Integration will help to overcome conflicts and maintain peace and stability: this was a widespread legitimization for European Union (EU) enlargement toward central and Eastern Europe.1
Higashino 2004.
In this article, we develop a theory of the power of integration and association in border conflict transformation. We propose four different paths of potential EU impact. We also use the five cases mentioned above to provide an initial test of our theory, allowing us to specify further some of the conditions under which individual paths have a positive or negative effect on border conflicts. The selection of these cases is not based on a distinction of different settings of conflict, such as interstate or intrastate conflicts, but on how conflicts relate to different constellations of integration and association. It follows the hypothesis that the EU's impact is strongest and most positive in situations where the border is fully a part of the EU, and all parties involved therefore subjected to the forces of the integration process. At the other end of the spectrum, we expect the EU's impact to be weaker in situations of association, although we would also argue that the power of integration might potentially be also at play in association agreements. Finally, we would expect the EU to have a negative impact in situations where the border conflict coincides with the outer borders of EU territories, as the need to enforce the acquis communautaire, in particular, the Schengen agreement, further divides rather than integrates these border areas.
Such a comparison across our set of case studies can of course only provide initial findings, which need to be subjected to further research in a larger number of cases. The nature of the paths of EU impact that we suggest in this article necessitates a wide range of qualitative research methods, which presuppose active knowledge of language and culture and are highly labor-intensive. Individual teams of researchers will therefore always be restricted to a relatively small number of cases. We thus see this article first and foremost as a contribution to the development of a theory of the impact of integration on border conflicts, the usefulness of which we will demonstrate in our case studies. We hope that this will spark further research projects along the suggested lines.
To avoid misunderstandings, we also need to stress that our concern is with the impact of integration and association, not with the EU as a more traditional third party intervening in conflict resolution. This limits the scope of our argument, but it will also make it more precise. The question of the EU as a foreign policy actor in conflict resolution is an interesting and, with a strengthening of the EU's Common and Foreign Security Policy (CFSP), equally topical and challenging one, but it is different from the question of the impact of integration and association, and requires further reflections on the literature on CFSP as well as on third-party intervention, which we do not take into account in the following discussion.4
This does however not mean that our framework cannot be applied to conflicts with EU involvement beyond integration and association,5See Loisel 2004.
In what follows, we proceed in three steps. First, we define what we mean by “border conflict” and successful (or “positive”) EU impact. Secondly, we develop the four possible paths of such an impact. In a third step, we discuss how these pathways have operated with regard to our five case studies and then outline the conditions under which there is an impact, and whether this impact is positive or negative. We will refer to our empirical cases throughout the article as we develop and discuss our approach.
Border Conflicts and Successful EU Impact
A Discursive Definition of Border Conflicts
To begin, we need to define what we consider to be a successful or positive impact of integration or association on border conflict transformation, which in turn requires a definition of conflict. We follow a discursive definition of conflict as the articulation of the incompatibility of subject positions. More simply stated, we observe the existence of a conflict when an actor constructs his or her identity or interests in such a way that these cannot be made compatible with the identity or interests of another actor. Conflict is therefore discursively constructed. This means that, on the one hand, we do not consider violence as a necessary element of conflict; on the other hand, we do not regard as conflicts what the literature refers to as “latent” conflicts, in which an incompatibility is deducted from “objective” predispositions rather than actual communication.6
Efinger, Rittberger, and Zürn 1988.
In a border conflict, actors construct and communicate their identities and interests in relation to a larger group, the overall identity or interests of which are seen as incompatible with that of another group. In the modern society of (nation) states, such “imagined communities” tend to be constructed as nations organized in territorially bounded states, or aspiring statehood.7
Anderson 1991.
See, for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tessler 1994.
The case of Northern Ireland demonstrates how a border conflict can mutate from a conflict about a state border (between Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) to multiple border conflicts (in the demarcation of republican and unionist spaces in Belfast, (London-)Derry, and other cities in Northern Ireland). Meanwhile the conflict about the actual state border has greatly diminished, although it has not altogether disappeared.9
See, for the conflict in Northern Ireland, Ruane and Todd 1996.
See, for EU-Russian relations, Johnson and Robinson 2004.
