Critical Security Governance and the European Neighbourhood Policy after the Arab Spring: Continuity or 'Substantive' Change?

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Neighbourhood Policy after the Arab Spring:

Continuity or ‘Substantive’ Change?

Euan D. Carss - s1578510

MSc Crisis and Security Management - Master Thesis

Track: September 2014

Leiden University,

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Supervisor: Drs. Richard ‘t Hart

Second Reader: Dr. Caspar van den Berg

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Introduction

Decades ago, many observers of the early European Union (EU) debated if the burgeoning supranational organisation even had the capacity for an effective or meaningful ‘foreign policy’

at all (Bull, 1982). Today however, deliberations surrounding the EU’s external role in foreign affairs have primarily come to center around the determinant characteristics of the EU’s so-called ‘novel’ approach to foreign policy, and the perceived particularities of the institution itself - in many ways understood as being dissimilar to conventional nation states and international organisations in both its actions and roles abroad. Thus, today, to speak of an ‘EU foreign policy’ is to speak of a curious external political force, active (to varying degrees) in a number of different regions around the world, constituting the trade-offs of interest amongst a diverse collection of member states (MS), while altogether overseen by a complex and multifaceted, institutional and legal treaty-based organisational framework. The enigmatic nature of the EU in this regard has stimulated a great deal of academic and scholarly research on the now varied ‘foreign policy’ elements of the institution in recent years - indeed, the thematic and topical origin of the present thesis are well placed, and timely, in this context.

From the EU’s perceived ‘actorness’ abroad (Wunderlich, 2008), its raison d’être (e.g. norms and values or security and economic interests) for engagement with its various foreign partners (Manners, 2002; Hyde-Price, 2006) and studies attempting to quantify

1

Figure 1 - Current ENP Countries shown in Green (Assembly of European Regions - 2015)

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and qualify particular EU foreign policy ‘successes’ in different contexts abroad (Hill, 2004) - academic interest in EU foreign relations, to date, has shown little sign of abating. While studies of particular facets of EU foreign policy are indeed many and varied, one theme in particular has occupied the attention of interested scholars more recently - this being the EU’s relationship with the countries directly on its ‘near abroad’. Stretching from Morocco in the west to Azerbaijan in the east (see Figure 1) - the region often coined as the ‘EU’s neighbourhood’ typically concerns the areas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the former Soviet countries of Eastern Europe. While even a cursory glance over European history confirms the continent’s longstanding, historic interest and involvement with such countries on its near abroad, it is only in the last few decades or so that Europe, by way of the EU, has adopted a series of common policies orientated directly towards these neighbouring regions, encompassing the political, social and economic elements guiding and determining the boundaries of their engagement with one another.

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Thus, it can be argued strongly that the current upward trajectory of academic interest in ‘neighbourhood relations’ started primarily around the time of the EU’s fifth round of enlargement - divided in two between 2004 and 2007 - whereby the Union’s external borders were redrawn significantly (see Figure 2). Ten countries joined the EU in 2004, and a further two in 2007. Simply, as the Union became ever larger, so too did its borders and, as a result, so too did the ‘new’ regions of interest surrounding it.1 To the East, the EU’s newest neighbours were generally considered to be economically and politically unstable - given their relatively recent independence from the clutches of the Soviet Union. To the South on the other hand, EU officials were gradually becoming increasingly aware of the need to reform the institution’s existing foreign policy frameworks towards the MENA region; namely the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership2 and the various Partnership and Cooperation Agreements3 that had been drawn up in the preceding decades (Smith, 2005; 759). Thus, in preparation for both enlargement (eastern-orientation) and reform (southern-orientation), the European Commission released a communication in 2003 entitled: ‘The Wider Europe Neighbourhood, A New Framework for Relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours’ (COM 104 final, 2003).

Outlining a proposal for a single, unified policy response towards the EU’s existing and new neighbouring countries, the contents of such a document were made in congruence with the EU’s broader ‘Security Strategy’ that was actively in force at the time - with an overarching aim therefore in striving to secure Europe by way of enhancing stability in its immediate neighbourhood and throughout the wider world (Wesselink & Boschma, 2012). EU leaders however, anticipating future exhaustion and apathy on behalf of existing EU MS, regarding further accession of non-EU member states to the Union following the largest intake of new members to date, decided that no prospect of EU

1_{2004
(Cyprus,
Czech
Republic,
Estonia,
Hungary,
Latvia,
Lithuania,
Malta,
Poland,
Slovakia
and}

Slovenia), 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania)

2_{The
Euro-‐Mediterranean
Partnership,
or
‘Barcelona
Process’
for
short,
was
the
EU’s
first}

comprehensive policy for the region (1995) and covered political, economic and social cooperation aimed at achieving peace, stability and growth in the EU’s neighbourhood.

3_{Partnership
and
Cooperation
Agreements
were
primarily
bilateral,
legally
binding
agreements} between the EU and third-‐countries aimed at supporting the democratic and economic development of such countries.

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membership was to be offered to the countries involved in the ‘new neighbourhood project’. Instead, closer political cooperation and economic integration (ultimately with access to the EU common market) would be rewarded in return for the participant countries’ convergence with the EU’s common, overarching acquis, including, but not exclusive to; economic regulation, border security, immigration measures, improved human rights, democratic reform, and increasing the capacities of civil society. The EU thus endeavoured to offer “all but institutions” (Prodi, 2002) to its neighbours, with the legality of the policy resting on (and eventually subsuming) the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements and Euro-Med Partnership frameworks already in place.

