External Perceptions of the European Union as a Global Actor

This book examines how the European Union (EU) is perceived beyond its borders in the US; the Middle East: Israel, Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iran; Russia; China; India; Brazil and South Africa. The book also analyses the main perceptions of the EU in some key international institutions, including the World Bank; World Trade Organization, United Nations, African Union; and transnational actors, including non-Western media such as Al Jazeera. It seeks to provide a thorough analysis of the implications that these perceptions might have for the global role of the EU.

By taking this approach and by providing both conceptual and empirical arguments, the volume provides an innovative perspective on the analysis of the EU as a global actor. It also strengthens a research agenda on the EU external image: an underdeveloped area of investigation in which the editors and the main contributors to this volume have played a pioneering role in the past few years.

It will be of strong interest to academics and students of international politics, European studies and development studies.

Sonia Lucarelli, PhD, is Lecturer of International Relations at the University of Bologna (Italy). She has written widely on International relations theory, the EU’s foreign policy and the external image of the EU. Among her publications: (co-editor with Furio Cerutti) The Search for a European identity. Values, Policies and Legitimacy of the European Union, London: Routledge; in print; (ed.) Beyond Self Perception: The Others’ View of the European Union, Special issue of European Foreign Affairs Review, 3/2007; (co-editor with Ian Manners) Values and Principles in EU Foreign Policy, London: Routledge 2006; (co-editor with Claudio Radaelli) Mobilising Politics and Society? The EU Convention’s Impact on Southern Europe, London: Routledge 2005; Europe and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. A Political Failure in Search of a Scholarly Explanation, The Hague: Kluwer 2000. She is also the author of several academic articles and chapters on the topics of her competence.

Lorenzo Fioramonti, PhD, is Research Fellow at the University of Bologna (Italy). Previously, he was Lecturer in European Studies at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Pretoria (South Africa) and Senior Researcher at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, based in Johannesburg (South Africa). He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and European Politics and has published widely on European Union’s external relations, civil society and development policies in international journals such as Development in Practice, European Foreign Affairs Review and Third World Quarterly. He is the editor of the CIVICUS Global Survey of the State of Civil Society (Kumarian Press, 2007).