically notes that Kant was a very locally rooted man ‘who never went out of [his native town] Königsberg during his entire life’ (see Kant, 2015 (1795), author’s own translation). While this article mainly draws from a generally anti-colonial and pro-diversity reading of Kantian Enlightenment theory (see Muthu, 2003, 2014), it must be noted that the emancipatory ideals of the Enlightenment have also been (ab)used by European powers to justify colonialism and imperialism (Devetak, 2007). Manners (2011: 245) raised a concern that a ‘communitarian emphasis on normative power as promoting European values raises concerns of neo-colonial hegemony’, while other scholars have pointed out the deficits of neo-colonialism, parochialism, tribalism, racism, and anti-feminism in cosmopolitan theory and practice (e.g. Behnke, 2008; Douthat, 2016; Ngcoya, 2015; Onar and Nicolaïdis, 2013; Pieterse, 2006; Prichard, 2013). ³ Since these concerns have been systematically addressed by other scholars, this article limits itself to emphasizing that a sympathetic reading of Kantian cosmopolitan theory presented in this article should not be seen as an encouragement of its uncritical celebration. As Pollock, Bhabha, Breckenridge, and Chakrabarty note, ‘specifying cosmopolitanism positively and definitely is an uncosmopolitan thing to do’ (quoted in Pieterse, 2006: 1252).

Third, it must be clarified here that the criticisms advanced in this article are not specifically directed at Manners. As noted above, the original article of Manners (2002) has received more than 4300 citations since its publication in 2002. This means that normative power research has taken on a life of its own. It is worth highlighting that Manners’ 2002 article was not about the uncritical celebration of EU normative power, but rather a plea for caution against the (re-)emergence of a ‘military power Europe’ (see Manners, 2002: 235; Diez and Manners, 2007: 178). Despite this, the plurality of the subsequent normative power research merged with positivist studies on norm diffusion, promotion, and compliance (e.g. Liik, 2018; Pelczynska-Nalecz, 2017; Raik, 2006; Vachudova, 2005; Voloshin, 2014), many of which tend to presuppose that EU normative power is a cosmopolitan force for good. Many EU foreign policymakers have also (mis)appropriated the normative power concept to advance a narrative of ‘good’ Europe (see Barroso, 2013; Verhofstadt, 2017) without sufficient critical self-reflection. As Manners notes, what is ‘problematic is the tendency to compound discourses of “force for good” with “normative power,” without too much reflection on how these have been differently constructed and by whom’ (Manners, 2011: 243). ⁴ In light of these trends, this article answers Manners’ call for a critical power analysis rooted in ‘longitudinal interpretation’ (Manners, 2011: 244) by offering macro-historical reflections that serve to historicize, deconstruct, and denaturalize the ontology of normativity and value-based community in Europe. ⁵ Rather than critiquing the concept of normative power per se, this article interrogates and problematizes the deep-seated and taken-for-granted ontological assumptions on European unity and norm diffusion, which have laid the ground for a particularly uncritical discourse and practice of normative power. Through its engagement with international political theory, this article argues that reciprocal learning and mutual transformation – rather than the dogmatic insistence on normative unity and one-way norm diffusion – need to be emphasized as key mechanisms of cosmopolitan normative power.

The Vatican and the dystopia of value-based community

Normative power scholars often seem to imply that the EU is the world’s first normative power. As Thomas Diez (2013: 194) notes, ‘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 supposed novelty of the EU’s normative power stems from the fact that ‘its use involves normative justification rather than the use of material incentives or physical force’ (Manners, 2009: 2), which mainly works through ‘persuasion, argumentation, and the conferral of prestige or shame’ (Manners, 2009: 3). While the EU might be at times ‘promoting its own norms in a similar manner to historical empires and contemporary global powers’ (Manners, 2002: 240), this primacy of normative means employed toward normative ends is purportedly what makes the EU a new kind of ‘post-modern’ actor in contrast to other ‘normal’, ‘modern’ great powers.

Such a conceptualization of the EU’s use of normative means in pursuit of normative ends calls for closer examination. Historical analysis shows that the Vatican in medieval European politics acted and constructed itself as a normative power, whose influence explicitly relied on the diffusion of ‘universal’ Christian norms and the empowerment of civil society actors supporting these norms. ⁶ In pre-Enlightenment Europe, the Vatican claimed to uniquely represent the union of Europe, ruling the continent through the distribution of moral and ecclesiastical patronages (see Morgenthau, 1948: 341; Fontana, 2010: 346; Reus-Smit, 2017: 866). Contemporary normative power scholars contend that a unique feature of EU normative power is its reliance on the highly legalized order centred around acquis communautaire (see Lenz, 2013). The salience of a common legal space, however, also constituted the core of the Vatican’s medieval normative power, which rested on Corpus Iuris Canonici, Corpus Iuris Civilis, and other ecclesiastical and civil codes constituting the ius commune of the transnational rule-based order enforced by papal courts (see Bain, 2019: 279; Bellomo, 1995; Canning, 2017; Ullmann, 1976). As Phillips (2011: 72) notes:

