Explaining Russian Reactions to the European Neighbourhood Policy

Abstract

The post-Cold War era has largely been one of Western liberal hegemony.1 Yet all is not well in the world of Western hegemony. Increasingly it seems that the appropriateness of liberal models is being challenged by other non-Western powers. To make a long story short — as it would deserve a book-length exposition of its own — the liberal agenda is being challenged both in its role as the only legitimate form of internal governance for the states (entailing a certain challenge to the role of democracy, human rights, etc. in the internal constitution of states) as well as eroding the consensus concerning the viability of certain neoliberal principles (in short: the Washington Consensus as the organising principle for the global trading regime). Underlying these two trends is a broader undercurrent where the more traditional understandings of sovereignty as being based on essential non-interference in the affairs of states seems to be making a comeback at the expense of more recent attempts at qualifying the sovereignty of states by references to concepts such as ’the responsibility to protect’, that have essentially been based on a liberal agenda concerning the primacy of individual rights and autonomy over those of states and other corporate actors.2