Arrival of Normative Power in Planetary Politics

For the past two decades, the ‘Normative Power Approach’ (NPA) has affected both academic and policymaking debates on the European Union (EU) in global politics. Since its publication in the Journal of Common Market Studies in 2002, the Normative Power article has remained one of the highest cited and most influential articles in the study of European integration. Importantly, the NPA is one of the very few approaches in EU studies applied outside of the field to China, India, Russia, Japan, USA, Turkey, ASEAN, and other polities.

The NPA opened up the study of the EU in global politics to normative theory, specifically the use of Critical Social Theory. The approach also opened up for constitutive understandings and causal explanations of the EU in global politics, specifically through the concept of European Communion and theory of radical agonistic cosmopolitics. Finally, the approach opened up for practical theory of EU external actions, specifically normative justification as shared actions in concert that reshape conceptions of normal for the common good.

The twentieth anniversary forum provides a unique opportunity to reflect and develop the ideas of the original article through both a retrospective of the last two decades and a prospective on the arrival of normative power in planetary politics. The forum sets out a prospective on theorising normative power in the rapidly shifting context of 21st century planetary politics. It begins with a key intervention article on arrival of normative power in planetary politics, where ‘planetary politics’ are characterised by truly planetary relations of causality that can only be understood and addressed holistically. In the context of climate emergency, Coronavirus pandemic, and their socio-economic and political consequences, a planetary political approach to understanding the EU is an essential starting point. Following this ‘arrival’ intervention, contributing authors respond to the article from their own theoretical perspective. The proposal thus changes the role of the forum away from delivering an ‘exclusive’ retrospective towards opening up the discussion to a more inclusive prospective on the EU in 21st century planetary politics.

The twentieth anniversary forum of JCMS on the arrival of normative power in planetary politics brings together leading theorists of the EU as a global actor to reflect on, react to, and develop, a range of diverse theoretical approaches in order to advance the field into the 21st century. The contributors are carefully chosen for their diversity of theoretical perspectives and their mixture of experiences in the field. Furthermore, the forum has the explicit aim of being both retrospective and prospective, and generating theoretical insights into normative power that can be applied to political actors outside the immediate field.