The EU’s Reaction to Changes in the Multilateral System

The international society is changing rapidly and there is a widely held view in the literature that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the EU to exert influence over the institutions of global governance. This paper builds on a conceptualization of structural changes in international society (based on the relationship between material power, institutions and ideas), and on a characterization of possible reactions of the EU to these changes (accommodation or entrenchment) to explore a number of structural and agentic explanations as to how the global power shift is changing the relationship between the EU and international institutions.