Abstract
This chapter addresses the issue of European Union (EU) actorness, questioning the ways in which this conceptual debate has evolved and to what extent it remains a relevant analytical tool of the EU’s international presence. This chapter starts by map** the existing state-of-the-art on EU actorness, focusing particularly on the debates on international agency and the main tensions resulting from its application to the EU. It then moves on to address the issue of operational capacities, linking their development to the issues of purpose, legitimacy and recognition. This framework of analysis identifies key conceptual links between the different dimensions of “actorness” in the current contested international context and reinforces the constructivist argument of the book that actorness should be defined in a way as to encompass processes, values and principles, norms and rules, as well as the intersubjective nature of relations, which attribute meaning to capabilities.
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Notes
- 1.
These included the end of the Soviet Union and the political fragmentation that ensued, the end of the Yugoslav Federation and the violent conflicts in the Balkans, new violent conflicts in the Horn of Africa, among others.
- 2.
Since the early 2000s, the EU defined a series of strategic partnerships, including with the United States, Russia, China and India, among others.
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Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges funding for research from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN-ETN) of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under grant agreement “CASPIAN - Around the Caspian: a Doctoral Training for Future Experts in Development and Cooperation with Focus on the Caspian Region” (642709 — CASPIAN — H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014).
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Simão, L. (2022). Unpacking the EU’s International Actorness: Debates, Theories and Concepts. In: Freire, M.R., Lopes, P.D., Nascimento, D., Simão, L. (eds) EU Global Actorness in a World of Contested Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92997-8_2
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