Eastern Partnership: bringing “the political” back in

ABSTRACT

This article rethinks the Eastern Partnership agenda using Edkins’ framework of “the political”. Part of the problem, it argues, is the EU’s failure to imagine a new social order, which would give a relational value to the Other, and not by way of disciplining it to the EU standards, but rather, by way of aligning differences to a shared “normal”. The article problematises power relations as a process of “othering” in order to re-conceptualise them via key notions of differentiation, and normalisation. It argues for bringing “the political” back in, for debating and legitimising contesting social orders.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• new social order
• othering
• differentiation
• normalisation
• Eastern Partnership
• regional powers

Introduction

When Romano Prodi, a former President of the European Commission, addressed the 6th World Conference of the European Community Studies Association in 2002, he reassuringly spoke of a new world “opening up new opportunities but also throwing up new challenges” (2002). His speech set aspirations for an expanding European Union (EU) and “its closest European neighbours, from Morocco to Russia and the Black Sea”, aiming to achieve “sustainable stability and security on the European continent” (Prodi 2002). Just over a decade on, this “new world” is a different place, having thrown open more challenges than opportunities. Today’s EU faces years of financial crisis, stagnant growth, rising levels of unemployment and illegal migration. Its borders have become a “ring of fire” rather than “a ring of friends” (Bildt 2015; Kasekamp 2016) stricken by instability and armed conflicts from Tripoli in the south to Luhansk and Donetsk in the east. In 2002, Prodi anticipated that the EU would become a “real global player [acting] as one”; instead, the EU of today barely scrambles to build consensus, let alone to project its vision and find solutions to multiple crises within and outside its borders.

What has gone amiss, especially in the EU neighbourhood? Part of the problem, this special issue contends, is the EU’s failure to imagine a new social order, which would give a relational value to the Other,¹ for example, the outsiders, and become more accommodating of their diverse and different world, and not by way of disciplining it to the EU purported standards, but rather by way of aligning differences to a mutually agreeable “normal”. Over the years, since the inception of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004, the EU has been developing a complex portfolio of means to reach out and to shape the outside by its own standards. This included: new financial and policy instruments with further policy regionalisation and focus; new agents extending to multilateral platforms and now embracing all levels of society; and new modes of governance, shifting from disciplinary to more cooperative modus operandi and emphasising joint ownership and commitment (Korosteleva, Natorski, and Simão 2014). However, the EU has been struggling during this period to understand the world beyond its borders – that is, the world as pari passu, and a stranger to the EU’s complex bureaucracy and its codified norms. The EU, as Edkins (1999, 2) would argue, has become too politics-driven, in an attempt to promote its own established order inside-out, having forgotten that “politics is not in any sense given” and that “it is the result of contestation” (Donald and Hall in Edkins 1999, 2). It is ideological and contingent on a particular social order, and when externalised, it requires winning the “hearts and minds” first, before replacing it by the rule of bureaucracy. It is a political process, whereby “politics” is only a small part of “the political”, with the latter serving as a moment of openness to allow for contestation, new opportunities and new circuits of power to emerge and re-align in co-existence. It is precisely “the political” that has been amiss in the EU’s imagining of this new world, thus reducing the boundaries of politics to the mere exercise of norm transference.

To be fair, the EU has been reflective of its policies and their effects. During its 10-year cycle, the ENP alone has received at least two major iterations. The 2009 iteration involved policy regionalisation into the Eastern Partnership Initiative (EaP) and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) (European Commission 2009). In 2011, it received additional differentiation to accommodate changes both within the EU institutions after the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, and with instability and military conflicts escalating in the neighbourhood, especially in the south (European Commission 2011). At the same time, these iterations offered little in the way of expanding the boundaries of knowledge about the world outside. Rather, they have contracted “the political” even further by actually depoliticising – that is, removing the risk of contestation – it to the confines of roadmaps, regulations and technical solutions, which did little justice to solicit public support and commitment.

More recently, the ENP underwent its third major revision,² to respond to the neighbourhood “on fire”, which in the Commission’s own words, has become considerably “less stable than it was ten years ago” and which “increase[s] the challenges faced by both the EU and its partners, aggravating economic and social pressures, irregular migration and refugee flows, security threats and leading to diverging aspirations” (European Commission 2015a, 2). The ENP’s third iteration, in the words of the EU High Representative, Federica Mogherini,³ should “switch from the idea that the European Union is at the centre, surrounded by the neighbouring countries, to the idea of a new partnership based on cooperation” – which underwrites the very process of positive othering, and which this special issue is set to critically unpack through the lens of differentiation and normalisation, two instrumental notions to make othering more effective and enduring.

