Goals and contents

3 Goals and contents

What is the substantive content of Europeanization beyond Europe? Which kinds of domestic impact does the EU produce either intentionally or unintentionally? In general, Europeanization covers a broad domain of political impacts across the triad of polity, politics, and policy.

Probably the readiest general characterization of the content of Europeanization beyond Europe follows from the thesis of “domestic analogy”. According to this thesis, polities prefer to have an international environment that is ordered according to their own principles and procedures. The substantive goals – as well as the instruments – thus mirror the fundamental principles of the EU and European integration (Peters and Wagner 2005 : 215-216); Europeanization consists of “the external projection of internal solutions” (Lavenex 2004 : 695).

This general characterization entails various more specific claims regarding the goals that the EU pursues in the world.

First, the EU promotes its model of regionalism to other regions. It proposes regional economic and market integration and the establishment of supranational organizations as a pathway to peace and welfare in other parts of the world as well (Bicchi 2006 ; Farrell 2007 ). The regionalist model is also seen in the tendency of the EU to design its policies for, and conclude agreements with, regional groupings of countries rather than with individual states.
Second, and often in a more critical perspective, the EU is often seen to disseminate a “neoliberal” economic model, which reflects the EU’s internal commitment to market-building and economic liberalization (see, e.g., Hurt 2003 , 2004 ). Others point out, however, that the EU does not stand for free market policies as such but for a multilaterally managed “regulatory framework for liberal markets” according to its own model (Grugel 2004 : 616; Woolcock 2005 : 396).
Third, the EU promotes its constitutional norms such as human rights, the rule of law and democracy in its external relations (e.g. Manners 2002 : 240-241). Mirroring the debate on the economic model promoted by the EU, Gordon Crawford asserts, however, that the EU promotes a rather limited democracy assistance agenda “oriented at challenging state power and sustaining economic liberalisation rather than extending popular participation and control” and thus “consistent with the maintenance of neo-liberal hegemony” (Crawford 2005 : 594, 596).

In sum, for the EU as a regionally integrated system of liberal democracies, regionalism, regulated transnational markets, and democratic constitutionalism define the essence of being “European”. “Europeanization” then consists in promoting regionally integrated liberal democracies beyond its borders. In an instrumentally rational perspective, an international environment that mirrors the EU is likely to be in the interest of the EU and its member states. It is an environment that they know – and know to use to their benefit. This reduces adaptation and information costs and gives them an advantage over non-EU actors that are not as familiar with such an environment (Peters and Wagner 2005 : 216). Others, however, emphasize shared values and norms as well as established routines and templates of the EU as the source of these goals. Federica Bicchi, for instance, suggests that EU external policy can “be seen as unreflexive behaviour mirroring the deeply engrained belief that Europe’s history is a lesson for everybody. Put briefly, [it] is informed, at least partially, by the idea that ‘our size fits all”’ (Bicchi 2006 : 287). Regional economic integration and liberal democracy thus represent strong beliefs and universally valid ideas about the good political order that are promoted regardless of calculations of benefit and feasibility.

The focus on rather general principles of political order in “Europeanization beyond Europe” may be an artifact of the literature, which has shown a strong interest in the normative content of EU external policies and the EU as a value-driven actor and “normative power” (e.g. Manners 2002 ; Lucarelli and Manners 2006 ; Sjursen 2006a ,b ). But it also reflects the EU’s official external relations doctrine. In addition, it is in line with the findings on Europeanization in the candidate countries (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005b ): prior to the accession process proper, the focus on and impact of the EU’s specific acquis rules has been generally weak. Rather, the EU’s constitutive political norms feature prominently.

Yet the focus on regional integration and liberal democracy also raises some questions. First of all, what is distinctly “European” in “Europeanization” understood in this way? Whereas it may be granted that regionalism is a unique feature of EU external relations, democracy, human rights, and market economy are Western principles that are propagated by non-EU Western countries (such as the United States) and other international organizations (e.g., the Council of Europe or the OECD) as well. More than that, the EU itself may have been influenced by broader tendencies and patterns in the international system. Take, for instance, the “neoliberal” economic order the EU propagates in its external relations. In this case, the EU is not only part of a larger tendency represented by most other international economic organizations (Hurt 2004 ) but its own, internal economic governance has changed under the impact of “neoliberalism” as well. By the same token, researchers must be extremely careful in attributing liberal democratic domestic change in third countries to “Europeanization”. The general problem of Europeanization research – that EU influences have to be analytically separated from non-EU international and from domestic societal and political influences – is the more pressing, the less EU-specific the rules under study and the less dense the institutional relationship between the EU and a third country are.

Second, the arguments about the “domestic analogy” (Peters and Wagner 2005 ) or the “ontological quality” of the EU as a “changer of norms” (Manners 2002 : 252) obviously do not sufficiently take into account the evolution and changes of the EU’s “Europeanization” goals and strategies over time. Both arguments suggest that, having been a regional organization of liberal democratic countries from its very beginnings, the EU should also have engaged in promoting its model right from the start. Yet the promotion of regionalism, economic liberalism, human rights and democracy has only become prominent since the early 1990s (see below). Rather, the global political changes of the time (the end of the Cold War, the wave of democratization) and the concomitant institutional enhancement of the EU as an international actor (the Common Foreign Security Policy – CFSP agreed in the Maastricht Treaty) seem to have spurred the explicit definition and promotion of the EU model beyond Europe (Farrell 2007 : 304).

Third, the focus on “nice” and general goals that are officially propagated and intentionally pursued by the EU may come at the expense of studying the more policy-specific, unintended and even “nasty” domestic consequences of the EU’s presence in the world. As an effect of the EU’s market power, for instance, producers and legislators in third countries will often be forced to unilaterally adopt EU product standards. Consequently, we can observe policy- or issue-specific Europeanization. Moreover, the effects of the protectionist Common Agricultural Policy on the welfare as well as societal and political development of less developed countries have arguably been “nasty” as well as unintended.

In the remainder of the review, I will, however, focus on the general political principles pro-actively propagated and pursued by the EU. In the next section, the question is how they have been pursued. Which instruments, strategies, and mechanisms does the literature identify?