Failing forward and EU foreign policy: the dynamics of ‘integration without membership’ in the Eastern Neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

The article aims to investigate the applicability of the ‘failing forward’ framework to the case of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The ‘failing forward’ framework explains how the liberal intergovernmentalist and neo-functionalist developments shape policy dynamics in the ENP. It is, however, proven to be challenging to determine the initial policy incompleteness and, due to the influence of exogenous factors, also explain the origins of the Ukraine crisis using the framework. Although the ‘failing forward’ framework responds to the intellectual demand for stronger exchange between the theories of EU integration and the EU Foreign Policy Studies, it is not able to fully explain complex crises at the ‘high politics’ level.

KEYWORDS:

• Failing forward
• European Neighbourhood Policy
• Eastern Partnership
• Association Agreement
• Ukraine crisis
• resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Functional spillover takes place when an aspired integration aim can only be achieved through further integrative actions, and, thus, stems from the interdependencies between issue areas.

2 Given the highly politicized nature of the EU-’associated’ Neighbours visa liberalization negotiations, we purposefully do not consider them as ‘NF solutions’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maryna Rabinovych

Maryna Rabinovych is an Assistant Professor at Kyiv School of Economics, Kyiv, Ukraine. She holds a PhD in Legal Studies from the University of Hamburg and is a graduate of an LL.M programme “European and European Legal Studies”, run by the University of Hamburg and Europa-Kolleg Hamburg.