European Union: An Empire in New Clothes?

Behr, Hatmut and Stivachtis, Yannis A. (2015) European Union: An Empire in New Clothes? [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Introduction: The political and academic discourse(s) of whether, or not, the European Union (EU) can be understood as a form of empire are, first, controversial and, second, encounter widely indignant disapproval by those who those who ‘like’ the EU and by orthodox EU scholarship. From such perspectives, the EU is understood as a ‘normative’, i.e., good, power that spreads and conducts politics guided by human rights, democracy, and free markets, while ‘empire’ is understood as something evil, martial, and aggressive (amongst others, Manners, 2002; Telo, 2006; Whitman, 1998). This, somewhat simplified, dichotomy is in desperate need of clarification; and in this clarification exists the approach of this book and its attempt to assemble some of the most important contributors to the first wave of the ‘EU-as-empire-discourse’ to revisit their arguments after some 10 years.

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