In comparison with the contemporary global state system’s ordering institutions, the authority of the papal court within Christendom seems particularly impressive. The papal court contrasted starkly with the modern International Court of Justice inasmuch as its jurisdiction was compulsory; it explained, interpreted and developed the law through the issuing of papal decretals; and it could reasonably anticipate – by dint of its spiritual authority over all believers – the reliable enforcement of its decisions. At the height of its power, the Church routinely struck down the laws of lesser powers, ordered the revision or annulment of treaties, and even deprived kings and emperors of their powers through deposition or excommunication.

As such, the Vatican retained a pre-eminent – if not singularly dominant – position in medieval European politics and exerted a defining influence through ecclesiastical, legal, and normative means, despite the fact that it lacked predominant military and economic capabilities (see Ullmann, 1976). Devoid of coercive material forces, the Vatican’s medieval normative power largely stemmed from its vision of universal Christendom (res publica Christiana) which encompassed all European nations (and in fact the whole universe) under a single moral union. As Vagts and Vagts (1979: 557) emphasize, ‘medieval scholars saw their Europe. . . as essentially one people. This European unity combined a unity of religion with one of law and one of politics. The unity of religion was presided over by a genuinely international church that gave a universal international organizational structure. . .’

Insofar as the exercise of non-coercive, non-material force is a salient determinant of normative power, we find further evidence of the medieval Vatican exercising an early instance of normative power. Though the Vatican’s moral authority faced perpetual challenges in the context of the heteronomous medieval order (see Williams, 1992: 109; Haldén, 2017; Reus-Smit, 2017), ⁷ the ‘normative force of these [the Vatican’s] prescriptions was evident in the Church’s frequently successful efforts to mobilise religious sanctions to restrain the worst excesses of seigneurial violence’ (Phillips, 2011: 65). As mentioned above, the Vatican did not have predominant material capability, but it ruled Europe by constructing an image of an undivided value-based community founded on ‘common’ European values. As Andreas Osiander (2001: 262) emphasizes, ‘contrary to what is often supposed, at that time conquest was regarded as a dubious title to possession’. Indeed, until the sixteenth century, military conquests (especially in the New World) had to be justified in the name of papal authority (Krisch, 2005: 382). In this value-based community of an (imagined) undivided Europe, the Vatican’s normative power often prevailed over actors who were equipped with superior material forces. For instance, Rodney Bruce Hall investigated an important historical case in which Otto IV of the Holy Roman Empire challenged the ruling authority of Pope Innocent III in the early thirteenth century. ‘In spite of possessing a preponderance of force, vast military and economic capabilities, Otto fell from power’ because Innocent III ‘effectively fought Otto’s material power resources with pronouncements – excommunication, the interdict, and the ban’ (Hall, 1997: 618). Here, it is also worth highlighting the fact that the Vatican’s exercise of normative power heavily relied on the empowerment and mobilization of Societas Civilis (civil society), which often insisted that Europe’s trade relations with non-Europeans should be conditional upon the latter’s recognition and acceptance of ‘universal’ European norms (see below).

It is clear, however, that the Vatican’s lack of coercive material power cannot be equated with a lack of the use of coercion. As European politics of the time largely rested on the disciplining discourse of a united value-based community, coercion took place through persuasion, argumentation, and the conferral of prestige or shame – the very mechanisms considered to be central to the working of EU normative power. Though the persistence of medieval heteronomy meant that the Vatican’s normative power regularly faced internal and external challenges, the Pope retained a preeminent position in European politics despite the Vatican’s lack of military and economic capabilities. ‘Given the very real political consequences that could flow from an adverse ruling – the sanction of excommunication absolved vassals from allegiance to an excommunicated lord, thereby exposing the latter to the threat of dispossession, deposition or even death – the threat of papal sanctions could restrain even those with little concern for their own spiritual welfare’ (Phillips, 2011: 68). Capitalizing on the vision of ‘normative unity’ (Phillips, 2011: 73), the Vatican promoted dogmatism, aggressive conformism, and ubiquitous moral disciplining which severely curtailed the space for rational politics and democratic deliberation.

With the rise of the anti-Vatican Reformation movements in the mid-fifteenth century, however, the disintegration of moral authority in Europe prompted the rise of lively competition among and between different normative visions, which eventually opened up a space for pluralistic political discussion (Whelan, 1995: 325). To be sure, there had always been manifestations of heteronomous normative fragmentation in Europe, but the anti-Vatican Reformation movements were innovative in the sense that they framed the rejection of a singular moral authority as a celebratory cause for European emancipation. Given this context, it was not surprising that many of the early Enlightenment thinkers were Protestant intellectuals who abhorred the Vatican’s insistence on normative unity (Sheehan, 1996: 38). It is in this vein that the call for one Europe, united in one value system, and aspiring for one future, was condemned as a deadly impediment to European freedom (even though, as emphasized above, such a call had always been a moral aspiration rather than an objective reality). Against this backdrop, the Enlightenment project emerged, building on the retreat and eventual negation of the Vatican’s medieval normative power in Europe.

