In discussions of the European Union (EU) as an international actor, there is a wide range of interpretations in the literature. The Union is often seen as a ‘civilian’ or ‘normative’ power – in essence a force for good in the world – but in the work of scholars studying the EU there are many different normative assumptions and agendas. Normativity is of course something we can hardly escape or do without, but as such, our normative ideas can be amended or rejected and the role given to them in building social scientific explanations can vary in terms of the intensity and degree of consciousness involved in utilizing the concepts. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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