Indeed, the European Council’s own approval of the direction of the proposal in 2004 confirmed the start of what would become known as the ‘European Neighbourhood Policy’ (ENP) - the central case focus of the present thesis. Its goal; to create a “ring of friends” around Europe, with which it was hoped the EU would come to have close, cooperative and peaceful relations (COM 373 final, 2004). With respect to the southern dimension specifically therefore, it was decided that previous EU-Mediterranean policies would be given time to converge with the newly adopted ENP; with a view that by no later than 2013, the ENP would have incorporated all existing regional policies and be backed by its own particular financial instruments (Wesselink & Boschma, 2012; 6). All in all, the ENP sought to harmonize the functionality and procedures associated with the EU’s role in the southern Mediterranean (Wesselink & Boschma, 2012; 7), while also addressing the limited scope of its older policies that had inadvertently began to create a number of significant gaps in EU foreign policy towards the region more generally (Wesselink & Boschma, 2012; 7).4

Upon the ENP’s implementation in the southern Mediterranean in 2004, scholars thus began to appropriate the policy from a variety of different perspectives - a trend that has indeed continued to this day. Owing to its largely ‘reformative’ nature upon its inception

4_{For
a
more
succinct
and
detailed
account
of
previous
EU
policies
prior
to
the
ENP
towards
its} neighbourhood, see (Wesselink & Boschma, 2012)

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in 2004 - with regards to overturning the existing EU-Med policies of the EU - scholars such as Del Sarto and Schumacher (2005) and Smith (2005) for example, focused on the differences between the ENP and other such prior EU ‘neighbourhood’ policy approaches. Some scholars instead looked at the ENP in isolation - attempting to explain its origin, rationale, development and potential shortcomings for the future (Emerson, 2004; Wallace, 2003; Missiroli, 2003). Other scholars still, assessed EU-Med relations more generally, focusing on aspects such as the underlying political and security logics of the ENP (Balfour, 2004); the origin and basic model for such ‘third-party’ relations in the first place (Bicchi, 2004; Smith, 2005); and the potential for the ENP to be a ‘positive force’ for change abroad with regards to the overall external ‘actorness’ of the EU (Emerson and Noutcheva, 2005). All-in-all, each appropriated the ENP not only with such specific ‘themes’ of research in mind, but also from different theoretical and conceptual standpoints - largely mirroring the broader paradigms concerned with international relations (IR) more generally.

Subsequently, many debates concerning the EU’s actions and roles with respect to its neighbourhood - and those focusing on the ENP in particular - broadly became intertwined and synonymous with different International Relations (IR), political and social-science ‘schools-of-thought’ - each with their own specific analytical predispositions and theoretical leanings. Scholars from both the Constructivist and Critical ‘turns’ in such disciplines for example each weighed in, appropriating the ENP in terms of its underlying normative content - focusing primarily on the values and norms observed to underpin EU action, specifically in its neighbourhood, but also abroad more generally (Manners, 2002; Diez, 2005; Pace, 2007; Ciambria, 2008). Conversely, others looked at the ENP and the EU’s foreign policy from a primarily security-oriented, interest-driven perspective, focusing on the ENP instead as a conduit for implementing and achieving the EU’s burgeoning realpolitik interests on its near abroad, namely those concerning security, stability and trade-gains for example (Youngs, 2004; Hyde-Price, 2006; Seeberg, 2009). Given the growing prevalence of such polarized approaches in the fields of IR and social-sciences in recent times therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that today much of the literature on the ENP (and indeed, EU foreign policy more generally) continues to stem from such ‘norms vs. interests’/’idealism vs. realism’ debates, or at

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least engages with them to a degree. On the face of it the present thesis is not so different in this regard (as will be conveyed in due course) but such traditional, binary ‘pardigmical’ debates - as will be shown later here - can just as easily be a point of departure for various aspects of EU foreign policy research, as they can their foundation.

Indeed, one such novel analytical tool, born out of the constructive debates eluded to above and increasingly used by scholars when dealing with European security and foreign policy trends in recent years, has been the notion of ‘security governance’. Such an approach owes a great deal to the debates touched on above, however it has also been cast by scholars as a much-needed alternative to such approaches when one’s focus becomes less about EU foreign policy more generally - as a phenomenon in its own right - and more about particular policies and their various, complex features. Appropriated both as an academic concept emphasising the range of ‘new’ actors, arrangements and instruments involved in the provision of security and as a real-world political practice serving as the basis for more effective and legitimate forms of security provision by these various actors therefore, security governance has increasingly been applied to the study and provision of different forms and understandings of contemporary ‘security’. Security governance has also been perceived of as having a certain ‘European’ particularity - Europe (or, more specifically, the EU) often being understood as having a distinct and novel approach to the provision of different ‘securities’ (much in the same manner as notions pertaining to its specific particularities vis-à-vis its foreign policies), encompassing a range of actors, an array of instruments and operating differentially both spatially and across time. Thus, the concept has been readily applied to arrangements such as those concerning individual cases of local-actor responsibilization in various EU MS for example (e.g. local neighbourhood-watch schemes), to ones more directly related to international security actors - with which the EU and its members now have a stake in - such as the United Nations (e.g. the UN Security Council). Furthermore, a number of studies have also began to touch upon the concept with respect to the study of specific EU polices, such as the ENP - arguing that the ENP is an example of the EU’s internal governance of external security field (Lavanex & Wichmann, 2008; Lavanex & Schimmelfennig, 2009; Ehrhart et al, 2014). The concept of security governance today has therefore emerged as a distinct analytical perspective on the EU’s actorness abroad in

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its own right - both complementing and challenging the traditional approaches conventionally utilised by scholars interested in the study of EU foreign policy in equal measure.

Despite the term’s growth academically however, a number of scholars have, even more recently, begun to question the largely descriptive and technical manner by which the concept of security governance has typically been applied to particular cases by its proponents. Such a ‘benign’ view of security governance arrangements, in their opinion, whereby the primary (and often sole) focus has simply been on the functions of security governance cases such as the ENP, is thought to overlook important questions usually hidden by conventional security governance proponents’ often misplaced central claims and assumptions about consensus, inclusivity, heterarchical coordination and inbuilt effectiveness and legitimacy (Ehrhart et al, 2014; Dandashly, 2014). Broadly dubbed ‘Critical scholars’, academics that question security governance in this manner have sought to move beyond purely functionalist appreciations of security provision and instead look to capture what they consider to be the significant frictions and dilemmas typically inherent and substantial - but often overlooked - within security governance arrangements such as the ENP today. Such frictions and dilemmas are indeed perceived to be potentially greatly significant - having a number of practical consequences vis-à-vis the actual cases of security governance observable throughout the world today, however in its current format, critical security governance remains a primarily heuristic tool, without its causal potential having been fully realised or as yet adequately conceptualised. Indeed, with regards to assessing the ENP in particular - as the present thesis seeks to do - the adoption of a more theoretically grounded critical appreciation of the conventional security governance concept can be revealed to help not only elucidate prevailing problematiques underlying, within, and emanating from, the security governance aspects of the policy itself, but also be shown to be a useful analytical tool for the exploration of quasi-causal security governance characteristics and their possible impacts upon various facets of the ENP. Given the multiplicity of debates and approaches with respect to researching the ENP over time, what then is the overarching research question guiding the main line of inquiry of the present thesis? Indeed, what is the

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relevance of asking such a question in the first place and how relevant may aspects of the above debates prove to be in uncovering its answer?

