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The European Union (EU) has increasingly become a foreign policy actor in its own right, sparking the emergence of EU External Action Studies (EU EAS). Although this thriving field at the intersection of EU Studies and International Relations has gradually matured, the interaction of EU EAS with Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) has so far remained limited. This contribution discusses whether concepts and approaches from EU EAS hold valuable theoretical insights for FPA, and how these could be exploited. It argues that there is a largely untapped potential for cross-fertilization between the two fields. This claim is illustrated with several examples as well as two short instructive cases that show how the approach to studying the EU's “external effectiveness” helps addressing FPA's blind spot regarding foreign policy impacts, and how the critical agenda on “decentering” EU external action directs much-needed attention to the “foreign” in FPA.

In recent times, the European Union’s external engagement has expanded in originally internal policy areas. This process is particularly intriguing in areas where the EU possesses only supplementary competences. Examining the case of EU higher education policy, this contribution sets out to understand and explain EU external engagement in such areas. To this end, it employs an explanatory framework that argues that EU external action emerges when a structural policy window of external ‘opportunity’ and domestic ‘presence’ opens, which is exploited by ‘policy entrepreneurs’. The contribution compares two pillars of EU higher education policy – the Tempus and Erasmus Mundus programmes – which it sets in relation to the emergence of external action in other EU higher education initiatives. Offering an explanation of why the EU engages externally in higher education, the contribution concludes by discussing the broader generalizability of its findings.

Climate change has turned the Arctic simultaneously into an environmentally highly fragile space and a region offering manifold economic opportunities. The notion of ‘Arctic Paradox’ aptly captures...

This article examines how, to what extent and why the European Union (EU) engages in cultural diplomacy (CD) vis-à-vis the United States (US). While providing an empirical review of and conceptual reflection on the current state of the EU’s (including key Member States’ (MS’)) CD efforts vis-à-vis the US, it also strives to explain the forms of this activity. It finds that a complex, multi-level, multi-actor, multifaceted and multipurpose EU CD in the US currently exists, which displays ‘diversity without unity’ and faces several incoherencies. This finding can be explained primarily by a latent competition for attention between EU MS. The article concludes by reflecting on how a more coherent EU CD could be achieved, thereby helping to reinvigorate EU-US relations.

Despite its increasing importance for European integration, there remains a lack of scholarly attention to the growth of EU external action in originally internal policy areas. This article advances a comprehensive framework for understanding and explaining the emergence of EU external engagement in such areas. The framework combines insights from two sets of literatures: the EU external relations literature offers useful concepts – particularly ‘actorness’ – as building blocks for explanatory purposes, while the public policy literature provides relevant insights regarding policy entrepreneurship and agenda-setting. The article contends that EU external engagement results from a favourable interplay between an external ‘opportunity’ and the EU’s ‘presence’ in a given domain, which is identified and capitalized upon by a set of policy entrepreneurs, who are driven by interest-based and/or ideational motives. The article undertakes a qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources to apply the framework across multiple policy areas.

The European Union (EU) is widely considered as a ‘leader’ in global environmental politics. Over the past forty years, it has gradually adopted a corpus of primary/secondary environmental law allowing it to become the strongest regional environmental protection regime in the world. As a global actor, the EU attempts to export this acquis, following a mainstreaming approach that in principle demands attention to the protection of non-human nature in all of its external action. Employing four different approaches to the human-NHN relationship derived from the debate about global environmental justice, this chapter provides a critical discussion of EU external activities related to the protection of non-human nature and their effects. It focuses on three domains that are central to tackling the causes of the Anthropocene: EU external action aimed at mitigating climate change, halting biodiversity loss and governing the Arctic as a major theatre of environmental degradation processes. The chapter finds that the EU’s diplomacy primarily pursues a ‘reformist’ justice agenda, aimed at better ‘managing’ non-human nature. It fares rather well with regard to the conclusion of international environmental agreements (institutional effectiveness), but less so when it comes to the actual protection of non-human nature (ecological effectiveness).

This introductory article to the special issue on major powers in shared neighbourhoods sets the scenery by introducing the research objectives, situating them in the relevant academic context with...

In the early twenty-first century, environmental matters have become subject to high politics, tackled in complex global contexts. In such contexts, effectively dealing with environmental challenges requires a geopolitically informed environmental foreign policy strategy. This article examines whether, to what extent and for what reasons the European Union, with its highly developed internal environmental regime and its ambition to lead global environmental politics, possesses such a strategy. It argues that the EU has for a long time pursued a leadership-by-example approach, characterized by attributes of planning rather than a strategy, but that signs of change can nowadays be detected notably in the area of climate change. Drawing on insights from pragmatist reasoning, the article concludes by suggesting how the EU’s environmental foreign policy could develop further strategically.

