The EU in Southeast Asian Security

The Role of External Perceptions

Ronja Scheler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000331592
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book revealingly traces the ways in which third-party perceptions of an international actor affect its agency in global affairs by using the example of the European Union's engagement in Southeast Asian non-traditional security.

Utilizing an innovative analytical framework emphasising the intersubjective nature of international actorness, it provides novel insights into cooperation between the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The book covers fields such as counter-terrorism, disaster management, or maritime security affairs and emphasises the role that ASEAN's perceptions of the EU play in them. Based on rich empirical data gained from multiple interviews in Europe and Southeast Asia, the author uncovers the missing link between external perceptions of the EU and their impact on joint EU-ASEAN endeavours in non-traditional security fields. The book concludes by making some concrete recommendations to policy-makers engaged in EU external relations and reminds us that 'the other' and its domestic context might be even more important in thinking about international affairs than acknowledged thus far.

This book is of key interest to scholars, practitioners and students of EU foreign policy, EU-ASEAN affairs, EU-Asia relations, and more broadly of EU studies, International Relations, regionalism and interregionalism as well as security studies.

1Introduction: External perceptions, the EU-ASEAN partnership, and non-traditional security

What others think about us is as important as what we actually are.

Hans Morgenthau (1965)

“It’s not important what others think of you”. A lot of parents give this piece of advice to their children. It might well be an important lesson on human interaction for adolescents trying to build up self-confidence. This book shows, however, that a different story is to be told about the interaction of international actors, where, in fact, it is important what others think of you. Clearly, perceptions matter. Actors act upon their views of the world surrounding them and of the actors inhabiting it. As traced throughout the following pages, this is not only true for individual human decision-makers but also for organised agglomerates of people in the form of states or international organisations, where perceptions are also at play.

The organisation for which this seems particularly relevant is the European Union (EU)¹. At least, it is the international entity that has incited most research interest in third-party perceptions, i.e. the ways in which it is seen by outside players such as states, international organisations, or non-state actors. Numerous book chapters and journal articles have collected substantial amounts of data depicting external perceptions of the EU (e.g. Bachmann and Müller 2015; Chaban and Elgström 2015; Chaban and Holland 2008, 2015; Chaban, Elgström, and Holland 2006; Elgström 2007, 2010; Lucarelli 2013; Lucarelli and Fioramonti 2010). But also the EU itself – or rather, its bureaucrats – seem to wonder how the regional organisation is viewed from the outside: Over the years, the Union has commissioned a number of studies that examine how other international players regard the EU as an actor in the international system. Exemplary research projects have traded under names such as Disaggregating Chinese Perceptions of the EU and Implications for the EU’s China Policy, EuroBroadMap (for both see Lucarelli 2013, 435), or Analysis of the Perception of the EU and of EU’s Policies Abroad (European Commission 2015).

Critics might argue that such endeavours are owed to the lack of self-confidence of the EU and the widespread uncertainty of its role as an international actor. But there seems to be another underlying rationale: There is a somewhat vague sense that, as stated at the outset, it is important what others think of you. But important for what? Analysts have come up with largely congruent assertions, which, in essence, claim that third-party views affect the performance of the EU as an actor on the global stage.

For example, Lucarelli asserts that “[one] reason to undertake an analysis of the external perceptions of the EU is their impact on the effectiveness of the EU’s policies” (Lucarelli 2013, 430; emphasis added). Other examples include Chaban et al. (“Whether policy initiatives taken by the EU reach their goals, and whether (and to what extent) the Union may play a leadership role in a given policy area, are partly determined by the images others have of the EU”; Chaban et al. 2006, 248) and Elgström (“When the EU tries to lead in multilateral negotiations, it needs followers”; Elgström 2007, 952). It has also been posited that “outsiders’ perceptions of the EU will be key to the Union’s impact on the outcome” (Chaban and Elgström 2015, 17). None of the above authors, however, unfolds the specific instances and conditions under which this is the case. While a causal relationship between third-party perceptions and actual policies is suspected, this link has not been empirically substantiated to date. Closing this gap in the vivid research on EU foreign policy is the main mission of the book at hand.

So what are the conceivable ways in which perceptions impact international affairs? One causal link arguably exists between the cognitive images of third parties that emerge in individual decision-makers’ minds, and the influence of these images on the respective decider’s actions. A state leader, foreign minister, parliamentarian, or bureaucrat, for instance, has a specific view of a third party that may or may not correspond to objective facts, but that will certainly influence the way in which the person behaves towards this third party. He or she will most probably act upon these perceptions rather than an objective truth. This relationship represents what I term the “intrasubjective” dimension of perceptions; it has been a popular theme among foreign policy analysts since the 1960s (Boulding 1959; Dolan 2014; Gold 1978; Jervis 1976; Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin 1962; Sprout and Sprout 1969; Starr 1984; Stein 2013; Walker and Falkowski 1984).