On the 4th March 2015, the European Commission, through the High Representative of Foreign Affairs (HRFA), issued a ‘joint consultation paper’ entitled: ‘Towards a new European Neighbourhood Policy’ (JOIN 6 final, 2015). Its aim - to collect and collate a range of perspectives, as held by a variety of different agents5, on both the past and current experiences of the ENP, with a further view to fully reviewing the policy over the coming years (JOIN 6 final, 2015). One may indeed wonder as to the actual significance of such a review - granted, such cases of policy feedback and the subsequent reworking of specific EU policies are rather common occurrences within the institution’s various policy domains - not least in areas relating to its multifaceted foreign policy, whereby the ‘state of affairs’ often changes day-by-day and a large collective of actors and interests are at play - not to mention the additional attention paid to EU foreign policies today by many observers and scholars critical of the institution’s various approaches in this regard.

Significant however, it most certainly is. Most curious is the fact that the launching of such a comprehensive review of the ENP in 2015 comes only four short years after an unprecedented reform of the entire policy, by the EU, in the wake of the Arab Spring revolts in 2011. Back then, not only did the revolts have a profound effect on the countries of the EU’s southern neighbourhood - leading to regime change and a number of protracted civil wars in certain neighbouring states - but they also proved to be the fundamental catalyst for the EU in terms of its seeking to ‘radically’ and ‘substantively’ reform the ENP - the eventual enactment of which still currently represents the policy’s greatest revision to date. Indeed, it is the contention of the present thesis that such an interesting situation calls both the EU itself and the current formulation of the ENP into question; does the swift call by the EU presently, to again seek to reform the ENP

5_{For
example,
public
consultation
from
EU
MS,
partner
governments,
EU
institutions,
international} organizations, social partners, civil society, business, think tanks, academic and members of the public (JOIN 6 final, 2015).

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comprehensively, imply that its preceding attempt at ‘substantive’ reform has, in some manner, failed? Indeed, by turning one’s attention to the past, such an obvious yet general quandary - in the wider context of the brief theoretical and conceptual discussions of EU actorness detailed both above and below - can be re-framed and re-imagined in a more clear and concise manner for the purpose of this thesis. A central, overarching research question therefore emerges, it being: how did the EU respond after the Arab Spring, with respect to reforming the ENP and can security governance aspects of the policy be revealed to have been relevant to this response?

To begin, and to eventually end up, answering such a question in an adequate and comprehensive manner therefore, one must embark on a detailed analysis and assessment of an extremely complex policy, as conceptualised and implemented by a notoriously multifarious supranational institution. Not only that, but one must also engage with, depart from, or at least contend with, the vast and convoluted literature that exists today on the EU generally, and on EU foreign policy and the ENP more specifically. Most important at this stage however, is to understand the initial implications of posing and responding to such a question in the first place; what are the constituent components of such a central, overarching research question and indeed how will the present research more generally go about tackling them?

The overarching, central research question underpinning the present inquiry above, poses two additional points of interest if it is indeed to be answered sufficiently - two key constituent components if you like. First, one must look to the past and appropriate and scrutinise the ENP in terms of its most recent post-Arab Spring review. The EU, as introduced above, communicating in 2011, called for the ‘substantive’ reform of the ENP and has since repeatedly emphasised the ‘far-reaching’ and ‘comprehensive’ nature of this reform (COM 200 final, 2011; COM 303 final, 2011). Given this fact, the first component to focus on in the context of this thesis is: how ‘substantive’ were the changes made to the ENP, by the EU, following its post-Arab Spring reform of the policy in 2011? Second, and very closely related, one must attempt to provide an answer as to why such changes have been as they have been in the context of their ‘substantive’ nature - a point compartmentalised by our central research question in terms of appropriating: can

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security governance aspects of the policy be revealed to have been relevant to this response? Thus, this second component of the central research question implies the application of a particular analytical approach - being as it is (for the purpose of this thesis) an adapted model of a specific aspect of the critical security governance framework - which is discussed and developed purposely with the above central research question in mind in Chapter 2, and further operationalized for the purpose of Chapters 4 and 5 in Chapter 3. By exploring these two components of the overarching, central research question in great depth, a comprehensive understanding of (i) the nature of EU’s previous ENP reform attempt post-Arab Spring, (ii) likely reasons behind the nature of the EU’s previous reform attempt post-Arab Spring will be established - a focus that is indeed indispensable and invaluable if one is to answer adequately the question of; how did the EU respond after the Arab Spring, with respect to reforming the ENP and can security governance aspects of the policy be revealed to have been relevant to this response?

