Introduction

Abstract

This chapter outlines how to analyse and explain changes to EU foreign policy. After reviewing various theories of foreign policy change, it argues that how the EU changes its foreign policy after crisis remains under-studied and explains how and why this book intends to complement traditional, cumulative typologies in which each order of policy change is progressively significant. The central premise of this book is that to understand EU foreign policy after crisis, one must understand the decision-making process following those crises in order to grasp what kinds of policy changes – however minor or unsubstantiated – were seen, at what level, their substance, and why this output emerged from the decision-making process. To understand how EU foreign policy changes after crisis, we should consider how institutions and temporal context affected this process. This argument is founded on a theoretical dialogue between historical institutionalism, foreign policy analysis and public policy studies.