Science diplomacy represents a relatively novel field of EU external action. This contribution provides a better understanding of the under-researched development of this policy domain, asking how and why the EU has extended the scope of its external activities in the scientific area. To answer these questions, it conducts an analysis of EU policy-makers' discourses on external science policies inspired by role theory. It finds that EU role conceptions in this domain take the forms of ‘science for diplomacy’ or ‘diplomacy for science’, and that they correspond either to an image of normative or market power Europe. These findings are confirmed by a study of the EU's recent external science policies. The article argues that the ambiguity of rationales invoked for introducing a genuine science diplomacy in the EU helps to appeal to different constituencies. This, in turn, enhances the Union's chances for successfully expanding the scope of its activities.

How do America’s democratic allies perceive and respond to a relative decline in US power and influence and the simultaneous rise of China? Using the case-studies of Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan and South East Asian countries, this book offers a broad assessment of the perceptions of threat and the strategies used by these allies to cope with the relative decline of America’s hegemonic power, the rise of China and the transforming world order. In answering these central questions, contributors focus on two complementary analytical approaches. The first examines the perceptions of systemic changes by America’s allies: how are US allies framing this issue and what kind of political discourse is emerging with regards to it? The second approach focuses on the concrete foreign policy and defence strategies put forward by these allies. The book explores the extent to which US allies are willing to support US hegemony and considers the democratic allies’ understanding of the international structure, their relations to the United States, and their own aspirations in this changing world order. This book will be of interest to general readers as well as scholars and students of US foreign policy, foreign policy analysis and International Relations.

This article explores the prospects for joint leadership by the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) in an evolving multipolar world. Arguing that multipolarity leads to a highly differentiated global system, it conceptualizes global order as negotiated order revolving around issue-specific global governance arrangements subject to constant negotiation processes. In this context, transatlantic leadership depends not only on a US and EU willingness to lead individually and collectively, but especially on their capacity to define joint purposes and mobilize followers in issue areas relevant to global order. To test whether the two parties fulfil these conditions, the article first engages in a discourse analysis comparing US and EU leadership ambitions and visions of world order as expressed in their global strategies. US and EU rhetoric is subsequently compared to their (inter)action in the major global policy domain of climate change, focusing on the negotiations of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The article finds that opportunities for US-EU leadership generally exist, but that sustained future leadership will depend on renewed commitments and tend to be, rather than cross-cutting and relatively stable as during the Cold War, issue-specific and contingent, necessitating regular negotiation with other major global forces.

Despite growing scholarly interest in the EU's flagship policy towards its Eastern and Southern neighbours, serious attempts at theory-building on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have been largely absent from the academic debate. This book aims at contributing to fill this research gap in a three-fold manner: first and foremost it aims at theorizing the ENP as such, explaining the origins, development and effectiveness of this policy. Building on this effort, it also pursues the broader objective of addressing certain shortcomings in EU external relations theory, and even beyond, in International Relations theory. Finally, it aspires to provide new insights for European policy-makers. It is one of the first volumes to provide different theoretical perspectives on the ENP by revisiting and building bridges between mainstream and critical theories, stimulating academic and policy debates and thus setting a novel, less EU-centric research agenda. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU external relations, EU foreign policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy, and more broadly in European Union Politics and International Relations.

This article analyzes the historical dynamics of the relationship between China and the European Union (EU) in global climate governance. The evolution of this relationship is traced through three ...

This article discusses the relations between the different layers of government in Belgium with regard to a typical multi-level issue, i.e. climate change. It addresses the question to which degree the characteristics of Belgian federalism shape those intergovernmental relations. Three major characteristics are identified: the constitutionally ‘dual’ but de facto ‘cooperative’ federalism, the Europeanization of competences and of relations, and the executive and politicized character of federalism. The impact of those characteristics are studied with regard to crucial cases in recent decision-making on (i) domestic climate change policy in Belgium and on (ii) the position and representation of Belgium in the international climate change debate. It is observed that intergovernmental relations on climate change are to a high degree institutionalized. That is the consequence of the fragmentation in many of the competence areas important for climate change (e.g. environment, energy, transport). The different ...

