Norms, Institutions and EU Foreign Policy: Advancing the Research Programme

Abstract

The question of whether the EU provides a tangible ‘value-added’ to European foreign policy (EFP) actions beyond the aggregated contributions of its member states has inspired a large literature. In other words, are there endogenous mechanisms at work within EU institutions that lead EU member states to pursue foreign policies they otherwise might not adopt? If so, what are these mechanisms and how do they impact foreign policy-making processes among EU member states and EU institutions? The more orthodox (i.e., realist or inter-governmental) answer to these questions rejects the possibility of an independent EU influence; in this view, EU foreign policy actions are merely a product of bargains among EU member states based on their pre-existing policy preferences. The contributions to this volume add to this debate by considering the role of institutional factors in determining EU foreign policy actions, which may help to moderate or even condition the pursuit of national positions in EFP deliberations on major global problems. Moreover, by focusing on actual EU decisionmaking procedures across a range of foreign policy issue-areas, and by examining both more-successful and less-successful examples of EU deliberations with a single set of hypotheses, the volume has done a major service to the study of EFP.KeywordsForeign PolicyInternational Criminal CourtCommon PolicyNormative ConsensusCooperative BargainingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.