The European Union's normative power on South Caucasus: Examples of Armenia and Georgia

Normative power approach by Ian Manners can be defined as a capability to identify what is normal in short. According to Manners, Europe instill universal norms such as human rights, democracy and rule of law which lies under its ethos into the countries that entered to relations with it, and Europeanized them. After the fifth enlargement on 2007, EU became the neighbor of South Caucasus region. In this context, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, South Caucasus States were included in the Neighborhood Policy and became a part of Eastern Partnership declared after 2009. By this way, efforts to sign Partnership Agreements between the South Caucaus states and EU have begun. After all, Georgia signed that agreement in 2014, and Armenia signed it in 2017. Eastern Partnership Agreements has the capability of identifying what is normal as Manners described because of its provisions. EU aims with these agreements to transfer its norms and values through institutional and formal contagion to partner countries. This study focused on the question of the relationship between normative power and the effects and dimensions of EU policies towards South Caucasus countries, starting specifically from Georgia and Armenia. In this context, it has been tried to assess whether the implemented policies have equal weight in both countries through Partnership Agreements and progress reports. In the scope of the study, literature was searched and firstly a framework was drawn about normative power theory. Afterwards, the treaties signed by the EU with Georgia and Armenia were examined and the normative power was tested by evaluating official policy documents. As a result of the study, it is seen that although the agreements signed by the EU with Georgia and Armenia contain similar provisions; but they did not produce similar results in practice.