ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of European power and investigates the relationship between the civilian, normative and military character of the European power. Civilian power' has been defined as involving three key features: the centrality of economic power to achieve national goals; the primacy of diplomatic cooperation to solve international problems; the willingness to use legally-binding supranational institutions to achieve international progress. Ian Manners effort begins by briefly surveying the conceptual history of civilian power' and military power Europe' since the early 1980s in order to locate these traditional conceptions of the EU's international role. Manners' empirical evidence that the EU is a normative power relies largely on the policies it pursues and his work has had a considerable impact on the study of European foreign policy. While normative power and military power are not incompatible, they can be in a serious tension and therefore this fact should not be ignored in the development of European Security and Defense Policy.
