Political steering: how the EU employs power in its neighbourhood policy towards Morocco

Abstract

Although the European Union’s engagement beyond its borders is ultimately about power, the concept remains under-utilized in empirical analyses of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). This article therefore proposes political steering as an analytical framework to conceptualize and track the empirical use and entanglements of diverse forms of power, highlighting genuine soft mechanisms. These bind actors to discursive practices because formalized sanctions or institutions are absent. This case study of the EU’s human rights and rule-of-law promotion in Morocco reveals how such soft mechanisms are intertwined with indirect steering mechanisms to achieve technicalization of policy reform at the governmental level and parallel politicization at the societal level.

Keywords:

• European Neighbourhood Policy
• external governance
• human rights
• democracy promotion
• soft power
• discursive practices

Acknowledgements

For their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, the authors would like to thank Tanja Börzel, Louiza Odysseos, Justus Dreyling and Mohamed Amjahid as well as the three anonymous reviewers. We are also grateful for critical feedback from workshop participants in Brussels and New Orleans.

Notes

1. A more complete theoretical discussion of these modes is available in Göhler (2007) and Göhler et al. (2009b, 2010).

2. For more thorough accounts of EU‒Moroccan relations and domestic politics see Cavartorta (2010), Dalmasso and Cavatorta (2013), Kausch (2009), Khakee (2008), Maghraoui (2009), Pace (2005, 2014) and van Hüllen (2013).

3. Comprehensive assessments of the EU’s revised neighbourhood approach are offered by, among others, Börzel et al. (2014), Teti (2012), Teti et al. (2013) and Tömmel (2013). Cavatorta and Rivetti (2014) discuss the implications for research on EU‒MENA relations.

4. The scholarly debate on the EU’s actorness has not and should not prevent analyses that conceive of the EU bureaucracy as capable of agency ‒ i.e. interacting with other entities in given policy areas (see Cavatorta & Rivetti, 2014: 623).

5. Interview, European Commission Official, DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations.

6. Interview, Moroccan think tank leader (also see European Commission, 2013b).

7. Interview, Moroccan think tank leader.

8. Interview, European Commission Official, DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations.

9. Interview, European Commission Official, EU Delegation to Morocco.

10. An internal paper by the Commission (European Commission, 2008) explicitly states: ’for this reason … it will be essential to avoid any sense of castigation of partners whose performance has not warranted increased allocations, concentrating solely on applauding the achievements of the best performers’ (cited in Kausch, 2009: 174).

11. Interview, European Commission Official, EU Delegation to Morocco.

12. Interview, Moroccan think tank leader.

13. Interview, Moroccan think tank leader.

14. Interview, European Commission Official, DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (also see EMHRN, 2007: 6‒10).