Jesper Dahl Kelstrup

Market Power Europe: A Constructive Critique

Market Power Europe (MPE) constitutes an important contribution to the literature on the global role and actorness of the EU. In order to develop MPE as a theory, this contribution provides an assessment of how Russia, the USA and China have converged towards three EU trade policies in 2013. The analysis finds that MPE fails to account for important dynamics related to externalization in the three cases. In order to improve MPE analytically, the article suggests that MPE should include three intervening variables to account for the EU’s ability to externalize its policies and act as MPE in practice.