Abstract
This paper maintains that Historical Institutionalism – with its emphasis on such concepts as path dependency, time, continuity and change, critical junctures, and unintended consequences – serves as a valuable theoretical tool in explaining the why and how of the European Union developing from a strictly economic union during the first forty years of its existence towards a political union with a global foreign policy agenda in the post-Cold War period. Discussing the EU’s post-1989 foreign policy development and zooming in on the EU’s policy towards Eastern Europe to illustrate its argument, the paper argues that Brussels’ participation in global politics has for long been in the making. More specifically, four elements that have determined – and continue to do so – the EU’s foreign policy portfolio are first, the successful economic integration in the first forty years of the European Union’s existence; second, the logic of integration through institutionalization driving EU integration since 1952; third, the – at first – informal European Political Cooperation witnessing the emergence of tacit norms and rules of conducting foreign policy coordination; and fourth, the rhetoric commitment to the region of Central and Eastern Europe pre-1989.
Highlights
The eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union – and the accompanying bipolar nature of the international arena – provides good grounds for assessing how new actors developed their foreign and security policy agendas to occupy a spot in the new multipolar global order
Four elements that have determined – and continue to do so – the EU’s foreign policy portfolio are first, the successful economic integration in the first forty years of the European Union’s existence; second, the logic of integration through institutionalization driving EU integration since 1952; third, the – at first – informal European Political Cooperation witnessing the emergence of tacit norms and rules of conducting foreign policy coordination; and fourth, the rhetoric commitment to the region of Central and Eastern Europe pre-1989
2 The Mediterranean countries grouped under the European Neighbourhood Policy are Algeria, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Syria. Some of these challenges to the European Neighbourhood Policy were addressed by the creation of two region-specific sub-frameworks; the Union for the Mediterranean (2008) and the Eastern Partnership (2009), of which the second is of interest to this section.[1]. Both the emergence and the structure of the EaP can be assessed through the historical institutionalist lens; its launch has been accelerated in the aftermath of the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008, which can be seen as a critical juncture in the ENP’s development, opening a window of opportunity for EU member states with a foreign policy interest in Eastern Europe to push for more robust engagement with countries of the region.[2]
Summary
The eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union – and the accompanying bipolar nature of the international arena – provides good grounds for assessing how new actors developed their foreign and security policy agendas to occupy a spot in the new multipolar global order. Some of these challenges to the European Neighbourhood Policy were addressed by the creation of two region-specific sub-frameworks; the Union for the Mediterranean (2008) and the Eastern Partnership (2009), of which the second is of interest to this section.[1] Both the emergence and the structure of the EaP can be assessed through the historical institutionalist lens; its launch has been accelerated in the aftermath of the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008, which can be seen as a critical juncture in the ENP’s development, opening a window of opportunity for EU member states with a foreign policy interest (and expertise) in Eastern Europe to push for more robust engagement with countries of the region.[2] The ensuing Eastern Partnership, is an example of both continuity and change of the earlier ENP; whereas the EaP continues to rely on the long-established integrationist logic and on the EU’s economic appeal (manifested in the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements to be concluded with the individual partner countries), we see the addition of new policy portfolia structuring EU–EaP relations. Casier’s work, this scholarly focus only rarely conceptualizes the quality of EU–Russian relations as an unintended consequence of policy decisions made in a different spatio-temporal context.[4]
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