This thesis is developed as follows. First, it traces the rise of security governance conceptually and practically over the past decade in the context of the traditional debates of EU actorness introduced above - identifying the concept’s core, primary characteristics, a number of its shortcomings and thus also introducing the merits of instead adopting an alternative, adapted ‘critical’ security governance approach when analysing specific policies such as the ENP - focusing on acute questions born out of the Constructivist and Critical turns in social science more generally (Chapter 2). Second, Chapter 3 is dedicated to operationalizing the above central research question - also with respect to mapping the aforementioned components of such a question - in effect re-establishing and re-orientating the research focus of the present thesis in the context of the relevant theory discussed at length in Chapter 2 and the desirable, discernable expectations and methodology of the proceeding research. Third, this thesis will then go on to summarise the significance of, and reactions to, the Arab Spring uprisings vis-à-vis the EU, before proceeding to assess the key goals of the ENP both before and after the revolts. Through a broadly comparative analysis of the core goals and instruments of the ENP pre- and post-Arab Spring - democracy promotion, mobility and migration management and conflict management - a strong case is made for the EU’s inability to

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have ‘substantively’ reformed the policy, both rhetorically and operationally, despite pressures emanating from the Arab Spring and the EU’s oft-self-acknowledged need for such reform prior, during and after the revolts. Thus, the ENP will effectively be ‘problematized’ in terms of this distinct lack of ‘substantive’ change (Chapter 4). Fourth, given the EU’s clear inability to ‘substantively’ reform the main goals of the ENP following the Arab Spring - an adapted model of ‘critical’ security governance, theoretically grounded in Chapter 2 and operationalized in Chapter 3, will then be utilised in order to emphasise the ‘quasi-causal linkages’ suggested by this thesis - between the contested characteristics of EU MS foreign policies underpinning the ENP on one hand, and the EU’s inability to ‘substantively’ reform the ENP as a result of such contestation on the other (Chapter 5).

In the final analysis (Chapter 6), it will be concluded that (i) the EU’s policy response post-Arab Spring has been weak, thus not bringing about the ‘substantive’ changes envisaged or later claimed by the EU and that, (ii) a likely reason for the EU’s inability to reform the ENP in this regard, concerns a situation of contestation between EU MS, with regards to the largely normative- or interest-based nature of their respective foreign policies, in the context of the main goals of the ENP. By asking and answering the central research question guiding this thesis therefore - how did the EU respond after the Arab Spring with respect to reforming the ENP and can security governance aspects of the policy be revealed to have been relevant to this response? - not only can a better understanding of the ‘state-of play’ with respect to the ENP in its current formation today be garnered but, moreover, one can also gain an insight into why the EU seeks yet another reform of the policy so soon after the first. Subsequently, one can also appropriate broadly the EU’s chances of actually being able to fundamentally reform the ENP this time round and furthermore, offer some keen insight into the utility and merits of adopting a critical security governance perspective in the case of analysing particular EU foreign policies such as the ENP.

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EU Actorness and EU Security Governance:

from Conventional to Critical

2.1 Analysing EU Foreign Policy: From ‘what kind’ of actor, to ‘how’ and ‘why’ the EU acts abroad

The overarching themes and topics of the present thesis - the case focus of the ENP, notions of the EU’s reform of the policy, and the context of the Arab Spring as born out of the central research question - are typically subject matters related by EU scholars to issues concerning the EU’s external actions abroad, the EU’s own self-sense of foreign identity and the EU’s main foreign policy components towards the MENA region - indeed, the institution’s ‘actorness’6. Understanding where such matters typically lie, in relation to the broader debates of EU foreign policy and EU actorness more generally, can therefore help to better understand the merits and limitations of such debates themselves, while also providing an invaluable first-step towards contextualising the research aims of this thesis and justifying the theoretical approach that will be used in the final analysis - critical security governance. Thus, this section will first detail the nature of common approaches towards the study of EU foreign policy and the ENP more generally - introducing their key merits and limitations - before proposing an alternative approach based on such shortcomings that will then be discussed in much greater detail in the proceeding sections of this chapter.

The most common debate of EU foreign policy scholarship in recent years has been the insistence that the EU seeks to follow a particular ‘logic of action’ when conducting its foreign policies abroad. Indeed, the focus of such debates has largely centered around attempting to define what kind of actor the EU is vis-à-vis its external actions - the argument being that the EU’s roles and actions abroad are best explained by the nature and character of the institution itself - indeed, its very identity (Youngs, 2004). Such logics have typically concerned a simplistic juxtaposition between ‘norms’ and ‘interests’ - denoting the various identity- and interest-based motivations that can be observed to

6_{Actorness
denotes
the
EU’s
ability
to
function
actively
and
deliberately
in
relation
to
other
actors
in}

the international system (Sjöstedt, 1977).

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underpin the EU’s many actions abroad and its now quite substantial foreign policies more generally (Noutcheva et al, 2013). Some scholars have therefore defined the very nature of the EU as being wholly normative on one hand - its external identity guided by a set of normative values and principles that it then seeks to diffuse beyond its borders in its relations with other countries through policies such as the ENP for example (Manners, 2002). Others, have instead postulated that the EU’s identity abroad is one more closely aligned with its pursual of its own strategic interests externally - including the security and stability of its near abroad (Hyde-Price, 2006). Others still have perceived the EU’s identity and actions abroad to largely constitute its pursual of both liberal and normative strategies as a means to further its own interests, a perspective somewhat bridging the gap therefore between the above two very polarised perspectives (Youngs, 2004; Smith, 2011).

Indeed, with respect to the more specific topics of EU foreign policy explored here - the ENP and the Arab Spring - the above debates, namely those concerning the normative elements of EU foreign policy, appear to have been well positioned to account for the EU’s at first tentative, though eventually strong interest in the revolts themselves; the supranational institution understood to have come to interpret the Arab Spring as being beneficial for democratic change in the Arab world as a whole - indeed, a positive ‘force for good’ mirrored by its own normative and value driven identity - a reflexive understanding of itself as a ‘guiding light’ of liberal democratic values and human rights promotion given the substantial changes going on in the region during and immediately after the uprisings (Noutcheva, 2014; 19). Moreover, such normative identity-motivations have also been thought of as having helped to pave the way for the EU’s actual reform of the ENP post-Arab Spring - the institution seeking to support such initial instances of democratic change in the region over the long term, by attempting to radically and substantively review its primary policy towards the MENA region itself in line with its own external character. Such identity concerns however, cannot explain the EU’s paralleled recourse to a strong security logic in other areas relating to the ENP post-Arab Spring (a hard security logic in the field of mobility and migration management for example) and in terms of the EU’s continued, and in many ways increasing, preoccupation with counterterrorism, conflict management and other associated ‘harder’

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security issues in its neighbourhood more recently (Pace, 2009; Youngs, 2010). Neither are such debates wholly suited to the study of particular policies in the context of specific events - the ENP, the nature of the changes made to it by the EU following the Arab Spring and the underlying reasons as to why the nature of such change has been as it has been, for example. Indeed, such notions are clearly somewhat more complex issues than ones simply born out of whether or not the EU acts based upon either a normative- or interest-based self-perception of itself vis-à-vis its role and actions abroad (though clearly such debates are relevant in some manner).