The creation of the Treaty of Lisbon sparked high hopes for a greater level of coherence within the application of European Union (EU) external policies. Now, more than two years after its entry into force, the question remains to what extent the Treaty actually succeeded in fostering greater external unity. Through a systematic analysis of EU and Member State actions in the areas of EU external energy and climate policies, both prior and immediately after the Treaty's arrival, this article aims to critically evaluate whether Lisbon is able to live up to the initial expectations.

This contribution examines the driving factors behind the European Union's activism in global climate politics since the mid-1990s. Two alternatives are considered: norms and interests. Norms underlying the EU's stance include its belief in multilateralism, sustainable development and the precautionary principle. Interests comprise economic opportunities and the climate change–security nexus. It is argued here that the normative orientation has dominated the EU's ‘leading by example’ strategy in global negotiations. In Copenhagen, it yielded little influence as it was insufficiently geared towards the context of the negotiations. This challenges the notion of ‘normative power’ Europe and makes a review of the Union's external climate policy necessary.

In previous editions of the Journal of Contemporary European Research, we reported on the set-up and progress of the interdisciplinary research project “The European Union and Global Multilateral Governance” (see Vol. 4, No. 1; Vol. 5, No. 1). This third and final research note presents some of the key-results of the project and suggests future areas for research.

In much of the literature on global climate politics, and notably on the United Nations (UN) climate regime, the European Union (EU) has long been considered as a lead actor in efforts to combat climate change (Gupta and Grubb, 2000; Oberthur, 2009). Even its apparent marginalisation at the 2009 Copenhagen conference of the parties (COP) has left this assessment largely unchanged (Wurzel and Connelly, 2010: 286–287). It is, on the one hand, based on the Union’s internal policies, which have resulted in the set-up of a regional climate regime around the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), widely studied by scholars (see, for example, Skjaerseth and Wettestad, 2009). On the other hand, its unrivalled level of diplomatic activities in the sphere of global climate negotiations is highlighted as a major source of its supposed leading role (Gupta and Grubb, 2000). As a matter of fact, the gradual transformation of climate change into an ever more ‘important foreign policy issue has rendered this external dimension of the Union’s climate policy increasingly significant’ (Ott, 2001). Its concrete external activities in and their effects on global climate politics have, however, long remained understudied from a foreign policy and diplomatic studies perspective.

As analysts of real-world politics, political scientists reflect upon the changing nature of a social reality that is in quasi-constant flux. Since processes of ‘political transformation inevitably call […] into question the available concepts and categories through which that transformation can be understood’, this scholarly activity has to involve a regular dose of self-reflexivity about the objects and tools of the discipline (Kelstrup and Williams, 2000, 3). At times, adjustments aimed at reflecting the evolving social world occur quickly. Often, however, the theoretical and conceptual toolkits of the discipline lag behind evident modifications in the objects they intend to scrutinize. A case in point is the debate about whether, in an era of globalization and global governance, ‘foreign policy remains a key site of agency in international relations, or whether it is being steadily emptied of content’ (Hill, 2003, 16). Where foreign policy as a social practice is quite apparently being transformed by a rapidly evolving global political context, the analytical frameworks used to investigate it have tended to remain rather statist, static and under the influence of broad assumptions derived primarily from rational choice based, systemic International Relations (IR) theories (Alden and Aran, 2012). With this contribution, we intend to propose some novel paths for analysing foreign policy by investigating how it is impacted by — and needs to be investigated under conditions of — global governance.

After almost two decades of active implication in the United Nations (UN) climate change regime, the European Union’s (EU) engagement in this domain of global environmental politics has become widely considered as emblematic of its participation in global multilateral governance generally.2 In this time span, the internal and external parameters for EU activities in this domain have considerably evolved. The science of climate change, reflected in successive reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has become ever more compelling, transforming the issue into a priority foreign policy topic (IPCC, 2007). At the same time, the global politics of climate change as well as the governance structures within and beyond the UN climate regime have undergone significant transformations. Not in the least, the EU itself has become a foreign policy actor in its own right, not only driven by several internal treaty reforms, but also by recurring attempts at finding its place in the evolving regime context. One parameter that has remained a constant throughout all this time, however, is the Union’s desire to ‘play a leading role in promoting concerted and effective action at global level’, formulated by the European Council in Dublin in June 1990 (European Council 1990: Annex II – ‘The environmental imperative’). This leadership aspiration, paired with a commitment to searching for multilateral solutions to the problem of climate change, has been reinvigorated at different moments in the evolution of the climate regime on the basis of both norms and interests shared among EU Member States (van Schaik and Schunz, 2012).