The EU's Peace and Security Narrative: Views from EU Strategic Partners in Asia

Abstract

The EU has consistently struggled to forge a foreign policy narrative which promotes internal cohesion and supports the EU's efforts to exert international influence. The 2016 EU Global Strategy is the latest iteration of collective efforts to tie strategy and purpose to the EU's coherent identity in the world. This study compares the EU's strategic partners of peace and security with narratives about the EU held in the EU's strategic partners in Asia. Whilst we find reasonable coherence in the EU's projection of the international system and its role in it, its identity as an actor, and its response to policy issues on the ground, views from Asia largely contest these claims. This article employs a strategic narrative approach to conceptualize and empirically trace how the formation, projection and reception of EU narratives are part of broader circuits of communication through which EU might be recognized, legitimized and achieve influence.

Normative power Europe and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the EU’s peacebuilding narrative meets local narratives

“…To assess the local reception of the EU's normative power narrative in peacebuilding empirically, we examine how core elements of the EU's construction as a normative power are perceived by local elites in the case of Israel and Palestine in light with their own local narratives. External perceptions have been identified in previous research as a key indicator to shed light on external reactions to EU narratives (Björkdahl et al 2015, Chaban et al 2017. At the same time, external perceptions of the EU are also of great relevance from a policy-perspective.…”

“…The narrative framework employed in this article provides a novel perspective on the EU's discursive construction as a normative power in peacebuilding. Despite a so-called "narrative turn" in international relations (Roberts 2006, p. 703)which has also been reflected in scholarship on EU foreign policy (Tonra 2011, Coelmont 2012, Chaban et al 2017)thus far only few efforts have been made to employ narrative theory in the study of the EU's normative power. 2 In our view this is unfortunate, as narrative theory offers considerable potential to facilitate a better understanding of the discursive construction, projection and external reception of the EU's normative power.…”

“…To assess the reception of the EU's normative power narrative in peacebuilding empirically, we rely on interviews with Israeli and Palestinian elites. Elite perceptions have previously been employed as a useful technique to explore the "basis for external recognition", which serves as an important indicator for the EU's global influence (Elgström 2007, Chaban et al 2017, p. 1274. Perception is understood here as the "result of the subjective or psychological cognition of the observer rather than the objective that is being observed" (Shiming 2010, p. 269) and they often trigger categorizations, with the focus here being on external images of the EU (Chaban and Holland 2014).…”

Challenging the masters of the treaties: Emerging narratives of constituent power in the European Union

“…The presentation of each narrative starts with a stylised summary before I turn to concrete examples in order to illustrate them in more detail. In contrast to narrative research in empirical political science, I have no intention of identifying or explaining the effects of particular stories (Chaban et al 2017). Rather, I seek to make the ‘narrative turn’ in EU scholarship productive for normative political theory.…”

Is the European Union an Energy Actor in Relations with Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries?

“…Na druhou stranu jsou si autoři vědomi určitých limitů mediální analýzy (srovnej Chaban -Kelly 2017: 691-708; Chaban -Miskimmon -O'Loughlin 2017: 1273-1289. V případě zvolených afrických deníků se může jednat zejména o problém objektivity a důvěryhodnosti zvolených periodik, neboť jejich články mohou být ovlivněny vztahem daného média k vládnoucí reprezentaci, vlastnickou strukturou, ideologickým zaměřením či obecnou mírou svobody sdělovacích prostředků.…”