Europe, China and security governance: is there evidence of normative convergence?

Normative power can be defined as the ability to govern interdependencies by means of rules, regimes and compliance strategies. This paper presents two case studies in security governance—international responsibility to protect in Sudan and counter-proliferation policies towards Iran’s nuclear programme—to evaluate the degree of normative convergence between China and Europe. It concludes that there are still major differences between Europe and China on employing normative strategies in security governance but that both modes of governance and identities as security actors are mobile so that the trend is towards convergence, albeit with some distance still to travel.