EU Foreign Policy in a Globalized World: Normative power and social preferences (Routledge/GARNET series) - Hardcover

'This volume provides a highly stimulating set of essays on this understudied phenomenon. Moreover, in analytical terms, this volume succeeds in its own terms in providing the first step forward in what will hopefully become a more comprehensive research program. Above all, the volume accomplishes something valuable in introducing this significant subject area to the academic agenda while revealing its complexity, relevance, and interest.' - M. L. R. Smith, Democracy and Security, Vol. 6, 1, March 2010

Written by leading experts in the field, this volume identifies European collective preferences and analyzes to what extent these preferences inform and shape EU foreign policy and are shared by other actors in the international system.

While studies of the EU's foreign policy are not new, this book takes a very different tack from previous research. Specifically it leaves aside the institutional and bureaucratic dimensions of the European Union's behaviour as an international actor in order to concentrate on the meanings and outcomes of its foreign policy taken in the broadest sense. Two outcomes are possible:

• Either Europe succeeds in imposing a norms-based international system and thus, in this case, its soft power capacity will not only have been demonstrated but will be enhanced
• Or, on the contrary, it does not succeed and the global system will become one where realpolitik reigns; especially once China, India and Russia attain a preponderant influence on the international scene.

EU Foreign Policy in a Globalized World will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, foreign policy and politics and international relations in general.