ANTERO Roundtable at the EUSA Miami conference (May 4-6, 2017)
Submitted by University College of Dublin on Wed, 06/28/2017 - 20:17
The State of EU Foreign Policy Scholarship: its added value, current challenges, and future potential
During the European Union Studies Association Conference 2017, the ANTERO team organized a roundtable “Assessing the State of EU Foreign Policy Scholarship: its added value, current challenges, and future potential” to kick off the discussion on the EU Foreign Policy Scholarship.
The roundtable aimed at a critical reflection on the state of EU foreign policy scholarship by 1. evaluating the added value and missed opportunities of EU foreign policy research in the past.
assessing its current state and challenges
discussing where to move from here in terms of future potential to contribute to a deeper understanding of Europe and the European Union in global affairs.
From left to right: Michael Smith, Karolina Pomorska (chair), Mai´a Cross, Kaija Schilde, Ben Tonra and Heidi Maurer.
Missed the roundtable? Then have a look at the follow-up posts by Ben Tonra and Mike Smith below…
Ben Tonra
Jean Monnet Professor of European Foreign, Security and Defence Policy
UCD Dublin: ben.tonra@ucd.ie
Our fascination with the processes of this unique multi-level policy making machinery does lead us – from time to time – to excessively thick description, to the ever finer parsing of diplomatic and treaty language and the reinvention of too many wheels.
EU foreign policy scholarship has made an undoubted contribution to our understanding of politics at the global level. First, it has added to our understanding of what EU membership means for member states. The complex and reciprocal relationship between national political systems and a developing European-level polity poses many challenging questions to comparative politics and international relations. EU foreign policy studies has outlined – in some detail – how and why member states have contributed to the creation of collective foreign policy making at European level and how this process of collective policy making has in turn impacted the foreign policies of the member states and the impact this has/has not made on the global system. Second, this scholarship has offered varying conceptions of what the EU represents as an international actor. This debate is ongoing – but it has added richly to conversations concerning the role of interests, identity and institutions in International Relations. In doing both these things, EU foreign policy scholarship has also created a visible – if multilane (!) – bridge between European Studies and International Relations. At the same time, we can't overlook the mote in our eyes. Our fascination with the processes of this unique multi-level policy making machinery does lead us – from time to time – to excessively thick description, to the ever finer parsing of diplomatic and treaty language and the reinvention of too many wheels.
We also suffer from the fact that the object of our study is unique, that we are juggling multiple actors at multiple levels and that the entire project is a work in progress and thus a moving target of analysis
This scholarship also suffers from multiple contemporary challenges. While the community of scholars is large and growing, it can suffer from a tendency towards marginalisation and detachment. Too often our big professional conferences, in International Relations and European Studies, feature panels and sections dedicated to EU foreign policy, but too rarely do we see EU foreign policy papers featuring in mainstream IR panels on human rights, trade, and security or in mainstream European Studies panels on governance, policy making and polity-building/fragmentation. Our community also tends to be somewhat mendicant, shuttling somewhat randomly between IR and ES conferences and professional associations without always setting down firm roots in either. We also suffer from the fact that the object of our study is unique, that we are juggling multiple actors at multiple levels and that the entire project is a work in progress and thus a moving target of analysis. All of this tends to prompt something of a magpie tendency – to seize on the latest marginal iteration of change as a focus of immediate and all-consuming analysis. There is finally, of course, the benchmark problem which derives from the very uniqueness of the EU that fascinates us. Against what is the Union's evolving foreign, security and defence policy to be compared: that of the United States, of a mid-ranking 'soft' power like Canada, or perhaps better yet another intergovernmental actor such as NATO or the UN? These puzzles are enduring, if frustrating.
So where might we go from here? For an early career scholar looking at the field, I'd suggest a number of avenues for future research direction. First, we certainly need deeper and more profound analysis of EU foreign policy and legitimacy. How can a multinational, multi-state polity endeavour to ensure that its foreign, security and defence policy is being properly grounded in active democratic consent? To what extent, if at all, is the Union representing externally the will, interests and values of Europeans- either as individual citizens or on behalf of their state? Second, we have been caught napping with the so-called 'return' of geopolitics. Seduced by the possibilities of the end of the Cold War, we had come to assume that a tolerant, cosmopolitan and liberal democratic international order was upon us and that the European Union was the poster child of this new age. Today, beset by formidable political challenges both internal and external, how does the Union respond; a gentle slide into global irrelevance, a collapse born of its false premise and false promise or a powerful re-launch in the vanguard of the defence and promotion of the values on which the Union is claimed to be based? Third, I would encourage early stage researchers – and those of us that are still adaptable (!), to look more deeply at an emerging European military industrial complex. The intersection between security/defence and commercial/industrial interests is complex and one which no state has yet fully reconciled. In the rarefied world of EU policy making, where a fully functioning public space has yet to develop, the scope for policy capture by narrow sectional interests at the expense of the public good (both domestic and global) is too great. This is all the more problematic at a time when – faced with profound security threats – the boundaries between domestic and international security realms has been near-erased.
