European foreign policy in times of crisis: a political development lens

ABSTRACT

EU foreign policy has become increasingly politicised over the past years, amongst others as a consequence of the succession of crises. Crises may engender processes of crisis framing and contestation. This article focuses on how the policy demands being voiced in these processes of contestation are channelled through the institutional context. Drawing on insights from American Political Development (APD), it is expounded that this process is shaped by 1) historically created institutional arrangements shaping EU foreign policy through established institutionalised frames and 2) the way external crises generate novel frames that challenge and confront these. Crises and political conflict can ‘evaporate’ existing frames, yet dominant and engrained arrangements subsequently constrain which crises frames are deemed acceptable and which frames are institutionalised. It illustrates this dialectic investigating the dynamics of contestation and politicisation of European Neighbourhood Policy reform after the Arab uprisings and the Ukraine crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Politicisation
• crisis response
• (American) political development
• institutionalism
• European Union foreign policy
• European neighbourhood policy

Acknowledgments

The author expresses gratitude for the helpful comments received from the special issue editors, Anand Menon, Christoph Meyer and Trineke Palm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Scott (2009) for more on APD and Historical Institutionalism as related analytic approaches to the study of politics.

2. The case study research of the Arab uprisings and the Ukraine crisis as well as 18 of the interviews used here are conducted as part of the INTEL research project which investigates knowledge production and use in the foreign policies of the UK, Germany and the European Union during the cases of Arab uprisings, the rise of ISIS and the Russia/Ukraine crisis. The project webpage can be found at https://www.kcl.ac.uk/eis/research/intel/intel-research-project.

3. Interview EEAS official, 28/7/2015, Brussels.

4. Phone interview EEAS official, 3/6/2015.

5. Interview DG DEAR official, 19/05/2015, Brussels.

6. Phone interview with EEAS official at the Moscow Delegation, 12/05/2015.

7. Interview EEAS official, 1/12/2015, Brussels.

Additional information

Funding

Funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council [Grant ES/R004331/1] is gratefully acknowledged.