This thesis is an attempt to analyse whether the EU can be conceived as a “force for good” in the world, where through its actions in its surroundings, EU is very eager to take a role as a “Normative Power”, and to be conceived as a model for integration and democracy.This thesis is looking at this narrative from two different perspectives. Firstly, through an analysis of the successfulness of the ENP, through looking at the official EU documents and the progression in key areas in between them, and contrasting them to critique by Human Rights NGOs. Secondly, interconnected with the ENP, this thesis will look at the EU’s response to the recent refugee crisis on its southern border, and its current developments, where the EU’s sea rescue operation “Operation Sophia” has been diminished, and the refugees rescued are taken back to Libya by the Libyan Coast Guard, contrary to UNHCR’s position on returns to Libya. This issue will be looked at through the perspective of the refugees’ democratic rights, and invokes questions regarding the legitimacy of closing one’s borders, and whether the “demos” can be legitimately bounded or does the Democratic Theory insist for the demos to be unbounded.This thesis concludes to find itself agreeing with the previous debates regarding the ENP, where the paradoxes of EU foreign policy have been researched 10-years back, little has changed. These two “cases” researched also contribute to the fact that the inconsistency of EU’s action is eroding its claims both to “Normative Power” and to be a “Force for Good”.

Research on geopolitics primarily focuses on nation-state actors and how geographical factors affect their policy towards other actors in international relations. The EU, as a non-state actor and a normative power, has been understudied through the lens of geopolitics as scholars believed that this Union was unlikely to apply geopolitical thinking in their foreign policy. This thesis aims to explore to what extent and under what circumstances an actor, notably a non- state actor, applies geopolitical theories in the foreign policy. The paper argues that geopolitics theories, both classical and critical ones, have been increasingly able to explain the external relations of the EU, particularly after 2013 when the Chinese government launched Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Furthermore, geopolitics theories also add more values to understand the complexity of the EU' foreign policy, given the fact that there is no single theory that can explain it comprehensively. As explanatory research, qualitative methods, including discourse analysis, content analysis, and process tracing, will be used to examine how the EU has responded to BRI. The thesis first reviews the scholarship on geopolitics and EU's foreign policy. Next, it investigates how China applies geoplitics in BRI. Last, it focuses on how the...

The abolition of the death penalty lies at the core of the EU’s human rights agenda. Iraq, a long-term partner of the EU, has one of the highest execution rates in the world. Despite the plethora of policies, agreements and strategies of the EU in its relations with Iraq, the death penalty remains unbridled and in widespread use. With human rights and the EU’s abolitionist policy constituting essential elements of the EU’s relations with third countries, it is vital to examine the extent to which this is the case in its relations with Iraq. The legitimacy of the EU as a leading promoter of the universal abolition of the death penalty is at stake. This thesis examines the subject of human rights promotion in the EU’s external actions with Iraq, focusing on the EU norm of the abolition of the death penalty. The EU as a ‘normative power’ in its relations with Iraq is analyzed. This thesis aims to answer the following questions: How has the EU’s foreign policy towards Iraq aligned with its normative objectives and human rights priorities? To what extent is the EU limited in its ability to promote the abolition of the death penalty in Iraq? The focus is on the period from 2004 onwards, as this marked the beginning of official EU-Iraq relations. The thesis concludes that the EU’s normative power is and will remain limited in its ability to bring about normative change as long as the Iraqi community and society continue to accept the death penalty as an appropriate punishment. Therefore, the EU must continually maintain its strong opposition to the death penalty by consistently addressing the death penalty in the documents with Iraq, working with the local community and civil society, and taking concrete action to provide for alternative punishments.

This thesis puts the European Union’s (EU) normative power in a historical context and combines it with EU’s development of social goals and measures surrounding the turn of the twenty-first century. This provides social normative power to be central phenomenon. The development of EU’s social normative power is analyzed through its founding Treaties. It shows how this development leads to the construction of the European Constitution in the beginning of the twenty-first century. This treaty got rejected by the Netherlands through a national referendum, but was reused almost in its entirety in the Lisbon Treaty only a few years later. Since the development of social normative power and these controversial events have taken place in the same period, the connection between the two is examined. This is done by focusing on the national debate in the Netherlands during the period of the European Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty through newspaper articles that were published at that time. It is researched how social normative power influenced Dutch national debate during the indicated period. This research will show that EU’s social normative power made the lack of democratic capacity of the EU more visible for Dutch citizens and that it contributed to a negative attitude towards the EU.

The principles of human rights and democracy have been of great importance for a long time and for many actors globally, especially for the European Union. This paper has the purpose of examining the European Union’s bilateral development aid and its relation to the organisation's human rights and democracy promotion. The study is a case study of Myanmar in the years 2000-2017 and with particular focus on the situation for the Muslim minority Rohingya. The case is investigated through the perspective of Ian Manners’ Normative Power Europe supplemented with aspects collected from previous research, to see if it can explain the behaviour of the aid flow. The conclusions of this study were that human rights and democracy while appearing greatly central has not had any major influence on the aid from the Union to Myanmar, and neither can the idea of European normative power explain the nature of the aid allocation.

