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This book provides readers with an analytical framework that serves to investigate and explain how the EU adapts its foreign policy in the wake of crisis. While a range of studies dedicated to foreign policy stability and change exist for the US context, such analyses are rare for the assessment and measurement of foreign policy change at the European Union level. This book explores a range of theories of (foreign) policy change and assesses their value for explaining EU foreign policy change. Changes to EU foreign policy, this study proposes based upon an in-depth investigation of recent episodes in which foreign policy has changed, are not captured well using existing typologies of policy change from other fields of study.
Offering a new perspective on the question of change, this book proposes an analytical framework focused on how institutions, institutional ‘plasticity’ and temporal context impact on the decision-making process leading to change. It thus provides readers with the tools to analyse, explain and conceptualise the various change outcomes in EU foreign policy. In so doing, it sets the theoretical approach of historical institutionalism to work in an EU foreign policy setting. Based on a rich empirical analysis of five case studies it provides a revised typology of EU foreign policy change. It proposes two novel forms of foreign policy change, symbolic change and constructive ambiguity, as frequent and important outcomes of the EU decision-making process.
exhaustive (as such an endeavour merits its own book). First, the chapter presents an overview of the evolution of the EU enlargement process and demonstrates how EU policy changed from promoting peace and democracy to an increasing focus on human rights (including LGBT rights). This shift in policy is also reflected in the EU's Othering mechanisms, in particular those employed to reinforce the (at times conflicting) EU identities based on either promoting sustainable peace (often based on geopolitical Othering processes) or the promotion of human (and
framework EU foreign policy change Chapter five takes this framework on three ‘test-drives’ by looking at three recent critical junctures for EU foreign policy which triggered policy change episodes: the EU policy changes developed in response to rising disinformation coming from Russia in 2014–15, the policy changes resulting from the migration and asylum crisis of 2015 and, finally, the EU's policy response to the greater critical juncture in European
over 2016, 2017 and 2018, to care for them, along with promises of progress on EU accession talks and visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in the EU. Today, Turkey hosts 3.4 million refugees, prompting its nickname of “Europe’s warehouse for migrants.” While the stream into Europe has subsequently slowed, Turkey’s demands for visa-free travel never led to EU policy changes. Having seen very limited returns from the deal, President Erdoğan threatened to withdraw Turkey’s EU accession bid. Regardless, his departure from democratic norms and military operations in
high- priced protected markets for CAP commodities. What emerges is a complex picture of EU–African food trade relations where EU policy interventions have resulted in both benefits and losses to African exporters. Recent EU policy changes risk squeezing Africa from two sides, leading to rising costs for Africa’s cereals imports but lower prices and volumes for its agricultural exports (Stevens, 2003). Stevens’ argument focused particularly on preference erosion resulting from EU agricultural policy reform. During the past decade, the value of traditional African
shed light on what kinds of policy change it produced, at what level they took place, what their actual substance was and why this particular output came out of the decision-making process. To understand the outcome, I argue, we should consider how institutions and temporal context affected this process. Figure 1.1 summarises the analytical framework for EU policy change in this book, focusing on this decision-making process. Figure 1
a compromise that made the revised ENP more palatable to actors in favour of a stronger UfM. Constructive ambiguity is more than a theoretical concept that allows us to better capture the outcomes of policy change processes. It directs our attention to a frequent and important outcome of EU policy change processes. Understanding the way in which European decision-makers deal with critical junctures and other policy challenges requires an understanding of their efforts to create constructive ambiguities as a technique of governance that offers a