Hybrid Actors in the Middle East and North Africa and European Foreign Policy: a Decentred Research Approach

This paper explores how “hybrid actors” in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are factored into EU foreign policy towards the region. It assumes that the erosion of state capacities in the MENA, combined with a proliferation of a particular kind of non-state actors taking on governance functions that are generally considered to be provided by states, affects the EU’s policy towards its Southern Neighborhood. Hybrid actors include a crucible of ethnicity-based groups, religious movements, or armed organisations (such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Kurdish movements, etc.) which act as governance structures, providing legitimate authority, identity, goods and services, and security in the absence of, in complement or competition with state structures. The aim is to investigate to what extent and how hybrid actors are perceived, taken into account and engaged in EU foreign policy discourses and actions. By starting from observations on realities within the MENA region, which are generally ignored in EU foreign policy scholarship, but might have a great impact on EU external action, the research contributes to developing a decentred approach to European foreign policy analysis.