As a posterchild of European Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant’s international political theory was developed in opposition to the medieval aspiration for a normative unification in Europe (though, as emphasized above, Kantian theory should not be singled out as a ‘modern’ disruption from ‘pre-modern’ political thoughts). Kant believed that ‘there were no absolute values, but rather that human societies had rationally developed practical norms of coexistence which must be followed by all members’ (Takeshita, 2012, author’s own translation; see also Airaksinen and Siitonen, 2004: 318; Waldron, 1996; Jahn, 2005). In Kantian political theory, ‘no one state can sit in judgement over another and there can be no such thing as a just or unjust war’ (Hurrell, 1990: 187). The statement that there is no such thing as absolute morality is often taken by contemporary scholars as an endorsement of relativism and nihilism. As Takeshita (2012: 53) points out, however, such an argument in the context of Enlightenment Europe constituted support for secularism, as the terms ‘morality’, ‘normativity’, and ‘justice’ were often used to invoke papal authority. ⁸ For Kant (and for many of his fellow Enlightenment theorists), the renunciation of an absolute morality constituted an endeavour to explore an extra-Christian morality rooted in common human rationality. ⁹ Under the reign of the Vatican’s normative power, discord was a disgrace that was to be eliminated. Human beings were supposed to live harmoniously under one God, in one community, and with one set of pre-defined normative values. In contrast to the ‘Christian unity of the medieval world’ (Wight, 1979: 24), Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers sought human freedom in disagreements and defended ‘a plurality of life-choices, as opposed to the stifling uniformity of paternalistic authorities’ (Muthu, 2003: 180).

To this effect, Kant stressed that the ‘natural antagonism between men gives them reason to seek concord which can serve as the basis for social order and political institutions; this genesis of order takes place precisely through discord’ (as quoted in Bartelson, 1995: 268). It is in this sense that Kant proposed the renowned idea of a ‘pacific union’ as a rational instrument to manage – rather than eliminate – discords among and between actors of different normative orientations and to seek the coexistence of different subjectivities (Cavallar, 2001; Franceschet, 2001; Hurrell, 1990: 192–193; Lynch, 1994; Negretto, 1993; Waldron, 2000: 240–241). For instance, Kant’s Perpetual Peace explicitly proclaimed that ‘the Guarantee of a Perpetual Peace’ hinged on lively competition among actors with different values, religions, traditions, and languages:

The idea of international right presupposes the separate existence of many independent adjoining states. . .These may certainly occasion mutual hatred and provide pretexts for wars, but as culture grows and men gradually move towards greater agreement over their principles, they lead to mutual understanding and peace. And unlike that universal despotism which saps all man’s energies and ends in the graveyard of freedom, this peace is created and guaranteed by an equilibrium of forces and a most vigorous rivalry (Kant, 1991 (1795): 108, emphasis added).

This point is emphasized by Muthu (2014: 88), who also stressed that ‘Kant maintains a dual commitment to foster equitable connections among nations and yet simultaneously to encourage a productive resistance among them’.

For this reason, Kant opposed Europe’s ambition to diffuse its ‘universal’ norms even when such diffusion was envisioned to materialize through voluntary, peaceful, and non-coercive mechanisms such as trade conditionality and civil society promotion. As briefly discussed above, the Vatican emphasized the role of Societas Civilis in Europe’s value-promotion activities and sponsored various grassroots initiatives launched by theological scholars and professionals (see Takeshita, 2012, chapter 3; Phillips, 2011: 63, 80). For instance, the Vatican-backed civil society actors such as the Society of Jesus proposed that Japan would be given more preferential access to European (and in particular Portuguese) commercial networks if it accepted the ‘universal’ European norms of Christianity. In this vision of value-based trade, Portuguese commercial ships were diverted to Japanese ports governed by norm-acceptant, Christian-friendly samurais. ¹⁰ Supported by the practice of trade conditionality, Christian norms quickly diffused across Japan. This trend culminated in the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion of 1637–1638, in which young Christian activists, local Christian samurais, and their collaborators revolted against the Tokugawa dynastic government. The revolt was brutally crashed by the government, subsequently resulting in the expulsion of Catholic Christians from Japan and stringent trade restrictions. Despite this, Japan retained its trade relationship with Dutch merchants who practiced the Enlightenment idea of free trade: commence was for the sake of mutual betterment and should not be conditional on the acceptance of normative values.

