The Soft Superpower: The Foreign Policy Of The EU

In this article, theoretical framework or the scope of analysis is planned in respect of rational preferences of respective actors. However, because of the multi-layered nature of the EU in which many types of actors are embedded, I have to take the connections between different processes and structures into account. In the end, the outcomes of actors’ interactions and preferences will be assessed from a constructivist perspective which may enable us to understand the consequences of those interactions. EU foreign policy is mainly conducted through economic means or in other words its components are based on the union’s economic advantages and relative superiority to the majority of states, and regions. M. Smith rightfully notes that ‘in the case of foreign economic policy, the aims and the means would be defined as economic, although the ultimate goals would be implicitly political or concerned with security’. The EU extensively, if not only (except a few peacekeeping operations and marginal works), pursues this pattern in its foreign policy behavior. The union successfully has been using “market access” as a bargaining tool to change the internal realms of its economic partners. By going into inter-regional agreements, offering preferential trade agreements and providing humanitarian and other aid to less-developed and developing countries the EU follows the same pattern. Since the union itself is a product of such logic, it wants to see stable markets in neighboring regions in both economic and political terms. The enlargement policies in that sense have always been driven by this kind of logic. http://www.apem-wspa.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=123

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