Indeed, in recent years, the emphasis placed by scholars in the manner described above on either identity- or interest-based motivations when seeking to analyse and explain the EU’s actions and roles abroad, has increasingly been challenged by those who postulate alternatively, that such normative and interest based concerns of the institution itself are not necessarily as diametrically opposed to one another as has typically been assumed in EU foreign policy scholarship to date. Attempts to describe and in many ways define the EU as being some sort of particular kind of power with respect to its foreign relations are to an extent well meaning and useful - in so much as they seek to better understand the nature of the actor behind the policies so to speak and to develop theory accordingly. However, when such an approach is applied to the study of particular EU foreign policies such as the ENP (or particular geopolitical events to which the EU has responded, such as the Arab Spring), it becomes increasingly clear that such narrow, binary perspectives of EU identity are in many ways severely limited analytical perspectives to take (Noutcheva, 2014; 20). Indeed, the insistence of some scholars that either values or strategic interests can best explain EU foreign policy action has increasingly been thought of as being misguided - assuming wrongly that the EU is a unitary actor (much like a traditional nation state) and thus overlooking the complex institutional make-up of the EU - in which its varied foreign policies, including the ENP, are conceptualised, developed and implemented (Noutcheva, 2014; 20). Such considerations and direct challenges towards the conventional norms/interests EU foreign policy debate may have themselves also come to the fore in IR and EU scholarship more concerned with the EU’s wider actorness in such regards, however they have instead sought to move the debate beyond an overriding focus on what kind of power the EU actually is vis-à-vis its external

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relations. In this manner, the primary focus of scholars critical of the traditional and binary norms/interests argument made by others - and indeed the actual level of analysis they utilise when analysing the EU and its foreign policies - has shifted more recently from one primarily preoccupied with the EU’s own self-identity, towards perspectives attempting to account for the EU’s multifaceted institutional character vis-à-vis its foreign relations (Bretherton & Volger, 2006; Gehring et al, 2013).

In contrast to the conventional norms/interests debates detailed above, more contemporary and current discussions regarding the EU’s actorness have moved somewhat away from explanations governed by the questioning of what kind of actor the EU actually is when conducting its foreign policy, instead looking to describe whether the EU can act in particular scenarios abroad and, more importantly, detailing the reasons why the EU acts or does not in any given situation (Noutcheva, 2014; 20). Indeed, topically and thematically, the central research question of the present thesis, on the face of it, appears to relate more closely to such approaches than it does to the what kind of power debate discussed above (though both are still clearly linked, to an extent). Understanding the EU’s policy response post-Arab Spring with respect to reforming the ENP and also attempting to account for possible reasons as to why this may have been, are therefore clearly questions concerning EU external actorness in a more specified manner than those pertaining to the EU’s overall identity - holding connotations of an interest in the underlying sources of policy-making, the actors involved in such arrangements and the mechanisms underpinning the conceptualisation, development and implementation of the ENP overtime. Thus, the desire to explore both the hows and whys of the EU’s reform of the ENP post-Arab Spring - as the present thesis seeks to do - demands that one clearly engages with a more institutional- and structurally-led investigation of EU foreign policy - and indeed of the ENP itself. But, given the ENP’s oft-noted complex and multifarious nature in comparison to other components of the EU’s burgeoning foreign policy, are these more contemporary forms of study relating to the EU’s actorness any more adept at doing so than those concerning the EU’s self-identity externally as discussed and discredited above?

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Simply, no. Thus, what such contemporary actorness debates have primarily failed to account for is, “the substantial variation in the EU’s recognition, authority, autonomy and capability in its various foreign policy domains” (Börzel et al, 2014). The majority of scholars concerned with the hows and whys of the EU’s actorness to date therefore - while assessing EU foreign policy in a more diffuse and nuanced manner than those seeking to simply define the EU’s very identity vis-à-vis its foreign relations - have only gone so far in accounting for the many complexities of specific EU foreign polices such as the ENP (Noutcheva, 2014; 20). Indeed, with respect to the ENP in particular, actorness debates emanating from a purely institutionalist and structural understanding of EU foreign policy as a whole, have also struggled themselves to deal with composite and multifaceted nature of the ENP itself across the board - being that it tends to cut across various functional domains relating to the EU’s actions and roles in its neighbourhood, while encompassing a range of goals, each concerning a multitude of different actors, preferences, priorities, and practices significant within the wider EU foreign policy framework (Noutcheva, 2014; 22). Any study of particular EU foreign policies therefore - while clearly part-and-parcel of the contemporary EU actorness debates to an extent - must be wary of such conceptual and theoretical limitations - and must therefore seek to justify its choice of theoretical framework based upon a real understanding of such, and make a judgement on what sort of theory may indeed seem most appropriate or suited for the specific task at hand.

The two predominant EU foreign policy actorness approaches discussed above - one based around the EU’s own self-identity and one more concerned with the institutional and structural conditions of EU actions and roles abroad - both seem somewhat wanting in the context of present research focus and given the subject-matter born out of the central research question that this thesis indeed seeks to further explore. The former on one hand, wrongly assumes that the EU is a unitary actor with a single, unified identity in its roles and actions abroad (Noutcheva, 2014; 22); while the latter tends to place too little an emphasis on the complex variations and multifaceted character of the EU’s, now many, varied foreign policies and their key constituent components (Noutcheva, 2014; 22). Furthermore, and perhaps most significant for this thesis, given their respective shortcomings - both approaches appear wholly limited in their capacity to gain a

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comprehensive understanding of particular EU foreign policies - an example being the ENP itself. Indeed, the ENP is not necessarily a policy born out of the EU acting either normatively or strategically; indeed, as will be shown, both value- and interest-based motivations on behalf of the EU (and the various actors that constitute the institution) can be seen to operate in parallel to one another in the context of the ENP - either peacefully coexisting or antagonistically contradicting one another in different scenarios - and this can further be seen to have a significant impact on the policy as whole at any given time. Furthermore, the ENP is not simply a reflection of the EU’s institutional structure with respect to its foreign policy actions abroad - both the EU itself and the ENP being made up of multiple actors, each with different but significant preferences when particular geopolitical contexts are taken into account.