One specific mode to capture conflict communication in our border conflict cases is securitization, which we define, following Buzan and Waever, as the representation of the other as an existential threat justifying extraordinary measures.11
We observe a conflict when actors articulate an incompatibility by referring to another as an existential threat to the self. In doing so, we focus in particular on public discourse, as it is here that border conflicts gain political salience.The case studies on which our argument builds have systematically analyzed instances of securitization in parliamentary debates, newspaper commentaries and history schoolbooks throughout the period of EU involvement in each conflict. In-depth interviews with policymakers on all sides of a conflict, as well as the EU, complemented the emerging picture, although their primary purpose was to reconstruct one particular (“compulsory”) pathway of EU impact, which we will introduce below. We take our empirical examples from these case studies, for which a larger project team was responsible. A project Web site,12
See 〈www.euborderconf.bham.ac.uk〉.
This approach allows us to assess degrees of securitization, which are to do with the extent to which individual attempts to securitize (so-called “securitizing moves”) gain acceptance by other members of the group or society, the frequency with which securitizing moves occur, and the extent to which a given group or society perceives the threat of the other as “existential.” A securitization in its strongest form is manifest in the argument that the 1974 coup in Cyprus, organized by the then reigning military junta in Athens, represented an existential threat to the Turkish Cypriots (and also, given Cyprus's proximity to Turkey's southern coastline, to Turkey), which justified the extraordinary measure of military intervention.13
Adamson 2002, 170.
For the persistence of deep-seated suspicion in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, see Wasserstein 2003.
See also Mitchell 2006.
We would also see the disputes in the 1996 Imia/Kardak crisis between Greece and Turkey as instances of securitization, even though the articulated threat was not one of wiping out an entire population—in fact, the dispute was over a rocky, uninhabited island in the Aegean. Yet the threat was still seen, on a more symbolic level, as existential for the Turkish and Greek states.16
For the Imia/Kardak conflict, see Athanassopoulou 1997.
See, for example, Browning 2003.
Stages of Conflict and Observation of EU Impact
Our discursive definition of conflict allows us to conceptualize an ideal-typical model of conflict stages, which forms the basis for our analysis of EU impact further below. These stages are characterized by (1) an increasing intensity of securitization (a greater stress on the existentiality of the threat; an increased frequency of securitizing moves; a greater acceptance of securitizing moves); and (2) a greater infiltration of societal life by securitization.18
See also Messmer 2003.
Stages of conflict (as modified from Messmer 2003)
Conflict is at its weakest if the articulation of an incompatibility occurs as a singular, isolated incidence with no reference to an existential threat, which we call a conflict episode. An issue conflict displays conflict communication that is limited to a particular issue and contains no or few securitizing moves. Issue conflicts are largely about conflicting specific interests. Although identities are partly expressed through interests, at the stage of issue conflicts the parties do not explicitly invoke identities as such as part of the conflict. This, however, becomes the case in identity conflicts, where securitizing moves abound and conflict parties articulate explicitly existential threats to the “self.” Conflict communication begins to overshadow most spheres of societal life. In the final stage of subordination conflicts, the conflicting parties widely accept the existential threat posed by the other, as well as the need to counter this threat with extraordinary measures. Conflict communication dominates all aspect of societal life, including the interpersonal level.
We want to emphasize that from an empirical perspective, these different conflict stages are not discrete, but rather overlapping zones on a continuum between conflict episodes and subordination conflicts. The point of this discussion is not to be able to unambiguously classify a conflict as being at one or another stage, but rather to observe movements along this continuum over time. We may argue that integration or association have had a positive impact if we can observe that they have contributed to the movement of a conflict from a stage of greater conflict intensity to stages of lower intensity. When this is the case, we may observe, for instance, that the representation of the other side as an existential threat becomes confined to specific issues in both parliamentary debates and newspaper commentaries; that more actors contest securitizing moves instead of readily accepting and engaging in them; or that new editions of school books begin to stress commonalities, rather than incompatibilities, between the parties involved. Conversely, integration and association can be seen to have had a negative impact if a conflict intensifies and moves, for instance, from an issue conflict to an identity conflict.
Border Conflict Transformations Through Integration and Association
While the precise location of a border conflict on this continuum may be contested between different observers, we find that there is usually widespread agreement about the tendency of the movement of the overall conflict. If there is no such tendency, this is usually because of divergent patterns of interaction within assumed conflict parties. An illustration outside our five case studies is instructive in this respect: the conflict about Gibraltar might overall be seen as an identity conflict that has by now moved to the stage of an issue conflict as far as the British and Spanish governments are concerned, while in the articulations of many Gibraltarians it comes closer to a subordination conflict. This is not necessarily a problem for our research; it rather helps to specify where exactly a border conflict transformation has taken place, for such a transformation may well involve only some sectors of society, while others remain unchanged or move into the opposite direction. Indeed, it would not at all be surprising to find that at times integration has contradictory effects on border conflicts, which we need to observe and explain as such, rather than artificially trying to bring them into a single coherent picture.
