ABSTRACT
In a 2005 article on the intellectual history of regionalism studies, Hettne (2005: 543) suggested that ‘regionalism might actually shape world order’. European reactions to the launch of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015 certainly vindicated Hettne’s proposal, but in unexpected ways. This chapter thus grapples with the institutions, identities and power within the geographical space of the European Union (EU), the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), Russia and its ‘near abroad’. It is guided by the following empirical question: to what extent is (potential) EU-EAEU interregionalism compatible with the ENP? Theoretically, the chapter shows that the EU and Russian regionalism are largely constructed as mutually exclusive, particularly when it comes to the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and the EAEU. Understanding identity constructions within regionalism through an ontologically pragmatic constructivism, it is argued that EU critiques of the EAEU are the pinnacle of the ENP’s disregard for the ‘Other’ that Putin’s Russia has become since the 2000s. Instead of treating the EAEU as a regionalism problem, this chapter’s multidimensional approach to the EAEU highlights some leeway for alternative strategies. By emphasizing the economic governance dimension of the EAEU while limiting Russian ideological Eurasianism, a possible EU-EAEU dialogue might seek to harness the non-geopolitical evolution of the EAEU. This chapter’s contribution to theorizing the ENP is threefold. First, it insists on the impact of identity dynamics between the ENP and Eurasian integration. This constructivist lens requires some methodological distance from the EU’s own legalistic approach. Second, however, the eclectic theoretical approach proposed here incorporates not only discourse and identity but also organizational ‘hard’ structures. It therefore allows a bridging of the constructivist and legalistic institutionalist schools in EU studies. Third, by choosing an interregional perspective on the ENP and Eurasianism, a more universal, less EU-centric theorization of the ENP/‘near abroad’ space becomes possible.