Kant later decried these attempts to promote Europe’s ‘universal’ values. The clearest manifestation of this worldview appeared in Perpetual Peace, where Kant praised the Chinese and Japanese dynastic governments (which were essentially absolute monarchies) for forcefully containing Europeans and imposing trade restrictions:

China and Japan (Nippon), having had experience of such [Christian European] guests, have wisely placed restrictions on them. China permits contact with her territories, but not entrance into them, while Japan only allows contact with a single European people, the Dutch, although they are still segregated from the native community like prisoners (Kant, 1991 (1795): 106–107, emphasis added).

As Jahn (2005: 192) reiterates, Kant believed that ‘China and Japan were not just entirely within their rights but also wise when they refused the Europeans entry’ (see also Muthu, 2014: 87; Brown, 2014: 684). Indeed, Kant went so far as to repudiate the attempt of these ‘European savages’ to remake the world in their own moral image, arguing that this posed a danger to the cultural diversity of the cosmopolitan world (Muthu, 2014: 83).

It is precisely in this sense that contemporary researchers and practitioners of normative power should be careful when framing the EU’s promotion of norms and values as ‘Kantian’. Kant’s international political theory was developed in opposition to the exercise of normative power by an actor with universalizing aspiration, even when it rested on peaceful means such as trade conditionality and civil society promotion, as exemplified by the Japanese case revisited above. To the extent that the EU’s supposed normative power promotes rational institutions, democratic deliberation, mutual respect, workable compromise, and reciprocal learning, it could be interpreted as broadly compatible with Kant’s political theory (in the spirit of ‘cosmopolitical co-existence’ articulated by Manners, 2013: 485). However, to the extent that the EU is pursuing the dream of a pan-European ‘value-based community’ and the projection of its ‘universal’ values beyond its boundaries, its actions are far more closely in line with the pre-Enlightenment vision of Vaticanian normative power, which celebrated the peaceful diffusion of European norms through trade conditionality and civil society promotion as a global force for good.

While Kantian philosophy has evolved over time in a complex manner, with scholars regularly pointing out its internal contradictions and conflicting visions (see Airaksinen and Siitonen, 2004; Lynch, 1994; Pieterse, 2006; Prichard, 2013), this brief revisit of Kant’s original theory highlights the closer resemblance of the EU’s narrative and practice of normative power to pre-Enlightenment forms, rather than to the Kantian conception of it. ¹¹ Manners (2002: 254) contends that ‘the ability to define what passes for “normal” in world politics is, ultimately, the greatest power of all’. It is precisely because normative power symbolized ‘the greatest power of all’ that Kant (and many other Enlightenment thinkers) reasoned that its repudiation was crucial for the liberation of European (and international) politics. Indeed, the view that the aspiration for excessive homogenization may be detrimental to pluralistic cosmopolitan ideals is also emphasized by Manners, who approvingly quotes Craig Calhoun’s statement that the EU needs ‘to build institutions that encourage and protect multiple, discontinuous, sometimes conflicting public spaces and modes of public engagement rather than attempt to nurture or impose some unified European culture’ (Calhoun, quoted in Manners, 2007: 82).

Hobbes, the Commonwealth, and the Gentle Leviathan

As we have seen above, Kantian cosmopolitanism celebrated normative pluralism as a source of human freedom and encouraged an inclusive dialogue between multiple conceptions of normalcy. In light of this, researchers and practitioners who are inclined to define EU normative power as a ‘good’ force for normative homogenization and compliance in world politics seem to contradict the Kantian emphasis on a pluralism of perspectives on normalcy. Yet, this does not mean that normative power research lacks a sound politico-theoretical ground. In fact, the variant of normative power research focusing on the EU’s promotion of common values and shared norms is wholly compatible with the Hobbesian idea that the power of socialization and norm diffusion is essential to the development and consolidation of a value-based community. Prima facie, this suggestion may appear counter-intuitive, as Hobbesian realism is considered diametrically opposed to the EU’s vision for peaceful politics. ¹² Indeed, Hobbes famously contended in Leviathan (1996 (1651): 85) that ‘[to the] war of every man against every man. . . nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice’. In recent years, however, IR scholars and historians have shown that this well-known phrase is often misinterpreted as an archetypical statement of realpolitik that there is no such thing as morality because power alone defines justice (see Kagan, 2004). ¹³ As Lloyd (1992) has convincingly demonstrated, morality, unity, and the idea of a value-based community constituted the very core of Hobbesian political theory. This is evident from the fact that nearly half of Leviathan covered ideational themes such as religion, education, and the construction of a community based on common values. Indeed, Hobbes’ seminal work put a strong emphasis on the civic and ideational aspects of power, as Hans Morgenthau (1948: 362) notes that ‘the unfettered authority of Hobbes’ Leviathan’ is ‘the source not only of law, but of ethics and mores as well’.

