Suchergebnisse

Relations between Ukraine, Russia and the EU have undergone a dramatic development that influences the relations between all of the countries of the Eastern Partnership – Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan – the EU and Russia. In order to understand the communication and cooperation processes within the region, we have to analyse perceptions. This holds true for individuals, civil society organizations as well as states in the region. This article introduces the Special Issue to the readers and overviews the European Neighbourhood Policy, the Eastern Partnership and EU-Russia relations and identifies the role of images and perceptions in shaping these dialogues. The article offers a novel comprehensive theoretical framework in the study of EU perceptions stressing the relational nature of perceptions and points to several main trends in how the EU is recognized and characterized by its eastern neighbours in a time of major crises and changes in Europe.

The outcome of the British Brexit referendum sent shockwaves across Europe. It sent signals about the future of the European Union (EU), not only to the Member States but also to the surrounding world. How to characterize the EU after Brexit? We address this problematic by investigating the metaphors applied to the EU in the Russian and Ukrainian press in the first week after the referendum. We find that metaphors in the Russian press demonstrate a basic image of the EU as weak and fragmented. The EU is considered to be moving on a bumpy road with an uncertain destination. Feelings of superiority are intricately combined with hope and pride as a result of perceived opened opportunities. In Ukraine, Brexit is seen from a local perspective with its potential effects on visa freedom as the most important consideration. Metaphors demonstrate a basic image of the EU as without vision and travelling on rough seas. This situation is considered both as a potential threat and an opportunity and is associated with both hope and anxiety.

Multiple crises in the EU are assumed to impact EU external images in general, and in Ukraine specifically. Our article asks if these crises are only short time-span variations with limited implications for longer term EU perceptions in Ukraine. To answer this question, our article turns to the concepts of spatial and historical distances (Braudel 1982, Didelon-Loiseau and Grasland 2014) and argues two interacting sets of factors behind EU images in Ukraine – spatial (location-, region-, EU-specific and global) and temporal (short-, mediumand long-term). Hypothesizing evolutions of EU images in post-Maidan Ukraine in terms of the EU's perceived power, opportunities and normative profile, our analysis tests its hypotheses by examining Ukrainian public opinion pre- and post-Maidan and tracing EU framing in influential press across the political continuum. Our results demonstrate the relational nature of EU external images and suggest avenues to fine-tune the EU's operational and programming level tools in its dialogue with Ukraine.

AbstractPositioned within the multidisciplinary scholarly fields of political psychology, our analysis follows an interdisciplinary approach, linking the study of EU images (from international relations (IR), political science and EU Studies) to the notion of conceptual metaphors (cognitive linguistics). Our research uses a novel empirical tool – a four‐tiered model of conceptual metaphors (Zhabotynska, 2011) to assess how meanings are formed in the construction of EU images in third countries. Using a case‐study of Australian and New Zealand elites, the paper contributes to EU foreign policy scholarship through the description of a systematic algorithm for tracing the 'mapping of emotions' towards the EU from beyond its borders. Metaphors are understood as a cognitive device for translating emotions, but empirical analysis of emotions is nascent in IR studies. Assessing EU external images over time in an empirically‐informed and systematic way is a further novel contribution from this body of research.

This paper examines a supranational actor, the European Union (EU), as a producer of energy diplomacy. This study uses a comparative analytical framework of state-centred vs. multistakeholder diplomacies to explore EU energy diplomacy towards the 'emerging' powers of Brazil, India, China and South Africa (BICS). It also elaborates the multistakeholder model by advocating the inclusion of a new element – a consumer of diplomatic actions – into its conceptualization. In this way the paper suggests a new synthesis of the concepts of multistakeholder and public diplomacies. Advancing the notion of energy diplomacy, our analysis suggests that this type of diplomacy goes beyond state actors as producers of diplomatic outcomes, and is no longer confined to the norms of security of supply and competitiveness; EU energy diplomacy is a complex blend of multistakeholder and state-centred diplomacies, participants (producers and consumers) and communication modes. This comprehensive approach to diplomacy – led in the EU's case by norms of sustainability, competitiveness and security of supply – is a response to the challenges of global governance, multipolarity and multinational cross-sectoral networks.

AbstractThe EU has consistently struggled to forge a foreign policy narrative which promotes internal cohesion and supports the EU's efforts to exert international influence. The 2016 EU Global Strategy is the latest iteration of collective efforts to tie strategy and purpose to the EU's coherent identity in the world. This study compares the EU's strategic partners of peace and security with narratives about the EU held in the EU's strategic partners in Asia. Whilst we find reasonable coherence in the EU's projection of the international system and its role in it, its identity as an actor, and its response to policy issues on the ground, views from Asia largely contest these claims. This article employs a strategic narrative approach to conceptualize and empirically trace how the formation, projection and reception of EU narratives are part of broader circuits of communication through which EU might be recognized, legitimized and achieve influence.