Unlearning What Has Been Learned: The EU’s New Neighbourhood Policy After the Arab Uprisings

Abstract

The chapter does three things: first, it examines the discursive structure of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as it was revised between 2011 and 2017, critically assessing its claim to discursive novelty in the post-Uprisings principles and frameworks of the ENP; secondly, it examines the policies and practices associated with post-Uprisings principles, again scrutinising the EU’s claim to novelty; and thirdly, it considers the extent to which citizens in Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs) have benefited from the implementation of these policies. The chapter conducts an in-depth comparative examination of the conceptual properties and discursive structure of the EU’s democracy and development policies after the Arab Uprisings, designed to make the thematic comparison with pre-Uprisings policies conducted in the previous chapter straightforward, facilitating an assessment of the EU’s own claims to having learned from past mistakes and of having substantively innovated the ENP as a consequence.