Recalibrating the Local Lens: Drivers and Transformations of the European Union's Territorial Agenda in the Southern Neighbourhood
Since its inception, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has incorporated a local lens in its engagement with Southern partners. However, the capacity of local authorities to enact the political autonomy expected by the European Union (EU) is distant from reality. The article mobilizes the conce...
| Autores: | , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) |
| Repositorio: | O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/151615 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10609/151615 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13708 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | European Neighbourhood Policy hegemonic narratives local government Morocco Tunisia |
| Sumario: | Since its inception, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has incorporated a local lens in its engagement with Southern partners. However, the capacity of local authorities to enact the political autonomy expected by the European Union (EU) is distant from reality. The article mobilizes the concept of hegemonic narratives in the cases of Morocco and Tunisia to problematize the set of discourses that establish the common understanding of ‘the local’ in the ENP's territorial agenda. We present three narratives that became hegemonic across ENP implementation: ‘the local’ as an agent of development, ‘the local’ as an agent of democratization and ‘the local’ as a provider of resilience. The evidence presented allows us to conclude that ‘the local’ acts as an empty signifier in the EU's territorial agenda in its Southern Neighbourhood. Whilst these narratives have certainly served centralizing trends, they have also been mobilized by or in support of emerging actors that contest them. |
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