The Implications of Regionalism Support and Norm Diffusion on EU Actorness

Abstract

Conceptualising the EU as a certain type of power does not provide an accurate conceptualisation of the EU’s impact on international affairs. Rather than basing an assessment of EU actorness on principles supported by the EU and which frame its foreign policies, this book has primarily based its analysis on EU norm promotion and the evaluation of internal and external perceptions. By doing so, it has avoided an analysis excessively influenced by normative formulations of how EU foreign policy should be devised and implemented and instead relied principally on perception analysis.

It (the EU) tries to help other regions develop. This is perhaps done arrogantly, or Eurocentrically, but the EU believes that other regions should grow and develop … it is in our nature to reproduce ourselves.

Interview Respondent 9, Official at the EEAS in Brussels, 2011.

EU discourse seems to emphasise a clear lack of insight into the ASEAN … for example branding ASEAN itself as an institution which more or less has copied the EU.

Survey Respondent 11, Academic in Southeast Asia, 2012.