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Africa–EU Relations and Normative Power Europe: A Decolonial Pan‐African Critique
Author(s) -
Staeger Ueli
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12350
Subject(s) - normative , conceptualization , european union , power (physics) , paternalism , political science , convergence (economics) , sociology , political economy , law , economics , economic growth , philosophy , international trade , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
The debate on NPE (Normative Power Europe) has flourished for more than a decade. NPE has shaped Africa–EU relations considerably, especially since the founding of the AU (African Union). Yet while the EU aspires to be a post‐imperial, normative power, this postcolonial critique suggests NPE is a neo‐Kantian, Eurocentric discourse that reinvigorates an outdated European moral paternalism. The article explores the role of NPE in Africa–EU relations through a Foucauldian conceptualization of knowledge in EU foreign policy, and insists particularly on how pan‐African regionalization and NPE led to unwarranted optimism about deploying European norms in Africa. To the contrary, a decolonial perspective reveals that AU–EU inter‐regional structural and organizational convergence enchains only frail normative convergence, which will diminish as the pan‐African project unfolds further.