Indeed, while the introduction of such structural- and institutionally-led approaches to the debate on the EU’s actorness has been a welcome one for many to the study of EU foreign policy more generally, the current focus of such approaches solely on EU foreign policy’s institutional establishment seems analytically narrow to say the least. Policies such as the ENP therefore - as touched on above and as will be described more comprehensively below - clearly concern much more than simply a forum for EU external representation, effective action and recognition abroad by third countries and other observers. Having moved therefore, from broader assessments of what kind of power the EU actually is, to the hows and whys of EU foreign policy action abroad, debates surrounding the EU’s external actorness are undoubtedly still very much contestable for interested scholars in the realms of both IR and EU studies today. Without a finite answer to the question of how we can best account for the now varied aspects of contemporary EU foreign policy and its constituent components therefore - indeed, how we seek to assess and analyse both the EU and its specific foreign policies - also remains a curiously open question. Indeed, the answer to such a query seems particularly ‘up-for-grabs’ and contestable when one considers EU foreign policy research concerned with specific EU foreign policies such as the ENP, rather than more general studies focused on EU foreign policy as a whole. As this discussion has indeed highlighted, conventional actorness approaches, with a focus on either the institutional- or identity-based factors of

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the EU’s role and actions abroad, seem particularly limited in terms of both case and question at hand in the present research.

It is largely for these reasons that this thesis seeks to employ a more novel approach to the study of the ENP and to related questions of the EU’s role and actions abroad - the adoption of an adapted critical security governance perspective. Taking on much from the preceding actorness debates (and their associated underlying, theoretical paradigms) while equally leaving much behind - as will be shown - critical security governance represents a comprehensive cross-disciplinary, theoretical, heuristic device for the analysis of questions relating to the study of EU foreign policy more generally, while also appearing adept at dealing with more implicitly-causal questions relating to particular EU foreign policies, such as the ENP itself once adequately developed and conceptualised to do so. With a strong Critically leaning conceptual and theoretical starting point, critical security governance represents an updated, reformed version of more commonplace, conventional security governance perspectives that will be discussed below. A concept broadly born out of constructivism, more general notions of security governance have likewise accepted a strong role for both norms and interests in the study of EU foreign policies - although their proponents are less interested in what this means for the EU’s overriding external identity per se, but instead on the possible affective qualities of multiple actor’s norms and interests, upon the formulation of such policies in the first instance. Moreover, they advocate a focus on multiple actors, their individual and collective preferences, their methods of cooperation and the consequences of their engagement with one another. Thus they move studies of particular EU foreign policies from being purely institutionally- and structurally-focused, to ones that are more nuanced and comprehensive - indeed, more adequately suited to assessing individual cases of specific EU foreign policies in a variety of different manners. Though some studies have indeed successfully utilised such conventional security governance approaches when undertaking EU foreign policy research to date, it has only been much more recently that Critical strands of theoretical work have sought to challenge, develop and build upon

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their central assumptions - adding an additional layer of conceptual nuance and utility to an already useful and insightful analytical tool.

What follows here is rather unchartered territory to say the least. The topics and themes associated with the central research question posed by this thesis are clearly ones more generally related to debates concerning the EU’s actorness abroad - the analytical weaknesses of which, as detailed above, clearly demand the adoption of an alternative approach given the case and the question currently at hand. Introduced here as security governance - the following theoretical and conceptual discussions in this chapter will chart this concept’s rise in prominence in the field of EU scholarship - taking note of its theoretical and conceptual predispositions, its core characteristics and its main merits in the context of the study of specific EU policies such as the ENP. However, given the real significance of the theoretical and conceptual shortcomings that can be associated with such a conventional approach, what follows in this chapter will also represent a problematization of the perspective and the introduction to the reader of an alternative, critical vision of the concept, theoretically developed as an alternate quasi-causal tool for the proceeding analysis of this thesis specifically, but also for studies of EU foreign policy more generally. Before such an approach can be described in more detail - and indeed adequately operationalized vis-à-vis the central research question and associated components of this thesis in chapter 3 - let alone applied to the case of the ENP in chapter 5 - it is pertinent to first chart the origins of ‘security governance’ more generally; identifying its key merits, shortcomings and its core characteristics.

2.2 Security: essentially contested, broadened and deepened

‘Security’ is oft perceived of as being a heavily debated and essentially contested concept, both academically and, indeed, in practice with respect to policy.7 Across a multitude of disciplines, scholars and practioners have, over time, confronted the concept of security from a diverse range of perspectives, based upon a varied set of theoretical and conceptual predispositions and their own distinct practical experiences. From early

7_{For
the
purpose
of
this
thesis,
an
‘essentially
contested’
concept
is
defined
as
one
in
which
there}

exists a general consensus amongst academics and policymakers that such a concept exists, but there is no formal agreement about what the term’s meaning actually is, or indeed should be.

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formations vis-à-vis the creation of sovereign, Westphalian states, to more recent conceptions in the context of the end of Cold War bipolarity; different ‘senses’ of security have, one way or another, emerged as cornerstones of the political, economic and societal perceptions held by all individuals; academics, practioners or otherwise for centuries.

