The Social Dimension of European Union Trade Policies

The European Union (EU) is widely considered as a formidable trade power. It represents about one fourth of worldwide trade fl ows and generally speaks with one voice in its common commercial policies. In addition, policy-makers and scholars often regard the Union as a distinctive, ‘normative power’ in the world. From this perspective, Europe tries to be at the forefront of promoting values such as human rights, democracy, sustainable development, and social justice, this with a clear preference for supporting international dialogue and cooperation in these areas, rather than for using trade sanctions. This special issue combines both aspects of the EU’s international role. More specifi cally, it concerns the social dimension of the EU’s trade policies. It raises the questions of how, why, and with what impact the EU has promoted social objectives through its common commercial policies. These three questions will be addressed in this introduction, followed by a brief summary of the way in which the different contributions of this special issue deal with them

The EU's promotion of external democracy: in search of the plot

While the EU has recently upgraded its external democracy promotion policies through a number of different initiatives, there is one challenge that it has not yet addressed: what exactly does it aim to support? This policy brief illustrates that both the conceptualisation of democracy and the means to achieve it remain vague, and explains why this is problematic. It points out the risks that stem from a lack of clear understanding about how human rights, governance, civil society and socio-economic development relate to democratisation. Among a number of recommendations, authors Anne Wetzel and Jan Orbie propose a ‘Green Paper’ debate on this topic that would take into account the views of different stakeholders, including those from the target countries, without neglecting existing international standards and agreements

Theorizing EU trade politics

This special issue aims to take the first step towards an inter-paradigmatic debate in the study of European Union trade politics

MetaKosovo: local and international narratives

This article examines local narratives on Kosovo and their role in crafting and articulating interpretations of Kosovo and international missions. Using the concept of ‘home’, as used and conceptualised by Jacques Derrida, the article reverses the order of who is ‘guest’ and ‘host’ in Kosovo and how that defines the local narratives on the subject. In the first part, attention is paid solely to letting local narratives deconstruct themselves, while in the second part we let them deconstruct the international narrative on Kosovo. The aim of the article is to present Kosovo as a battleground of division and commonality among the narratives and at the same time as an ‘impossible’ ‘home’ of all its narratives. In conclusion, some thoughts pave the way for the idea of ‘renegotiating’ the concept of ‘home’ with particular focus on ‘home’ in interventions and missions and its ultimate influence on the ethics of intervention

Towards engaged pluralism in the study of European Union trade politics

Going back to the Kuhnian debate about the assumed incommensurability of different paradigms, we point at the need for engaged pluralism in political science. We illustrate this by giving illustrations from the different paradigmatic perspectives included in the special issue and how they could speak to each other. While this analysis clearly shows the limits and difficulties encountered during such an endeavor, we hope to have laid the basis for a more reflexive dialogue within the literature

Ignoring the elephant in the room? Assessing the impact of the European Union on the Development Assistance Committee's role in international development

This article studies the impact of the European Union (EU) on the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). While the literature thus far has focused on the external challenges for the DAC's role in international development, this study argues that the EU should be taken into account as well. By focusing on the cases of policy coherence for development and the concessionality of official development assistance (ODA) loans, we show that the EU poses a structural challenge for the DAC's role in international development given the strong overlap in membership between both institutions and the Union's changing nature as a development actor