“The Politics” and “The Political” of the Eastern Partnership Initiative

Abstract

Drawing on Edkins’ (1999) interpretation of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, this article conceptually rethinks the Eastern Partnership agenda. Part of the problem, as this article argues, is the EU’s failure to imagine a new social order, which would give a relational value to the Other, and become more accommodating of their diverse and different world: and not by way of disciplining it to the EU purported standards, but rather by way of aligning differences to a mutually agreeable ‘normal’. The article thus problematises power relations as a process of ‘othering’, in order to re-conceptualise them via the key notions of differentiation conceived as distinction rather than deviation, and normalisation, seen as the interplay between different normalities. The article argues for bringing ‘the political’ (Edkins 1999) back in as an opportunity for debate and legitimation of contesting social orders.