In order to make the EU policies more sustainable for dealing with the outside as different and yet permeable to negotiation of the new boundaries for “politics” and “the political”, one can no longer afford to simply tinker around the edges with the policy contents and ignore its disputed rationale and limited legitimacy on the ground. Instead, one needs to problematise the very fundamentals of EU external relations, and develop more reliable methodologies for knowledge production and transfer, to make the EU more attractive to sustain its authority for promoting reform. The premise of this special issue’s inquiry is essentially threefold. First, in order to understand and make power relations more sustainable, we need to “move outside the institution and replace it with the overall point of view of the technology of power” (Foucault 2007, 117) – that is, to engage in the process of positive othering (see note 2; and Korosteleva 2016a), as this volume critically contends. Second, we also need to move beyond the analysis of the EU “institutional functions” – in the ENP case, its instruments, agents and modes of governance – towards developing more understanding of the rationale, vision and strategies of the other actors afield in order to adequately respond to their specific needs and interests, in the process of relational power production – herewith, explored as a process of differentiation, a constitutive part of positive othering. Third, this kind of analysis requires de-centring of the subject, who “has no fixed, essential or permanent identity” (Edkins 1999, 22), with the intention to construct a mutually agreeable/optimal space of normality which could endure the “politics” of the “day-to-day decision making and ideological partisanship” (Dallmayr in Edkins 1999, 2), and which would be examined thereon as a process of “normalisation” (Foucault 2007).

At the heart of this project lies the need to acknowledge and understand the relational, ideological and contingent nature of power, which refers to “politics” in a narrower sense as a process of institutionalising and expanding the established order of things, part of “the political” but in a “smaller” way. On the contrary, “the Political”, with a capital “P”, represents an opportunity for contestation and openness, offering a wider frame of reference, “the moment of undecidability, when a new social order is on the point of establishment, when its limits are being contested” (Edkins 1999,126). This is where the EU neighbourhood policies, this special issue believes, are presently located: much of the EU politics in the neighbourhood to date has been essentially depoliticised, having taken for granted the need for continuing legitimation and instead focusing excessively on promoting pre-set EU normative governance over the region. By placing our revision of the ENP/EaP agenda within the conceptual frame of “the political”, this special issue argues that power could and should be exercised in many different ways, and their interface should be more nuanced than is currently understood. While daily politics is an important instrument for institutionalising an agreed political order “by a technology of expertise or the rule of bureaucracy”(Edkins 1999, xii), and making it more transactional and security-predicated, it generally affords no room for real political change, and thus becomes “depoliticised” and deprived of the opportunity to think “outside the box”. “The political”, on the other hand, allows to problematise, to re-imagine and to experiment with the emerging power arrangements, especially when such are deeply contested, as in the case of Ukraine. This may engender new and/or additional social space to help overcome the limitations of the existing political order, and avail new opportunities for dialogue and cooperation – that is, by bringing “the political” back in.

From the perspective of “the political”, the questions about how the EU should respond to the limited convergence and growing resistance and instability in the neighbourhood would invariably lead us to the need to understand the role of the Other, and not only of the partner countries but also of the other power contestants and populations of the region; and how they could be co-opted back in the process of regenerating a new social space. This volume argues that in order to rationalise convergence and understand the disconnects and reasons for resistance, the EU’s Self should engage with the Other as part of its cognitive nexus with the outside, and be vetted and contested by the normative discourses of the existing and conflating power modalities, to re-imagine it-Self in the neighbourhood. Furthermore, this volume renders a different reading to the oft-cited notion of differentiation, which in the context of “the political” is understood not as deviation from a sanitised version of the EU standards, but rather as an agreed new “normal” developed via contestation and inclusive of the expectations and historicity of the participating sides. Following from the above, this volume also advocates for the need to shift away from a prescriptive “normation” approach, which hitherto assumed third countries’ adherence to the EU’s interpretation of “normal”, to finding a new optimal space for the interplay of differing normalities, which could be understood as a new “shared normal” and jointly deduced through a relational process of “normalisation” (Foucault 2007).

What follows next is a brief discussion of the conceptual framework which unpacks the nexus of “politics” and “the political” in a dialectical manner, and explores the key tenets of this volume – differentiation and normalisation as conceptual tools of positive othering. A subsequent section then introduces the reader to the structure of the volume and its major contributions, which endeavour to rethink some crucial aspects of the EU-neighbourly relations ranging from security contestation to its institutional (European External Action Service (EEAS)), normative (bargaining power) and instrumental (border management) forms of application.

Re-examining the boundaries of “politics” and “the political”

In her seminal work, Jenny Edkins (1999, 2) argues that “much of what we call ‘politics’ [today] is in many senses ‘depoliticised’ or ‘technologised’”, thus missing an essential element of intellectual debate and contestation by differing and proliferating subjectivities. Instead, often forgetting about the relational nature of power politics, we tend to objectivise the outside world as a simple extension of our own Self, at the expense of the rationalities and subjectivities it has to offer. While this view of the outside is perhaps natural to a human desire of “governance” inferring “control” and “coordination” (Börzel 2010), or as Foucault terms it, of “governmentality” implying the composite of power institutions and their need to dominate and regulate the outside (2007, 108–109), this logic is nevertheless potentially perilous.

