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V. Conclusions
Theoretically, this article has engaged two debates. First, with respect to the debate
on the nature of the EU as a collectivity, it has argued that the EU as a collectivity is
neither post-modern nor wholly modern, and the diverse trajectories of border conflicts on
its external borders attest to that. Secondly, it has addressed the debate on the effects of
international institutions on states. There, the paper has argued that the influence of the
international institution varies depending on the identity position of the state with respect
to the institution. In the empirical section of this paper, I have demonstrated how the
diverse identity positions of conflict parties affects both the degree and nature of EU
influence on conflicts on its external borders. The priority of the paper has been to make
these contributions to these debates, and not to offer the most comprehensive explanation
as to why the border conflicts have followed diverse trajectories. The factor that I have
chosen to bring forward, identity position, is certainly one among many, and is closely
related to other relevant domestic and international variables.
While it is easy to draw the theoretical implication from my paper –that the EU
helps transform conflicts on its external borders when it constitutes the non-member state
as potentially a part of self- I have to grant that it is much harder to translate this into
concrete policy suggestions. On the one hand, the EU cannot be expected to expand
indefinitely, and sooner or later it will be surrounded by states that it has no intention of
taking in as members (or states that do not want to become members, for that matter). On
the other hand, the concept of an identity position, as I have argued before, does suggest
the possibility that the (positive) effects of an international institution are not limited to its
institutional membership and those it intends to take in as members. But how to separate
out the two in practice, how to constitute states that have no prospect of membership, as
potentially parts of the European self is certainly a challenge. Perhaps, the answer lies in
what some scholars have identified as characteristics of the EU as a post-modern
collectivity –and which I have argued do not correspond to empirical realities:
Emphasizing inclusive aspects of European identity, constructing others as less, rather
than as anti-self, basing European identity on differentiation from its own past.
Convention