Re-thinking ‘Normative Power Europe’ from a Historical Perspective: Non-European Integration and the “Normative Shift”

Abstract

This article is a follow-up of the ‘grand’ theoretical debate on Normative Power Europe and it seeks to engage with the surprising lack of in-depth historical investigation of this research program. The article attempts to contribute to the existing literature by trying to identify the origins of EU’s ‘normativeness’, i.e. to locate a significant normative shift in the EU’s becoming as a normative power. In doing so, it will advance the premise that the innovative model of governance of the European Union, which inspired other processes of regional integration elsewhere, constituted and validated the EU as a normative power long before the EU itself assumed such a role. Such forms of “silent”, quiescent and “passive” normative behavior were a priori to conscious political endeavors to promote new norms and structural change in the world. This means that the normative ontology of the European Union was first acquired through its ideational impact and the emulation of its system of governance beyond Europe, in different other forms of regional integration. The exploration of this largely under-theorized and empirically uninvestigated strand of enquiry will hopefully bring valuable reflections and perspectives on the normative content of the EU system of governance.

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