Analyse géographique d’un discours politique : L’exemple des brochures L’Union européenne dans le monde (2000-2007)

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to highlight the geographical representation of political actors. It is based on the postulate that many official documents released by national or international organisations can be analysed in the framework of a geographical approach and eventually give way to cartographic representations. They provide precious information upon how political actors see the world and how they plan their action in it. The paper is focused on the official discourses of the European Union (EU), an institutional body able to behave as an autonomous actor in international relations. These discourses have not really attracted the attention of scholars. Yet they provide much information about the EU as an actor. How does EU see the world? How does it see its place in the world and its role in international relations? In the paper, we present the method carried out for the analysis, we describe the sample of official discourses considered and we propose a set of results that make it possible to characterize the global political space as seen by the EU.

Keywords

• European Union
• content analysis
• political geography
• representations
• international relations