Normative Power Europe on Comparative Studies
II read an article by Scheipers and Sicurelli (2007) titled “Normative Power Europe: A Credible Utopia?”. It is interesting to see on how Mill’s similar agreement research method is exercised. The article elaborated the normative power concept which originated by Manners (2002) by asking the clarity of the notion of reflexivity and its relation to collective identity of normative power. The research question is: how much reflexive should be in order to be normative power? How the reflexivity constitutes identity-building of the EU?
These questions arise after Nicolaïdis and Howse (2002) paint a less optimistic picture, in which they argue what the EU is in fact projecting is an ‘EUtopia’, rather than the EU as it is. They hold that the inconsistency between what the EU is and what the EU tries to project undermines its credibility in the eyes of its negotiation counterparts and therefore affects its power.
Article’s hypothesis is that inconsistency does not inevitably lead to a loss of credibility; rather, inconsistency seems to be a characteristic feature of collective identities per se. The same applies to the charge of ‘utopian normativity’, since successful self-representations necessarily contain a good deal of utopia – otherwise they are not attractive to others.
The authors analyze the negotiations for the institutionalization of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and ratification of the Kyoto Protocol as case study. The reason for these two cases is that human rights and the protection of the environment provide the EU with grounds for reinforcing its cohesion and emphasizing its moral role in international relations.
Because of their highly symbolic value, these are attractive issues for the EU to focus on its role in the international arena and reinforce its self-esteem. They are also relevant cases for an investigation of EU identity and credibility. The methodology of the inquiry use text analysis based official documents (e.g. press release, speeches) of the European Commission and of national ministers involved in the negotiations.
With respect to the assessment of the EU’s reflexivity, the ICC and the Kyoto Protocol cases show that the EU’s identity is taking shape regardless of its actual consistency and awareness of its utopian stands. Moreover, the lack of reflexivity of the EU does not undermine its normative power.
The authors generalize the result based on the case studies. They take other researcher findings’ and attempted to confirm with the case studies. For example, they mentioned “Consistent with Lucarelli’s (2006) findings, the ICC and the Kyoto Protocol cases show that the EU identifies this difference as constitutive of its normative framework.”
The author claimed that the similarities between the two cases can be valid evidences of EU normative power. However I argue that the similarities finds some obstacle to find the conclusion. European response to ICC and environmental are quite similar so it’s hard to become the comparison. If the author can compare between European response toward Iraq’s war and Kyoto Protocol’s ratification, the conclusion can become more valid.
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