| Summary/Abstract |
This article aims to show that the European Union has normative power. Normative power is understood here as the capacity to promote norms by diffusion, based on persuasion, communication and interaction at large. The EU aims to influence the international order and to promote effective multilateralism. However, the further away from Europe the EU operates, the less it is able to use its traditional means of conditionality or its neighbourhood policy tools. Instead, the EU has to rely on diffusion mechanisms. This holds particularly true in the policy field of security where the EU has only limited capabilities for force projections and—given the specific nature of the defence market—only a limited role for the incentive of ‘market access’ and hence conditionality. Drawing on research on norm diffusion and taking into account the filter factors such as history, exposure and political systems that are at play in diffusion processes as well as the particular mechanisms at work, the European Union and its Member States seem to possess some normative power when meeting specific and growing demands for templates, know-how, procedures and processes to address today’s security challenges and operating on a global level with the new global stakeholders such as China and India.
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