Democracy Promotion and the Normative Power Europe Framework

Marek Neuman is Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where he conducts research into the European Union’s foreign policy. He is particularly interested in the EU’s external democratization policy towards the near and far abroad. Further, he focuses on the European Union’s relations with Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, which he regularly visits as a research and teaching fellow.

• Introduction: EU Democracy Promotion in its Near (and Further) Abroad Through the Prism of Normative Power Europe.- Chapter 1: Framing the Debate: The Evolution of the European Union as an External Democratization Actor.- Chapter 2:  The Role of New Member States in the European Union's External Democratization Policy.- Chapter 3: The Limits of the EU's Normative myth in Armenia and Georgia.-  Chapter 4:  From Orange Revolution to Euromaidan: Ukraine, The EU and the Transfer of Democracy.- Chapter 5:  A Force For Good?: Assessing the EU's Normative Power in the Western Balkans.- Chapter 6:  The Emergence of State Capitalism in Central Asia - The Absence of Normative Power Europe.- Chapter 7: The EU's Democratization Policy Successes: Fit Between Internal and External Perception.- Chapter 8: Normative Power Europe, Democratization, and the Challenges of Complexity.- Conclusion: The Relevance of Normative Power in Changing Europe.

“The book is surprisingly coherent for an edited volume. It is carefully edited, and the individual chapters position themselves very clearly in relation to the book’s broad theoretical framework. … While using NPE as a framework to explain EU democracy promotion will mainly be of interest to academic readers, there is plenty of relevant insight in this volume for policy practitioners as well, especially in the empirical chapters.” (Balazs Szent-Ivanyi, Democratization, Vol. 26 (3), 2019)