The notion Normative Power Europe (NPE), as it was introduced more than ten years ago by Ian Manners (2002), has left a major mark on the scientific debate on the EU’s role as an international security actor. This paper revisits this impact by evaluating the contribution that NPE has made to our understanding of the EU as an actor in the world. To that end, the paper will address the “historical” trajectory of the concept of normative power, its internal debates among normative power proponents, and competing conceptualizations of the EU’s international actorness (thus fitting most naturally in session 1 of the proposed workshop).
The paper suggests that the contribution of NPE to our understanding of the EU’s international actorness has come in three distinct forms. First, NPE has been used as an empirical claim (e.g. Niemann and De Wekker 2009). On the other extreme, NPE has come to be adopted as a normative philosophy (e.g. Sjursen 2006). A third knowledge aim sits somewhere between pure empiricism and normative philosophy. In this strand, NPE serves as a recursive intervention in the on-going policy-debate. Here the question is not so much whether NPE has been right or wrong (in an empirical or a normative-philosophical sense) but whether it has had any leverage on the actual strategic development and self-understanding expressed in the policies involved; and indeed whether it itself has evolved.
The paper concludes with a review of the extent to which and how those three different positions interact in the debate on the character of the EU as a security provider in its military operations. This way the paper will assess how NPE can contribute to the analysis and/or evaluation of the EU as a security provider.
