Education as foreign policy: the European Union in central Asia

Abstract

Since 2007, the European Union (EU) has pursued a strategy to achieve its foreign policy aims in Central Asia and an EU-Central Asia Education Initiative has been developed within the over-arching strategy. In the first section of this chapter, the rationale for the EU-Central Asia Strategy is discussed in relation to the EU vision of the Central Asia space and the EU’s means for externalising its internal policy processes. Then, prospects for the success of the strategy are considered theoretically in relation to Jaysuriya’s notion of Regulatory Regionalism (Jayasuriya, 2003, 2007, 2008a, 2008b). Building on empirical research with EU and Central Asia policy actors, the second half of this chapter uses the development of the EU-Central Asia Education Initiative to explore the barriers to the EU pursuing its foreign relations interests in the region by developing its profile in education policy. The chapter argues that the political and institutional contexts within which the Education Initiative has developed and in particular the limited role for education policy actors, helps to explain why the Education Initiative has (1) worked with only an attenuated notion of the challenges for education reform in Central Asia and (2) has achieved such limited traction with education policy actors in the Central Asia states. The lack of progress in developing the Education Initiative suggests that the broader foreign policy aims of the EU are unlikely to be achieved by mobilising the approach to governance mapped by Regulatory Regionalism. On this occasion, the combination of foreign policy and education policy has neither promoted the achievement of foreign policy aims nor contributed to the development of education policy.

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