Governmentality in Eu External Trade and Environment Policy ─ Between Rights and Market

Govermentality and EU External Trade and Environment Policy applies theories drawn from Foucauldian governmentality studies to investigate the ideological and political roots of the European Union’s (EU) external trade and environmental policy and their effects on the transnational legal landscape. The EU’s desire to spread environmental norms abroad is viewed in the book as a significant feature of contemporary EU trade policy. The EU’s activities in this area have not been uncontroversial for other transnational legal actors. States, individuals, and organizations have challenged the EU’s various trade and environment policies, arguing that they are coercive, unfair, over-reaching, or inefficient. Meanwhile, these policies have also raised a number of questions from the perspective of legality and political theory.

This book takes a different approach. Rather than asking what the law says about the EU’s behavior, and whether the EU should or should not engage in environmental norm export, it considers what does the practice of EU environmental norm export tell us about the way the EU perceives the role and limits of transnational government, the means and ends of politics, and the drivers of human and institutional behavior? Jessica Lawrence examines the legal and political discourse of the EU and those affected by its policies. By studying legal cases, statements by officials, legislative documents, press releases, and other representative documents the book identifies the rationalities, technologies, and subjectivities that underlie contemporary EU activity in this area. The overall effect paints a more complicated and nuanced picture of the EU’s vision of itself and its goals; one that ultimately seeks to provide a better understanding of the functioning of power in this area.

Jessica C. Lawrence is an Assistant Professor in the Legal Studies Department at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.