Description
This paper analyses the EU’s response to global pressures such as the China shock and the illiberalism of Trump. While a lot has been written on this already, this paper contributes by using a broader concept of liberalism and focusing on the internal and external dimension of EU policy. It looks at how ‘geoeconomics’ interplays with liberal norms and logics in the EU’s external trade policy but also its internal regional integration (via a study of Competition Policy). A range of official and quasi-official texts from the past 5 years are analysed in terms of the balance between liberalism and more power-centric approaches. The textual analysis method here is a form of deductive thematic coding. I delineate key themes such as neoliberalism, liberalism, neomercantilism, power, protectionism and so forth, also outlining preliminary codes (key vocabulary and logics). The texts are then manually coded, using NVivo software, and this is supplemented by a trained Chat GPT model thematic coder. The coding will then be compared and ‘agreed’. This empirical textual research is embedded in broader theoretical analysis and a pilot study of policy outcomes.
