The EU continuously searches for more effective policy towards its eastern neighbourhood, which is reflected in the on-going adaptation of its existing approaches, discourses and policy strategies to the new challenges of its external environment. In order to understand the complexity and limitations of the EU framework under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership Initiative (EaP) - that is, to consider the interface between policy instruments, institutional structures, and multiple agents - one needs to adopt an original analytical perspective of practices to comprehensively assess the policies' outcomes. This volume therefore offers an examination of social practices as implemented through the use of policy instruments and subsequently embedded into the existing/emergent social structures which shape and determine the EU-neighbours' relations. To gauge success of the ENP in the eastern region, the manuscript pulls together a rich collection of geographical and thematic case-studies, joined by the overarching conceptual framework of practices. This study's principal aims are to discern patterns of social practices which guide agents' interactions in different policy areas; to explore the origin and effect of these practices (the role of dominant discourses, logistical imbalances, deliberate strategies, etc.); and to explicate the nature of the emerging social structures being established in the eastern region. This approach is distinctive from other constructivist undertakings as it allows to synergise the meanings of social actions (through the focus on agents and instruments), and their structural extensions (through the focus on emergent structures) across geo- and bio-political localities of the EU and its eastern neighbourhood. This book was published as a special issue of East European Politics.

This book addresses the potential and limitations of the European Union Neighbourhood Policy in sustaining the expansion of the European security community towards the South Caucasus. The Caucasus' complex regional security dynamics are a hard test for regional security community building and showcase both the challenges of security provision through liberal reforms and integration and of the interaction between security communities and balance of power. The author begins by conceptualizing security community expansion and then considers the ENP through this perspective, before moving on to individual case studies on Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The book will appeal to both scholars and practitioners interested in European security, the European Union external action, and the post-Soviet space.

This edited volume addresses the foreign policy approaches demonstrated by the European Union (EU), Russia and Turkey towards their shared neighbourhood. These three geopolitical players promote active foreign and security policies towards the Black and Caspian Seas, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and determine stability in these regions.

This book contributes to the literature on the EU's role in the international system by engaging with the debates on global actorness and mapping new conceptual and theoretical avenues to better understand how agency and power are exerted at the global and regional levels, in a context of increased contestation of the international liberal order. Organised around three main lines, the book first looks at how the EU positions itself internationally in different policy areas, providing a multi-dimensional reading of EU policies, instruments, and practices; secondly, it engages with the EU's own perspective toward its regional contexts and with the perspectives of regional actors on the EU; and, thirdly, it explores non-European perspectives on EU actorness, as the way the EU is perceived by others in this system of contested leadership is central to how it is understood in terms of policies, instruments, and overall capability to lead and act as a global power.