ABSTRACT
Introduction This edited volume testifies to the potential for a rich and innovative debate about the European Union’s (EU) neighbourhood policy and to the numerous ways in which this subject can be meaningfully treated from a theoretical perspective. In so doing, it not only demonstrates that the current state of the art of theoretical reflection on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) can be usefully built on, but also how many of its main shortcomings can be addressed and overcome. Chapter 1 of this volume provides a critical review of the theoretical gist of existing ENP studies, highlighting in particular three clusters of approaches. A first approach draws on international relations (IR) theories and essentially stages a replay of the general debates in that discipline, notably with regard to two allegedly competing logics of action. The resulting dichotomization between interests and a ‘logic of consequences’ and norms and a ‘logic of appropriateness’ is considered as unhelpful for a full understanding and explanation of the ENP. A second cluster of scholarship is inspired by EU enlargement studies, reproducing to a certain extent a fallacy made by EU policymakers themselves about the replicability of policies. Taking concepts and theoretical propositions from the enlargement context, in which an EU membership perspective is present, and applying them to the – very different – neighbourhood context is characterized as a flawed ceteris paribus assumption that does not stand the test of social reality. Finally, Chapter 1 identifies theoretical approaches inspired by foreign policy analysis (FPA) as a third strand of ENP-oriented research but finds that these are – so far – overly actor-focused, preoccupied with understanding and explaining EU decision-making and action but often neglecting the external environment that the Union has to operate in. This concluding chapter, while referring back to these three major approaches, draws the main findings of the 12 chapters of Parts I to III of this volume together, highlighting how they can advance the state of the art. Based on this synthesis, it suggests a new research programme intended to further the critical reflection on ways in which to theorize the ENP in order to explain its origins, development and effectiveness, but also to think beyond this rigid institutional framework and in terms of alternative policies.
