‘Democracy Promotion and the Normative Power Europe Framework: the European Union in South Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia’ by Marek Neuman
5 February 2019 Reading suggestion gsclibrary
Democracy Promotion and the Normative Power Europe Framework.
The concept of Normative Power Europe has been studied and critiqued extensively since Ian Manners introduced it in his 2002 essay, “Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?”. It followed other interpretations of the European Union’s international role as a civilian power, a military power, and so forth, and it poses a challenge to political scientists, economists and specialists in international relations with its interpretation of the EU as a unique value-driven entity on the global stage. Democracy Promotion and the Normative Power Europe Framework: The European Union in South Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia is an edited work which looks at Normative Power Europe through the lens of democracy promotion in the areas of South Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The book is divided into two parts. Part I sets the stage for an analysis of EU foreign policy in the light of the Normative Power Europe concept. It discusses the development of Europe’s democratisation promotion and the impact of new member states on this area. Seen as a success in Central and Eastern Europe, democracy promotion now extends well beyond the EU’s borders. There are many challenges to this, however, both within and outside the EU. Part II brings this analysis to Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. Critiques of Europe’s approach to democracy promotion in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa abound. Therefore this book offers a fresh approach to these studies by focusing on the countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia – countries whose histories and years spent in transition are fascinating in their own right, but also within the realm of political science and international relations. The book also offers a crucial discussion of the EU’s successes as a normative power, in light of extensive criticism.
The book’s ten contributors are scholars whose research is in the fields of political science, international economics and European integration. The editor, Marek Neuman, is a professor in the Centre for International Relations at the University of Groningen. He is widely published on Normative Power Europe and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Thoroughly researched, Democracy Promotion and the Normative Power Europe Framework provides a fascinating analysis of EU foreign policy in countries which can – and often do – change quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Given this fact, further studies of the EU’s aspirations, achievements and limitations in these countries will undoubtedly be needed. This book should be of particular interest to those working in the areas of neighbourhood policy and enlargement, as well as Eastern Europe and Central Asia.