The principal caveat of this kind of projection of the Self is that it is invariably unilateral, perpetuating a parochial cycle of knowledge production that centres on the Self (no matter how worthy it may be), and reduces the boundaries of knowledge to a simple transmission and acceptance of the Self’s standards by the outside. This is what “politics” seems to have become in present-day international relations, as Edkins argues – deprived of contestation, and displaced by a technology of expertise and bureaucracy, in the promotion of an unreciprocated and seemingly agreeable order. Foucault however reminds us that at the heart of “governmentality” with its inherent need to regulate is an understanding that power can only work through the practices of freedom (a calculated rationality) and as a process of interacting with the Other. For Rose (1999, 4), by example, “to govern is to presuppose the freedom of the governed”, while Miller and Rose (2008, 53) argue that “power is not so much a matter of imposing constraints upon citizens” but rather “making up citizens capable of bearing a kind of regulated freedom”. Hence, the task of this volume is to radically rethink the rationality of the ENP in the eastern neighbourhood while clearly distinguishing between “politics” and “the political” in an attempt to bring the “dialogue” and “openness” back in.

Edkins argues that “politics” is in essence the outcome rather than the process of contestation: it is the debate that occurs within the limits set by the new order (1999, 126), when a legitimate authority emerges, to exert “a bureaucratic technique of governance elaborated through recognised expertise and endorsed … through a regular, ritual replacement of the placeholders of authority” (1999, 4). It does not account for how power “establishes a social order and a corresponding form of legitimacy” (Edkins 1999, 3) or explains how “one social form rather than another emerges from a period of contestation and struggle”. To achieve this understanding, one needs to examine “the political” as a process of struggle and mutations of one social order into the next. “What takes place thereafter … is not ‘the political', but a technology of governance, and ironically, this technology of governance is what we call ‘politics’” (Edkins 1999, 5). As Edkins contends further, when a new social order is legitimated, it then “sets out a particular, historically specific account of what counts as politics and defines other areas of social life as not politics” (1999, 2). Politics, therefore, is more concerned with the social rather than the political space, in the intention to institutionalise new structures of governance and make them sustainable. “The political” in this case becomes removed, and politics – “depoliticised” representing a closure of an ideological debate, a moment of forgetting of “the political” and making history.

From this perspective, it is precisely the analysis of “the political” in a deeply contested ideological environment of the eastern region, rather than the EU “politics” as a set of instruments, capabilities and budgets, that should give this revision a new meaning. A decade-long struggle of the ENP’s application in the eastern region, which Huntington (1991) argued is located on a fault line of differing civilisations, demonstrates the dangers and the consequences of such premature ideological closure that promote power at the expense of freedom (Taylor 2009, 6), in a situation when political space still requires “winning-over” and canvassing for reciprocal future and course of reform.

Instead, as the practice attests, the ENP has found itself locked in EU-centric “politics” of norm transference rather than the contestability of “the political”. Consequently, all policy revisions that had taken place to date focused just on that – modification of policy instruments for more effective norm transmission and diffusion. Therefore, instead of addressing the root cause for resistance and ideological struggle which risks opening up the political space to contestation once again, the logic that prevailed, was to step up a gear of “politics” and move it to “higher politics” (termed as “politicisation” by Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde 1998), or if need be, to “higher security politics” (respectively termed as “securitisation” by the same scholars), in an attempt to protect the limits of the established order. Neither however – be it politicisation or securitisation – represents an opportunity to understand, contest and renegotiate a new order of things, in order to accommodate divergent interests and needs of the involved parties. Rather, this simply shifts the “debate” in the direction of more control by the existing order, becoming more “constrained within the already accepted criteria of a specific social form” (Edkins 1999, 11), with a limited prospect for new settlement and reconciliation. More “politics” involving intense ideological inculcation and norm transmission, in a highly contested environment, as embodied by the EU–Russia conflict over Ukraine, may become dangerous and can even set afoot an irreversible fight for hegemony by the involved power contestants. As Buzan and Wæver (2009) argue further, this process of “higher security politics” may eventually drive the contested [universalist] identities to their hegemonic obliteration by one another, whereby “the only way in which one can reach stability is if it succeeds in taking over the whole system” (263).

This special issue however contends that there should be another way in this highly intense and polycentric world of power relations whereby cohabitation rather than hegemony, which is by its very nature “always contested in trying to secure itself” (Gramsci in Edkins 1999, 127), ought to be imagined and achieved by rethinking the place of the “Other” through “differentiation” and “normalisation”, and as an interplay of the aligned and yet different norms.

If applied to the case of the EaP region, and the 2013 Kyiv Euromaidan in particular, one could observe precisely the moment of rejection of and resistance to the conflating knowledge regimes – that is, of Yanukovich’s corrupt government, the EU’s conditional technocracy and Russia’s aggressive incursion – enmeshed in a single space of power projection and demand which eventually led Ukraine to its implosion and the unfolding drama of human and political loss. And yet again, instead of bringing “the political” back in, to allow for ideological canvassing, openness and dia-/trialogue to occur, this interplay of clashing normative orders has resulted in the liminality of “politics”, depoliticisation of “the political”, and, in Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde’s (1998) terms, heavy securitisation of the political process which stifled the process of reconciliation and deprived the people of Ukraine of their calculated choice. This was the moment which concealed the very absence of “the political”, exposing the immense shrinking of knowledge production to a binary space of the EU–Russia regional contestation. It is however a scholarly task “to challenge the hegemony of the power relations or symbolic order in whose name security is produced, to render visible its contingent nature … and to advocate for recurring, vigilant and responsive activism … to ensure that we are not lulled into forgetfulness” (Edkins 1999, 142).

