NORMATIVE DIMENSION IN THE ‘RESILIENCE’CONCEPT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS OF NEOLIBERALISM
Keywords:
resilience, discourse, neoliberalism, European Union, Fragile States Index, Democracy Index, Freedom House reportAbstract
The ecological concept of resilience was defined by its author C.S. Holling as ‘a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variable’. In other words, it means the ability of a system to adapt after shocks and turbulence. In recent decades, the ‘resilience’ notion has been transferred to a wide range of social disciplines, including political science and theory of international relations. Moreover, the European Union has articulated its own interpretation of this concept, where resilience is closely connected with the so-called Western political norms – liberal democracy and human rights. Comparing Fragile States Index, Democracy Index, Freedom House report, on the one hand, and normative position of Brussels – on the other, the author describes such an odd interpretation of resilience as a deeply controversial one. Comparative analysis reveals the presence of an inverse correlation between resilience and the normative component, rather than a direct one. The contradictory nature of the link between resilience and normativity (even within the neoliberal discourse) makes us critically reflect on the relationship between ‘resilience’ as a discursive concept of the European Union and resilience as a real ability of the system to adapt after shocks.DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2019-2-70-77References
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