"Europeanization of International Relations Governance: Much ado about nothing?"

The field of International Relations has always been one of the most volatile areas in terms of policy planning, decision making and policy implementation, thus attracting always the interest of academia. The International System, especially in its formulation during the post-Westphalian era (from 1648 till now), has been always deemed as anarchic, antagonistic, and a self-help environment, as the various states seek to safeguard their national interests, each employing all means possible to that end, by devising strategies, charting courses, and making decisions about how to meet internal and external exigencies (Litsas 2013, and the references therein). It has therefore been justifiably anticipated that the European Union, having as one of its aims to “contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter” (as stated in Art. 3 para 5 of the Treaty on the European Union), will develop and implement a policy in that respect. Examining the governance reflecting this policy as a characteristic element of the European integration process is the objective of this paper. Before embarking to the analysis, it is necessary to examine the concept of governance and distinguish it from two other relevant concepts: the concept of management and the concept of government. Maintaining the view that there is no difference between governance and management is a fundamental mistake with regard to the essence of these two concepts. Governance refers to the provision of leadership to an entity (i.e. a state, a supra-national group of states, an international organization, etc.), the formulation of the entity’s vision and the translation of this vision into policy for each sector of the entity’s activity, taking into account – especially within the context of a democratic representative regime – the wishes, the choices and the will of the entity’s main interest group, the people who form this entity. Management, on the other hand, refers to making decisions for implementing the formulated policies. This differentiation is further highlighted by the fact that the responsibilities of governance include choosing the executives for occupying the positions at the top of the administrative hierarchy, evaluating their performance through several schemes of (usually political/parliamentary) control, authorizing plans/commitments and evaluating the entity’s performance, while the responsibilities of management refer to enhancing the overall performance of the entity and implementing the systems of governance. Thus, governance entails the strategic task of setting the entity's goals, direction, limitations and accountability frameworks while management entails the allocation of resources and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the entity. In other words, governance is all about setting the right policy and procedures for ensuring that things are done in a proper way, while management is all about actually doing things in the proper way.