Resilient states vs. resilient societies? The ‘dark side’ of resilience narratives in EU relations with authoritarian regimes: a case study of Belarus

Abstract

The present article maps and analyses the different meanings of the EU’s resilience narratives in its neighbourhood policy towards authoritarian regimes. While a large part of the existing literature has placed an emphasis on the role of resilience in EU foreign policy more generally, the specific use and representations of resilience in EU policy towards authoritarian regimes remains ill-explored. However, it is specifically in the context of the EU’s relations with authoritarian regimes, that references to resilience, and especially ‘state resilience’, are highly problematic. Focusing on the EU’s neighbourhood policy and the case of Belarus, we present a discourse analysis of the different uses of the term resilience in the official discourses of key EU institutions. In a first-order critique, we examine how the EU’s narratives construct resilience, and in particular for whom, what, when, where, and why. We show that the EU’s resilience discourses are inherently state-centric and present highly contradictory goals of resilience-building. In a second-order critique, we demonstrate the problematic political implications of the EU’s usage of the term resilience, including the omission of ‘everyday forms of resilience and resistance’ from the EU’s narratives.