Contestation, Resilience and Re-Centring EU External Relations in the 'Age of Anxiety'

In this paper I develop a model that allows us to think about how a so-called de-centred approach to foreign policy can lead to greater legitimacy in the European Union’s foreign policy. The paper starts from the assumption that the European Union (EU) finds itself in an 'age of anxiety‘ – an age of crisis and contestation, that undermines the EU’s legitimacy. This contestation requires a fresh look at how the EU could regain its status as a legitimate and authoritative actor – in other words a 'stronger global actor' in the world (Duke 2017). While several strategic documents of the EU do try to address this quest (e.g. the EU Global Strategy), it remains unclear how exactly the EU is going to achieve it, and for which reason. Building on 'de-centring' literature in European Foreign Policy, I argue that we need a model that not only emphasizes de-centred foreign policy as a means to overcome crisis and to foster legitimacy of the EU , but also others, which I call centred and recentred foreign policies.