For Hobbes, the essential problem in politics is not that there is no morality. Quite the contrary: the issue is that there are in fact multiple, competing visions of moralities and normalcies (see Lloyd, 1992: 261; Malcolm, 2002; Devetak, 2007: 161) manifested in the form of an ‘epistemic anarchy’ (van Rythoven, 2020: 486). To borrow the words of Michael Williams, ‘in the absence of a sovereign authority to fix meanings, determine contested facts, and the like, the laws of nature in themselves are an inadequate foundation on which to construct and maintain social order’ (Williams, 1996: 218). In a world of competing normative visions, monopoly over organized violence never forms a sufficient basis to establish a durable political order. In Behemoth, Hobbes clearly articulated that ‘the power of the mighty hath no foundation but in the opinion and behalf of the people’ (as quoted in Lloyd, 1992: 39). Leviathan, in this sense, is much more than the simple monopoly over legitimate violence: it is fundamentally a normative power – a great definer which constructs, diffuses, and, when necessary, enforces, a unitary normative order based on a single, undivided conception of the ‘normal’ in politics. As William Bain (2020: 141) emphasizes, Hobbes regarded unity as a virtue of supreme importance and ‘the meaning of “leviathan” developed in such a way as to impart connotations of “addition,” “joining together,” “incorporation,” and “union”’. For any polity (or ‘commonwealth’ in the words of Hobbes), conformity with and adherence to the norms of the value-based community is rendered unquestionable. It is in this sense that, though Hobbes attempted to move on from the Vatican’s vision of transcendent normative unity rooted in ‘universal’ Christian values, Hobbesian political theory continues to suffer from a similar kind of unity complex, here broadly conceived as the inability to tolerate (let alone celebrate) pluralism and multiple normalcies. This mindset perpetually manifests itself as a compulsive aspiration to seek the normative homogenization and to promote unidirectional diffusion of designated ‘common’ norms from the centre of morality to the subjects (see Bain, 2015, 2019, 2020; Mitchell, 1993, 2017: 94). ¹⁴

As such, Hobbesian theory envisions power not merely as the exercise of brute material force, but, more fundamentally, as the ability to construct and defend normative unity in a value-based community. A sovereign power governs a commonwealth by diffusing a unitary normative vision and eliminating normative disagreements, thereby guaranteeing ‘the preserving of peace and security, by prevention of Discord at home, and Hostility from abroad’ (Hobbes, 1996 (1651): 118, emphasis added). Based on this worldview, Hobbes argued that a resilient commonwealth must embrace a uniform religion represented by a central authority which would then promote the elimination of ‘competing conceptions of what is valuable, good, useful, and worthy’ (Lloyd, 1992: 276). Michael Williams writes (1996: 220):

The coercive powers of the sovereign will alone, Hobbes argues, never be sufficient to maintain a political order. Only if the people understand why the polity must be ordered as it must, and only if they continue to view the sovereign as a legitimate authority and trust in its judgment, can a political order be secure. Leviathan is an attempt to create precisely this understanding, acceptance, and support, and through them to legitimize and strengthen the political order of the state.

In this vein, Hobbes devoted a significant portion of Leviathan to explaining that the development and consolidation of a resilient and peaceful commonwealth could take place only through the diffusion of designated common values. He emphasized, especially, the role of public education and awareness-raising in this endeavour (see Airaksinen and Siitonen, 2004: 316; Lloyd, 1992), because ‘the sovereign has a duty to teach true doctrines’ (Bain, 2020: 133) as the defender of the commonwealth’s normative unity.

Although Leviathan was primarily concerned with a national commonwealth, the logic of Hobbes’ political theory could be applied to a wider context. The conventional view is that Hobbesian theory is about anarchy and state sovereignty (Bull, 1981; Keohane, 2002; Wendt, 1999). However, as shown above, the Hobbesian emphasis on sovereignty is less concerned with material power politics than it is with the maintenance of a unitary normative order firmly rooted in common values and shared norms (Abizadeh, 2011; Bain, 2019; Hindess, 1996; Lloyd, 1992: 117; Williams, 1996). It is in this sense that ‘sovereignty’ can be understood as independence expressed in terms of unitary normativity. To defend a commonwealth is, therefore, to defend its core values. Accordingly, peace, security, and prosperity of a commonwealth are thus inseparable from the construction and enforcement of normative unity (see Devetak, 2007: 161). Conversely, wars and other forms of insecurity originate from the lack of a unified normative order. As Abizadeh (2011: 298) explains:

Hobbesian war primarily arises not because material resources are scarce; or because humans ruthlessly seek survival before all else; or because we are naturally selfish, competitive, or aggressive brutes. . .The primary source of war, according to Hobbes, is disagreement, because we read into it the most inflammatory signs of contempt.