Thus our five case studies cover a range of different conflict constellations, with different directions of movement between conflict stages. While in Northern Ireland the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) succeeded in limiting previously widespread instances of intercommunal violence, which allow us to describe the conflict prior to the GFA as a conflict of subordination, it nevertheless reinforced the articulation of antagonistic unionist and republican identities. The Northern Ireland conflict has thus moved to a lower conflict stage, yet it has become “locked in” at the stage of an identity conflict.19
A more pervasive move toward a relatively low stage of securitization has been achieved in the Greek-Turkish conflict. While important conflict issues, such as the delineation of the continental shelf in the eastern Aegean or the status of some islets remain disputed between both states, the overall political, social, and economic relations between Greece and Turkey have reached an unprecedented level of détente and cooperation, in which negative images of the other, let alone recourse to military means, are no longer a dominant characteristic of conflict communication in either society. Consequently, the conflict moved from the level of a subordination conflict toward an issue conflict.20A movement in the opposite direction characterizes our three other case studies. In the Middle East, the failed Camp David summit of September 2000 preceded the outbreak of the second Intifada and the massive increase of violence by both Israelis and Palestinians. With the factual end to the Oslo peace process since 2000, the Middle East conflict has become locked in at the stage of a conflict of subordination.21
On the Oslo process, see Lustick 1997.
Prozorov 2005.
Four Pathways of EU Impact
Integration or association are always only one among several factors that influence the development of a border conflict, and empirically it is difficult clearly to distinguish between these various factors. Thus the transformation of border conflicts might also be related to the role of other actors (for example, the United States or the UN).24
Tocci 2005.
It is not possible to clearly separate these factors from integration on the basis of our cases because the latter are all similar with respect to the alternative explanatory variables. Indeed, the possibility of states to participate in European integration depends on this similarity, especially after the Copenhagen Criteria, and consequently it is difficult to find appropriate control cases. However, democratization, as a more tangible factor than globalization, as such does not seem to be a sufficient condition for border conflict transformation, as there was no weakening of securitization in Northern Ireland or Greece/Turkey while they have been democracies. Some studies even suggest that the process of democratization leads to a period of greater conflict volatility.25
As we will demonstrate, our cases suggest that while processes such as globalization and democratization might facilitate border conflict transformation in the long run, other factors are crucial to make it happen. Our task is then to identify the specific contribution that integration makes to such a transformation.The demonstration of the impact of integration and association, therefore, has to rest on a number of indicators that amount to a plausible story across cases. In this respect, the impact of integration is similar to the impact of ideas.26
Yee 1996.
We propose to distinguish four different possible pathways of EU impact in the transformation of border conflicts. These pathways relate to two dimensions: (1) whether the impact is generated either by concrete EU measures or an effect of integration processes that are not directly influenced by EU actors; and (2) whether the impact is on concrete policies or has wider social implications. In conceptualizing these four pathways of EU impact, we have made use of the work of Barnett and Duvall on different categories of power in international politics.27
Barnett and Duvall 2005.
Pathways of EU impact
Path 1 (compulsory impact) works through carrots and sticks, compelling actors through the mechanisms of integration and association to change their policies vis-à-vis the other party toward conciliatory moves, rather than deepening securitization.28
Dorussen 2001.
Wallace 2003.
Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004.
Risse et al. 2001.
In comparison with membership, other EU incentives can be regarded as relatively minor in weight and importance. Association agreements do not entail all the benefits of full membership, in particular not the symbolic importance of being an EU member, as the debate about an alternative form of membership for Turkey has shown.32
Diez 2005.
Path 2 (enabling impact) relies on specific actors within conflict parties to link their political agendas with the EU and, through reference to integration, justify desecuritizing moves that may otherwise have not been considered legitimate.34
Buzan, Waever, and deWilde 1998, 41–42.
See Adamson 2002, for the case of Cyprus in 1974.
Newman 1996, 189; but see Moravcsik 2002, 612, for the view that decision making at EU level is much more tightly scrutinized.
Path 3 (connective impact) supports contact between conflict parties, mainly through direct financial support of common activities. Such contact is not in itself a step toward desecuritization. Sustained contact within the context of common projects may however lead to a broader societal effect in the form of social networks across conflict parties, which in turn should facilitate identity change as foreseen within the constructive impact below. Outside the EU, support for such activities largely takes the form of traditional grants.37
Stetter 2003.
See Anderson and O'Dowd 1999.
