Titolo completo

Performing Power: Discourse, Legitimacy and the Regional Strategies of the EU and the PRC

How do the European Union (EU) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as leadership-type regional powers, use discourse to shape regional order and structure the roles, responsibilities and expectations of neighbouring states? A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis (CDA) of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) documents (2004-21) and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) texts (2013-21) identifies recurring patterns of role attribution, action modality and expectation framing. The EU performs leadership primarily through procedural legitimation, embedding partners within rules, instruments and administrative pathways, whereas the PRC foregrounds symbolic and relational language, historical narratives and ‘win-win’ promises. Viewed through the lens of regional leadership, these styles share a logic of discursive governance: repeated formulas stabilise expectations, encode hierarchy and sustain authority without overt coercion. Discursive leadership can thus be conceptualised as a strategic mechanism of regional power.
Keywords: foreign policy discourse, European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), Belt and Road Initiative, comparative discourse analysis