Seen from the Outside: The State of the Art on the External Image of the EU

ABSTRACT

After years of collective fascination with the idea of the EU as a ‘special’ global actor, some scholars have started to investigate whether such a perception of distinctiveness is shared by people, institutions and intellectuals outside of Europe. Such investigations have already produced some interesting results, but they are still limited in terms of geographical and functional scope of research, and they tend to be under-theorised and to fail to engage to their full potential with other branches of literature. This article illustrates how the analysis of the external image of the EU can contribute to the overall understanding of the EU's identity and role in world politics. It goes on to review the main projects on the external image of the EU and their findings, as well as the main challenges to this type of research. It finally proposes avenues of research for the future.

Key Words:

• external images
• foreign policy
• identity perceptions
• European Union

Notes

1. The programme’s website (http://www.euperceptions.canterbury.ac.nz/) provides a detailed description of its various projects and publications, amongst which, particular attention should be paid to: Holland et al. 2005; Chaban, Holland and Ryan 2009; Chaban and Holland 2008, 2011; Holland and Chaban 2010a, 2010b; Chaban, Smith and Holland 2010; Brovelli et al. 2010.

2. A brief summary of the project with a list of publications is available at: http://www.onlineforum.it/onlineforum-ricerche.asp. The full reports are available online: Lucarelli 2007a (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/garnet/workingpapers/1707.pdf); Lucarelli and Fioramonti 2009 (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/garnet/workingpapers/6209_alt.pdf). Among the most relevant publications: Lucarelli 2007b; Lucarelli and Fioramonti 2010 and a series of articles and book chapters (e.g. Fioramonti and Poletti 2008; Fioramonti and Lucarelli 2008).

3. Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Russia, Palestine, South Africa, United States and Venezuela.

4. See, respectively, http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cpi/research/funded-projects/chinese-eu/consortium.aspx and http://www.eurobroadmap.eu/. A third, Eumagine (2011–12), focuses attention on the impact of the perceptions of human rights and democracy on migrants’ aspirations and decisions to migrate to Europe (http://www.eumagine.org/default.aspx). A further project, begun recently, is the ‘Asian Perceptions of the EU’ Research Group at the Free University of Berlin (http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/en/v/transformeurope/Associated_Projects/nfg/index.html).

5. See World Powers in the 21st Century (2006) by the Bertelsmann Stiftung (available at: http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/bst/en/media/xcms_bst_dms_19189_19190_2.pdf).

6. See Holland and Chaban 2010a, 5; Chaban 2011, 18.

7. A rare and interesting contribution to this topic is Andretta and Doerr 2007.