LISTEN TO YOUR PEERS: INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND EUROPE’S QUEST FOR AN INTERNATIONAL IDENTITY

The basic premise of this paper is to assess the role ‘educational diplomacy’ can play in the process of the EU’s international identity formation. International cooperation in higher education serves as a suitable tool to further the EU’s international standing due to its potency in terms of norms diffusion and social learning. But more importantly, by offering channels of communication, it creates opportunities to challenge core values and understandings, thus placing the EU ‘at the receiving end of external influences’. Whether out of virtue or necessity, the European Union has increasingly presented itself as a normative power to enhance its international standing. Since its legitimacy as a foreign policy actor thus depends primarily on how far “other actors accept the role that EU actors themselves project for themselves in international politics” (Diez et al., 2011, p. 223), these ‘others’ play a crucial role in its constitution as a foreign policy actor. A recent international study of external perceptions has shown that the EU is lacking visibility and is only seldom recognized as normative power (Lucarelli et al., 2010). The paper at hand analyzes strategies of EU policy makers which aim at cultivating its international standing by spreading “social knowledge” (Nye, 2004) about own values, norms and standards among key actors abroad. The basic premise is to assess the role of higher education programs in the process of international identity formation for the EU. Diez and Manners have recently argued that in order not to fall into the ‘hegemony-trap’, being primarily perceived a ‘norm dictator’, it is indispensable for the EU to establish a culture of dialogue: “Rather than the propagation of particular ‘European’ norms, it is such reflection and reflexivity that constitute the EU as a normative power that is different from pure self-interested hegemony” (Diez et al., 2007, 174). This paper argues that ‘educational diplomacy’ can serve this purpose. International higher education programs, inviting both Europeans and non-Europeans to jointly engage in research and debate, take effect beyond the mere strategic goal of norms diffusion. First, the independence of higher education institutions allows a critical and reflexive altercation with dominant positions, thereby exposing European understandings to thorough scrutiny. Second, the participants, international (future) functional elites, should not only be regarded as key multipliers in their countries but are, with their outside-perspective, in the optimum position to assess the EU and especially its external features critically. The development of international programs in higher education establishes thus channels of communication which enable the exchange of a variety of views and positions reaching beyond the mere European perspective, thereby enriching the latter. The existing linkages between academia and politics can lead to a feeding of these debates into the EU’s institutions and policies. Thus, by investing more into “educational diplomacy” the European Union can serve as a key facilitator of a debate which questions the justification, eligibility, entitlement, the right and the credibility of its international position. This overdue deliberation might provide justified ground for a renewed discussion about the EU’s normative dimensions as an international actor.