ABSTRACT
Since introduced by Ian Manners in 2002, ‘normative power Europe’ (NPE), has emerged as one of the most widely debated approaches in European Studies. While critiques persist, NPE continues to be innovatively applied by scholars exploring the role of the European Union as a global actor. This contribution aims to position NPE scholarship away from ‘essentialist’ theoretical debates and towards its use as an analytical apparatus for examining transnational policy formation. Illustrating why NPE may be recast as a policy framework, it offers an exposition of its key concepts and theoretical underpinnings and presents a set of criteria against which it may be empirically assessed. Turning to how NPE operates as a policy framework, a survey and evaluation of NPE scholarship is provided as well as a comparison with other approaches and an overview of the strengths and limitations of the NPE framework for understanding the EU’s policy process.
