European External Action (Critical Geopolitics)

European External Action provides a critical assessment of the practice of EU diplomacy in a key site of Africa-European relations and the global development industry - the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. It analyses how the EU positions itself through its newly established diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and how it is perceived as a collective geopolitical actor by its external cooperation partners. Going beyond existing studies on EU policy making in Brussels and African-European relations more generally, this book explores in a novel way the conduct of external relations and perceptions of the EU - abroad. Based on institutional ethnography within the EU Delegation in Nairobi and research affiliation with the University of Nairobi, as well as interviews with leading individuals of Kenyan-European interaction, it analyses the practices, processes and perceptions through which EU diplomacy is enacted and realised in a strategic node of global North-South relations. In light of the EU’s claim as a key partner for developing countries and its ambition to be a major player in global politics, European External Action thereby speaks not only to wider debates on the EU’s role as a global and development actor, but also provides new insights in the internal dynamics and the making of external agency in and through EU diplomacy.

Veit Bachmann is Director of the EuroGaps research group that examines external relations and external perceptions of the EU in sub-Saharan Africa and the Black Sea Region based in the Department of Human Geography at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany. More generally, his research interests are in political geography, (critical) geopolitics, European studies and global North-South relations with a focus on the international identity and role of the EU as a global and development actor.