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1 Introduction
Theoretical and methodological background of the survey
Since its inception in 1993 – when the provisions of the Treaty of Maastricht came into force – the European Union (EU) has become an important player in political international relations. Previously, since late 1950s, the European Communities developed economic relations with most countries and regions of the world through a series of strategic partnerships or various types of international agreements. For this reason the European Union is an active player in international diplomacy, promotion of human rights, trade, development and humanitarian aid, and it cooperates with multilateral organizations. She is present in many regions of the globe: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, etc. The EU is represented through approximately 140 delegations and offices around the world.
After the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon came into force, the European Union’s character in the international relations changed even more. In Article 47, the Treaty gave it for the first time a legal personality in the international relations. Moreover, the Treaty in Article 21 points at the EU’s guiding principles on the international scene:
The Union’s action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement, and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.1
The character of the European Union in the international relations is determined by its legal status, instruments of foreign and external relations as well as of its capabilities, mainly economic ones. This formal institutional approach however seems insufficient to understand the complex and geographical differentiation of the EU’s external activity. What seems to be missing in such an approach refers to the identity and informal issues of the European Union’s external presence. This gap is even more visible when reading official documents on the EU’s foreign relations, in which there is an attempt to answer the following question: what kind of identity, understood as self-identification – should the EU acquire in the relations with the third countries?
Searching the literature dedicated to the topic of the European Union’s presence in the international relations one can only find few studies on the EU’s identity at the global stage.2 Researchers more often pay attention to the problem of Europe’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) or the regional involvement in many parts of the globe.3 What seems to be missing, however, are the studies of the European Union from the outside perspective. Scientists possess knowledge of the way in which third parties perceive not only everyday activities and policies of the European Union and its institution around the globe, but what is becoming more and more expected are the analyses of the EU’s identity perception and its possible influence on EU’s self-identification. It is the effect of Constructivist assumptions and their growing popularity not only within European Studies but also within International Relations over the last decade.
What was defined in Maastricht terminology as the Common Foreign and Security Policy has been one of the most compelling factors in helping shape the EU’s external image and the perception of its identity held by the rest of the world, constituting the lens through which it is identified and evaluated by outsiders worldwide. Perceptions of the European Union have mostly been studied from an internal perspective, producing a wide range of contributions on topics such as EU’s self-identification, Euroenthusiasm or Euroscepticism inside the European boundaries. On the other hand, external perceptions of the European Union are still an underexplored territory: empirical data are often patchy and fragmented and few theoretical studies have been published.4 One of the pioneers in this field is ‘The EU through the Eyes of the Asia-Pacific’ project (APPP) based at the National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, led by Martin Holland and a project on ‘The External Image of the European Union’ led by Sonia Lucarelli of the University of Bologna in the framework of the GARNET.
The purpose of the book is to show the perception of the European Union identity in international relations by ‘others’ (third countries’ political elites, civil society, think tanks etc.) and the meaning of third parties’ discourse on the European Union’s identity in international relations, especially for the narration on its identity in international relations.
The objective of the book is to fill the gap existing in the literature, thereby presenting a wide and consistent review of the existing surveys addressing the external perceptions of the EU. The innovative character of the survey refers to the theoretical assumption of normative European Union’s identity and discursive practices in the third countries that legitimate (or not) narration among third parties and thus influence European Union self-identification.
In this respect, it is however worth noting that the book is still quite limited in time and space, with some areas not being covered and many surveys and specific questions being fragmented. Moreover the contributors are aware of restrictions coming from discourse analysis as a main method of the survey. Huge methodological advantage is to stay at the level of discourse treated as a source of objective knowledge on reality.
The book consists of two general parts. The first one will analyze the identity issue of international relations’ actors. It seeks to answer the following question: how to analyze and what is the cognitive value of the identity concept in International Relations and within the European Studies.
The second part of the book will contain specific case studies of the perception of EU’s external identity reflected in the discursive practice of selected countries of the word, such as United States of America (American think-tanks’ analyses of the EU’s global specificity); the Russian Federation (an analysis of political actors as well an academic community perception of the European Union); the Balkan countries as well as the countries of the Eastern Partnership and their perspective of the EU envisaged in their public and civil discourse; the African region and its attitude towards Europe; and East Asian (South Korean and Japanese perception of the European values), Indian and Latin America perception of the European Union’s global identity.
Theoretical assessment
The survey is grounded in the post-modern variant of Constructivist perspective of International Relations. The point here is the value of that version of Constructivism with its assumption of the possibility to reach knowledge about the reality on the basis of the analysis of the ideational elements of this reality, such as: language, beliefs, imaginations, etc.
