The European Union in the Legacies of Imperial Rule? EU Accession Politics Viewed from a Historical Comparative Perspective
| Author | Hartmut Behr |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066107076956 |
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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The European Union in the Legacies of
Imperial Rule? EU Accession Politics
Viewed from a Historical Comparative
Perspective
H A RT M U T B E H R
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
International Relations benefits from historical comparative research.
Although a historical comparative method can be fruitfully applied to
the study of the European Union (EU), it is rarely undertaken. In this
article, EU accession politics, particularly its 2004 enlargement, is
compared with 19th century ‘standards of civilization’ developed by
European states concluding treaties with non-European nations. This
article argues that EU accession politics operates in the legacies of
19th-century imperial rule. Understanding the EU in terms of an
(new) empire might enrich the discussion of the perception and cat-
egorization of the EU as an international order.
KEY WORDS ♦ empire – EU accession politics ♦ EU enlargement
♦ globalization ♦ international law ♦ standards of civilization
1. The Definition of ‘Standards of Civilization’ in 19th-century
International Law and EU Regulations on Accession and
Membership
1.1. Introduction
The accession politics of the EU and the ‘standards of civilization’ developed
by European nations in the 19th century evince strong commonalities.
Nineteenth-century ‘standards of civilization’ decided which non-European
nations were eligible to interact with European nations; and, if a nation was
European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 2007
SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 13(2): 239–262
[DOI: 10.1177/1354066107076956]
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European Journal of International Relations 13(2)
perceived as eligible (or ‘civilized’), the method of interaction. International
law, which actually was European international law in the legacies of
Christianity and 16th- and 17th-century legal theories (i.e. Justus Lipsius,
Hugo Grotius), became globalized in the 19th century when an increasing
number of international treaties were contracted with non-European
nations.1 Thus an international society steadily evolved, until in the League
of Nations a reasonable number of states (28 permanent, another 35 joined
or withdrew at various times)2 was united and at present nearly all nations
worldwide (currently 192) are included in the United Nations. The glob-
alization of international law, however, did not rest upon equality between
European and non-European states. On the contrary, non-European states had
to incorporate distinct legal, administrative and political elements into their sys-
tems to be regarded as legally and politically compatible with European
statehood. Three general features underlie the politics of ‘standards of civ-
ilization’: first, the general self-perception of European states as those who
authoritatively define the standards; second, regulations which define differ-
ent steps and paces of cooperation between European and non-European
states; and finally a geopolitical model projecting a world order with
European states at the centre and zones of less politically developed states at
the peripheries.
All three features are also an integral part of EU accession politics. From the
Treaties of Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2000) as well as
from secondary EU law, commonalities can be elaborated between EU acces-
sion politics and the 19th century. Fundamental political principles and the
‘acquis communautaire’ of the EU define standards to which non-members
have to adapt their political and legal systems if they aspire to membership.
Later a diverging pace of integration emerges which distinguishes between
candidate states as well as between EU member states themselves (‘Europe on
purchase’). Finally, we observe a geopolitical projection of core EU member
states and peripheral zones on the outside.
1.2. Conceptual Remarks
To inquire more deeply into these commonalities a discussion of the 19th-
century ‘standards of civilization’ will be undertaken in the next section,
followed, in section 3, by an examination of EU Treaties. This study takes up
the idea of ‘Comparative Historical International Society’ developed by the
English School (see Buzan, 2001; with an emphasis on the EU, Diez and
Whitman, 2002; Czaputowicz, 2003) to strengthen historical comparative
research, not only for supplementing the great part of EU studies, which
mostly follow institutionalist approaches and are a-historical (see Aspinwall and
Schneider, 2000), by qualitative research but also for highlighting historical
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Behr: The European Union and Imperial Rule
continuities, commonalities and shifts in the creation of international society.
Each comparative analysis has to ask for the tertium comparationis of the
objects compared. The objective of each comparison is twofold: first, to inquire
deeper into the characteristics which the studied objects have in common and
second, to elaborate specific differences (differentia specifica) between them.
Applied to the study of the EU system of rule, and 19th-century international
law, this means that both cases have certain features in common which relate
to, and stem from, the problem of recognition in International Politics and
International Law (as the tertium comparationis). As Hedley Bull notes, inter-
national society rests upon collective recognition (Bull, 1977), thus there must
exist standards of recognition which are the basis for interaction; furthermore
these standards have to become binding for others who are not yet part of the
international society. Recognition in international society refers to ‘principles
that prevail … within a majority of states [belonging to that international soci-
ety] … as well in the relations between them’, as Martin Wight concludes
(Wight, 1977: 153; see also Wight, 1969: 103). Hans-Martin Jaeger demon-
strates that the debate on international recognition in the modern nation-state
world goes back to Hegel (Jaeger, 2002; critically Brooks, 2004).3 Focusing
on 19th-century Europe we get, however, an ambivalent picture: whereas on
the one side we face a nearly consecutive history of warfare and conflict among
European nations, on the other side we see the emergence of a European
international society. Thereby a huge proliferation of new international organ-
izations was brought about as well as, during the last decades of that century,
a working ‘balance of power’ system (which, too, rested upon a minimum of
mutual recognition and shared norms, as elaborated in Bull and Watson, 1984,
and by Watson, 1992).4
Another aspect of recognition becomes relevant when we focus on the
relations between European nations and those who are (perceived as) ‘out-
side’. Here we have to realize a tradition of not only political, but also legal
inequality and hierarchical thinking which can be traced throughout the cen-
turies until the present in the EU system of rule. Taking this comprehensive
background into consideration, this article focuses on political and legal
practices of, and thoughts on, recognition as they can be comparatively iden-
tified as common between 19th-century international law and EU accession
politics, both dealing with ‘outside’ nations.5
The common features identified — see 1.1. — are atypical in the study of
international politics, particularly in EU studies. They derive from theor-
etical concepts well established, however in an interdisciplinary and multi-
paradigm perspective. Pierre Bourdieu (1991) and Michel Foucault (1980,
1991) sensitized us to the idea that political power depends on a ‘defining
authority’ proclaiming political and legal standards which function as appar-
ently ‘objective’ and which have to be accepted for participating in the game
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of power. This conceptual approach applies to feature (1) mentioned above. The
feature of different paces of recognition and eventual cooperation — feature
(2) — is a sub-aspect of the aforementioned since it describes a certain
modality of wielding power over recognition and cooperation. Applying —
in feature (3) — geopolitically informed concepts finally derives from the
suggestion, developed by ‘Critical Geography’,6 that each society, national
and international, is underpinned by geographical conceptions of ‘political
space’. Those conceptions are the carrier of distinct power perceptions and
ambitions, while they argue that geographically, thus ostensible objectively
given, conditions would determine state relations. However, geopolitical
projections are never politically ‘neutral’ or geographically ‘objective’, rather
they are socially and politically constructed, they serve as an analytical con-
cept for the study of how political power relations are conceptualized and
argumentatively espoused. In this function, geopolitical discourses can be
regarded and analysed as a further instrument of constructing and exercising
‘authoritative knowledge’ (also Foucault on geography, 1980: 63–77;
Bourdieu on space, 1991: 163–251).
Identifying these features as common features does not, of course, deny
particular differences between the EU system of rule and 19th-century inter-
national law, nor does it deny that there are additional examples in history
and current international politics which might evince comparable features.
Divergences between compared objects as well as between them and further
historical...
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