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The EU’s Leadership in global Governance: Perceptions from the Others

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Communicating Europe in Times of Crisis

Part of the book series: The European Union in International Affairs Series ((EUIA))

Abstract

The literature on the role of the European Union (EU) role in world politics has speculated on the degree of the EU’s actorness (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006; Groenleer and van Schaik, 2007), presence (Allen and Smith, 1990, 1998), capability (Hill, 1993) and peculiar type of power (Manners, 2002; Telò, 2006; Zimmermann, 2007; Aggestam, 2008; Damro, 2012). The 1990s also acknowledged a growing attention to the EU’s leadership in multilateral settings, with particular attention being paid to the implementation of environmental regimes (Gupta and Grubb, 2000; Oberthur and Kelly, 2008; Wurzel and Connelly, 2010), trade negotiations (Meunier, 2000; Ahnild, 2005) and some other areas in which the EU has a special role, such as the institution of the International Criminal Court (Groenleer and van Schaik, 2007) or development policy (Orbie and Versluys, 2008; Holland and Doidge, 2012), have grown. Most of such literature looks at the EU’s performance in negotiations. However, implicit attention to EU leadership is also present in the analyses of the EU’s role as a norm exporter at the global (Zwolski and Kaunert, 2011), regional (Pace, 2007) or local (Schimmelfennig, 2009) level. An important feature of the EU leadership literature is the recognition that frequently the EU is a leader ‘by example’. This has frequently been claimed in the case of the EU’s role in environmental policy (although the EU’s own strategy to lead by example in climate-change negotiations has been put under pressure by the failure of the Copenhagen Summit (Geden, 2010; see also Chapter 1 in this volume), and even more so as far as the EU’s role as a model of regional integration is concerned (Murray, 2009).

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Lucarelli, S. (2014). The EU’s Leadership in global Governance: Perceptions from the Others. In: Chaban, N., Holland, M. (eds) Communicating Europe in Times of Crisis. The European Union in International Affairs Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137331175_3

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