Global Governance and Integrative Balancing: EU Efforts to Respond to the Global Challenge
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00111.x |
| Author | Attila Ágh |
| Published date | 01 May 2012 |
| Date | 01 May 2012 |
Global Governance and Integrative
Balancing: EU Efforts to Respond to
the Global Challenge
Attila Ágh
Institute of Political Science, Budapest Corvinus University
Abstract
In the early 21st century globalisation has radically transformed the whole world. In the rapidly globalising world the
main issue for the EU is globalisation-cum-regionalisation, namely to increase policy cooperation with its own
neighbourhood to strengthen its global position and to avoid systemic failure in its partner countries by offering them
a win-win game through regional organisations. Globalisation has unleashed the process of regionalisation at various
levels, so restructuring the political space around the globe. New territorial units have been organised in order to be
able to withstand the pressure of globalisation, and to be more effective in the global competition that has also
generated the need for global governance. The basic principle in the recent regionalisation efforts by the EU is
‘integrative balancing’, empowering unequal external partners through meaningful cooperation. In this spirit the EU
has recently transformed its global policy in both aspects of globalisation-cum-regionalisation. It has accelerated
common institution building with neighbouring states. The EU has also established an active cooperation framework
with the newly emerging global powers as ‘strategic partners’. Altogether, the European Council concluded in October
2010 that ‘wider governance reform should be delivered’ in the EU’s global policy.
1
Policy Implications
•The rise of the multilateral world order requires a clear EU strategy for the regionalisation of its own neighbour-
hood. The increasing tensions in both the southern and eastern rims have also been pushing the EU in this direc-
tion.
•The EU regionalisation strategy needs an institutional separation of the southern and the eastern mega-regions,
given the basic differences between them concerning ‘European perspectives’, that is, their different opportunities
for EU membership.
•There can be no gap between the polity and policy approaches in EU regionalisation. This means that the EU can-
not extend its regulative regimes to neighbouring regions without building proper common institutions with the
partner states concerned in those policy fields, in which common policies have been intensified.
•Integrative balancing mechanisms have to be invented and implemented by the EU in order to upgrade its partner
states instead of simply imposing strict conditionalities upon them.
1. Towards a multilateral regionalised world
order
Regionalisation inside and around the EU has character-
ised EU globalisation efforts in recent years, including
the new widening policy in the Eastern Partnership (EaP)
and the entry of ‘functional macro-regions’. The EU has
acted both by promoting globalisation and by defending
itself against the tsunami, the monster waves of globali-
sation, by pushing for its own multilevel internal region-
alisation. This dual approach can clearly be seen in a
series of EU documents from the December 2007 Presi-
dency Conclusion to the EU Declaration on Globalisation
attached to the Presidency Conclusions in September
2010 with its Annex I entitled ‘Internal Arrangements to
Improve the European Union’s External Policy’.
2
In the tough global competition of the early 21st cen-
tury the main issue for the EU is globalisation-cum-re-
gionalisation, namely the regionalisation of its own
neighbourhood as a special kind of EU ‘widening’. As
Manuel Castells has pointed out (Castells, 1998, p. 357):
Global Policy Volume 3 . Issue 2 . May 2012
Global Policy (2012) 3:2 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00111.x ª2012 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Research Article
145
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