ABSTRACT
It has become commonplace in discussions of environmental and other global issues to treat the EU as if it were a single purposive entity. The Union is urged to act, even to lead and has rather ostentatiously ascribed such a role to itself during the ratifi cation and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and the search for a post 2012 climate regime. Leadership is logically inseparable from the capacity to act which may, inelegantly, be described as ‘actorness’. Normally this point would hardly be worth making, and in this volume leadership roles are examined for a range of actors, constituent institutions of the Union, states and non state actors. However, with the EU as an entity in world politics, there is a problem that requires consideration of the defi nition of a political actor, something that is normally taken for granted. It is quite simply expressed. The Union is neither an emergent federal state nor an overdeveloped international organisation. In an international system where the capacity to act has conventionally been confi ned to sovereign states (although with some modifi cation for certain types of international organisation) the EU is unique, an entity which is, according to the international lawyers, sui generis. This chapter, therefore, sets up some criteria to establish the extent to which the EU may be regarded as an international environmental actor in general and more specifi cally in the fi eld of climate change policy. The analysis is based upon previous work (Bretherton and Vogler 2006; Vogler 1999) and posits four characteristics that one might expect an international actor to exhibit. They are: autonomy, volition, negotiating capability and the ability to deploy policy instruments. All of these relate to the leadership types and styles set out in Table 1.2 of the introductory chapter by Wurzel and Connelly. If there is no autonomy then it would make little sense to consider the EU (as opposed to its Member States) as a leader. Structural leadership requires the ability to mobilise resources and without negotiating capability there will be little chance of entrepreneurial leadership. An ‘heroic’ leadership style implies real and continuing volition. These outward and visible signs of actorness rely upon various capabilities possessed by the Union, but they are also dependent upon its broader ‘presence’ in the global political economy and upon the opportunity structure that confronted Union decision-makers
at particular points in the history of the international climate regime. While this structure may have facilitated the development of EU actorness and its leadership ambitions during the 1990s and in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century, there are already indications of signifi cantly reduced opportunity as the search for a post 2012 agreement proceeds. The status of an actor and the exercise of leadership are not automatic consequences of capability, presence and opportunity. Just as in the social life of an individual, actorness is conditional upon the expectations and constructions of third parties that serve to establish identity, reputation and credibility. The EU as actor may capitalise on such constructions, but they may equally prove to be damaging, as appears to have been the case with the Common and Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Chris Hill’s (1993) ‘capability-expectations gap’. Leadership is a reciprocal process that requires recognition and acceptance by the led. It may involve the willing adoption of concepts and principles enunciated by the Union but also a more fundamental recognition that the EU is capable of acting as a unit and delivering upon its commitments. Over the life of the climate change regime the Union has in many ways been able to exceed the expectations of outsiders but this can no longer be taken for granted.
