Gergana Noutcheva

Fake, Partial and Imposed Compliance: the Limits of the EU's Normative Power in the Western Balkans

This article examines the EUs external power through the prism of perceptions by non-EU countries of the aims of EUs foreign policy, as shown in the Western Balkans. It argues that the EUs policy in the Western Balkans lacks a strong normative justification, which affects the degree of compliance with the EUs demands in areas related to state sovereignty. The perceived lack of legitimacy opens up political space for domestic actors to contest the positions taken by the EU on normative grounds. The Western Balkan countries have responded by giving preference to internal sources of legitimacy and asserting domestic reasons for fake compliance, partial compliance or non-compliance with the EUs conditions, with the latter provoking imposed compliance. The article links the enlargement literature with the study of EU foreign policy by offering a new approach to analysing the normative and strategic dimensions of the EUs external power.

Institutional Governance of European Neighbourhood Policy in the Wake of the Arab Spring

Abstract This paper analyses the goals and instruments of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) before and after the Arab Spring, and enquires why there has been little substantive change in the European Union’s (EU’s) approach to the neighbourhood, notwithstanding the acknowledged opportunity for democratic change and the EU’s stated willingness to contribute to it. It argues that the institutional governance of the ENP has largely conditioned the EU’s response to the historic changes in the neighbourhood. The EU’s actorness has been tamed by the underlying differences among EU member states and this has particularly played out in policy areas where the EU institutions have less freedom to act on behalf of the Union. Overall, the EU has asserted itself as neither a strategic actor nor a normative power, but rather as a bystander, trapped in its internal institutional process and passively reacting to crisis events by proposing long-term solutions with little short-term impact.

The European Union as a Normative Foreign Policy Actor

This is the second in a series of papers from a new project entitled “Who is a normative foreign policy actor? The European Union and its Global Partners”. The first paper – entitled Profiling Normative Foreign Policy: The European Union and its Global Partners, by Nathalie Tocci, CEPS Working Document No. 279, December 2007 – set out the conceptual framework for exploring this question. The present paper constitutes one of several case studies applying this framework to the behaviour of the European Union, whereas the others to follow concern China, India, Russia and the United States. A normative foreign policy is rigorously defined as one that is normative according to the goals set, the means employed and the results obtained. Each of these studies explores eight actual case examples of foreign policy behaviour, selected in order to illustrate four alternative paradigms of foreign policy behaviour – the normative, the realpolitik, the imperialistic and the status quo. For each of these four paradigms, there are two examples of EU foreign policy, one demonstrating intended consequences and the other, unintended effects. The fact that examples can be found that fit all of these different types shows the importance of ‘conditioning factors’, which relate to the internal interests and capabilities of the EU as a foreign policy actor as well as the external context in which other major actors may be at work.

Fake, Partial and Imposed Compliance: The Limits of the EU's Normative Power in the Western Balkans

This paper examines the EUs external power through the prism of perceptions by non-EU countries of the aims of EU foreign policies, as shown in the Western Balkans. The paper argues that the EUs policy in the Western Balkans lacks a strong normative justification, which affects the degree of compliance with the EUs demands in areas related to state sovereignty. The perceived lack of legitimacy opens up political space for domestic actors to contest the positions taken by the EU on normative grounds. The Western Balkan countries have responded by giving preference to internal sources of legitimacy and asserting domestic reasons for fake compliance, partial compliance or non-compliance with the EUs conditions, with the latter provoking imposed compliance. The EUs transformative leverage in the region has been much weaker to date in comparison with that in Central and Eastern Europe prior to EU accession. The paper also makes the case for widening the debate about EU foreign policy to include contributions that focus on the external impact of the EUs actions. It links the study of EU foreign policy to the literature on Europeanisation that developed in the context of the EUs enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe.

Societal Empowerment and Europeanization: Revisiting the EU's Impact on Democratization

The Europeanization literature predominantly credits the empowerment of pro‐reform political elites through the EUs incentives for the democratization of non‐EU countries. The existing studies under‐emphasize the societal dimension of the EUs impact and the normative context in which the EUs leverage is applied. Taking a societal perspective, this article examines societal empowerment as an alternative to elite empowerment and proposes four mechanisms of EU influence on democratization through societies taking into account the EUs structural power and actorness, and considering their effects on the societal sphere and societal actions. Applying the mechanisms to a tough case for societal mobilization for democracy – Bulgaria – the article shows how the EU, through representing a legitimate model of democratic governance, has created a strong pro‐reform societal constituency that can sustain the democratic dynamic. The article also demonstrates the relevance of cross‐national diffusion processes for pro‐democracy societal mobilization.

Whose legitimacy? The EU and Russia in contest for the eastern neighbourhood

ABSTRACT The impact of external actors on political change in the European neighbourhood has mostly been examined through the prism of elite empowerment through externally offered incentives. The legitimacy of external policies has received less scrutiny, both with regard to liberal powers promoting democracy and illiberal powers preventing democracy. This article investigates the conflicting notions of legitimate political governance that underpin the contest between the European Union (EU) and Russia in the Eastern neighbourhood. It proposes four mechanisms of external soft influence that take into account the EU’s and Russia’s actorness and the structural power of their norms of political governance, and consider their effects on domestic actors and societal understandings of appropriate forms of political authority. It finally traces the EU’s and Russia’s soft influence on political governance in Ukraine. It maintains that through shaping the domestic understandings of legitimate political authority and reinforcing the domestic political competition, the EU and Russia have both left a durable imprint on Ukraine’s uneven political path.