Varför har European Civil Peace Corps inte bildats?: En studie om civilt fredsbevarande, maktutövande och kämpande diskurser.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out why the EU has not yet implemented the European Civil Peace Corps (ECPC), which the EU Parliament took a resolution about in 1999. The more specific questions posed are whether the concept of ECPC has been redefined, whether the issue of ECPC has been prevented from coming up for discussion and decision-making, and what this has meant for the non-implementation. Steven Lukes' theory about the three dimensions of power is used in combination with a discourse analysis method. The material used is documents from the EU Parliament's decisions and debate about ECPC, and ECPC feasibility studies. In the analysis I find one "law and order"-discourse and one "peaceknowledge"- discourse. The conclusions are that power strategies have been used to not implement the ECPC while not openly resisting implementation, including preventing the issue from coming up for discussion and decision-making, and that the ECPC has been redefined at several times in ways that have made implementation of the ECPC as originally conceived of less likely.