Path 4 (constructive impact) is the most indirect but—if successful—also most persuasive mode of transformation, because it “aims” at changing the underlying identity-scripts of conflicts, thus supporting a (re-)construction of identities that permanently sustains peaceful relations between conflict parties. This pathway is based on the assumption that EU impact can put in place completely new discursive frameworks for creating novel ways of constructing and expressing identities within conflict regions. These new identity-scripts will foster desecuritization in a virtuous circle. Ultimately, this may lead to the eventual resolution of the conflict, that is, the disappearance of articulations of the incompatibility of subject positions. This is clearly a long-term process, but its applicability is corroborated by the claim that while there may not (yet) be a single European identity, “Europe” has become an integral part of the identity/-ies in each of the EU's member states.39
Waever 1996.
There are two often-discussed influences of integration on conflict that do not seem to fit easily into the four paths as outlined above. The first of these is the essentially neofunctionalist logic that conflicts can be overcome by bringing actors to cooperate on functional matters, this process leading to a change in preferences and ultimately in individual “allegiances.”40
Yet, there are in fact two mechanisms on which this logic rests: the facilitation of cooperation by focusing on seemingly technical matters, and the long-term shift of subject positions that this might bring with it. Both mechanisms are contained in the connective and the constructive impact, respectively.The second possible gap in our scheme is the argument that integration leads to increased wealth and employment, and that this will take people off the streets and alter their preference structures so that violent conflict is no longer a desirable option—an argument often found in the early discussions on Northern Ireland in the European Parliament.41
Pace 2005.
While we have presented all paths as possibly leading to a reduction of securitization, and therefore to a successful impact of integration on border conflict transformation, their influence can also be negative. Regarding the compulsory impact, this is for instance the case when new member states are required to implement certain policies to satisfy the acquis, which actors in neighboring states see as securitizing moves: the implementation of visa regimes on the border of Russia and the EU is an example.
Likewise, integration can enable actors to pursue policies that have the effect of intensifying conflict discourse, such as in the case of Cyprus after accession, where Greek Cypriots have adopted the discourse of a “European solution” to insist on the four freedoms. In this view, the latter would have been compromised under the UN-sponsored Annan Plan for a solution in Cyprus, which had the backing of most other EU actors. EU policies can have a disconnective rather than a connective impact if new visa regimes make contact across the border more difficult, as is the case not only in Russia and Europe's North, but also between Greece and Turkey. Finally, and in particular in cases of conflicts between EU member and nonmember states, integration can foster the construction of a European identity in opposition to the neighboring conflict party outside the EU. Whether or not integration does have an impact on border conflicts, and whether or not such an impact is positive or negative can therefore not be determined in the abstract, but is a matter of empirical investigation. Furthermore, the different paths do not occur in isolation from each other. Instead, we need to observe their interplay, including the reinforcing effects between them.
The Operation of Pathways in Border Conflicts
In this section we specify, on the basis of our pathway-model and the aforementioned case studies, whether and under what conditions integration and association have an impact on border conflict transformation. We argue that in most cases integration and association contribute to a desecuritization of border conflicts, thereby largely confirming our hypothesis of the transformative power of integration. However, there are also cases in which EU impact has lead to a further securitization of the conflict. This leads us to establish the conditions of positive and negative EU impact. In observing change, we do not argue that EU impact operates in a simple cause-effect relationship. Instead, in many cases integration and association support rather than initiate desecuritizing moves.
Compulsory Impact
The success of the compulsory impact of integration is subject to three conditions. First, the compulsory impact operates most efficiently in situations of pending membership negotiations, while it looses much of its power without such a concrete offer and once membership has been attained. It follows that we cannot confirm our initial hypothesis that EU impact is strongest in cases of EU membership of all parties, at least in relation to formal policy changes. This pathway, second, crucially depends on the credibility of the membership offer. Only if a conflict party considers the carrot of membership an achievable option will it engage in desecuritizing moves. Third, the pervasiveness of the compulsory impact depends on the extent to which domestic actors internalize the legal and normative framework of integration.
Both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom are members of the EU and therefore the Northern Ireland conflict is an internal conflict of the EU. Yet the compulsory impact has been rather limited. We can explain this by the fact that during the preaccession period in 1973, the then European Community (EC) provided no facilitating conditions for solving the conflict. The EC of the early 1970s was a different institution from the EU of the 1990s, when the linkage between a resolution of border conflicts and entry into the EU had become part of official policies. In 1973 border conflicts were considered a matter of national prerogative.42
Hayward 2004b, 5.
In contrast, the compulsory impact is most obvious in the case of Greece and Turkey. Since Turkey's EU membership candidacy, “policymakers [have been] careful to restrain themselves from further escalating crises, and worked toward improving bilateral relations.”43
Rumelili 2004a, 7.