How do we then disentangle and make more effective the use of “politics” and “the political” to reset the limits of the existing social and political order in the eastern region, and to imagine its more stable future?

Edkins’s approach is important for locating and exposing the sites of knowledge and points of resistance and contestation required to make political and social space sustainable and better governed. In her attempt to move away from politics to the political, she searches for the points of political disorder or, rather, the breakdown of order and the moment of openness and change, which make the process of politics “political” again, in fostering and claiming allegiances. Her approach highlights the importance of resistance and dialogue for any change to occur and become sustainable. It also opens up a debate on the process of “othering” (unpacked here via its core tenets – differentiation and normalisation) as an opportunity to move beyond a conventionally “opposing” relationship between the Self and the Other, towards a more positive nexus of their cognisance and identity construction, as this special issue argues. It indisputably offers an innovative quest for a new methodology for norm production, transmission and cohabitation, which should go beyond the constraints of liberal and neo-liberal technologies of power.

From this perspective, this special issue supports Edkins’ conceptualisation of “politics” and “the political”, but it also goes a step further. This volume also insists that new methodologies of knowledge production should not be binary, or mutually exclusive. Rather, they should accommodate and apply “politics” and “the political” as mutually constitutive and reinforcing tools of sustainable governance. For Edkins, depoliticisation – that is, the removal of “the political” – is a controlling project, because “it brings in order, discipline, and regulation” (1999, 12). Depoliticisation essentially draws on disciplinary (prescriptive) governance which “fights” resistance by advancing conformity and the boundaries of order. However, as we intend to show, “depoliticised spaces”, which have acquired a somewhat deconstructive meaning in Edkins’s work, could also serve the purpose of establishing dialogue and devising new space for reciprocal learning, where cooperation hitherto had been seen impossible. For example, as Korosteleva argues (2016a) in the case of Belarus, a neighbouring country that rejected EU political demands, low-key technical cooperation may actually just offer big enough space for bringing “the political” back in, to enable the dialogue. Equally relevant, political contestation may not be a suitable tool for advancing cooperation in more “technical” areas such as customs or border management, as Merheim-Eyre contends in this volume, but it is precisely in the microcosms of such areas that we tend to find opportunities for change and adaptation by generating a new shared “normal”.

In other words, in this volume, we will experiment both with the interplay of “politics” and “the political”, as well as their relational application to the process of defining and locating the Self and the Other in the EU eastern neighbourhood. More specifically, we argue that the ENP or the EaP, in particular, should be situated within a continuum of “politics” (as depoliticised space) and “the political”, in order to develop traction in areas where prior cooperation had been made impossible. While “the political” assumes ideological means to legitimise order, “politics” or “the depoliticised” space seeks disciplinary means to institutionalise and maintain it. This special issue, therefore, will explore the prospects of their cohabitation under the rubrics of positive othering. In what follows next, we briefly foreground positive othering as an overarching concept of this volume to be fully unpacked in its application through the lens of differentiation and normalisation, its two core conceptual tenets, in an attempt to identify a new methodology for a more sustainable knowledge production and maintenance.

The relevance of othering in power politics of contestation

Much has been written about the importance of the Other in power politics and the relational meaning of the Self (Diez 2005; Flockhart 2010; Neumann 1999; Nicolaïdis and Howse 2002; Walker 1993). At the same time, little has been done in the way of fully unpacking the meaning of this relationship and especially, the extent of their inter-dependency, in the process of constructing sustainable cohabitation between often competing power modalities.

We have moved a long way to recognise the Other as an important referent object in defining the outside. To date, the conventional reading of this relationship appears to be mainly through the lens of the Self, whereby the presence of the Other is instrumental, but not necessarily pari passu or even independent of the Self. In this vein, the Other is often recognised as relevant, but different, and as a rule, projected as a threat or inferior, and therefore “serves to enframe, limit and domesticate a particular identity” (Campbell in Diez 2005, 628) by way of reaching out and shaping it to the image of the Self (Manners 2002). Other readings suggest that the Other may also be seen as part of a “utopian” narrative of the Self (Nicolaïdis and Howse 2002), or as Flockhart (2010) argues, may constitute a Self’s “Significant We”, in the process of its future power construction and projection to the outside world.

While historically significant, especially in the sense of exposing the importance and relevance of the Other in international relations, these readings nevertheless are confined to the Self-centric vision of the world, normally applied by a hegemonic power in its mission to shape the conceptions of “normal” by its own design. From this perspective, while present, the “Other” explicitly remains unknown, and at least as insecurity for an established order, whose natural propensity would be to blur these dangerous “differences” into a singular understanding of normality.

