Division of labour and specialization in EU foreign policy-making

Introduction: Foreign policy-making in the European Union (EU) often deviates from the formal rules and is largely characterized by processes of informal division of labour between member states and European institutions. Such informal processes, which result is foreign policy-making driven by specialization, have largely escaped the radar of EU foreign policy scholars, but are important for fully understanding how the EU functions in many foreign policy dossiers. This paper presents a framework for mapping the different manifestations of informal division of labour and for understanding its consequences for EU foreign policy

The study of the EU as an international actor: Bringing the outside back in. Examples from EU-China relations.

Concerns on EU-centrism in EU foreign policy analysis have become more frequent in recent years. In contrast to the mature debate in International Relations, however, a systematic toolbox for diagnosing and remedying this problem is still lacking. This article’s contribution is twofold. First, it proposes a new typology of five approaches to foreign policy analysis, giving conceptual body and nuance to the debate on EU-centrism. It draws on publications on EU-China relations to further illustrate the proposed categories. This typology can be used for scrutinizing existing analyses, as well as for shaping new research projects. The second part of the article applies this typology in a meta-analysis of post-Lisbon EU foreign policy scholarship. To this end, it analyses a built-for-purpose dataset of 482 articles, which covers all work on EU foreign policy published in 2010-2014 in seven key journals. It finds, first, that academic work on EU foreign policy is indeed rife with EU-centric approaches. Moreover, this is the case irrespective of the policy area under study and of the focus of the journal. Second, while non-western authors form a small minority within the dataset, their work on EU foreign policy holds promise for a move away from EU-centrism. The article concludes by proposing research strategies that aim to assist the EU foreign policy analyst in adopting an outside-in perspective, both in terms of his analytical competences (linguistic outside-in, disciplinary and methodological outside-in) as well as well as concerning the acquisition of knowledge on the context of the region, country or society that is the subject, target, recipient, beneficiary or victim of EU’s external policies (material ‘outside-in’, polity ‘outside-in’, normative ‘outside-in’). These various dimensions of an outside-in perspective are illustrated through the example of EU-China relations. This analytical framework can not only be used to analyse the EU’s foreign policy, but can also contribute to the strengthening of the analysis of foreign policy in general

Convergence towards a European strategic culture? A constructivist framework for explaining changing norms.

The article contributes to the debate about the emergence of a European strategic culture to underpin a European Security and Defence Policy. Noting both conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the literature, the article disaggregates the concept of strategic culture and focuses on four types of norms concerning the means and ends for the use of force. The study argues that national strategic cultures are less resistant to change than commonly thought and that they have been subject to three types of learning pressures since 1989: changing threat perceptions, institutional socialization, and mediatized crisis learning. The combined effect of these mechanisms would be a process of convergence with regard to strategic norms prevalent in current EU countries. If the outlined hypotheses can be substantiated by further research the implications for ESDP are positive, especially if the EU acts cautiously in those cases which involve norms that are not yet sufficiently shared across countries

EU Core Groups: Specialisation and Division of Labour in EU Foreign Policy. CEPS Working Document, No. 252, 19 October 2006

Close foreign policy cooperation among a limited number of EU member states is generally looked upon with suspicion as it is associated with ‘directoires’ of large member states. The central argument of this paper is that, under certain conditions, the specialisation and division of labour among the member states can strengthen both the effectiveness and legitimacy of the foreign policy of the EU. This paper proposes the establishment of a system of small, specialised EU core groups that focus on particular foreign policy issues. An EU core group consists of (representatives of) the high representative, the Commission and the presidency and of a limited number of EU member states that are both willing and able to devote extra efforts and resources to a specific foreign policy matter. A system of EU core groups can help to alleviate some major problems of EU foreign policy: the cleavage between large and middle-sized or small member states, the predominance of uncommon interests, a lack of cooperation and vertical consistency, and the growing irrelevance of the Council in an EU with 25 or more member states

European Security and Defence Policy: from Taboo to a Spearhead of EU Foreign Policy?

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Ending the cold war: the USSR-FRG/EC partnership and the changing of the guard over Eastern Europe

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Reconceptualising foreign policy – or upgrading agency in a globalized world: Structural Foreign Policy

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