Pridham 1991.
Rumelili 2004a, 9.
A similar effect can be observed in the case of Cyprus where the compulsory impact of the EU on both conflict parties was highly influential during membership negotiations with the RoC from 1997 to 2004. Yet it failed to pave the way for a long-term desecuritization of this conflict after the RoC had joined the EU, due to the instrumental approach of Greek Cypriot policymakers on possible concessions. The lukewarm approach by the EU, which tied “Cyprus' EU accession to the negotiation process for resolution of the conflict, but disengaged it from an absolute requirement that such a resolution be reached” did not foster the belief of Greek-Cypriot policymakers that concessions to the other side should be made.46
Demetriou 2004b, 13–14. For a critique of EU policies toward Cyprus, see also Brewin 2000; and Diez 2002.
Demetriou 2004b, 16.
Diez 2002.
In Europe's north, too, the compulsory impact of the EU remained limited from the outset because the potential benefits of membership only extended to one side, Central and Eastern European countries, while Russia was deprived of carrots stemming from any form of closer integration. The impact of the membership prospect in compelling hesitant governments of the Baltic States to improve the status of Russian minorities is well documented in the literature.50
D. Smith 2003.
Wallace 2003.
Prozorov 2005, 1.
In the Middle East, membership of Israel or Palestine in the EU has not been considered an option, despite isolated voices in both Europe and the Middle East proposing EU membership of Israel as a carrot for obtaining Israeli concessions toward the Palestinians.53
Schael 2002.
Stetter 2004.
Peters and Dachs 2004.
The Guardian, 14 October 2004, A1.
Enabling Impact
For a pervasive impact of the EU on border conflict transformation, compulsory impact alone does not suffice. In order to successfully contribute to long-term conflict change, the carrot of integration or association must also empower a political leadership in conflict societies that is able to legitimize, through reference to the acquis, desecuritizing moves within their wider domestic constituency. However, this impact and its modalities are also dependent on contextual conditions. The first of these relates to the perceived legitimacy of references to integration for desecuritizing moves and to the basis of this legitimacy, which can be limited to a narrow political elite or reach out to a wider societal base. The second condition concerns the degree to which integration or association become overarching policy goals and overshadow the powerful securitization discourses in conflict societies.
In Northern Ireland the enabling impact of the EU has had a considerable effect. This was particularly true in the 1990s, when the Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) of John Hume successfully linked its conflict resolution agenda with the issue of European integration.57
However, the emergence of the nationalistic Sinn Féin as the largest Catholic party in Northern Ireland after the GFA also points to the limits of the EU's enabling impact.58See also Cunningham 1997 for such a critique.
Hayward 2004b, 7.
In addition, the EC/EU offered an institutional framework that regularly brought the heads of government of Britain and Ireland together at European Council meetings. During the 1983 European Council meeting in Brussels, for instance, “[Irish] Taioseach FitzGerald and [British Prime Minister] Thatcher held their first meeting in fifteen months,” which was perceived as the major “turnaround in British-Irish relations at this time.”60
Ibid.
As far as the relations between Greece and Turkey are concerned, the literature on the gradual Europeanization of Greek foreign policy documents well the enabling impact of European integration.61
Rather than using Greece's EU membership as a tool against Turkey, which was the dominant instrumental approach throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Greek policymakers increasingly began to see the Europeanization of Turkey as a recipe for sustained desecuritization. The very existence of the EU as a reference point for “peaceful relations as a natural outcome of Europeanization … legitimizes, and renders rational, that Greece should work toward bringing its main rival into the European Union.”62Rumelili 2004b, 16.
In a similar way the Turkish political leadership demonstrates a “perception of the EU as a successful security community, which defuses interstate conflicts … and serves to legitimize the joint efforts to gain membership in the EU and to resolve the outstanding disputes with Greece.”63
Ibid., 17.
Millas 2004, 21.
See overview in Rumelili 2004a.
As we have already argued above, a decisive problem with the compulsory impact in the Cyprus conflict has been the lack of internalization of EU norms on the level of the Greek Cypriot political leadership, which, despite long-lasting negotiations between 1997 and 2004, retained an instrumental approach to European integration. The situation in the Turkish north of the island was however different and here we observe a considerable role of the enabling impact in fostering desecuritization. This relates in particular to the empowerment of an alternative political agenda of the Turkish-Cypriot opposition, which successfully managed to couple the issues of détente in relations with the south, the entry of northern Cyprus into the EU, and replacement of the old Denktash government. This enabling impact of the EU became visible in the parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus in 2003, in which the peace-oriented opposition party, with its main election slogan being “Europe is within sight,” defeated the nationalistic Denktash government.66
Demetriou 2005, 23.
