Golden or gilded jubilee? A research agenda for actorness

Abstract

This article explores, explains and challenges the state of the art of actorness, one of the most recognizable concepts in the study of the European Union (EU)'s international functioning. Covering 45 years of research (1970-2015), it examines the notion's conceptual history, discusses its main findings, analyses its limitations and opportunities, and formulates suggestions for future work. It argues that the status quo can be seen through two opposing lensesthat of an optimist and that of a pessimistand suggests two research shifts and specific recommendations to realize them in order to flip the notion's upcoming 50th anniversary from gilded to golden.

Theorizing the EU's Actorness: Towards an Interactionist Role Theory Framework

“…Interactionist role theory consequently promises to complement the literature by providing an understanding of the EU's emerging international actorness , which is more dynamic than that of previous approaches. An interactionist conception of actorness is moreover in no way confined to the study of the EU and may thus provide a valuable contribution to a longstanding ambition of the literature: a theory of actorness (Drieskens, , p. 9).…”

“…In doing so, third‐wave scholars problematized and addressed the literature's lacking understanding of the relative significance of – and interaction between – presumed determinants for the EU's actorness (Driesken, , pp. 9–10; Gehring et al ., , p. 850).…”

“…Perhaps most prominently, this debate has evolved between scholars who conceptualized the EU as a distinct international power (Aggestam, 2008;Duchêne, 1973Manners, 2002Wagner, 2017), and their realist or English School critics, who emphasized the EU's limited capacity to act as an independent, let alone distinct, power in the international system (Bull, 1982Hyde-Price, 2006. At the same time, a third group of scholars has advocated for moving past debating the EU's type of power, and instead emphasized the need to analyze the EU's (varying) significance in different international contexts (see Allen and Smith, 1990;Bretherton and Vogler, 1999, 2013Drieskens, 2017;Ginsberg, 2001;Hill, 1993Hill, , 1997Niemann and Bretherton, 2013;Smith, 2003Smith, , 2014.…”

“…By drawing on these insights, a 'third wave' in the literature focused on further substantiating the second wave's presumed determinants for actorness while investigating their role in shaping the EU's effectiveness as an international actor (Conceição-Heldt and Meunier, 2014;Drieskens, 2017;Niemann and Bretherton, 2013). Following Jupille and Caporaso's emphasis on Member State cohesion, scholars, for instance, explored links between the EU's coherence and its capacity to perform leading roles in areas such as climate policy-making or international criminal justice (Groen and Niemann, 2013;Thomas, 2012).…”

Institutional innovation of EU’s foreign and security policy: Big leap for EU’s strategic actorness or much ADO about nothing?

“…Drawing on Toje's understanding of actorness as a yardstick by which the process of change in EU foreign policy can be monitored (2008,204), the article argues that the recent changes on EU's institutional level push its strategic actorness forward. Being aware of the shortcomings of the application of 'actorness' as a concept (Drieskens 2017), this paper first defines what constitutes strategic actorness and then applies a framework for investigating the extent to which it has been advanced due to the institutional developments. Inspired by institutions-related criteria which the EU needs to fulfil in order to become a strategic actor (Smith and Xie 2010, 434;Allen and Smith 2010), this article scrutinizes the dynamics within three benchmarks: (1) the capacity to extract resources from various EU's foreign and security stakeholders, (2) the ability to relate these resources to EU's objectives and to express them within a general strategic narrative, and (3) the implementation of the strategy in the light of changes in the global arena.…”