Irish Political Parties' Attitudes towards Neutrality and the Evolution of the EU's Foreign, Security and Defence Policies

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This article traces the evolution of attitudes and policies of Irish political parties towards Irish neutrality and the European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) across four decades. The article provides conceptual snapshots of the position of parties' policies along two policy dimensions. The first dimension captures policies of limited ‘military’ neutrality and ‘positive’/‘active’ neutrality. The second dimension captures minimalist EU foreign and security policy, defined as ‘civilian’ or ‘soft’ security policy, to a maximalist EU CFSP/ESDP ‘hard security’ policy amounting to a ‘militarized’ EU. The positioning starts with the campaign for Irish membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), focusing on the accession negotiations and the 1972 referendum campaign and finishes with an analysis of parties' positions on the Security and Defence Policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Evidence shows the positions of the larger parties of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party shifted away from fundamental neutrality to embrace treaty‐based progress towards a maximalist EU ESDP. Over the same time period, the smaller parties of Sinn Féin and the Green Party were more consistent in their adherence to positive neutrality and in their opposition to the development of a maximalist EU ESDP. The forces of Europeanization have been evident in influencing evolving party discourses in Ireland. Much of this influence has been occasioned by the impact of participation in government on parties and the sporadic requirement to engage with referendum campaigns. The process of Europeanization has thus been subtle and muted and has interacted in intricate ways with domestic party agendas and objectives.