In the era of normative power Europe

Are some of the world's smallest state regions, like the Caribbean, able to punch above their weight in international affairs, thus overcoming limitations of acutely small size? This is the first of two questions that the dissertation addresses, by investigating how and under what conditions the Caribbean Region-an extremely small, marginal (ostensibly island) world region, on a global comparative scale-routinely dons and deploys an international image qua posture in the pursuit of strategic international policy. Through empirical cases the dissertation demonstrates that this strategy is principally geared at and mediated by technocratic norm generation and political projection in the international system, with a view to expanding very small states' scope for recourse to statecraft and agency. Explanations of this kind have, generally, not been offered. The first of two principal findings of the dissertation is that a constellation of 'norm entrepreneurs' or epistemic communities what is referred to as an elite technocracy-influence, champion and marshal how the Caribbean state is socialized inter- and intra-regionally, per moral imperatives. This study determines that this dual 'socializing' engagement is profoundly informed by elite technocrats operating in regional and national bureaucracies who draw attention to and seek accommodation as regards the treatment of clusters of states, in the light of the relative mismatch of size and associated material disparities. The dissertation showcases how collective norms and common regional identity or like-mindedness (expressed through regionness) are reified in Caribbean-pivoted interregionalism (as relates to the negotiation and implementation of trade agreements, specifically), whilst they are seemingly disrupted in aspects of Caribbean regional integration. The fact is, systematic scholarly study of small state Global South regions' constitutive role in norm generation and, importantly, in the use of norms to 'level the playing field' has been elusive. The dissertation contributes to filling this gap, building not on standard neorealist accounts-which fall flat-but rather on social constructivism, Social Identity Theory (SIT), the discourse-theoretic approach of poststructuralism and, to some extent, Habermas' social theory. Taken together, these theoretical referents are compelling in analyzing the priority accorded regional identity in very small states' diplomacy. The Caribbean has been pivoted as an 'ideational' actor at a time when many larger states/regions-often with competing geopolitical interests-have seemingly placed considerable stock in soft power, with a view to maneuvering to claim increased space and thus boost their standing in global politics as normative powers. In this context, focusing in on the European Union (EU), the second dimension of the two-tiered puzzle the dissertation unravels is whether through the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Caribbean, the EU seeks to promote its vision of the identity-cum-regionalization orientation of the 'official' Caribbean region-building project. The dissertation argues that the EU has seen fit to advance a particular notion of the identity-based boundedness of the Caribbean as a regional configuration, inclusive of the Dominican Republic. In the process the study also examines how the EU leverages its normative power, gauging how this reinforces the EU as a global actor and elucidating policy implications therein for the Caribbean Region as delimited for the purpose of the EPA. The dissertation determines that theorizing small, marginal world regions like the Caribbean as 'social constructs' provides conceptual purchase, and serves as an analytical device that more accurately captures and contributes to an understanding of the soupçon of negotiating savvy in regionalist engagements in which such states are involved than do materialist, rationalist approaches and attendant parsimonious explanations. It is shown that the Caribbean has a growing, purposeful reliance on (inter) regionalism-cum-norms in the exercise of strategic international policy-Le regional interactions and representations, with a view to extracting gains. For its part, as an emergent normative power the EU is increasingly relying on the norm-based exercise of actorness to achieve its own ends, which are deemed to be not altogether unproblematic.