In an increasingly changing global order, where one’s authority is no longer a given, and one’s normative appeal should no longer be taken for granted, recognition and acknowledgement of the Other as a different kind, is not enough (Flockhart 2016). What is needed instead is a more innovative thinking about the relational meaning of the outside to the inside, in which one would “focus less on difference than on variety” (Smith 1996, 22–23). Edkins’ work yet again is instrumental for attempting to imagine the world of diversity and difference, but in a non-threatening way. She argues that we do need to have the Other, in order to ascertain our own value, for which process “two things are [clearly] necessary: dissimilar things, for which the thing of value can be exchanged; and similar things, with which the thing can be compared” (1999, 24). In other words, “the value of a term is determined by its environment” (Edkins 1999) – a similar and yet different interpretation of the Self and the Other. Here the attention is de-centred from the Self, in the actual recognition of the environment’s value, which both the Self and the Other are part of the power nexus. By becoming part of their integrated space, the two entities – the Self and the Other – are no longer different when compared, but rather simply distinct, having acquired an intrinsic value of the relationship and being defined via their positioning to one another rather than divergence.

When applied to the EU, under the EaP, it is not the difference that matters between the EU and its eastern neighbours, and the normative mileage of cultural heritage and historical achievements. Rather, it is the relational space that brings both the EU and the EaP region together into a single environment and defines them not in opposition or asymmetry to one another, but rather through their distinctive individual “worth”, which requires mutual recognition of their respective normalities for their subsequent reciprocal alignment. As Haukkala aptly puts it, “the Union should consider a neighbourhood policy that is based less on heavy normative convergence and harmonisation and more on tangible cooperation with more modest rhetoric and clearer material incentives” (2008, 1618).

Working with the Other thus becomes a learning process, which no longer simply entails recognition, and even acceptance of differences pertaining to values, traditions and patterns of behaviour as historically contextualised and imprinted onto the outsiders. Rather, this new learning should be about establishing a new value of the Self and the Other, as being two constitutive parts of the same power equilibrium – distinct and yet complementary to the process of each other’s identity-building and external positioning. In this new reading, and in order to understand its inner workings, two more tenets need further unpacking – these are differentiation and normalisation, to which we now turn in the next section.

Differentiation, and not deviation

Differentiation is not a new concept for the EU. The Union has formally recognised it as a founding principle for its external relations with the launch of its Wider Europe strategy (European Commission 2003, 15). The tenet received its further elaboration by the Commission in its subsequent strategy papers, and a more technical connotation via action plans and roadmaps for the participating countries in the eastern region. While its definition seems straightforward underscoring the need for a tailored approach to individual partner countries, its meaning though remains unclear. Does it imply, as Balfour asks, that there is a standard set by the EU, “from which some states and policies deviate” (2014, 2) or, is it more about acknowledging a needs’ differential also involving differing capacities, aspirations and commitments? Does “differentiation” imply a variation of instruments on the EU side with view of achieving a specific outcome; or does it simply mean an à-la-carte choice of measures by the recipients? In other words, the notion has a complex meaning, so much so that by 2011 the Commission itself acknowledged the difficulties in clearly defining and measuring differentiation, by stating that the EaP is a learning process, and “there is no set model or a ready-made recipe for political reform” (European Commission 2011, 3; see also European Commission 2012, 2). To date, differentiation continues to bear an ambivalent meaning: in rhetoric it implies recognition of differing needs of the participating parties; in practice, however, it signifies reification of the EU norms and rules and their injection into the political space of the partner countries, at a differing pace and level.

From this perspective, “differentiation” comes in contradiction with the principle of positive othering. For the EU, differentiation becomes tangible when a policy package is issued to the recipient to enable them to choose the sequence and the pace of its adoption, in proportion to their needs and capacities. At the same time, this very same package does not alter either the nature or the content of the policy per se, remaining from the start an EU-set unidirectional framework for cooperation and reform. In this context, there is no room for the “political”, no space for the contestation of norms between the EU and the partners, and clearly, no opportunity for othering, in a sense of mutual recognition and genuine partnership-building.

This becomes problematic for at least two reasons. First, it goes against the very notion of positive othering which assumes a move, by the Self and the Other, from being different (and even a threat to one another) to becoming aligned and yet distinct in their now shared environment. Second, this unilateral projection of the Self and its established order of things, without sufficient legitimation and reciprocation, would lead to resistance and even rejection of the policy as a whole. In a highly contested ideological environment of the eastern neighbourhood, the EU “differentiation” becomes a signifier of “politics” rather than “the political”, akin to the promotion of EU bureaucracy within an agreed and internalised consensus by all participating sides. Countries like Belarus, deadlocked in this kind of politics, Azerbaijan besieged by the parochial cycle of negotiations or an oscillating Armenia, serve as testimony to the limited effect of such “differentiation”.