The power of the enabling impact in northern Cyprus depends on the fact that the carrot of membership is still out. This fits well with Demetriou's observation that the enabling impact has not gained a sufficient societal base on both sides that would be necessary to change the balance of power between “talkers and silent ones” in a sustained manner, as is the case in the Greek-Turkish conflict. Thus in northern Cyprus the failed unification of the island has “resulted in a heightened sense of public disillusionment about the ability of the EU to effectively and positively impact on the conflict.”67
Ibid., 19.
Ibid., 25.
The securitizing effect of the strict border regime in Europe's north between the enlarged EU and Russia has severely limited the enabling impact of the EU on this conflict. In a detailed study of Russian political elite discourses on Europe, Prozorov shows how the application of the Schengen border regime at the eastern border of the EU has triggered in Russia a “policy of ‘self-exclusion’ from the European political and normative space.” This policy finds strong supporters in “the entire spectrum of the political discourse in Russia,” including the once pro-European liberal-democratic camp.69
While conservative political actors in Russia see EU-policies as a confirmation of their long-held suspicion that Europe is not willing to accept Russia as an equal partner, the impact of EU-policies on the traditionally pro-European liberals is of greater interest for our purposes. Thus rather than becoming advocates of desecuritization and greater integration with Europe, “the exclusionary practices of the EU have … antagonised the most ‘pro-European’ forces within the Russian political debate, severely weakening any future impact on Russian politics” through these actors.70Prozorov 2005, 10.
The enabling impact of the EU has been the most pervasive pathway through which the EU has influenced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This relates in particular to the Palestinian side, where Newman and Yacobi have identified a “socialisation of policy-makers … into a ‘European discourse’” taking place.71
Newman and Yacobi 2004b, 23.
Jamal 2001.
In both Israel and Palestine, it has become commonplace to refer to European integration as an example that conflicts between long-time foes can be overcome in a cooperative manner.73
A similar rationale underlies the EU's approach to integrate Israel and Palestine into regional multilateral fora, such as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, thereby supporting Middle Eastern integration. See Asseburg 2003.
Newman and Yacobi 2004b, 7.
See, for example, Morris 2004.
Connective Impact
As our examples have already made clear, the successful transformation of border conflicts depends on the extent to which desecuritization reaches out beyond the political elite and builds up a wider societal base. This serves as a rationale for the EU's direct support of contacts between societal actors of the conflict parties. The success of these contacts depends, first, on the ability of the EU to support not only the already “convinced,” but to reach out to actors who would not adopt a desecuritization agenda without the EU's support. Second, it depends on the extent to which financial assistance of the EU is accepted in conflict societies as a legitimate tool rather than as external interference into domestic affairs.
The EU's connective impact on the conflict in Northern Ireland is widely acknowledged.76
See Meehan 2000.
Hayward 2004b, 22.
Bradley and Hamilton 1999.
With both Britain and Ireland being members of the Union, the EU could make use of the cross-border component of the Single Market Program as an indirect means to desecuritize the conflict in Northern Ireland. As a “powerful, and neutral, economic actor or, more specifically, material benefactor … the EU has become a main stimulator for community development on both sides of the border.”79
Hayward 2004b, 26.
See Teague 1996.
Large-scale direct funding of societal actors in Greece and Turkey has only begun after the bilateral rapprochement since 1999. The connective impact of the EU operates through two main grant programs, the first one being the Greek-Turkish civic dialogue program, which started in 2002 and has a budget of 8 million Euros. The second grant, established in 2004, provides 35 million Euros of funds for cross-border projects between Turkey and Greece under the umbrella of the Interreg III program. With these projects the EU attempts directly to support those nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the two countries that advocate a desecuritization agenda, but also, through the Interreg program, to widen the societal base of successful conflict transformation.
The relatively late timing of the actual establishment of these funds indicates that the connective impact has not been the driving force of desecuritization in the Greek-Turkish context. Yet it remains an important underpinning of desecuritization. This is particularly true for Turkey, where EU funding of wider societal organization—in the absence of alternative domestic sources of funding—has become a crucial factor in the Turkish reform process.81
Belge 2004.
Rumelili 2004b, 15.
