Normative Power in the Planetary Organic Crisis

The lead intervention article argues that the new reality of the planetary organic crisis awaits a normative critical social theory of planetary politics, a means of understanding the sharing of relationships within International Relations and an agenda for action in concert found in the normative power approach. The article and subsequent 20th anniversary special issue provide an opportunity to reflect and develop the ideas of the original Journal of Common Market Studies ‘normative power’ article through a prospective on the use of normative power in addressing the planetary organic crisis. The special issue sets out a prospective on theorising normative power in the rapidly shifting context of 21st-century planetary organic crisis involving interacting and deepening structural crises of economic inequality, social injustice, ecological unsustainability, ontological insecurity and political irresilience – as demonstrated by the global financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine. It begins by setting out the normative power approach to planetary organic crisis, where 21st-century politics are characterised by truly planetary relations of causality that can only be understood and addressed holistically. In the wider context of climate emergency, food and water insecurity and their socio-economic and political consequences, a planetary political approach to understanding the European Union is an essential starting point.