Policy and Geopolitics: Bounding Europe in EUrope

Abstract

This article analyzes geopolitics as a bureaucratic practice conducted by career policy professionals. Empirically, I investigate how the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) continuously produces and transforms the geopolitical category of “Europe” inside the European Union's (EU) policymaking bureaucracy—or EUrope as it is called colloquially. Drawing in part from forty-six interviews with thirty-five policy professionals, the article elucidates how these professionals use the concept of Europe in their daily work on ENP—not how they understand the concept intellectually but how they actually deploy it in policy discussions. Theoretically, I clarify how practical geopolitics operates through banal assumptions that are activated occasionally but present in an unremarkable way every day, how geopolitical categories are problematized inside policymaking bureaucracies, and how grand geopolitical visions are given specific technical content within everyday policy processes. The EU is an important example of this process because of its sheer global weight as well as the novel transnational character of its institutions. The argument advances two related strands of work in human geography: one on the role of public policy in producing social realities and the other on the capacity of specific individuals to shape geopolitical discourses.

Este artículo analiza la geopolítica como una práctica burocrática manejada por profesionales de carrera política. Empíricamente, investigué la manera como la Política Europea de Vecindad (ENP, por sigla en inglés) continuamente produce y transforma la categoría geopolítica de “Europa” dentro de la burocracia encargada de hacer política en la Unión Europea (UE)—o EUropa, como coloquialmente se le llama. Basándonos en parte de cuarenta y seis entrevistas con treinta y cinco políticos profesionales, en el artículo aclaramos el modo como estos profesionales utilizan el concepto de Europa en su trabajo cotidiano en la ENP—no como entienden ellos intelectualmente el concepto sino como lo ponen en juego en sus discusiones políticas. Teóricamente, hago claridad sobre la manera como opera la geopolítica práctica por medio de supuestos banales que se activan ocasionalmente pero que están presentes de modo poco notable cada día, cómo las categorías geopolíticas se problematizan dentro de las burocracias hacedoras de políticas y cómo a las grandes visiones geopolíticas se les da específico contenido técnico dentro de los procesos políticos cotidianos. La UE es un importante ejemplo de este proceso debido a su claro peso global lo mismo que al novedoso carácter transnacional de sus instituciones. El argumento promueve dos tipos relacionados de trabajo en geografía humana: uno sobre el papel de la política pública en la producción de realidades sociales y el otro sobre la capacidad que tienen individuos específicos para diseñar los discursos geopolíticos.

Key Words:

• critical geopolitics
• Europe
• European Union
• intellectuals of statecraft
• policy

关键词:

• 批判政治地理学
• 欧洲
• 欧洲联盟
• 知识分子治国
• 政策

Palabras clave:

• geopolítica crítica
• Europa
• Unión Europea
• estadistas intelectuales
• política

Acknowledgments

This article would not have been possible without the thirty-five professionals who graciously agreed to be interviewed for the study, in some cases several times. I am very grateful for their time, good humor, and thoughtful feedback. Jamie Peck and Luiza Bialasiewicz as well as Audrey Kobayashi and three referees of this journal offered helpful comments. Cris Shore pointed me to some of the key writings on the European Commission early on. A much earlier version of the study was presented to the Department of Geography, Politics and Sociology, the University of Newcastle, in October 2008. I thank the department and especially Alex Jeffrey for the opportunity to share my work. Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged. Lindsay Turner provided research assistance. I alone remain responsible for any mistakes or omissions.

Notes

1. These so-called partner states include Algeria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Ukraine, plus the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Applicant and candidate states do not participate in the policy and neither does Russia, whose relations with the EU are developed through the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. My empirical work focuses on EU relations with its eastern neighbors.

2. Approximately 33,000 people work for the seven key EU institutions (about 30,500 of them are based in Brussels), but the number of policymaking officials is much smaller. The Commission, for example, employs about 24,000 people, but only about 10,000 of them are policy officials involved in “coordinating legislative and budgetary processes” (EU-Careers.com 2009). Another estimated 30,000 people are employed in other organizations, such as business services and lobbying firms or think-tanks, linked to the EU. In addition, member states have well-staffed representations in Brussels and numerous cities and regions maintain their own Brussels offices. As of early 2009, an estimated 15,000 full-time lobbyists worked in Brussels (compared to 11,600 registered lobbyists in Washington, DC) representing some 1,400 companies and interest groups (Corcoran and Fahy 2009, 102). Another source (Parker 2007) gives markedly different numbers: about 10,000 registered lobbyists in Brussels against twice that number in Washington, DC. The discrepancy has to do with the term registered; not all lobbyists are registered.

3. For detailed analyses of the Commission, see Dimitrakopoulos (2004), Hooghe (2001), Page (1997), and Shore (1999).

4. I generally use “new” rather than “newer” because this term was used by most interviewees. “Newer” member states is a newer term designed (mostly by the Commission) to reduce the “new” versus “old” member distinction inside EU institutions.

5. The interviews were nonattributable and all references to them are made without disclosing the interviewees’ identities. When practicable, I identify the interviewee's institutional affiliation, such as the European Commission. In some cases, if pinpointing the institution is either unnecessary or would jeopardize the anonymity of the interviewee, I am vague about institutional affiliations. In the cases where simply identifying someone as a woman or a person from a new member state could effectively reveal her identity to her colleagues, I am vague about those markers, too. In a few cases, women are identified as men, and vice versa, to protect the individuals’ anonymity. For a discussion of such research techniques, see Gusterson (1996, xviii). Repeat conversations with the same individuals were designed to gain insights into changes in policy narratives and the perspectives of individual professionals. The interviews were not taped: I took handwritten notes during the meeting, “filled in” the notes within an hour or two after the event, and transcribed the conversation from memory as soon as possible thereafter. Most interviews were transcribed within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

6. Hooghe (2001, 54) reported that nearly a fifth of her 137 interviewees among high ranks at the Commission had held academic positions prior to joining that institution (late 1990s data). Page (1997, 70) noted that in his sample of 1,131 Commission officials, 37 percent held a master's degree and 30 percent had a doctorate (early 1990s data).

7. Several interviewees explicitly stated that in their personal opinion, Ukrainian membership is only a matter of time. According to one off-the-cuff remark (which, the interviewee recognized, did not turn out right), “Nobody really argues that Ukraine is not European: Ukraine is in Europe, of course, just on the wrong side … it is not on this side, it's on the other side.”

8. Italics in direct quotes are used to convey strong emphasis as communicated in the spoken language.

9. I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this phrase.