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2 - The European Union

Soft and Smart Power in Aid and Trade?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2023

By
Peter Holmes ,
Julia Magntorn Garrett  and
Jim Rollo
Edited by
Miriam Manchin ,
Laura Puccio  and
Aydin B. Yildirim
Miriam Manchin
Affiliation:
Politecnico di Milano
Laura Puccio
Affiliation:
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Aydin B. Yildirim
Affiliation:
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
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Summary

This chapter draws on Joseph Nye’s original definition of soft power as being the ability of a country or region to influence others by virtue simply of their wish to emulate them. As in the attractiveness of US culture during the cold war, and by the eagerness of post-communist Central and Eastern European countries to adopt the EU model as the basis of their economic and social reforms. The chapter notes however that while soft power is not a policy instrument as such, it can be linked to instruments such as aid or trade preferences to influence the behaviour of partners. The approach is therefore to look at the relationship between the values embodied in aid priorities of the EU institutions and the major donor states. Using a “Finger Kreinin Index” we find that the EU and its Member States are to some extent pulling in the same direction, but that the degree of coherence with the EU institutions varies across the key Member States. The tentative conclusion is that the EU and its Member States have been complementing rather than either replicating or contradicting each other’s actions.

Keywords

soft powercoherenceEuropean UnionAid for Tradedevelopment assistance
Type
Chapter
Information
Coherence of the European Union Trade Policy with Its Non-Trade Objectives
World Trade Forum
 , pp. 34 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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