The EU and Multidimensional Forms of Power: Critical Moments and Change in Actorness and Power

Abstract

This article introduces a framework for studying the European Union (EU) as power by focusing on what EU does rather than what EU is. Conceptualizing EU as a regional international society, EU is constituted along multidimensional lines. While a code of conduct limits internal and external practices, critical moments are important junctures for practitioners to reinterpret norms and rules, leading to the reproduction of EU as power. The practice of minority rights illustrates how a lack of intersubjectivity limits the EU’s power. It is first through practitioners’ engagement with norms and rules that new practices are established.

Keywords:

• EU actorness
• internal and external practices
• minority rights
• regional international society

Notes

¹ The English School acknowledges that international societies can be both regional and global in nature. Watson, for instance, has illustrated how the current global international society evolved through the expansion of the European regional international society in the 18th and 19th centuries (Bull & Watson, 1984; Watson, 2009). This is not the place to develop discussions of the various forms and borders of regional international societies and their interrelations with the global international society (see Diez & Whitman, 2002; Narine, 2006; Schouenborg, 2012; Stivachtis & Webber, 2011).

² FUEN is Europe’s largest umbrella organization representing national minority groups by advocating their interests at the regional, national, and European level. In 2014, FUEN has around 90 member organizations.