Diplomacy and Lobbying During Turkeys Europeanisation: The Private Life of Politics

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Description

How do interstate actors negotiate their interests What do 'common interests' look like from their historically and culturally contingent perspectives What happens when actors work for their private, professional, public, personal or institutional interests, even when those interests go against their mandate

Honing in on the role of diplomats and lobbyists during negotiations for Turkey's contentious EU membership bid, this book presents intricate, backstage conflicts of power and interests and negotiations of compromises, which drove this candidate country both closer to and farther apart from the EU. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Brussels, this first book-length account of Turkish Europeanisation argues that public, private and corporate actors voicing economic, political and bureaucratic interests from all corners of Europe sought access to markets and polities through the Turkish bid instead of facilitating Turkey's EU accession, earning recognition & power.

Reviews

"Firat has been hanging with the Eurocrats, the diplomats and the lobbyists of Brussels and comes back with a story that throws new light on their actual everyday give and take. The book offers that rare thing: new knowledge."
Iver B. Neumann, author of At Home with the Diplomats

Author Bio

Bilge Firat is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Texas at El Paso