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New Political Economy of Energy in Europe pp 27–47Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Regulatory or Market Power Europe? EU Leadership Models for International Energy Governance

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Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series ((IPES))

Abstract

With the second decade of the new millennium came a series of shocks to global politics that forced the EU to reconsider its liberal approach to international political economy. The increasingly assertive use of economic power by Russia and China, combined with the new US president’s challenge to international trading regimes and the British decision to leave the EU, means that the world confronting the EU in 2018 is quite different from the more benign international context of only half a decade earlier. This applies not least to the world of energy, where concerns about oil and gas supplies are increasingly linked to worries about Russia’s geopolitical agenda. This chapter explores the range of strategies available to the EU—from soft normative power to hard mercantilism—and concludes that, if the EU wishes to exercise any kind of international leadership in the energy sector, it must choose between assertive use of its regulatory power and more muscular use of its economic power.

The authors would like to thank the participants of the NUPI’s EUNOR workshop and of the LSE TransCrisis workshop for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an overview of the concept of global energy governance and the role of rules and institutions therein, see Goldthau and Witte (2010). For a discussion of EU–Russian energy governance dynamics, see also Kuzemko, Belyi, Goldthau, and Keating (2012).

  2. 2.

    Elsewhere in this volume, this process of Norway’s adaptation is discussed in detail in Chap. 6 by Ole Gunnar Austvik; its consequences for Norway’s role in the European energy game are discussed partly in Chap. 3 by Svein S. Andersen and Nick Sitter, and in Chap. 5 by Jakub M. Godzimirski.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Andreas Goldthau

  2. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, USA

    Andreas Goldthau

  3. BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway

    Nick Sitter

  4. Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Nick Sitter

Authors
  1. Andreas Goldthau
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  2. Nick Sitter
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Correspondence to Andreas Goldthau .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo, Norway

    Jakub M. Godzimirski

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Goldthau, A., Sitter, N. (2019). Regulatory or Market Power Europe? EU Leadership Models for International Energy Governance. In: Godzimirski, J.M. (eds) New Political Economy of Energy in Europe. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93360-3_2

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