Through funding bicommunal projects in the framework of the Civil Society Program, which the EU launched in 2003, it aims to bring together Greek and Turkish Cypriot individuals and NGOs, thus making use of opportunities offered by the opening of the Green Line by the TRNC administration in April 2003. Before 2003, the EU supported Turkish Cypriot NGOs with a desecuritization agenda, in particular, the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce, the main driving force in the run-up to the massive pro-EU and propeace demonstrations in northern Cyprus in early 2003. The Chamber was particularly aware of the “impact of the international isolation of the north and the possibilities that a solution [to the conflict] coupled with entry into the EU could unleash.”83
Demetriou 2004b, 23.
While in Europe's north, the compulsory and enabling impact of the EU are severely limited and have not prevented an increasing securitization of EU-Russian relations as a result of the strict border divide between Russia and the EU's eastern external borders, the connective impact has to some extent been able to counterbalance this development. This is particularly true for the Finnish-Russian borderland, in which the Euregio Karelia, which is part of the Interreg program, provides for an institutional framework of cross-border cooperation on the wider societal level.84
In addition, the Russian Republic of Karelia has throughout the 1990s been one of the main recipients of Tacis funds, which the EU provided for civil society development in the Commonwealth of Independent States.The overall positive assessment in the literature of the EU's connective impact in Europe's North has however one important caveat, the negative impact of the Schengen border regime outlined above.85
This concerns not only institutional obstacles to a joint development of the border region faced by wider societal actors, but also the disruption that the new border regime has introduced to traditional cross-border cooperation in this region.Like the enabling impact, the connective impact of the EU in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more pervasive than the compulsory pathway.86
Stetter 2004.
See, in particular, Behrendt and Hanelt 2000.
Stetter 2003.
Steinberg 2004, 8–9.
Yet the connective impact of the EU in the Middle East has had its shortcomings. Several authors have referred to the nontransparent and slow implementation procedures that hampered the overall pervasiveness of EU funding in the region, thus pointing to a problem that EU funding also encountered in some of our other case studies.90
Stetter 2003.
Newman and Yacobi 2004a, 35.
Constructive Impact
In our previous discussion of pathways we have often stressed the crucial role of the societal diffusion of a desecuritization agenda. Any long-term transformation of conflicts crucially depends on a change in identity constructions in conflict societies, to the extent that subject positions are no longer regarded as incompatible and the relevance of invoking previous conflict issues loses attraction.
In spite of the setbacks in the Northern Ireland peace process after the GFA, the conflict has not reached levels of securitization that characterized previous decades. This, according to Hayward, has to do with the fact that integration has offered an alternative frame for identity constructions in Northern Ireland and empowered “previously silent sections of the population,”92
Hayward 2004b, 8.
Ibid., 12.
See also Meehan 2000.
The significance of Greek-Turkish rapprochement since 1999 lies not so much in the actual resolution of the various disputed issues, but rather in the societal diffusion of a sustained desecuritization agenda.95
For an illustration of this societal diffusion in the cultural sector, see Tarikayha 2004.
Rumelili 2004a, 20.
Rumelili 2004b, 26.
The constructive impact of the EU on the Cyprus conflict is manifested most prominently in the linkage between a solution to the conflict and the idea of Europe, which has become particularly visible in the massive propeace demonstrations in northern Cyprus in 2002 and 2003, where many demonstrators waved EU flags. The effect was to reshuffle political allegiances, as the demonstrations “established a connection between Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots who supported the same cause, even without being able to have contact with each other, and thus fostered a change of identification of the civil society of the conflicting parties from ethnic (Greek/Turkish) to political (prosolution and rejectionist).”98
Demetriou 2004b, 25–26.
A similar effect resulting from a strict external border regime is at play in Europe's north. The combination of various conflictive issues in EU-Russian relations, ranging from the stringent visa regime to different interpretations of the 1999 Kosovo war by NATO or the Russian war in Chechnya, have fostered a sense of difference between both sides. Thus the aforementioned sense of exclusion has penetrated the identity dimension of even pro-European sectors of Russian society. The lack of meaningful integration between the EU and Russia has contributed to a greater securitization of EU-Russian relations. Contrary to the situation during the Yeltsin presidency, when calls for greater cooperation and integration between the EU and Russia were more prominent, the subsequent years have been dominated by discourses that advocate an inherent difference between Russia and the EU on the identity dimension.99
Prozorov 2005, 17.
Neumann 1998.
The constructive impact of the EU on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains limited for two reasons. On the one hand, the relatively weak integration provided for by the association of Israel and Palestine with the EU in the EMP setting constrains the pervasiveness of the EU's constructive impact from the outset. On the other hand, a rather ambivalent attitude toward the EU on the identity level further limits the EU's ability to become an uncontested reference point for a reconstruction of identities and sustained desecuritization.101
Newman and Yacobi 2004a.
