Recalibrating the Local Lens: Drivers and Transformations of the European Union's Territorial Agenda in the Southern Neighbourhood
研究了欧盟邻国政策中“地方”概念在摩洛哥和突尼斯的三种主导叙事（发展、民主化、韧性），发现其作为空洞能指服务于集权趋势，但也为新兴行动者所利用。
Abstract Since its inception, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has incorporated a local lens in its engagement with Southern partners. However, the capacity of local authorities to enact the political autonomy expected by the European Union (EU) is distant from reality. The article mobilizes the concept of hegemonic narratives in the cases of Morocco and Tunisia to problematize the set of discourses that establish the common understanding of ‘the local’ in the ENP's territorial agenda. We present three narratives that became hegemonic across ENP implementation: ‘the local’ as an agent of development, ‘the local’ as an agent of democratization and ‘the local’ as a provider of resilience. The evidence presented allows us to conclude that ‘the local’ acts as an empty signifier in the EU's territorial agenda in its Southern Neighbourhood. Whilst these narratives have certainly served centralizing trends, they have also been mobilized by or in support of emerging actors that contest them.