Elites in European foreign policy-making: Consensus and competition

Abstract

Elite theory up to now has been largely neglected within foreign policy analysis. This paper attempts to apply the concepts of elite theory on European foreign policy-making. Its focus is on elite consensus and competition, not least because such cleavages are particularly evident in this arena, where Member States' decision-makers compete with each other and with the various Brussels institutions, while at the same time speaking the language of cohesion and solidarity. Forms of significant scrutiny for common European diplomacy are less visible. There is a political and informational gap between the national parliamentary processes and the increasingly complex processes of foreign policy coordination. Thus when a crisis arises, national politics and institutions move into the vacant space. The subject of 'European foreign policy' has become immensely popular over the last two decades. The term generally refers to the attempts of the European Union to produce a single foreign policy, represented technically by the Common Foreign and Security Policy (viz. the 'CFSP', deriving from Pillar two of the Maastricht arrangements) but in practice by much cross-pillar activity involving both the Council and the Commission sides of the EU institutions. Some of us prefer to extend the definition to include the tout ensemble of EU and Member State external relations, at the same time acknowledging an even greater looseness of purpose and diplomacy than is represented by the EU's efforts. The literature which this subject has generated is divided more or less equally between the substance of policy and the processes of policy-making. What has not been done, however, is to tackle directly the question of how far those involved in the making of European foreign policy constitute a recognizable elite. Indeed, elites and elite theory have been neglected more generally within Foreign Policy Analysis, and perhaps within Political Science as a whole, since the influential writings of C. Wright Mills (1956), W.L. Guttsman (1965) and Geraint Parry (2005(1969)) in the 1950s and 1960s. This brief paper attempts to suggest how we might begin to think about elites