In order to prevent such normative disagreements, Leviathan was supposed to build a strong value-based community underpinned by an unchallenged normative unity. In the fourth part of Leviathan entitled ‘Of the Kingdom of Darkness’, Hobbes warned that ignorance and the lack of public education weakens the commonwealth by undermining its unity. In such a situation, ‘a confederacy of deceivers’ would attempt to ‘obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light both of nature, and of the gospel. . .’ (Hobbes, 1996 (1651): 403).

While this short article cannot do justice to Hobbes’ complex political philosophy (see Williams, 2003), Hobbesian theory was generally grounded in a belief that: (1) unitary normativity strengthens the resilience of a value-based community; (2) normative disagreements, behavioural deviations, and the fragmentation of normative visions pose a security threat to the viability of such community; and, hence, (3) the gentle power of norm diffusion and value promotion should be employed to reinforce the community’s normative unity. The security of a commonwealth can be assured mainly through encouraging and reinforcing a stricter commitment to the pre-defined set of common values and shared norms and by defending the value-based community from those who attempt to subvert it (see Abizadeh, 2011: 307). As such, the non-material aspect of political power to forge normative agreements and to dispel normative disagreements lies at the heart of Leviathan. This is precisely why the strand of normative power research that focuses on EU norm diffusion can be theoretically enriched by grounding itself more firmly within Hobbesian political theory. Indeed, Manners’ original article notes that earlier articulations of normative power can be also found in E.H. Carr’s notion of ‘power over opinion’, implicitly suggesting that normative power research may have much to learn from the realist IR scholarship. ¹⁵

Tracing the discussion so far, it quickly becomes apparent that the way the EU envisions and deploys its normative power closely follows the Hobbesian logic of normative homogenization, rather than the Kantian logic of coexistence and diversity protection. Since the early 2000s, EU policymakers have argued that that the consolidation of the EU’s ‘common’ normative values within and beyond its borders enhances the overall security of the Union. The EU’s 2003 European Security Strategy, for instance, explicitly links security and normative unity by declaring the twin purposes of EU foreign policy: ‘To defend its security and to promote its values’ (European Commission, 2003). Indeed, the view that normative unity and ‘value-based’ foreign policy form the basis of a stronger and ‘ever closer’ EU is commonplace, especially among EU foreign policymakers (Barroso, 2013; Verhofstadt, 2017; see Manners and Lucarelli, 2006, for an overview).

This worldview strongly resonates with Hobbes’ vision of international leagues of like-minded commonwealths bounded by common values and shared norms, which ‘are not only lawful, but also profitable’ (Hobbes, 1996 (1651): 157; see also Malcolm, 2002: 452). As the recent scholarship on Hobbesian theory points out, Leviathan’s emphasis on unity and norm diffusion as a fundamental basis of a peaceful political order – not only within a commonwealth but also potentially in the international arena – has been neglected by the conventional IR scholarship to date (Kratochwil, 1989; Malcolm, 2002: 452; Bain, 2019: 290, 2020: 151). From a Hobbesian perspective, the EU’s practice of streamlining ‘common’ values internally and projecting them externally beyond its boundaries can be understood as a power-political practice to overcome its perpetual ontological insecurity by developing a European Leviathan (or what Daniel Kelemen dubbed ‘the new European state’, see Kelemen, 2014), which defines a single conception of the ‘normal’ through the elimination of normative disagreements and the forging of a moral consensus. ¹⁶ Indeed, the EU’s emerging discourse on ‘European sovereignty’ (European Commission, 2018) appears to follow squarely the Hobbesian mindset, where the lack of normative unity is considered a threat to a polity’s security and well-being, rather than an opportunity to appreciate and engage with diversity along the lines of Kantian cosmopolitan thought.

Observing the EU’s conduct of normative power, Diez proposes the Gramscian notion of ‘normative hegemony’, which ‘shifts the focus from the power of brute force to the power of ideas and consensus’, where ‘the power to shape conceptions of the normal seems to be at its heart’ (Diez, 2013: 195). Yet the EU is compelled to promote its normative values precisely because it lacks such normative hegemony. Gramscian hegemony refers to the state of affairs in which a certain normative order is accepted as ‘normal’ and legitimate in the eyes of its subjects (see Fontana, 2010). If this were the case, however, there would be a minimal need for conscious norm promotion activities. Put differently, normative power is needed by the EU precisely because there remains perpetual discord both within its boundaries as well as in its immediate geographic neighbourhood (see Noutcheva, 2009), and, more importantly, the lack of pan-European normative unity is considered to be a threat to the EU’s ‘value-based community’, rather than an opportunity for pluralistic dialogue and reciprocal learning.

