ABSTRACT
Introduction Since its inception, the neighbourhood strategy of the European Union (EU) has scarcely been able to alleviate the difficulties that post-Soviet Eastern Europe faces. Despite being committed to supporting reforms in the fields of democracy promotion, human rights, good governance and economy, the EU’s incentivebased approach has not been sufficiently strong. Most of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries have embarked in the past years on a reversed path, amid growing illiberal and anti-democratic trends. Moreover, the Eastern proximity of the EU has gradually turned into a less stable and secure area, in spite of the originally stated goal of regional stability. In particular, the Ukrainian crisis, which erupted in the days after the EaP Summit in Vilnius in November 2013, has had a damaging effect on European security, ultimately raising additional challenges for the EU’s ‘transformative power’ in the region. Almost as a natural follow-up, a wave of criticism was triggered across the European political spectrum, castigating the neighbourhood strategy for its inconsistency and for not being able to bring about EU-driven change in third countries (see, for instance, Lehne 2014; Park 2014). This has placed the EU under strong scrutiny and pushed the European Commission to undertake a complete overhaul of these policies.1 As a result, the publication of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) review in November 2015 confirmed ‘the need for a new approach, a reprioritisation and an introduction of new ways of working’ (European Commission and High Representative 2015a: 2). The critical stance towards the ENP/EaP is nothing new. Various studies (Bechev and Nicolaïdis 2010; Börzel 2011; Korosteleva 2011, 2012; Langbein and Börzel 2013; Korosteleva et al. 2013) have pertinently claimed long before the 2015 review the need for revamping the EU’s neighbourhood strategy. A much more appealing policy would have been necessary in order to motivate the neighbouring states, particularly those negotiating Association Agreements including Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs), to take on approximation costs and in-depth reforms. Another point often made is that the EU has largely promoted ‘European values’ through ‘low’ politics and has seen the conclusion of Association Agreements as technocratic exercises while overlooking the political
consequences (Grant 2011; Nitoiu 2015). According to Korosteleva (2012: 46), one of the obvious shortcomings of the EaP has to do with its original design, which has chiefly been shaped through the EU’s internal lenses, despite the advocated joint ownership. As a result, the existing partnership has been ‘inherently hierarchical, in-cohesive and prescriptive’ (ibid.). It remains, hence, to be seen if the implementation of the recommendations from the ENP review can bring about a positive change. Against this backdrop, the chapter inquires whether the cognitive heuristics of bounded rationality – that is, the heuristics of availability and representativeness2 – have generated deviations from rational information processing and decisionmaking at the European level when crafting the neighbourhood frameworks (ENP/EaP). The chapter argues that cognitive shortcuts have played a disturbing role in the conceptualization phase of the neighbourhood strategy. Constrained by incomplete information and a high level of uncertainty when dealing with the new and composite environment at the Eastern border, EU decision makers were only able to offer, under the ENP/EaP, a limited form of commitment to the Eastern neighbours, which ultimately appeared to be inadequate given the complexity of the region. Moving beyond existing theoretical debates employed so far in the study of the EU’s neighbourhood policy, the bounded rationality approach makes a contribution to theory-building on the ENP by offering additional insights into the way the EU’s policies have been framed in relation to post-Soviet Eastern Europe. The novelty of this study consists in the analysis of the impact cognitive heuristics of bounded rationality have had on the EU decision-making process that led to pursuing the implementation of the neighbourhood frameworks in the Eastern proximity despite apparently adverse regional circumstances: the short history of independence of the post-Soviet countries, their unconsolidated sovereignty, the complicated domestic milieus, the geopolitical interests at stake and the involvement of Russia, to name just a few. The chapter introduces in the first section the bounded rationality approach into the study of the EU’s policy towards the Eastern neighbourhood. The next section provides empirical evidence of how the cognitive heuristics of bounded rationality are linked to the conceptualization of the neighbourhood instruments. The final section summarizes the findings and presents conclusions. The research method employed to uncover the implication of cognitive bounded rationality in the process of framing the neighbourhood strategy towards the EU’s Eastern proximity is in line with process tracing (George and Bennett 2005; Blatter and Haverland 2012; Schimmelfennig 2015). The article starts by drawing observations from the main theoretical interpretations which have so far sought to explain the EU’s approach towards its Eastern neighbourhood – constructivism and rational choice theories – subsequently looking at whether bounded rationality and its cognitive mechanisms can provide a more plausible explanation. After that, a selection of specific episodes in the process tracing analysis was made according to their relevance for the scope of this study and not necessarily in a full chronological order (Schimmelfennig 2015: 123).