There has been much scholarly debate around the varying meanings of “differentiation” (Blockmans 2014; Heinelt and Lang 2011; Holzinger and Schimmelfennig 2012). The scholars often contend that differentiation should pertain more to the structural content of relations, paying particular attention to the resource capacity of the recipient and/or the EU ability to build on its success and policy instruments. Others argue that differentiation should be seen as an outcome, a result of certain dynamics in relations between the EU and other countries. Wetzel and Orbie, for instance, identify a number of factors⁴ relating to both the EU as well as the partner states that may impact differentiation in the EU’s external democracy promotion policies (2011, 582–583). Conversely, Wunderlich (2010, 249–250) interprets differentiation as an “unintended consequence” seen as a composite result of both bilateral relations between member states and partner countries, and of “intra-EU coordination problems”. In his reading, this kind of “undifferentiated” policy would be an ideal outcome, as it would allow for both structure and flexibility within the policy. Perhaps indeed for the EU to have a universal type model or a uniform regional policy may be a more efficient way to plan its strategy, budget and instruments for knowledge production and transmission, as indeed “one-size-fits-all”, which could adjusted to the specific circumstances of the participating sides. For partner states, undifferentiated policies appear to be of limited benefit and often lead to stagnation and policy de-legitimisation. The ENP’s resisted application testifies to the limitations of this course: from the outset, the EU intended an overarching policy to embrace 16 different partner states; a decade on, this uniform vision has generated conflicts, instability and further resistance from the two regions – the south and the east, which the Commission’s recent revision paper openly acknowledged (European Commission 2015b, 6).

These analyses are not only instructive to help us understand how complex and contested the meaning and application of “differentiation” are, but also to encourage us to partake in the quest for the optimal solution to this puzzle. From the perspective of “the political”, this special issue puts forward an understanding of differentiation as an intended process, which should involve a calculated rationality on both sides, reciprocal learning about each other and a removal of differences, in recognition of one another’s distinction but also inseparability. As Kristeva argues, we simply need to recognise “the stranger”, “the foreigner” not as external, and not as “other”: “neither the romantic victim of our clannish indolence not the intruder responsible for all the ills” (in Edkins 1999, 112). It is when through positive othering, we generate the recognition of the stranger “within ourselves”, and begin to treat them as we want to be treated.

In this sense, differentiation should allow to take into account the perceptions and interests of both the EU and the Other, which can make the policy much more efficient than a one-size-fits-all approach that partner countries may not be interested or engaged with. Only if the proposed policies meet partners’ expectations and interests, there could develop reciprocity, specific or diffused (Keohane and Nye 1987), followed by trust-building or “truth”-building (to replace legitimation), and “politics” to replace “the political” (Edkins 1999, 59). Therefore, rather than projecting a unilateral kind of “normality”, as is often done by the EU, finding a “shared normal”, an optimal space as an intended interplay of distinct but comparable “normalities”, this is what “differentiation” should entail. In concrete terms, it means differentiation of policy priorities, also involving national policies of partners as referent; but also understanding trade-offs in policy areas, when, for example, economic development should precede political reform; or stabilisation – excessive conditionality of the Association Agreement. This understanding of differentiation now invites conceptualisation of the final tenet of our framework – normalisation.

From normation to normalisation

As Edkins (1999, 51) notes, depoliticisation, that is, displacement of “the political” by the “politics” of bureaucracy and expertise, involves “normalising power” by structuring it along the dimensions of “normal” and “abnormal”. This resonates with Foucault’s understanding of how a set knowledge regime would sustain itself – through “a relationship between the law and the norm, and … every system of law is related to a system of norms” (2007, 56). He further insisted that every form of power would naturally seek and apply disciplinary practices, in order to remain in control and to regulate the order of things. It would identify and classify key system components “according to definite objectives”, “establish optical sequences or co-ordinations”, fix “permanent control” and “divide the normal from the abnormal” (2007, 56–57). From this perspective, disciplinary power by example attempts to structure external reality by its rules and standards, often in a rather prescriptive manner, limiting freedom by way of aligning the abnormal with what is deemed normal in a given system. However, Foucault calls this particular process “normation” rather than normalisation, which posits a critical difference for the discussion in this volume.

As Foucault (2007, 57) explains, in disciplinary techniques of governing, the norm is fundamental, and there is always a “primacy of the norm to the normal”. In other words, its methodology starts from the norm – in our case, from the EU “best” practices and standards – and goes inside-out in an attempt to align abnormal with what is seemingly right. Normation, therefore, anticipates conformity of differing or deviating behavioural patterns with the set centrality of the norm which is fully reflected in the practices of EU conditionality. This methodology of knowledge production rests on a unilateral set of rules, and prescriptive techniques, to bring the abnormal in line with the normal. In this sense, it is the pre-determined norm that legitimises an established power by way of shaping “normal” in external relations.

Foucault notes further that the technologies of security work differently, and progressively. With time, they may evolve from a modern bureaucratic system (as a depoliticised space, or “politics”) premised on disciplinary governing, to more adaptive systems via new technologies, which do not eliminate “the abnormal”, but rather integrate it into a single space in an attempt to find an equilibrium of forces (cohabitation). It is a form of social control, but based on managing (managed inclusion), rather than excluding differences, which invariably generates a move from differences to distinctions within a system. In a new form of governing, “foreign” elements are controlled through the calculation of risk probability that monitor but leave alone the movement of the different elements, yet project into the future a certain programme of governing (Foucault 2007, 40), in a similar fashion how “politics” and “the political” work in Edkins’s reading.