Referring to post-modern variant of Constructivist perspective is expected to give a better understanding of the way in which third countries discursively (de-)construct European Union’s identity in the international relations and if it has the ability to change EU’s internal discourse on her international identity.
The theory should be able to simultaneously explain others’ perceptions of the European Union’s identity. The aspiration is not to explain the detailed EU global activity or every third country’s policy towards Europe but that of answering the questions: what kind of Europe do they see and if/how this image meets discourse and actions of the European Union on her identity?
It is assumed that in the last ten years the most dominant discourse on European Union’s identity at the global stage refers to the idea of normative power. The phenomenon of normative power should be understood as the ability of one international entity to exert its ideological influence on other members of international relations (described by the notions of ‘power over opinion’ and ‘ideological power’). Therefore, the concept itself is not founded on the analysis of the economic resources held by the EU in international relations. It rather refers to its ability to diffuse Europe’s legal and political standards, ideas, discourses and integration standards, and to shape the international environment with the use of such tools. The innovative and original character of the concept of the European Union as a normative power was built on the assumption that the power of the EU in international relations does not lie in its military capabilities or economic resources, but stems from the importance of the ideas, standards and values underlying the project of European integration.5
The research will be embedded in the Constructivist perspective of International Relations. It assumes that social reality is the product of social interaction. The perception of the actors of this reality, their roles and identities are shaped not only by internal factors (political culture, actors’ expectations, role discourse), but also by external factors. It is here that the expectations about the role and identity of the European Union are articulated by third parties. This specific external impulse should lead to a unique way of defining and redefining the European identity in the international relations.
The book will be divided into several parts. The first one will provide an analysis of the theoretical as well as methodological challenges while studying the European Union’s identity and its perceptions in the international relations. In the second, empirical part of the book, the case study analysis will follow. This will be an analysis of public discourse, public opinion research, and analysis of think-tank opinions on the role and identity of the European Union in selected parts of the world: Russia, the United States, the countries of the Eastern Neighborhood, African states, and countries of the Far East. These are only selected cases, on the basis of which the question concerning the acceptance of the European Union’s normative identity will be asked.
Constructivists’ assumptions regarding international reality as well as agents’ identities within the International Relations are quite promising, especially when it comes to the understanding of the behavior, interest and policies of an actor in the international scene. The concept of identity introduced by Alexander Wendt constitutes a revolution in the way of understanding interactions among international actors. According to Constructivism, identity is developed, supported and changed in the process of interactions among actors of the international relations – in this sense it is socially constructed.6 Therefore identities also have variable and fluxional nature depending on the character of participants of international relations in specific time and place.
According to Constructivism, identity is regarded as a product of social and political actions. It is used to highlight the process and the interactive nature of the development of the collective understanding. Thus, two characteristics are important for the Constructivist view of identity. First, identity is a ‘contingent product’ of social and political action, and second, it is understood as a ground or basis for further action.7
The aim of this study will be to analyze the perception of the European Union in selected countries/regions of the world. The perception will be defined here as:
- discursive shaping of the European Union’s image (statements by representatives of political elites, EU image in local media, think tanks, civil society);
- articulating expectations of its role in the region (similarly, in statements by representatives of political elites, the EU image in local media, think tanks, civil society); and
- perception of the normative identity of the EU in international relations – whether third countries recognize this role, whether they consider it an expected element of European identity in international relations or rather articulate another narrative of the EU.
Hypothesis
It is assumed that the European Union – since its beginning, in 1993, under the Maastricht Treaty provisions – has developed its identity and role in international relations as a normative actor. Scholars have described this phenomenon by using the concept of the normative power (Normative Power Europe, NPE), a concept developed by Ian Manners in 2002. Normative power refers to the European Union’s ability to spread the norms and standards of European integration into the international community. Such norms and standards are ruled by the following principles: respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights (TEU, Article 21); they should convey the legal, economic, social, political, and cultural norms elaborated during the European integration process.
When it comes to the perception of the European Union’s identity it is assumed that the way in which EU constructs her own identity takes under consideration others’ image of herself. In other words, the main assumption of the survey is that discourse on EU’s identity in third countries/parties should share an idea on normative character of the European Union in international relations.
The research is devoted to finding answers to the following questions: what is the content of the dominant discourse on EU’s identity among the European elites?; what is the content of the public discourse on EU’s identity in the third countries?; is the declared and up to date discourse on the European Union identity in the international relations as a ...
