Normative Power in the Planetary Organic Crisis

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. In the ten years since the decennial special issue of Cooperation and Conflict on normative power, the analytical focus of the NPA has broadened away from internal EU politics towards application 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 special issue provides a unique opportunity to reflect and develop the ideas of the original article through both a prospective on the use of normative power in addressing the ‘planetary organic crisis’ (Gill and Benatar, 2020). 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 economy/development, society, ecology, politics, culture and ethics – in ways that are unsustainable’ (Gill and Benatar, 2020: 5), as demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It begins with a key intervention article on normative power in 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 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 intervention article, contributing authors respond to the article from their own theoretical perspectives. The concluding article will be written by two leading authors in International Relations, Thomas Diez and Ben Rosamond, who have both participated in the development of the normative power approach over the past two decades since 2000.

The twentieth anniversary issue of Cooperation and Conflict on the normative power in the planetary organic crisis 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, ranging from established professors to early-career researchers. Furthermore, the special issue has the explicit aim of being prospective, and thus generating theoretical insights into normative power that can be applied to political actors outside the immediate field. In this context, the special issue aims to develop the normative power approach for application to international, regional, and transnational actors, as well as states.