Behind the EU’s discourse and practice of normative power, there lies the familiar pre-Enlightenment inability and unwillingness to separate common values from security, thus leading to a compulsive aspiration for normative homogenization as a solution to ontological insecurity. The success of the EU’s political community is judged in terms of its unitary normativity – the very logic of sameness and uniformity stipulated by Leviathan (see also Buzan and Wæver, 1997: 248). The ideal of a single united Europe designated by Enlightenment thinkers as an obstacle to rational liberation has been actively reincarnated and successfully romanticized as a virtue by the EU, which now aspires for a ‘Europe undivided’ (Vachudova, 2005). The EU’s normative power is justified in terms of its supposed ‘softness’; but these mechanisms of gentle normalization – voluntary compliance, awareness-raising, and norm diffusion – are exactly the core elements of powerful governance put forth by the Hobbesian vision of a pure and strong commonwealth. ¹⁷ From a politico-theoretical point of view, it must be emphasized here that the questions of whether and to what extent the EU’s norm promotion and diffusion is driven by instrumental self-interest or altruistic motivation is not so relevant; indeed, the political tragedy articulated by Kant is that altruistic actors are often most prone to paternalistic despotism: ‘The sovereign wants to make the people happy as he thinks best, and thus becomes a despot, while the people are unwilling to give up their universal human desire to seek happiness in their own way, and thus become rebels’ (Kant, 1991 (1793): 83).

In this vein, the discourse of the EU’s normative power – and especially those cherished by many EU foreign policymakers – appears to represent the Hobbesian vision of a strong and homogenous ‘value-based’ community rather than its Enlightenment repudiation along the lines of Kantian international political theory. In the Kantian world, ‘Justice in international life is necessarily subjectively defined’ (Hurrell, 1990: 187) and hence multiple conceptions of normalcy are encouraged (Behnke, 2008: 515; Clark, 1980; Riley, 1983; Waldron, 2000). In contrast to the medieval vision which conceives of normative fragmentation as a sign of weakness and imperfection, Kantian and Enlightenment thinkers embraced and celebrated disagreements as a source of lively competition, which, in turn, provided a basis for dialogue, negotiation, and compromise among and between actors of different normative orientations. While we should be careful not to exaggerate the supposed virtue of normative fragmentation, an important element of cosmopolitan theory is that discords can be harnessed as a source of human progress, in the manner of what Muthu (2014) termed ‘productive resistance’. In Perpetual Peace, Kant maintains that:

Now the republican constitution is the only one which does complete justice to the rights of man. But it is also the most difficult to establish, and even more so to preserve, so that many maintain that it would only be possible within a state of angels, since men, with their self-seeking inclinations, would be incapable of adhering to a constitution of so sublime a nature. But in fact, nature comes to the aid of the universal and rational human will, so admirable in itself but so impotent in practice, and makes use of precisely those self-seeking inclinations in order to do so. It only remains for men to create a good organisation for the state, a task which is well within their capability, and to arrange it in such a way that their self-seeking energies are opposed to one another, each thereby neutralising or eliminating the destructive effects of the rest. And as far as reason is concerned, the result is the same as if man’s selfish tendencies were non-existent, so that man, even if he is not morally good in himself, is nevertheless compelled to be a good citizen. As hard as it may sound, the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils (so long as they possess understanding) (Kant, 1991 (1795): 112, emphasis original).

As is evident from this passage, Kant does not argue that unity or altruism is necessary for a free political order. Quite the contrary, the promise of freedom offered by Kantian theory rests on the mobilization of ‘self-seeking energies’ to check and balance each other (see also Behnke, 2008: 519).

More importantly, differences between Kantian and Hobbesian theory come to be most apparent when we compare their visions of political progress and transformation. As noted above, transformation of a commonwealth in Hobbesian theory is conceived of as the consolidation of an ever more perfect union, with deepening commitment to the single set of common values and shared norms through which the value-based community acquires more strength and resilience. In contrast, Kantian political theory stipulates that it does not matter if citizens are good or bad, because a carefully designed system of checks and balances promotes competition and conflict, and these dynamics of action and counteraction create a transformative structure in which even ‘devils’ would start behaving like ‘angels’ by virtue of the prudence demanded by the competitive environment (see also Huntley, 1996: 55). Put differently, in Kantian theory, encounters among and between actors of different normative orientations result in mutual transformation (at least in the long run), as they are compelled to learn from each other in a world of differences. A genuinely transformative actor hence changes others and the Self through the process of reciprocal learning, and it is precisely this process of mutual transformation that ultimately minimizes the power-political implications of norm diffusion. In this vein, Airaksinen and Siitonen (2004) note that one crucial difference between Hobbesian and Kantian theory can be founded in the role of reciprocity. In Hobbesian theory, norm diffusion is envisioned as a one-way street where rulers educate their citizens to follow the unitary vision of normativity so that discord within a commonwealth is minimized. In contrast, in Kantian theory, both rulers and citizens reciprocally learn from each other through open democratic deliberation which catalyzes progress manifested in the form of mutual transformation. If the Hobbesian logic of value-based community rests on the assertion of the (normative) Self over/against the Other, the Kantian logic of cosmopolitan coexistence and mutual transformation rests on the vision of the Self changing with the Other (see Diez and Manners, 2007: 185–186; Wagnsson and Hellman, 2018).

