'Normative power Europe' meets economic liberalism: Complicating cosmopolitanism inside/outside the EU. (June 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Parker, Owen; Rosamond, Ben
• Editors: Nicolaïdis, Kalypso; Whitman, Richard G
• Is Part Of: Cooperation and conflict. Volume 48:Number 2(2013)
• Page Start: 229
• Page End: 246
• Publication Date: 2013-06
• Subjects: Cosmopolitanism -- economic liberalism -- European Union -- normative power; International cooperation -- Periodicals; 327.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0010836713485388
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0010-8367

Abstract

This article offers a reading of 'normative power Europe' (NPE) suggesting that the concept has been used for two distinct purposes: as a distinctive ontological characterisation of the EU, on the one hand, and as a critical approach to the study of the EU and its external projection, on the other. These positions are labelled 'NPE ontological reality' (NPE-OR) and 'NPE critical ontology' (NPE-CO), respectively, and this article sets out to show how they might work together in practice, even if they are incommensurable in theory. It is argued that NPE's ethico-political value resides in the extent that it embodies an ontologically plural reality, never entirely defined. By drawing attention to a blind-spot in the NPE position – the constitutive importance of economic liberalism ('market cosmopolitanism') to the EU's post-Westphalian character – attention is drawn to the normative basis of market cosmopolitanism and its connections to NPE-OR are described. It is argued that, from an NPE-CO perspective, we should exercise caution in celebrating NPE-OR as post-Westphalian reality to the extent that it is rooted in a market cosmopolitics.