Despite the important insights produced through such undertakings, this research tradition has only played a minor role for the book for two reasons: First, perceptions, in the above sense, have been conceptualised as an individual phenomenon, i.e. something that happens in one person’s mind. The book, however, is concerned with collective perceptions, i.e. the cumulative images that emerge in the thinking and acting of a determined group of actors on behalf of a (regional) organisation. The second incompatibility between the cited works and the objectives of the book lies in my interest for what I label, equivalent to the above, the “intersubjective” function of cognitive images. While the above scholars have been concerned with the way that cognitive images influence the actions of the perceiver, the book’s emphasis is on the role of perceptions for the perceived. The starting point for these considerations is the constructivist assumption that reality is, in part, a reflection of shared knowledge produced through intersubjective action (Wendt 1995, 73; see also Adler 2002; Berger and Luckmann 1967; Hopf 1998; Kratochwil 2012; Zehfuss 2002).

Related to one of the identified weaknesses, there is a second conceivable link between cognitions and international politics that was already alluded to in previous paragraphs. It has been taken up by a number of scholars cited above, who have set the stage for this book’s research and its interest in the intersubjective side of perceptions. This notion embodies the image that one international actor has of another, and the effect that it has on the interaction between them. As an example, Actor A (a state or international organisation; “the perceived”; “self”; “ego”)² is looked at by Actor B (another international entity; “the perceiver”; the “other”; “alter”)³. Actor B thus has a particular view of Actor A and its respective traits and abilities, leading to distinct images. These views and images are likely to affect the relationship and de facto cooperation between Actor A and Actor B. This causal link is captured in the term “external perceptions” that has made its way into the academic discourse on the matter (see works cited above), and that is used throughout the book. The notion of “external” indicates that the way in which Actor A is perceived by Actor B is a process beyond the scope of Actor A, and thus “external”. It has, however, a direct impact on Actor A’s constitution (and the constitution of the relationship between A and B). One can thus assume that external perceptions of Actor A have a direct bearing on its performance as an international actor.

Yet, as already pointed out, the details of this link have not been sufficiently investigated to date. There remains a glaring gap in our understanding of the ways in which external perceptions affect the policies of the perceived and the interaction between the perceiver and the perceived. The research for the present book set off to uncover the assumed causal mechanism connecting the two parameters. Specific attention is given to the context and the conditions under which the mechanism is activated or effective. All this is analysed within a specific relationship, namely the relations between the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)⁴ in non-traditional security (NTS), i.e. aspects of security that go beyond traditional understandings related to military and “hard” power. The core question that the book tackles is the one about the ways in and the conditions under which ASEAN’s perceptions of the EU affect the organisations’ bilateral relations in NTS fields.

Why the EU, ASEAN, and NTS? There is an array of reasons for the chosen approach. First and foremost, third-party views of the EU were placed front and centre because their investigation is a worthy extension of the ongoing debate of the EU as a global actor (Mattheis and Wunderlich 2017; Novotná 2017; Peters 2016; Rhinard and Sjöstedt 2019). In line with constructivist considerations, the role of “the other” or alter has become more prominent in discussions of the existence and performance of the Union in international affairs. How it is perceived by a respective third party hence should form a firm part of these academic endeavours. Accordingly, a considerable amount of research has already been conducted on EU external perceptions (EEP), on which the present book can draw and which it eventually will expand. Studies in this field conceptualise perceptions as a collective phenomenon, i.e. the cumulative images of a distinct group of people, for instance, functional elites and decision-makers. The object of these collective perceptions – in the context of EEP research – usually has been the EU and its capabilities in specific policy areas. As invoked above, however, these contributions have not prominently incorporated the link between these external views on the EU and their impact on concrete cooperation between the Union and the respective partner. Both empirical evidence on this causal mechanism and effort to theorise third-party views as a causal factor on EU foreign policy or international affairs as such have been limited thus far.

The second choice, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: External perceptions, the EU-ASEAN partnership, and non-traditional security
• 2 The concept: External perceptions and political cooperation
• 3 The context: EU-ASEAN relations and non-traditional security
• 4 The laggard: EU-ASEAN counter-terrorism cooperation
• 5 The poster child: EU-ASEAN disaster management cooperation
• 6 The mixed image: EU-ASEAN maritime cooperation
• 7 Conclusion: External perceptions, domestic context, and foreign policy cooperation
• Acknowledgements
• Appendices
• Index