In light of this, the empiricist strand of normative power research which naturalizes the homogenizing (‘socializing’) effects of EU normative power seems to understand ‘transformation’ in an unmistakably Hobbesian way rather than in a Kantian way. If the only consequence of EU normative power is internal consolidation (a more strictly value-based community) and external domestication (more polities joining the EU’s ‘commonwealth’ and internalizing its norms), this is a manifestation of the Hobbesian logic of public education through which normative disagreements are gradually eliminated at the expense of the freedom of choice guaranteed by pluralism and its ensuing productive resistance. If normative power researchers and practitioners hope to realize the EU’s potential as a cosmopolitan normative power, then they should be guided by a different set of questions. Rather than confining themselves to the study of how the EU ‘attempts to change others through the spread of particular norms’ (as criticized by Diez, 2005: 614), how does the EU change itself by changing others, or, how does the EU change with its partners and competitors through the process of reciprocal learning?

Conclusion: toward a cosmopolitan EU foreign policy

In his 2002 article, Manners questioned if the EU’s normative power was in fact a ‘contradiction in terms’. By grounding EU normative power research more deeply in international political theory, I have argued that the EU’s normative power is not a contradiction in terms, since such normative power empirically constituted the essence of medieval politics centred around the Vatican and is theoretically consistent with the Hobbesian theory of unity, order, and value-based community. Many prevalent accounts of the EU’s normative power do, however, directly contradict the EU’s apparent aspiration for a Kantian cosmopolitan world.

As discussed above, existing critiques of normative power research largely concur that the EU is a ‘tragic actor’ (Hyde-Price, 2008) that cannot help but act like a normal geopolitical power, where its well-intended foreign policy often ends up tragically producing and reproducing negative repercussions due to its lack of sensitivity to local contexts. These critiques suggest that EU foreign policy prospects could be improved if Brussels were to simply implement the normative power policy it preaches with enhanced coherence and consistency. However, reinforcing the adherence to uniform normativity invokes the very dystopia of single normalcy from which European Enlightenment theorists sought an escape in the first place. ¹⁸ As illustrated in the case of the Vatican’s medieval normative power, the promotion of normative values is a fundamentally power-political practice even when it does not involve coercive material force. In a similar vein, criticism of Hobbesian political theory shows that norm and value promotion activity remains a self-interested and self-preserving practice as long as security is defined in terms of normative unity.

In its neo-Vaticanian or Hobbesian aspects, the empiricist understanding of normative power – with its primary emphasis on normative unity and one-way norm diffusion – is diametrically opposed to the international political theory of Kantian cosmopolitanism, whose essence lies in the celebration – and not negation – of multiple normalcy as a fundamental basis of human freedom and perpetual peace. This, however, does not indicate the theoretical and practical impossibility of a cosmopolitan foreign policy for the EU. In fact, the EU’s inability to engage with multiple and competing normalcies in and beyond Europe could be viewed as a rather recent phenomenon. In the 1970s, Europe spearheaded the Helsinki Process which largely rested on a cosmopolitan philosophy of coexistence and mutual transformation, rather than on the aspiration for convergence and homogenization. Instead of dwelling on endless value talk and moral disciplining, the advocates of the Helsinki Process emphasized the common rational interest for creating and maintaining an inclusive space for sustained dialogue, through which both Eastern and Western Europe changed. ¹⁹

In many ways, the empiricist strand of normative power research remains blind to the relevance of the potential legacies of such past cosmopolitan practices during the Cold War, because it tends to be loaded with the aspiration for uniform normativity. For this reason, the EU in its current form is naturally seen as an ‘upgraded’ version of the ‘imperfect’ and less ‘value-based’ European Community (EC) of the past, which apparently lacked normative power. In light of the theoretical insights provided by international political theory, it could be argued that the EC was more cosmopolitan than the present-day EU precisely because it lacked the aspiration for uniform normativity, and that it was more effective in inducing fundamental change in Europe because it was able to catalyze mutual – rather than one-sided – transformation. Though this article cannot develop this point further due to the limit of space, future research on the EU’s transformative potential should pay attention to the things that were lost in the transition from the EC to the EU, rather than simply assuming that the EU is a superior and more consolidated version of the ‘half-baked’ EC.

For future research, EU normative power scholars and practitioners should also critically investigate how the EU provides (or fails to provide) opportunities for reciprocal learning both within and beyond Europe, and, more importantly, how the EU itself has changed (or not) through its engagement with actors of different normative orientations. In the absence of such an agenda to take mutual transformation seriously, the discourse of the EU’s ‘value-based community’ is prone to reincarnate the medieval aspiration for normative unity, though presented in secular clothing. This constrains scholars and practitioners from exploring the genuine potential of the EU’s cosmopolitan foreign policy.