What occurs thereafter is not a rejection of the normal, but rather the “interplay of differential normalities, their separation out and bringing into line with each other” (2007, 63). This process, emerging in and along the establishment of modern expertise and technologies of knowledge, Foucault calls “normalisation”. Rather than starting from an established norm there is “plotting of the normal and the abnormal”, working towards the equilibrium of forces, or a “shared normal”, an optimal space. In this reading, therefore, it is “the normal” that comes first, and then, “the norm” is deduced from it. But the abnormal is not rejected, it is merely aligned through the interplay of now comparable normalities (2007, 63).

The existence of “the abnormal”, or differences in other words, is essential for the acknowledgement and recognition of distinction, which attains a comparable value, integral to the process of learning about the outside. In this case, rather than removing the abnormal as in the case of disciplinary normation, normalisation seeks to manage the relationship between the normal and the abnormal. As Merheim-Eyre argues in his article to this volume, in the case of border management, for example, rather than rejecting the abnormal, both Frontex and the EU Delegation in Kyiv have sought to apply a mixture of Russian and Schengen curriculum courses in their training of the Ukrainian border guards. This allows sifting through the diverging practices in search of optimal solutions for the given context – thus, arriving at the interplay of different normalities. A similar case occurs in the EU–Azerbaijani relations, as Van Gils contends in her article, whereby the EU has been pushed by the other side to extend its normative boundaries to further negotiation and learning instead of applying disciplinary governance.

In a nutshell, this volume argues that when revisiting the fundamentals of the EU external representation, it is essential to adopt the perspective of normalisation (as a move to create a shared norm) rather than normation (the EU’s unilateral norm transmission), as the former allows for the integration (rather than elimination) of different distributions of normality in search for a “shared normal”, a newly imagined reciprocal world. At the same time, Foucault also warns about the dangers of normalisation. He spoke about the “supervision of normality” that in fact may limit the prospect of inclusion of “the abnormal” to facilitate cohabitation (Foucault in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983, 194). This warning resonates with Edkins’s understanding of the limitations of “politics”, and the consequential need for bringing “the political” back in: one should be mindful of the time when “truth replaces legitimacy as technologization replaces the political” (1999, 59). “Truth” premised on conviction rather than purpose and a calculated journey of an individual, can only function in heavily regulated space. An open political space needs knowledge, which always re-politicises itself (Edkins 1999, 59). That is why Foucault argued that resistance was implicit in all relations of power (even when normalisation occurs); hence “the political” in this sense cannot be extinguished, and the subject, the individual, remains free to seek a new balance of power (Edkins 1999). From this perspective, as this volume argues, “politics” and “the political” are never apart from each other, and invariably constitute a nexus for the production of a new and sustainable knowledge regime.

In the next section, we will introduce individual contributions to the volume, which question the very fundamentals of power relations under a new understanding of “othering” – namely, via the lens of “differentiation” and “normalisation”, to ensure that “the political” is back into the intellectual debate, which would chart the future role of the EU, as a global player, across the neighbourhood and beyond.

The structure of the volume

This collection consolidates new approaches to the study of the EU’s role in the eastern neighbourhood informed by post-structuralist traditions in international relations. More specifically, by revisiting the ENP/EaP’s agenda from the conceptual perspective of “the political” and viewing “differentiation” and “normalisation” through the lens of positive othering, this volume renders a new theoretical outlook to the policy development and its practices. By unpacking and connecting security, regional, institutional, normative and sector-thematic policy dimensions, this issue seeks to re-politicise the agenda and refocus policy revision on understanding the fundamentals of power relations when applied to the EU external relations. In light of the compounding crises, external and internal, one can no longer afford to simply tinker around the edges of the policy content and instruments. A more radical theoretical undertaking is overdue, to re-shape, re-define and de-centre the EU relations with the outside.

The theoretical discussion of “politics” and “the political” is continued by Licinia Simão who, in her chapter “Bringing the political back into European security”, offers a detailed examination of the notion of security and its multiple readings in the context of EU–neighbourhood relations. Her article maps out existing security modalities to explain the nature and limitations of the established social order that currently underpins the ENP, and the EaP in particular. Simão argues that the EU’s promotion of “depoliticised” forms of politics aims at maintaining the hegemonic and hierarchical order, rather than at developing and pioneering new sustainable discourses of cohabitation and inclusive forms of security. A rigid pursuit of EU security “politics”, with unilateral understanding of security in the highly contested region, is very problematic: it creates subjectivities which lack contextual underpinnings and are void of objective security provision. The ultimate question, as the author argues, is about the nature and identity of the political community the EU aims to foster: is it a restrictive security community with hard borders on the outside, or is it an inter-dependent community rooted in hybrid identities, which needs redefining through shared learning? To answer these and other questions, Simão draws on the newly developed understanding of “the political” to dismantle the prevalent rigid technologies of politics that ultimately constrain the joint progress towards “the shared security” in the region.

