Eternal potential? Temporality, complexity and the incoherent power of the European Union
| Author | Patrick Holden |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836716668786 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Cooperation and Conflict
2016, Vol. 51(4) 407 –427
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836716668786
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Eternal potential? Temporality,
complexity and the incoherent
power of the European Union
Patrick Holden
Abstract
Temporality is a relatively under-explored factor in international relations. The concept of
timescape refers to the temporal timeframe of institutional processes and/or the timeframes
of causation at different levels. Said concept has powerful explanatory potential in the case
of complex, fragmented entities such as the European Union (EU). Critical realism offers a
historicist meta-theoretical framework for delineating and analysing timescapes of different
forms. Theories of critical political economy and historical sociology can be used to critique
the EU’s own liberal teleological timescapes. The Union’s leadership postulates a central future
role for it, based on its long-term structural relationships, and its Mediterranean policy is
a prime example of this structural foreign policy. However, its component structures are
profoundly dissonant and unlikely to coalesce into a meaningful role. The EU’s engagement
in the Mediterranean illustrates how its long-term approach is over-ridden by the ‘real-time’
agency of other actors, and by deeper socio-economic cycles which it cannot control. A focus
on temporality thus helps to interpret and explain the fragmented power of the EU; as well as
our complex international system more generally.
Keywords
Timescape, critical realism, complexity, power, EU, coherence
Introduction
The European Union (EU) remains an important but somewhat nebulous actor in
international relations. Hopes for it to be a global power have not been fulfilled;
indeed at times of crisis it often seems quiescent (Koenig, 2014). Yet its importance
in many spheres of politics and economics is appreciated by both allies and rivals
such as Russia (which went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Ukraine integrating
Corresponding author:
Patrick Holden, Politics and International Relations Group, School of Law, Criminology and Government,
Plymouth University, Room 101, 21 Portland Villas, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.
Email: patrick.holden@plymouth.ac.uk
668786CAC0010.1177/0010836716668786Cooperation and ConflictHolden
research-article2016
Article
408 Cooperation and Conflict 51(4)
with the EU in 2013). Clearly, the acutely fragmented nature of the EU is responsible
for the confusion as to its role and potential (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006; Hill, 1993;
Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014). This article argues that a focus on temporality – in
particular the different timescapes of its institutions and the social, economic and
political changes it implements on various scales – helps us to explain the particular
irregularities of the EU’s role. Timescape was a term developed by Goetz and Meyer-
Sahling to describe the different institutional cycles of the EU system (2009). It is a
felicitous concept for EU studies as it captures the complexity, asynchrony and dif-
ferentiation of this entity. The term is expanded on here to go beyond institutional
timescapes and address the different causal timescapes in international relations; in
critical realist terms, the different causal complexes and generative structures of inter-
national relations (Patomaki, 2002: 99–122). This expanded concept of timescape
offers a lens with which to trace the complexity and stratification of the EU’s institu-
tions, policies and action. More specifically, the focus on temporality allows us to
delineate the particular imagined timescape of EU external action as a liberal teleo-
logical vision, and to critique this with an analysis informed by more historicist and
complexity-sensitive understandings of international change. The research rests on a
critical realist ontology as this historicist and stratified ontology is highly congruent
with the timescape concept.
As the EU’s salient characteristic is its effort to lead change through social and eco-
nomic interventions, various forms of critical political economy and historical sociol-
ogy are drawn upon for the analysis. The empirical case study is of Euro-Mediterranean
relations. This is a region which has been the subject of extensive multilevel structural
diplomacy (Keukeleire et al., 2009) on the part of the EU. As the EU is the dominant
economic pole in the region, it is an apt case study of the EU’s efforts to lead change
through social and economic interventions. However it is also a region which exemplifies
the dissonance between the EU’s institutional and structural approach and the other ‘reali-
ties’ which obtain. This article offers a holistic analysis and critique of the EU’s project.
The first section introduces the concept of timescape and elaborates on the critical realist
and historicist foundations of this approach. The following section elaborates a more spe-
cific framework for understanding the EU’s external relations timescapes, including its
institutional timescapes and the causal assumptions (causal timescapes) behind its pro-
ject. Then the analytical and conceptual framework for critiquing the EU’s approach –
its liberal structural foreign policy – is outlined. Subsequently the analysis turns to the
detail of the EU’s reform and integration project in the Mediterranean and the impact of
the differentiated timescapes and powers of the EU on its role in this region. The discon-
nects between the EU’s method of incremental development and legalisation, and the
reality of crisis, conflict and revolution came into sharp relief in 2011. The article seeks
to contribute to the existing literature on the EU by using the timescape concept to
elucidate precisely how and why the differentiated nature of the EU impacts on its
actorness and power. It offers a temporal conceptualisation and critique of the EU’s
structural foreign policy and the assumptions underlying it. It also explains its relative
passivity in times of crisis and in so doing contributes to the literature on the EU’s
crisis management (Boin et al., 2013). More generally, it is also hoped that this article
can offer an exemplar of how a more explicit understanding of the different timescapes
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