Deconstructing "Ideal Power Europe": The EU and the Arab Change(Europe and the World)

Deconstructing “Ideal Power Europe”: The EU and Arab Change criticizes the dominant discourse on European foreign policy, which represents the EU as a force for good in world politics. Using a poststructuralist approach, it deconstructs the EU’s representation as “an ideal power” through an analysis of European foreign policy on the Southern Mediterranean before and after the Arab uprisings. In this endeavor, it displaces three major discourses which construct the EU as “ideal”: the “postmodern and post-sovereign EU”, “the EU as a model/a virtuous example”, and, “the EU as a normative power” discourses. The major argument of the book is that the “ideal power Europe” meta-narrative is especially produced and reproduced in the EU’s approach towards the Southern Mediterranean, and, it manifests itself through the rhetoric of “responsibility” and “universality” in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings. The book also provides an analysis of how the “ideal power Europe” meta-narrative feeds into and legitimizes European governmentality in the world, in general, and, in the case of the Southern Mediterranean after the Arab uprisings, in particular. Arguing that the depiction of the EU as postmodern/post-sovereign, as a model/an exemplar, and as a normative power pertains to the representation of a “regulatory ideal”, it elucidates how the EU pursues hegemonic practices in the Southern Mediterranean. It further manifests how the EU’s governmentality is marked by a securitized, depoliticizing, and technocratic approach which feeds into and gets legitimized by the dominant discourse on European foreign policy; reproducing the EU’s “ideal” identity vis-à-vis its “imperfect” Arab other.

Table of Contents:
1. Foreign Policy, Sovereignty, Identity and Foreign Policy Research 2. European Foreign Policy Research: An Overview 3. The “Ideal Power Europe” Metanarrative 4. European Foreign Policy on the Southern Mediterranean: Discourse, Practice, and Research 5. Displacing the ‘Ideal Power Europe’ Meta-Narrative: A Second Reading of European Foreign Policy Regarding Arab Change

About the Author :
Münevver Cebeci is associate professor at Marmara University.

Review :
In this excellent and highly engaging analysis of EU discourses on the Southern Mediterranean, Cebeci masterfully unsettles the comfortable self-appraisals of many EU scholars and practitioners. A sobering must-read for anyone interested in EU foreign policy and EU-Arab relations. At a time when the EU seems to be in search of its role and identity in general and vis-à-vis its neighbors in particular, Münevver Cebeci offers a very timely and distinct analysis of the role of discourse in EU foreign policy. By providing a detailed post-structuralist interrogation of how the EU uses discourse and the depiction of itself as post-modern, post-sovereign and normative as tools to construct and reproduce an “ideal” self and an “inferior” and “imperfect” other, she sheds a much welcome light on the de facto legitimizing practices driving the EU’s supposedly hegemonic ambitions in the space beyond its territorial borders. Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality approach, this insightful study is a stark and much overdue reminder to all European Studies scholars and students alike to look beneath the surface of idealized and idealizing role concepts and EU foreign policy behavior. With this enlightening book, Cebeci puts herself at the forefront of the literature addressing the linkage between EU foreign policy, identity and sovereignty." In this book Münevver Cebeci offers a reading of current EU policy towards the Southern Mediterranean that is both critical and original. In contrast to the overwhelming majority of accounts in this field, the book provides a historically conscious account of the EU’s current approach to its southern “neighborhood”. Cebeci debunks a number of tacit assumptions and myths that cloud our understanding of the EU’s foreign policy – its current orientation, its past record and its future prospects. As she also skilfully shows, these myths are not only perpetuated by the EU organizations itself; they are also the result of a vast scholarship, stuck in an idealized conception of the EU project. In a world where Europe’s influence is arguably more necessary than ever, Munevver Cebeci provides us with a precious counterpoint to the dominant analysis on EU foreign policy. The EU may think of itself as an "ideal power,” in contrast in particular to its imperfect Arab neighbor, but such is not the secret for effectiveness in a post-colonial world. In the end, says Dr Cebeci, the EU will need to move from its narrow emphasis over security concerns and technocratic recipes to the more robust politics of democratic transformation in the region.