Actorness and power of the European Union

Abstract

By applying the realist, liberal and constructivist approaches to International Relations, in the light of the position the European Union holds in world politics, we are going to answer the question whether the aforementioned theoretical approaches see (do not see) a global actorness for the European Union. Each of the approaches answers the question of the EU’s own manifestation of its actor capacity-by means of using the concepts of the hard, the soft, and the normative power in the analysis. This shall be a way to investigating the degree of EU’s (global) actorness, as well as to testing its actorness through the actual implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy via the three aforementioned concepts of power.

Primenjujući realističke, liberalističke i konstruktivističke pristupe međunarodnim odnosima, a u svetlu položaja koji Evropska unija zauzima u svetskoj politici, pokušaćemo da odgovorimo na pitanje da li ti pristupi vide (ne vide) globalno akterstvo Evropske unije. Svaki od pristupa daje različit odgovor na pitanje kako Unija ispoljava svoj (akterski) kapacitet - kroz tvrdu, meku ili normativnu moć. Na ovaj način je moguće ispitati stepen razvoja (globalnog) akterstva Evropske unije i testirati njeno akterstvo posredstvom sprovođenja zajedničke spoljne i bezbednosne politike, a uz pomoć tri pomenuta vida moći.