Limits to the European Union’s Normative Power in a Post-conflict Society: EULEX and Peacebuilding in Kosovo

Peacebuilding; EULEX; Kosovo; European Union; Conflict prevention; Normative power; Post-conflict; IECE

Discursive representations of the ‘West’s’ international relations with China

Članek znotraj postpozitivistične metateoretske pozicije trdi, da je študij poglavitnih zahodnih reprezentacij Kitajske v literaturi konsistentno zanemarjen in površno obravnavan. Pomen teh reprezentacij za dejansko oblikovanje politik zahoda do Kitajske je prav tako v veliki meri prezrt. Članek želi znova ovrednotiti zahodne reprezentacije Kitajske kot grožnje in Kitajske kot priložnosti, na katere gleda kot neločljive od znanstvenega diskurza med zahodom in Kitajsko, ki z nami ostanejo tudi v daljšem časovnem obdobju: pri tem se osredotoči na zahodne zgodovinske reprezentacije Kitajske v mednarodnih odnosih in prenos teh idej v moderni čas. Ključna ugotovitev članka je, da takšni pristopi gradijo na ideji drugačnosti Kitajske, kar nam pove, da zahod vidi Kitajsko v kontekstu zahodne industrializacije, zahodne univerzalnosti in skozi posplošene zahodne izkušnje, prenešene na lokalni kontekst kitajske države. Vse povedano uspešno zmanjšuje sicer večplastno kitajsko družbo in državo na niz poenostavljenih empiričnih primerov, ki služijo generalizaciji zahodnega pogleda na kitajsko rast.In the post-positivist meta-theoretical context, the article claims that the study of the primary Western representations of China is consistently neglected and treated superficially in the literature. The importance held by these representations for actually shaping decisions made by the West is also largely ignored. The article seeks to re-evaluate Western representations of China as »China as a threat« and »China as an opportunity«, which are inseparable from the Western scientific discourse on China. Focus is given in the article to inspecting enduring Western historical representations in international relations and the transmission of these ideas to modern times, in modern literature on China produced in the West. The key conclusion made is that such approaches build on the idea of the Other, which tell us that the West sees China in the context of Western industrialisation, Western universality, and generalised Western experiences transferred to the local context of the Chinese state. They successfully reduce the otherwise multifaceted Chinese society and state into a set of simplistic empirical examples that serve to generalise the Western view of China’s growth

Limits to the European Union’s Normative Power in a Post-conflict Society: EULEX and Peacebuilding in Kosovo

Peacebuilding; EULEX; Kosovo; European Union; Conflict prevention; Normative power; Post-conflict; IECE

Limits to the European Union’s Normative Power in a Post-conflict Society: EULEX and Peacebuilding in Kosovo

By shedding light on EULEX - the EU mission to Kosovo – this open access book investigates the EU’s peacebuilding activities in that country, in the light of the normative power theory in the post-conflict setting and peacebuilding theory. Ten years after the massive engagement of the EU in the country torn by war, the authors critically assess the effects of the EU projecting its normative power – the enforcement of its standards, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – through the EULEX mission, taking into consideration also the local aspects, so far neglected in this field of research. Inspecting thoroughly the EULEX activities in the police, customs and judiciary sector, the authors reveal that the mission can contribute to a positive change, but only in those cases which do not request a heavy political involvement and broad leverage by other international players (for example in improving standards of work in police and customs). When it comes to the most serious cases of organized crime, corruption and war crimes, EULEX, however, has not been able to address them effectively due to several internal mission’s deficiencies and external factors; the perceived ineffectiveness of EULEX among the local population led to the lowering of trust not only in this CSDP mission, but also in the EU in general. This open access book offers a comprehensive assessment of the EULEX mission, based on two Horizon2020 research projects: IECEU - Improving the Effectiveness of Capabilities in EU Conflict Prevention, and KOSNORTH – The European Union and its Normative Power in a Post-conflict Society: A Case Study of Northern Kosovo (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship). As such it is an invaluable resource for scholars, students and policymakers interested in security questions in South Eastern Europe and EU external action