For better or worse? The evolution of normative policy in the Southern Mediterranean

Abstract

This research has tried to contribute to the understanding of the EU as a normative power, specifically in the Southern Mediterranean Region. While a critical body of literature exists on the EU as a normative power in the region, most of it does not give an empirically satisfying explanation for the failure of normative policies. This research looks for answers in the historical evolution of normative policy towards the Southern Mediterranean Region, and links this to the operationalization of normative power in key policy frameworks. It is argued that the operationalization of political conditionality and socialization, the supposed key principles underlying normative power, reflects certain interests and preferences that have less to do with norms and values related to democracy, and more with issues concerned with security, trade and migration. It is argued that this explains a divergence between a rhetoric and behaviour. Finally, this research argues that even though the EU’s policy adaptions following the wave of popular uprisings in the Southern Mediterranean Region, starting in 2011, might not point towards a different approach or strategy, they could in fact represent a changing attitude towards the region and a changing perception of itself as normative power, possibly preluding more credible and realistic normative policy in the long run.