Hrant Kostanyan’s article revisits the role of the EEAS as an institutional opportunity to bring the “political” back in, in an attempt to overcome the parochial silo mentality of the existing agencies when working with the outside. This is done by reviewing the differing levels of discretion used by the EEAS in different policy areas and frameworks under the ENP. Through application of the principal–agent model, the article assesses and explains degrees of variation in EEAS discretion in multilateral and bilateral frameworks of the EaP. It contends that EU member states, through their established “politics”, tend to limit degrees of discretion afforded to the EEAS, more in bilateral than multilateral settings; while political sensitivity may account for greater variation in EEAS discretion and outreach. To this end, Kostanyan focuses on the case of negotiations over the Association Agreement with Moldova. His analysis sheds light on the restrictions to the potential of the EEAS in assuring openness and convergence of different institutional modalities within the EU and its external effectiveness. System restrictions and the established status quo lead to a highly bureaucratised approach which corresponds with the notion of “politics”. This is problematic, Kostanyan contends, for it limits the levels of ambition and vision for the EaP – that is, if the EEAS were to operate more freely, in the framework of “the political”.

Igor Merheim-Eyre’s article explores the EU’s security knowledge regimes in the Eastern Partnership, through the case study of cross-border mobility. In particular, he contrasts the “normating” programme of the Visa Liberalisation Action Plans (VLAPs) to “normalising” micro-practices, such as the training of border guards that take into account diverse practices, or “inclusive” confidence-building with breakaway regions such as Transnistria. He argues that while the EU methodology (as exemplified by programmes such as VLAP) largely remains disciplinary, the study of micro-practices reveals an increasing shift towards practices that function through an “interplay of normalities”. Consequently, the article concludes that, for the EU to truly take into account the needs of its partners – a differentiation approach – there is a need to shift away from disciplinary methodologies which are prescriptive in the way they define “the normal”, and exclude what is deemed “the abnormal”, limiting freedoms and, thus, the possibilities for sectoral reform.

The following article by Van Gils examines the relevance of differentiation in EU–Azerbaijan relations, and applies the concept of bargaining power to unpack developments in democracy and human rights (DHR) promotion. This case highlights the need for a more differentiated policy in relations with the EaP countries. Azerbaijan, slowly overcoming much of the difficulties of the transition period after independence, is positioning itself as an increasingly strong actor in international politics. The country’s growing political awareness leads to the demand of being treated as an equal partner in relations with the EU. This suggests that a more effective way for the EU to leverage its relations with Azerbaijan would be via more inclusive forms of policy-making, if some progress were to be achieved under the DHR. The article further discusses different channels through which Brussels and Baku communicate their views on the role of DHR promotion in bilateral relations. It finds that there is an increasingly symmetrical division of bargaining power between Baku and Brussels. As a consequence, value promotion remains contested unless both parties can have an equal input in policy-making, and both sides can see their norms represented. In other words, unless relations are taken to the level of the political, progress in this area would remain obstructed.

Finally, in his article, Richard Sakwa brings together some of the key themes of the discussion to suggest that depoliticisation represents a negation of substantive political pluralism. While there may be many “others”, the norm-maker will tend to deprive them of an independent political subjectivity equal to that of the norm-making “Self”. The political represents a moment of open-ended political outcomes in which actors recognise autonomy and equality as constitutive values. Instead, the tutelary, pedagogical and disciplinary practices of the depoliticised EU undermine the foundations of equality in diplomatic and political engagement between continental actors. The relationship tends to become axiological, where issues are deemed to have been resolved through some sort of anterior pre-political arrangement. This undermines the quality of contemporary engagements, and has contributed to what some call a “new Cold War” in relations between Russia and the Atlantic community. A distinctive type of political temporality has emerged in which the solutions to the historical problems of one era and situation are transferred as complete and finished answers to the challenges of other times and spaces. This is a type of political monism that ultimately claims to speak for all of Europe, denying the multiplicity of the continent and the heterogeneity of adequate responses. The return of “the political” would allow a more generous and pluralistic politics to emerge based on genuine dialogical foundations in which self and other engage as equals and are mutually transformed by that engagement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Elena Korosteleva is Professor of International Politics and Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics, at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent. She is Director of the Global Europe Centre and LSE Dahrendorf Debating Europe Professorial Fellow.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union's H2020 UPTAKE Twinning project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/199194_en.html) [grant no. 691818].

Notes

1. Thereafter, we would term the process of acknowledging and engaging with the Other as “positive othering”, that is, a process which sees the Self and the Other as forming a cognitive nexus, and becoming two constitutive parts of a relational power projection. In this case, the Other is no longer viewed in opposition or even juxtaposition to the Self, but rather as a distinct and yet complementary part of a Self to make the latter more sustainable and legitimate to its external milieu. See further discussion in Korosteleva (2016b).

2. The European Commission published a third policy iteration (JOIN (2015b) 50 final) in November 2015 premised on the wide consultation process with all-level relevant stakeholders, which serves as a foundation for seeking further policy differentiation and potentially, normalisation, as this article suggests.

3. For more information, see http://eeas.europa.eu/top_stories/2015/181115_enp_review_en.htm, accessed 23 November 2015.

4. Namely, the “power structure between the EU and third countries”; “EU or member state interests in third countries”; the “EU's specific ‘diagnosis’ on the domestic state of democracy”; “the degree of cooperativeness of third countries”; “the paradigms on democracy promotion embedded in different regional institutional environments” and “the geographical proximity of the third countries” (Wetzel and Orbie 2011).