Michal Natorski

Drawing the Neighbours Closer … to What? Explaining Emerging Patterns of Policy Convergence between the EU and its Neighbours

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) launched in 2004 was purposefully conceived as a strategy to encourage neighbours’ approximation with the European Union (EU). This aim by the EU to extend its own system of rules beyond member states has become the focal point of the literature on the EU’s relations with neighbours. In this article, however, we aim to broaden the scope of the analysis of the EU’s role as it pursues policy convergence in the ENP area. More specifically, we argue that the convergence processes can be established on a basis other than EU’s norms, namely, international and bilaterally developed norms. Building on this three-fold distinction, we propose a model explaining how and when policy convergence is more likely to happen on the basis of every one of these norms. The model takes into account three variables: the structure of incentives between the EU and its neighbours, mutual perceptions of legitimacy and intra-EU coherence. Based on a number of empirical examples, we illustrate that EU-based convergence is less predominant in EU’s relations with its neighbours than it is usually portrayed in the literature.

Which rules shape EU external governance? Patterns of rule selection in foreign and security policies

This article addresses a particular aspect of EU external governance: rule selection. Drawing on institutionalist and power-based explanations we put forward an account for the choice of the specific rules that guide policy convergence between the EU and third countries. The proposed analytical framework broadens the scope of the studies examining the externalization of EU rules beyond its borders, in that we claim that the EU can promote policy convergence using rules other than the EUs. More specifically, the EU also promotes policy convergence on the basis of international and bilaterally developed rules. These analytical claims for explaining rule selection are checked against empirical data. We compare policy convergence between the EU and four neighbouring countries (Morocco, Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia) in three subfields within foreign and security policy: foreign policy dialogue, control of export of dual-use goods in the context of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and crisis management.

Epistemic (un)certainty in times of crisis: The role of coherence as a social convention in the European Neighbourhood Policy after the Arab Spring

Academic wisdom assumes that crises precipitate institutional and policy changes in domestic and international politics. However, the relation between crises and policy outcomes is under-theorised. This article conceptualises epistemic coherence as a factor that links crises and their consequences through policy continuity. Crises expose contradictions and inconsistencies, which create uncertainty. Therefore, actors seek to recover the epistemic certainty provided by coherence, which tacitly informs, structures and simplifies actors’ interpretation of reality, even during crisis. For this reason, the role of coherence in policy ideas and institutional rules remains essential to understanding policy continuity. This article illustrates the role of coherence in the policy continuity of the European Neighbourhood Policy in the context of the Arab Spring and the changes in the institutional architecture of European Union foreign policy during 2010–2011.

Reforms in the judiciary of Ukraine: domestic practices and the EU's policy instruments

The decline of judicial independence in Ukraine has continued at a higher pace during the Presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in spite of the reforms introduced in 2010 and the sustained involvement of international actors. Taking the EUs involvement as a case in point, this article argues that support for judicial reforms aimed at enhancing the independence of the judiciary did not comprehensively address the sociological roots of clientelism that have traditionally characterised the judiciary field in Ukraine and paradoxically reinforced the executive branch. This article analyses this phenomenon from the perspective of Bourdieus theory of practices and through the prism of policy tools promoted by the EU within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy.

The EU and Crisis in Ukraine: Policy Continuity in Times of Disorder?

This chapter examines the dominant continuity of the EU’s transformative policy in Ukraine during the 2013 crisis. The chapter scrutinises how the Euromaidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass affected the dynamics of EU policy reproduction since 2013 and explains the EU-Ukraine-Russia discussions on the potential trade consequences of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. The dynamics of continuity of EU policies towards Ukraine and the altered role of Russia are explained in terms of the discursive representations of the crisis in Ukraine by the EU. The chapter concludes that the policy reproduction and change depend on what actors make of the crisis and to what extent crisis representation can be mediated coherently through the background discursive schemes.