Explaining the Negotiation of EU Foreign Policy: Normative Institutionalism and Alternative Approaches

Abstract

Despite the vast literature on the development of EU foreign policy institutions and the EU’s growing experience as an international actor, relatively little effort has been made to explain the often-contentious negotiations among Member States that determine whether or not a common policy is adopted, and if so, what it will be. This paper proposes a Normative Institutionalist theory of intra-EU negotiations on foreign policy and external relations, including hypotheses that explain policy outcomes in terms of entrapment and cooperative bargaining dynamics. It compares these hypotheses’ causal mechanisms and observable implications to those of hypotheses derived from Intergovernmentalism as well as theories of Social Learning and Normative Suasion.

Keywords: European Union, foreign policy, CFSP, negotiation, institutionalism