The European Union: From a Complex Adaptive System to a Policy Interpreter

The current article builds on complexity theory and offers a new perspective on EU actorness in external policies. It does so by looking at the EU as a complex adaptive system and by adding new instances to previous analyses on EU agency. More concretely, the article critically assesses the idea tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of common market studies Vol. 59; no. 2; pp. 388 - 403
Main Author Serban, Ileana Daniela
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.03.2021
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects
complex adaptive systems
Cooperation
development consensus
European Union
International cooperation
policy interpreter
triangular cooperation
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Summary:The current article builds on complexity theory and offers a new perspective on EU actorness in external policies. It does so by looking at the EU as a complex adaptive system and by adding new instances to previous analyses on EU agency. More concretely, the article critically assesses the idea that the EU becomes a policy interpreter when external actors start to interact following new policy practices. This entails examining how external actors enable EU institutional learning, and, through this, new forms of EU actorness. The argument is illustrated by using the case of triangular cooperation as a recent policy practice helping the EU to fulfil its commitments to aid effectiveness.
Bibliography:Correction added on 3 December 2020, after first online publication: Grammatical changes have been made to the article to improve clarity.
The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and to the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science for the postdoctoral fellowship at Waseda University.
ISSN:0021-9886
1468-5965
DOI:10.1111/jcms.13095