Introduction: To Take or Not to Take EU Norms? Adoption, Adaptation, Resistance and Rejection

Abstract

Thirteen papers present constructionist and rationalist accounts and a conceptual framework of how EU norms are adopted, adapted, resisted, or rejected, including empirical cases and critical analysis of norm-takers from European and non-European EU member states and norm-rejecters or resisters in Russia, Africa, China, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Czech Republic. Papers discuss a selective and reluctant adopter--the Czech Republic and its (non)accession to Schengen and the Eurozone; mobility in principle and practice--multilevel adoption of free movement norms in a European cross-border region; the European Union and global economic governance--whether it is playing the role of a global leader; perceptions of "normative power Europe" in the shadow of the Eurozone debt crisis--public perspectives on European integration from the Asia Pacific; moving from one single market to another--European integration, Australasian ambivalence, and construction of the trans-Tasman single economic market; moving freely, but taking a different route--comparing trans-Tasman and EU norms of human mobility; exporting hard law through soft norms--New Zealand's reception of European standards; the Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations--whether they provide a channel for norm export and import; ambitions versus capacity--the role of institutions in ASEAN; reception of EU trademark law in New Zealand; the value of gender equality in EU-Asian trade policy--an assessment of the European Union's ability to implement its own legal obligations; Russia's complex engagement with EU norms--sovereign democracy versus post-Westphalianism; and the diffusion of EU to China--the case of Tibet. Bjorkdahl is in the Department of Political Science at Lund University. Chaban is in the National Centre for Research on Europe at the University of Canterbury. Leslie is Lecturer in Political Science at Victoria University of Wellington. Masselot is in the College of Business and Law at the University of Canterbury. Index.