Security may be thought of as ‘freedom from fear’ or ‘freedom from want’. In a similar manner, although by a more ‘positivist’ token, security can also be understood as a ‘freedom to’ rather than a ‘freedom from’ (Christou et al, 2010; 341). Thus, broadly and non-exhaustively, the concept has been carefully considered in terms of the particular referent objects that can be threatened by something; the actual ‘threat’ posed to these specific objects; as a form of power between various competing groups; a social construction; a mode of governance; a normative value; a means of state and individual survival; a tool of manipulation and coercion, and as a mechanism of emancipation (Christou et al, 2010; 341). It is therefore somewhat unsurprising that typically divergent scholars, dealing with security in these various manners and from these differing perspectives, tend to find a modicum of common ground in appropriating security in terms of its essentially contested nature.8 Moreover, in practice, security has often been used to justify countless instances of warfare, invasion and incursion by states and non-state actors, in parallel to also being employed as a device used to explain non-state interventions on humanitarian grounds, the far-reaching mandates of international security organisations vis-à-vis ‘threats’ such as global terrorism for example, and the policies of development, peacebuilding and reconciliation in post-conflict countries today (Christou et al, 2010; 341). Thus, in both liberal democratic countries and their autocratic, repressive counterparts; governments, militaries, militias, non-state actors and individuals alike, have each created their own distinct and diverse sets of policy frames under the auspices of their own differing conceptions, interpretations and practices of security (Christou et al, 2010; 341). It seems apt therefore, to understand the concept of security ultimately as essentially disputed - not least because a definitive and static

8_{Somewhat
inevitably,
given
the
complexities
of
conceptualizing
more
generally,
even
the
so-‐called}

‘contested’ nature of the concept of security has been challenged by some scholars; see (Walt, 1991; Baldwin, 1997).

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definition of the term is clearly inconsistent and, indeed, in many ways unhelpful - given the variegated applications and appreciations of security evident in both study and practice today.

Although the concept of security’s legacy is great, contemporary debates surrounding the term today - its meaning, application and utility - have their roots more recently in the innovative academic security scholarship of the late 1980’s-90’s.9 During this period, the ‘sub-discipline’ of ‘security studies’ re-orientated and re-established itself as a more distinct and distinguished academic field than it had been previously - before, often having been overshadowed and subsumed by the more traditional approaches touching on security related issues such as international relations, war and conflict studies. Made possible by the so-called ‘constructivist turn’ in conventional international relations theory more generally, new conceptual interpretations, appreciations and applications of security - catalysed by developments within the promising discipline of security studies - have come to have had a profound and enduring effect on our contemporary understandings of security, serving to both widen and deepen the concept and, in the process, strengthen the various schools-of-thought surrounding it.

Congruently, as the world entered a fresh era of international politics - signalled by the collapse of Soviet Communism in the early 1990’s - the role of the state as both a primary agent, and as a predominant target of conventional security threats, came to be challenged. Thus, for many observers and scholars, military threats directed towards the very survival of sovereign nation states would come to no longer constitute the primary risk posed during the post-Cold War period. Instead, it was postulated by many new-age security scholars, that novel, multifaceted threats would emerge, filling the gulf created by the collapse of the relatively stable bipolar world order that had come to characterise the security agenda of near-enough the last five-decades. Trans-border terrorism, fragile and failing states, mass refugee flows and civil wars - to name but a few - were expected to come and represent the primary threats of the age; while inter-state, military conflict was anticipated to decline in prominence (although not necessarily altogether or

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indefinitely). Furthermore, states themselves appeared to be increasingly incapable - in what was their current, conventional configuration - to tackle these new threats unaided; let alone in such a relatively complex and fluid post-Cold War security environment. Military solutions and interstate warfare, nuclear deterrence and invasion therefore were increasingly perceived to be out of balance with the ‘threats’ now considered to be the most ‘threatening’. Given the aforementioned decline in perceptions of the nation state as the primary referent object, many scholars thus sought to deal instead with the possible targets of these new and emerging, transboundary threats; the specific internal functions of contemporary nation states for example; the influence of wider, more nebulous societal institutions; human beings themselves and, indeed, even our very own planet - some of just many instances of a conceptual ‘race-to-the top’ by scholars and practioners to broaden the new-age security agenda after the Cold War. Thus, while security was still (and, indeed still is) very much about different senses of ‘survival’ - and undeniably, the key role of nation states in the provision of security had not been completely eradicated or wholly undermined - ‘whom’ or ‘what’s’ survival, and in response to ‘what’ threat, was becoming increasingly unclear and subject to a more profound and grander debate than ever before (Buzan et al, 1998).

Aside from such efforts to widen the very understanding of security - thus expanding the potential levels of analysis that could be utilised to explore the concept and its various complexities - the constructivist turn further served to deepen the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the concept underlying the new notions proposed vis-à-vis the processes of security’s conceptual broadening discussed above. Subsequently, as threat perceptions in terms of military warfare, national security and nation states declined, so too did the credence given to conventional theoretical approaches in International Relations typically applied to these conventional risks, such as political Realism for example.10 Closely linked to constructivist developments therefore, the ‘reflectivist-turn’ emphasised instead subjective and inter-subjective understandings of security and of the

10_{Realism,
simply
understood,
interprets
the
world
order
as
one
governed
by
competing,
self-‐}

interested nation states acting within a state of anarchy. Security is thus the typical preserve of nation states, whereby their ‘survival’ is the top priority of national interest, maintained typically militarily through incidences of interstate conflict and posturing.

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approaches towards studying it (Christou et al, 2010; 342). Thus, the concept of security began to be appropriated more and more as a socially constructed phenomenon - meaning different things to different people and at different times. Objective, static definitions of security began to be replaced by notions of discursive construction - cutting across space and time - and a further importance was also assigned to the role of researchers and scholars who sought to engage with the concept and research its various facets; “our interpretations are based on a shared system of codes and symbols, of languages, life-worlds, social practices” (Guzzini, 2000; 160). Notions such as this implied that ones’ knowledge of reality was also socially constructed and therefore one must, when making explanations and drawing conclusions, consider both the level of action (the subject of study) and the level of observation (the agent doing the studying). In these instances, interpretations involved making sense within the real-life world of the subject studied while also making sense within the context of the language shared by the community of observers (scholars and practitioners) - simply, academics were therefore understood to be interpreting an already interpreted social world. Moreover, constructivism moved away from individualist theories of action (evidenced by rational choice theories and political Realism for example), which tended to contend that once we knew both the desires of individuals (their preferences) and their own beliefs about how to realize them, then we could logically deduce their rational behaviour. Instead, constructivism posed an intersubjective approach whereby action and power could not in fact be reduced simply to individual choices – instead such decisions existed in the shared meanings given to them by their users and were further reproduced through their practices (Guzzini, 2000; 164).