Certainly the field of EU foreign, security and defence studies builds upon a solid base facing into these new challenges. If we can keep our focus on the larger issues, on the added value that we bring to our respective home disciplines and on better explaining and understanding the unique phenomena that we are studying, we will continue to serve our communities and the wider global society of which we are a part.
Michael Smith
Professor In European Politics, University of Warwick
The focus on state functions enables EFP approaches to identify the areas of strength in EU external action, but also helps us to identify a number of key limitations
There is no doubt that the study of European foreign policy (EFP) has made distinctive and significant contributions to our understanding of EU external action, but this judgement has to be accompanied by a number of important qualifications, both in terms of approach and method and in terms of substance. European foreign policy studies have done a good job of identifying the distinctiveness of EFP, as a form of extra-national foreign and security policy with a distinctive balance of qualities, and they have in particular identified the characteristics of EFP as a social process embodying the interaction of people and ideas within institutions. As such, it is important to think about the appropriate benchmarks and comparators for EFP, and in this context I have a lot of time for those approaches that focus on state functions and their performance, rather than on statehood – a standard that EFP can never hope to match. The focus on state functions enables EFP approaches to identify the areas of strength in EU external action, but also helps us to identify a number of key limitations – for example, the status of EFP as a form of ‘second order’ policy for EU member states (and the implications of this status for institutions, resources and effectiveness), the problems arising from the tensions between hard and soft security and power, and the problems in a general sense of collective action at the extra-national level. As does Ben Tonra, I would argue that a focus on such issues enables EFP studies to construct effective and well-targeted bridges between international relations theory and EFP.
Closeness to policy-makers and the Brussels institutions has its advantages, but it also carries with it the danger of co-optation or collusion.
At the same time, though, it is necessary to point to a number of gaps and problems with the study of EFP, which have not been resolved. One of these is the inability of EFP approaches to avoid normative commitment – not in terms of normative power approaches, but in terms of the links between EFP scholars and the Brussels foreign policy establishment. Closeness to policy-makers and the Brussels institutions has its advantages, but it also carries with it the danger of co-optation or collusion. Paradoxically, one response to this has been for some scholars to move towards theoretical abstraction, skewing the balance between theories and empirical evidence in another direction. So on the one hand, we have the well-known phenomenon of the ‘interview-driven study’, which if not handled with care can be driven by the interviewees, and on the other hand we have the perils of over-abstraction and the detachment of theory from evidence. The latter issue links with some of the broader problems of international relations theory, and the dangers of ‘self-ghettoisation’ through which debate focuses on an ever-smaller part of the theoretical and empirical spectrum. There is a more specific issue here, characteristic of EFP studies: the danger that EFP itself is defined in an increasingly narrow way, rather than as part of a ‘comprehensive approach’ to EU external action, and this is a problem to be addressed in present and future studies. Rather than the holistic approach that is characteristic of (for example) many studies of EU development policy, EFP studies can appear rather limited and insulated from the broader range of EU actions in the global arena.
The current state of EFP studies thus reflects these ‘historical’ and contextual factors, but it also shows signs of significant growth and development. These signs can be seen through the development of critiques around key approaches and schools of thought, the trend towards careful applications of such approaches (for example recent studies of ‘normative power’ and its application), the emerging focus on rich studies of practice and of ‘practitioner theories’ in Brussels and in the field, the detailed exploration of EU roles in key institutional contexts, and the creative use of discursive and new institutionalist models as the tools of enquiry. There are still weaknesses – the inability to move beyond critique and produce new or refined approaches, the ‘magpie factor’ and the appropriation of ideas from everywhere, the continuing neglect (with some honourable exceptions) of some approaches such as those from negotiation theory, and the inability to move beyond what some have called ‘islands of theory’ (which in turn links back to my earlier comment about the lack of a ‘comprehensive approach’ to EU external action). These gaps and limitations underline the questions outlined above about how we define EFP, how we study it and the relationship between academic studies and practitioner perspectives.
Where might we go from here? One answer might be to cover some of the gaps created by the narrowing of focus on EFP: for example, by exploring the linkages between EFP and foreign economic policy (a long-standing preoccupation of mine, but one that has yet to be fully addressed), by linking the new-found preoccupation with geopolitics to the equally significant issues of geo-economics, by exploring the differences between EFP and those aspects of external action that arise from the externalisation of internal EU policies and challenges, and more generally by exploring the risks and costs associated with the expansion of EFP and its ambitions. In this context, it is important to make the distinction between areas that are under-researched and those that are under-theorised and under-analysed – the distinction, that is to say, between the subjects that preoccupy scholars because they reflect current policy concerns and those that achieve theoretical and empirical rigour. This implies a distinction between events-driven research (and sometimes institution-driven research, as for example in the case of the European External Action Service) and curiosity-driven research. Each has its place, each has its limitations and it is important to recognise both the places and the limitations. Another answer to the question ‘where do we go from here?’ might be to build further on innovative approaches that go beyond the interview- or document-driven studies that currently predominate, to explore cultural dimensions or media-centred approaches to EFP – perhaps resuscitating some of the social and cultural anthropology enquiries that have been undertaken in EU institutions outside the realm of external action. Whichever route is chosen to address these and other problems, the questions of balance and of focus identified here will persist – the point is to recognise them clearly and respond to them in a systematic and grounded way.
