2
Currently, there are ongoing debates both in the International Relations and
European Studies literatures ‘exploring the nature of the beast.’ Following Ruggie’s
characterization of the European Union as ‘the first ‘multi-perspectival polity’ to emerge
since the advent of the modern era’,
3
many scholars have stressed the ‘post-modern’,
‘post-Westphalian’, or ‘post-nationalist’ nature of the EU as a polity and collectivity.
4
The
typical modern nation-state has been founded on clear and unambiguous inside/outside
distinctions that have been reflected in an understanding of borders as barriers against the
always threatening ‘other’s. In contrast, a post-modern collectivity, it is argued, entails
‘moving beyond the hard boundaries and centralized sovereignty characteristics of the
Westphalian, or “modern” state towards permeable boundaries and layered sovereignty’.
5
In this line of argument, the EU’s ‘post-modernity’ is generally based on how
international politics is conducted among the community members, and the crucial
question of whether the EU constitutes a ‘post-modern’ collectivity in terms of its
relations with its ‘outside’ is sidestepped. I emphasize that the decisive criterion of
whether the EU has succeeded in becoming a ‘postmodern’ collectivity or is merely
replicating the nation-state form at a higher level of aggregation lies in the nature of its
external borders. Are the external borders of the EU ‘traditional, non-permeable, sovereign
borders with their inherent connotations of security dilemmas, economic protection, and
cultural, national or ethnic unity?’
6
Or have the mutually constitutive identities and
security community inside the EU begun to spill over also to its external borders? Unless
the latter can be concluded to be the case, I argue the ‘postmodern’ity of the EU remains
dubious at best.
Borders are dynamic social institutions. As such, they are intimately linked with
the underlying construction of identities that they, as borders, are meant to separate, and
3
John G. Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International
Relations’, International Organization, 47:1 (1993), p. 172.
4
For such characterizations of the EU, see, among others, Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez,
‘The European Union and Turkey’, Survival, 41:1(1999), pp. 41-57, Lars-Erik Cederman,
‘Exclusion Versus Dilution: Real or Imagined Trade-Off?’, in Lars- Erik Cederman (ed.)
Constructing Europe’s Identity: The External Dimension , (Boulder: Lynne Rienner,
2001), pp. 233-56, esp. 248-50, and Ole Waever, ‘Insecurity, Security, and Asecurity in
the West European Non-war Community’, in Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.)
Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 69-118.
5
Buzan and Diez, ‘The European Union’, p. 56.
6
Richmond, ‘Emerging Concepts of Security in the European Order’, p. 45
Convention