The EU has taken a major role in The Republic of Kosovo, creating a new future for the country via the EU office in Kosovo with its role in implementing EU norms in Kosovo. Kosovo is a potential candidate state for the EU and has declared its interest in becoming an EU member state.  Kosovo has implemented crucial reforms and shows commitment to advancing on its European path. Kosovo does not fulfil the general requirements for the accession based on the Copenhagen criteria yet, and there remain major internal and external hindrances to its membership. The rule of law, despite the progress made in adapting the legal framework, Kosovo needs to step up its efforts to strengthen the independence of the judiciary. Additionally, Kosovo must fight corrupted structures and organised crime by building strong and independent institutions. Furthermore, reforms in the economic area are needed to tackle Kosovo's informal economy and unemployment. Despite, the Copenhagen Criteria, the main hindrances are the five non-recognizers in the EU and the required normalization process with Serbia. Kosovo must get its independence recognized by the five non-recognizers in the EU and stabilize its relations with Serbia before focusing on the accession to the EU.

EU’s international role as a normative power can be questioned as the current foreign policy of the Eastern Partnership implies a limit to the union’s ability to democratize. An alignment with EU norms is often seen through a dichotomy of compliance or non-compliance, overlooking other forms of resistance stemming from a nexus of international compliance pressure, and defiance pressure from hybrid regime structures. This applies to Georgia, a pro-EU country in the Eastern Partnership, committed to EU norms while maintaining a skewed playing field in favor of incumbents. Through the application of a theoretical framework developed in memory studies, a range of rhetorical adaptation strategies employed by the ruling party regarding electoral reforms delineates a norm navigation. A qualitative content analysis of statements and events relating to the long-contested electoral system during 2015-2019 shows a variation of strategies used, pointing in a direction of increased pressure to align with prescribed EU norms. Whether EU or domestic political forces can be credited is difficult to determine, yet the nuances of norm resistance are important to analytically separate from overarching labels, as states’ rhetorical commitments need a critical perspective to better understand the limits to EU’s normative power in the Eastern Partnership.

This thesis examines constraints of the EU’s engagement in the frozen conflicts of the South Caucasus, namely, the Abkhazia, the South Ossetia, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts. The study begins with a puzzle in which the EU’s ambition for prioritizing the resolution of frozen conflicts mismatches with the reality related to the status quo of frozen conflicts. By using an abductive reasoning in an observed surprising fact, the research highlights that the complexity of the region can be the main contributor to the EU’s limitations.   With this purpose, the ENP as a normative power of the EU is analyzed to identify how the EU is attempting to be a major actor in the region in order to secure its borders. Subsequently, the limitations of the EU in engaging in frozen conflicts are examined from ‘security dilemma’, ‘balance of power’ and ‘bandwagoning’ neorealism perspectives together with a comparative study on the three conflicts. The results show that the complexity of the region is a principal constraint for the EU. In particular, geopolitical rivalries with Russia and small states with their alliances contribute to the complexity of the region. However, this study also explores the idea that the complexity of the region is not only the best explanation for the EU’s limitations, but also the EU’s structure per se creates a lack of credibility with relations to the respective Caucasian states. For future studies, I suggest that the analysis of the social learning mechanism of the EU will be an asset for understanding the region and avoiding Eurocentric approaches towards Caucasian political systems and people. Regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, policymakers can consider that it is possible to change the EU’s low profile either by having clear strategies concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict or replacing one of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group with the EU.

The concept of Normative Power Europe (NPE) conceptualizes the European Union (EU) as a unique international actor, empowered by a foundation consisting of certain norms and values. Scholars of the NPE underline the significance of discursive representation strategies in the EU’s normative power international identity. A normative power EU should express no value-judgment or articulate any hierarchical positioning in the so-called othering– the construction of the self and the other– and display reflexivity. Previous research shows that NPE was weakened by Europe’s refugee crisis 2015-2016, partly by the strategic cooperation on migration that was established with Turkey. However, some argue that the European Parliament (EP) managed to uphold the normative power identity through safeguarding the values and norms of the EU’s normative basis. Through identifying and analyzing the discursive representations of Turkey 2010-2011, 2015-2016 and 2021, this thesis explores how and if the normative power EU via the EP withstood the challenges of the refugee crisis or if the crisis ultimately became the bane of NPE. The results show a dominant pattern of non-normative othering in all three cases, which undermines the claims of EP as a safeguard as well as the legitimacy of the NPE concept. The results however do not determine if the NPE concept is to be ruled out for good or not. The thesis contributes to the previous research on normative power, identity construction and European foreign policy.

The purpose of the study was to examine how the EU's ambition is to diffuse norms, as a normative power, within the instrument Pre-accession Assistance II during 2014-2020 in the region of the Western Balkans. The study was conducted with a qualitative theory-consuming case study together with a theoretical framework by Tuomas Forsberg (2011) which is based on the theory of Normative Power Europe. The results of the study showed that the EU has high ambitions to spread the Union's fundamental values through IPA II to the Western Balkans.