Kaija E. Schilde
Assistant Professor of International Relations, Boston University
Email: kschilde@bu.edu
In our roundtable discussion at the European Union Studies Association meeting in May 2017, my colleagues on the panel outlined the many contributions and remaining challenges in the field of EU foreign policy scholarship. While the scholarship on the EU as a global or regional actor is stellar, gaps remain in the conversation between more general international relations scholarship and EU studies. While the conversation in Miami centered on the detachment of EU studies from mainstream IR, this isolation also impacts mainstream IR, where scholars often lack a nuanced understanding of the EU. Mainstream IR and comparative foreign policy analysis misses out on a dynamic and evolving foreign policy case of data security, trade, human rights, peacekeeping, regional security, development, arms trade, and sanctions. A critical missing dimension is to explain where the EU falls in a continuum of foreign policy variation: what is the EU a case of in comparative foreign policy, and where do EU foreign policy causes and consequences fit into a larger universe of cases?
Treat the EU as a state for the purposes of seeing how much leverage it gives us for both understanding the EU and for understanding foreign policy and international relations in a dynamic 21st century case.
I suggest a few analytical frameworks for bridging this gap. They all center on ‘normalizing’ the EU as a foreign policy actor, if only for analytical leverage. While acknowledging the EU is not a unitary state as a foreign policy actor, I suggest that scholars engage in more suspension of disbelief for the purposes of theorizing. Treat the EU as a state for the purposes of seeing how much leverage it gives us for both understanding the EU and for understanding foreign policy and international relations in a dynamic 21st century case. We want to be able to explain variation in outcomes, and evaluate whether the EU is more exceptional or more normal in its foreign policy. A normal foreign policy actor pursues a complex mix of material and ideational goals and tools. The EU as a normal actor would be a complex entity that has norms and values, but also has interests, and sometimes pursues them alongside or over ideals and norms. To what degree is the EU normal, in areas ranging from policies such as sanctions implementation, strategic planning, organizational reform, energy security, development and conditionality policies, democracy promotion, and the external dimensions of migration and border policy? And to what degree are the ‘inputs’ of EU foreign policy—such as public opinion or interest group mobilization—exceptional or normal?
If we accept the idea of the EU as a ‘normal’ foreign policy actor, there are a number of theoretical frameworks with great potential. The first is to bring realism back in to EU foreign policy analysis, treating the EU as a realist actor in the world. This requires relaxing the unitary actor assumption, and considering the EU as actor with interests – sometimes hierarchical under certain conditions—attempting to engage in an anarchic world. When bringing realism back in, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel: neoclassical realism (NCR) provides many analytical tools to account for a combination of systematic and domestic factors to explain outcomes. In NCR, systematic pressures define relative gains, which are then filtered through unit level variables. Unit level variables can include the degree to which the political entity is internally cohesive or fragmented, the relative perceptions of decision makers, and the influence of bureaucratic and parochial interests. NCR provides powerful, yet abstract concepts that should be further harnessed for understanding EU foreign policy, particularly for capturing the variation in how fragmented and cohesive the EU is at a given time or over a given policy.
In addition to NCR, I suggest two other existing general frameworks. Mainstream IR is beginning to utilize insights from the comparative tradition of historical institutionalism, using causal frameworks such as critical junctures, lock-in, and path dependence. Using historical institutionalism to explain EU foreign policy outcomes could help answer questions of colonial legacy and national interests in EU foreign and security policies, or why the EU arms embargo on China remains in place.
The last general framework I suggest is a political economy of security approach. Instead of operating under fixed assumptions about state sovereignty, it takes seriously how state power and security is constrained and enabled by material interests, economic interdependence and non-state parochial interests. It elevates the importance of bottom-up, domestic phenomena both inside and between states. It follows from Susan Strange’s (1970) original international political economy agenda, which included non-state actors and market authority in international relations, with accompanying changes to state authority and the increasing importance of domestic politics. It identifies economic gains and losses that vary independently of state power, winners and losers of economic statecraft, and the bottom up interests influencing foreign and security policies. It also takes seriously the possibility that states take economic gains and losses into consideration, alongside or in competition with strategic gains or losses and that, in fact, they view economic gains or losses as having security effects. In EU foreign policy, sometimes it is resistant to interest group or bottom up influence. An example is the Commission resistance to VW lobbying pressure in EU-China WTO talks. The Commission had an EU public interest, specifically to achieve relative economic gains. In other cases, the EU may be more permeable to bottom-up interest group influence, including, potentially, in the high politics of security policy.