ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) is both a regime of regional govern ance and an actor within the global govern ance system. This relatively simple observation needs to be fleshed out to consider the relationship between these two roles. Is the EU’s primary purpose to insulate its member states from global pressures while protecting and advancing a distinctive European model of society and political economy? Alternatively, does it function as a kind of cipher through which European societies are globalized? Questions like this are not easily answered. They are the sources of considerable debate within International Relations and the more specialized subfield of EU Studies, with discussion tending to cluster around two distinct understandings of the interplay between the nature of the union’s internal govern ance and its status as an actor within the global system.