Governance stories in the South Caucasus: narrative policy analysis of the EU’s public administration reform assistance to the Eastern neighbourhood

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores the meaning of European Union’s (EU) public administration reform (PAR) assistance to the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries by identifying various narratives of good governance (GG) that interact between the actors who inhabit the EaP policy space. Interpretive policy analysis is employed for empirical research of the EaP in Georgia and Armenia with the aim of understanding the prospects and limitations of PAR assistance in the EU’s external relations. The findings show the narrative nature of GG promotion and indicate several competing narratives of PAR in the EaP policy field. While the EU’s narrative of legally constituted state essentializes and universalizes statism, legalism, and economism as constitutive elements of GG in the EaP, the contending stories and nonstories of reforming PA put forward by policy-relevant stakeholders also rely on alternative meanings of GG. The article captures and deconstructs those narratives and discusses policy implications.