Michael Merlingen

• Central European University

We identify an ideology gap in the Marxist EU (European Union) literature, which we then set out to narrow by identifying and analysing core elements of the particularising EU version of the global ideology of feel-good and ethical capitalism through which the EU interpellates certain subaltern classes towards identifying with the deepening and wid...

The paper elaborates a toolkit for the systematic assessment of CSDP operations. It is derived from international relations theories and enables analysts to go beyond existing evaluation research of the CSDP, which is largely ad hoc and idiosyncratic in character. The kit classifies operations on the basis of their mandated activities. Common Secur...

The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces: From the Rhine to Afghanistan. By AnthonyKing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 326p. $93.00. Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community. By SebastianRosato. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. 280p. $24.95. - Volume 10 Issue 4 - Michael Merlingen

Michel Foucault was not a student of the international and Foucauldian approaches to international relations (IR) and European Union (EU) studies do not constitute a school. The toolkit of concepts for social analysis he and those inspired by him have developed do not aim at building a substantive theory of anything, and Foucault did not pretend ot...

Governmentality theory is a tool to study networked governance beyond the state. Its research profile is characterized by a focus on power and micro-practices from a critical perspective. This article identifies the theory's comparative strengths and its distinct analytical style. It lays out the conceptual tools of governmentality theory before ap...

The article builds on the existing critique of `Normative Power Europe' (NPE), extending it in previously unexplored directions by drawing on the work of Michel Foucault. The author conceptualizes and empirically demonstrates the hidden face of European Union (EU) norm diffusion. The EU promotes human agency abroad through the promotion of fundamen...

Security and defence is the area in which the EU has advanced most in recent years. A principal element of this process is the proliferating number of military and civilian crisis management missions in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Clearly, Europe has come a long way since the disappointments and frustration in the 1990s, when, in ligh...

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This new book provides an in-depth analysis of the projects of improvement carried out by the civilian peacebuilding missions in Bosnia and Macedonia, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault to make the case that the EU's (self-) image as a model peacebuilder conceals another side of the European Security and Defence Policy. The authors explore the...

This article develops the argument that peacebuilding brings into play microphysical and nonsovereign forms of power that circulate through opaque capillaries that link foreign peacebuilders and indigenous populations. It examines the governmentality of liberal peacebuilding and the practices of “unfreedom” it licenses; brings into focus the conste...

The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), notably its conflict management component, has been evolving at impressive speed. Yet the EU's vocation as a crisis manager remains hampered by political, legal, financial, procedural, doctrinal and capability-related difficulties and shortfalls as well as structural challenges faced by ESDP missions...

The Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) is a generally underrated institution. For instance, in a symptomatic statement, a well-known student of European affairs describes it in denigrating manner as a ‘talking shop’ (van Ham, 2001: 404). Yet such a perspective overlooks the power of norms. A talking shop may be a social environment w...

In this article I draw on the later work of Michel Foucault to elaborate a governmentality framework for the study of international governmental organizations (IGOs). The main ‘value added’ of the proposed framework is that it brings into focus the micro-domain of power relations, thereby highlighting what mainline IGO studies fail to thematize. IG...

The article argues against the widespread view that OSCE long-term missions should be constrained in their use of public diplomacy. The case rests on arguments that link the emergence of post-international politics to the need for a transformation of diplomatic practices. Missions need to engage in more and better public diplomacy because, in their...

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In February 2000, 14 EU Member States collectively took the unprecedented step of imposing bilateral sanctions on their Austrian EU partner. How can this be explained? Was it, as the 14 governments argued, because the inclusion in the Austrian government of Jörg Haider's extreme right FPö opposes many of the ideas making up the common identity of t...

In this article, I seek a theoretically informed answer to the question of why in the period after 1993 the German government clamoured for a clarification of and a tightening of the rules governing the transition to, and the operation of, EMU. To this end, I evaluate the explanatory power of two approaches that make strongly contrasting assumption...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of British Columbia, 1997. Includes bibliographical references.