Newman and Yacobi 2005, 14.
Peters and Dachs 2004, 6.
These negative images with regard to the role of the EU in the Middle East conflict stand in a complex relationship with the positive endorsement that European integration receives in Israel. The growing number of applications by Israelis for a second passport of one of the EU's member states reflect this, but also the results of several opinion polls indicating that 85 percent of Israelis are in favor of Israeli membership in the EU.104
Ibid., 8.
Newman and Yacobi 2004a.
Conclusions
Our empirical analysis allows us to derive a number of preliminary conclusions about the impact of the four pathways on border conflict transformation and their interplay as well as the conditions for positive or negative impact of integration and association, which we hope will be tested further in other case studies. As far as the compulsory impact is concerned, we have argued that this pathway works best within the framework of a credible membership perspective. If there is such a perspective or if negotiations are already under way, conflict parties avoid securitizing moves in order not to endanger the membership perspective. This has been the case in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. However, without a credible membership perspective (Turkey before 1999) or once membership has been achieved (Cyprus), the compulsory impact loses much of its leverage, as it does under the condition of the weak form of integration offered by association (Israel-Palestine).
These structural limitations of the compulsory impact beg the question of the extent to which policymakers in conflict regions have internalized the norms and values of the EU and the degree to which they are able to legitimize desecuritizing moves through reference to European integration. Our analysis has shown that this enabling impact of the EU has played a major role in conflict transformation, either through a long-term socialization of policymakers into European normative discourses (Greece, Northern Ireland) or the empowerment of alternative desecuritization discourses (Turkey, northern Cyprus, Northern Ireland). However, we also have referred to instances in which reference to the EU has, for different reasons, legitimized further securitization. Such a constellation becomes more likely if only one conflict party becomes integrated into the EU, while the other side is subject to a more or less strict external border regime (Cyprus, Europe's north) or if both conflict parties remain outside the institutional framework of integration (Israel-Palestine). In such cases, reference to the EU is often used in order to reinscribe difference rather than promote cooperation.
The EU encourages cooperation on a wider societal level inter alia through financial support of peace-oriented actors. The pathway leading to a connective impact is a key strategy, working either through directly supporting peace-oriented groups (Cyprus, Greece-Turkey, Israel-Palestine, Europe's north, in particular Karelia, and Northern Ireland) or through community development that only indirectly relates to cross-border cooperation, such as economic development in border areas (Northern Ireland). We have also, however, pointed to the disruptive effect of a strict external border regime on antecedent forms of cross-border cooperation, impeded by partial integration of conflict parties into the EU (Europe's north). We have furthermore emphasized that the connective impact of the EU loses in pervasiveness due to complicated funding provisions, which slow down, obstruct and therefore limit the power of this pathway (Greece-Turkey, Europe's north, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland).
Corresponding to our initial observation that conflicts are constituted by an incompatibility of subject positions, the most pervasive form of conflict transformation relates to overcoming such incompatibilities—hence our argument that the constructive impact is the most powerful, but also the most demanding, pathway of EU impact. The constructive impact depends—more than all others—on a high degree of integration and internalization of European norms of conflict resolution on a wider societal level. This is, at least to some extent, the case in those conflict societies that have for a long time been integrated into the EU (Northern Ireland, Greece), or where at least the credible perspective of integration supports such a gradual change of scripts (Turkey). This impact is largely negligible under the condition of association (Israel-Palestine), while it operates in a conflict-enhancing manner if cross-boundary measures clash with the establishment of a strict external border regime (Europe's North), or with particularistic interpretations of European identity (Europe's North, Cyprus).
A second condition for negative EU impact relates to the perception on the part of conflict parties that the EU is biased in favor of one side of the conflict. This reinforces preexistent negative images of the EU in conflict regions. The EU can then even become a reference point for further securitization (Israel, Russia, Turkey before 1999).
Through the prospect of, as well as the instruments offered by, integration and, to a much lesser degree, association, the EU has a significant impact on the transformation of border conflicts. However, unlike the much-cited example of the resolution of the Franco-German conflict suggests, this impact is by no means automatic or unidirectional. Rather, as, for example, in the case of Europe's north, this impact can also be negative and conflict enhancing. Mainly, however, the above analysis has shown that a study of the EU's influence on the transformation of border conflicts, and thus of the relationship between integration and peace in a wider sense, requires taking into account a variety of possible pathways of influence that bear on different aspects of complex conflict constellations. What we have offered in this article is a conceptual framework for studying EU impact on the transformation of border conflicts, which we found useful in the five examples that we have examined and that, we hope, will be further applied, and subsequently refined, in other cases.