As these complex and fledgling theoretical and conceptual debates permeated further into the security considerations of scholars and practitioners, more and more, questions came to be asked as to the consequences of such meaningful developments on the way in which security would come to be provided for in the modern-age, as well as understood. The complexities of contemporary security provision in this manner; the greater number of actors now ‘doing’ and ‘receiving’ security and the greater number of ‘threats’ and ‘threatened’, demanded a rethink on behalf of both scholars and practioners as to the instruments and security practices which were deemed most appropriate to meet the

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demands of the contemporary post-Cold War security environment. With this change also arose a number of new conceptual frameworks, driven by both proponents and critics within security studies alike. Seeking primarily to assess the new-founded regulation, coordination and organization of security practices and policies throughout the world - within the context of the broadening and widening of security more generally described above - such scholars looked first towards the overarching trends and commonalities that had come to characterise the provision of ‘goods’, such as security, since the end of the Cold War. Such notions, culminating in the idea that security could (and indeed, as promoted by some scholars, should) be ‘problematized’ in terms of its ‘governance’, gained an increasing amount of traction and garnered a great deal of support with respect to the question of contemporary security provision in both theory and practice. Thus, it is to this ubiquitous term that we must now turn our attention.

2.3 Governance

The concept of ‘governance’ has emerged and grown into one of the most omnipresent terms within various forums of political and sociological debate in recent years. Its origins primarily lie in discussions surrounding the decline of central, hierarchical forms of state power and the shift instead towards alternative, diffused and indirect systems of political authority (Rhodes, 1996). Simply put, conceptually, governance can be said to encapsulate the fragmented nature of political authority that exists between a multiplicity of both public and private actors (also state and non-state); forms of non-hierarchical coordination and management in lieu of centralised, top-down control; and a reliance on voluntary compliance mechanisms as a means of exercising social responsibility (Ehrhart et al, 2014; 146). Plainer still, governance can be conceptualised as “the organized effort to manage the course of events in a social system” (Burris et al, 2008). Thus, as the traditional distinctions between the public sphere (government) and the private sphere (the governed) have gradually eroded over time (indeed, in a similar manner to the above understandings of the state vis-à-vis security), states’ monopoly on governance, in various formats, has been assessed to have declined, characterised instead by the vast number of new and emerging actors now involved in ascending various subjects through a variety of different forms of authority.

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‘Governance’ is therefore no longer considered to be the sole property or responsibility of states, and neither is it now typically confined ‘geo-politically’ to notions of traditional, Westphalian, sovereign state boundaries. Furthermore, governance has proliferated into a variety of disciplines beyond conventional ideas of simple governmental steering, focusing on the provision of somewhat banal public goods involving markets and beurocracy. Thus, at the local level for example, citizens and communities are argued to have become increasingly ‘responsibilized’ into various courses of ‘self-action’ involving the coordination of community crime prevention programmes, wholly or in part reliant on local populations. In this sense, the state has shifted responsibility towards the individual, granting additional agency to new and emerging actors tackling the issues usually considered being the sole preserve of nation states. At the other end of the spectrum, at an international level on the other hand, the concept has formed the cornerstone of the so-called ‘global governance’ literature, detailing instead the diffusion of political authority to new governance structures beyond sovereign states, to the level of international, supranational governmental and non-governmental organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank for instance. By pooling resources and sharing competencies at a level higher than that of the traditional nation state, the governance of arrangements such as humanitarian intervention, foreign direct investment and global trade has moved beyond being the typical preserve of a few, core nation states towards that of an international collective of like-minded and cooperative parties.

Finally, and somewhere in between these two trends, governance has also proliferated discussions about regional entities and practices such as the European Union (EU) - pointing to the emergence of networked and multilevel systems - wholly characteristic of ‘governance proper’ - created as direct responses to the problems faced by such institutions in coordinating vast and diverse sets of regional actors and interests. Common areas of market and the free movement of goods and persons for example, have emerged as foundational priorities and ideals of the wider ‘EU project’, owing a great deal to the softening of nation state authority and the strengthening of informal, heterarchical, multi-actor arrangements - in a sense - the ‘governance-turn’ discussed above clearly evident in action. More specifically then, what relationship does the multifaceted term of governance have with security in particular? How, therefore, have the developments

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discussed previously - with respect to security’s own conceptual and disciplinary evolution - been correlated with the emergence of these governance perspectives - and indeed, in what context have they come to be conventionally applied to the EU specifically?

2.4 (European) ‘Security’ Governance

It does not take such a great stretch of the imagination to recognise and realise a number of parallels between the deepening and widening of security on one hand, and the proliferation of governance approaches on the other. Both, for example, hold true the strong notions discussed above relating to the decline of traditional state power; the sharp rise in the number of actors involved in the provision of particular ‘goods’; and the non-hierarchical forms of cooperation now typically thought to guide such multi-actor arrangements. Furthermore, both are primarily complex conceptual notions born out of the ashes of the Cold War, a time when social and political science scholars were constantly seeking to understand and appropriate the world through varied, contemporary academic lenses. Indeed, it is not even too much for one to promulgate that many of the developments and notions discussed above in relation to security’s conceptual and practical development over the last three decades, are in fact just forms of ‘governance’ by another name - security can indeed increasingly be thought of as being provided for through diffuse and horizontal arrangements, reliant on new and emerging actors, for the collective purpose of dealing with particular ‘problems’. It has therefore also been particularly in Europe that ideas of ‘security’ married with ‘governance’ have greatly taken hold amongst scholars, observers and practioners. Owing, in part, to the strong academic legacy of ‘security-scholars’ on the continent during the post-Cold War period, the current European preoccupation with security vis-à-vis governance comes down to, in essence, the widely-held perception of the European Union (EU) as a wholly distinct and novel supranational structure. Its multifaceted decision-making environment - characterised by a multitude of actors and institutions - within the context of open borders, the pooling of benefits and risks in relations to economics and security, and the curious coming-together of burgeoning internal and external policies - has led the EU (and indeed wider Europe) to be considered as an ‘ideal case’ for ‘applying’ the concept of security governance academically, while also allowing scholars to observe many cases