The book draws on some of the scholarship in perception studies and "Normative Power Europe" theory. The study of perceptions, although dating back to the mid-1970s, is gaining renewed currency in recent years both in international relations, in general, and in European Union studies, in particular. And yet, despite the significance of external perceptions of the European Union, there is still a lack of theoretical forays into this area as well as an absence of empirical investigations of actual external role conceptions. These lacunae in scholarly work are significant, since how the European...

Commencing in 2001, the Europa Lecture has become a high-profile fixture on the EU-New Zealand calendar. As witnessed by the fifteen lectures reproduced in this new volume, the speakers were selected for both their high-level profile as well as their importance to this bilateral dialogue. This volume includes speeches from three Prime Ministers, a President, four European Commissioners as well as four Foreign Ministers both European and New Zealanders. Each lecture, naturally, reflects the important issues of their day and cumulatively they produced a unique record of how EU-New Zealand...

This book elucidates the tension between the European Union's normative and empirical dimensions underlying Israeli-European Union relations, and uses this uneasy relationship as a case study through which to bridge the theoretical gap between "Normative Power Europe" scholarship and European Union external perceptions studies.