1 / 12

Understanding EU Foreign Policy Cooperation Choices

Understanding EU Foreign Policy Cooperation Choices. Leanne C. Powner University of Michigan LPowner@umich.edu. Research Question. When does the EU choose (or manage) to cooperate on foreign policy? When they do, which tools do they use? Why? Incidences of cooperation are nonrandom.

wrobbins
Download Presentation

Understanding EU Foreign Policy Cooperation Choices

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Understanding EU Foreign Policy Cooperation Choices Leanne C. Powner University of Michigan LPowner@umich.edu

  2. Research Question • When does the EU choose (or manage) to cooperate on foreign policy? • When they do, which tools do they use? Why? • Incidences of cooperation are nonrandom. • Extent of selection bias tells us about extent of preference convergence among members. • Part of a larger project on foreign policy cooperation and forum shopping

  3. EU Foreign Policy Cooperation • ‘Common Foreign and Security Policy’ (CFSP) created with Treaty on European Union, 1993 • Expands on ‘European Political Cooperation’ of 1973-93 • Institutionalization intended to increase Union’s capacity to act in foreign affairs. • Purely intergovernmental process, despite provisions for qualified majority voting and Commission “association”

  4. CFSP Tools and Choices • Declaration – collective statement • Existed under EPC • Conclusion – short-term policy statement agreed by ministers or heads of state at a meeting • Common Position – medium-term policy statement around which all member states coordinate policy • forms the basis of all Union activity on that issue • Joint Action – coordinated action plan usually involving expenditure; scope can be large or small • All require unanimous votes or consensus • Demarches not coded; not public record • EP/Commission action not considered here: focus is on interstate cooperation.

  5. Barriers to Study • Cooperation is not random. Studying only successful instances of cooperation – the set of declarations, etc. – results in a biased sample. • Inference is invalid. • Solution: use an unbiased sample of events to which the EU could have reacted; compare to actual behavior

  6. Research Design • 300observations • 199 completed here • Double-random selection process: • Pages randomly selected from Keesing’s Contemporary Archive, 1994-2003 • Qualifying international events identified • One qualifying event per page randomly selected

  7. Do Preferences Converge Over Time? • If preferences are converging, cooperation should be more likely as time goes on. • Share of randomly selected observations on which the EU acts. • Irregular, but rising trend.

  8. Regional Interests • Is the EU more sensitive to events in its own area? • share of events per region with response • Yes, non-EU Europe (34.5%) and former USSR (33.3%) are high, but Africa is highest (44.1%). South America is ignored (0.8%).

  9. ….However…. • While EU may respond to most events in neighboring regions, these actions do not make up a large part of activity. • Most attention appears directed elsewhere. • 8% of actions (1/3 of total activity) in non-EU Europe and former USSR

  10. Human Rights and CFSP • Promoting human rights is a stated focus of CFSP • Worldwide: Human rights issues are about as likely as any other issue to receive a response (23.8% HR vs 24.7% rest) • In neighboring regions (non-EU Europe and Former USSR), only 1 of 5 human rights events received an EU response.

  11. Preliminary Conclusions • EU foreign policy behavior generally corresponds to expectations. • Trends are often weaker than expected, but do move in the predicted direction. • The EU is more sensitive to events in neighboring regions. • These areas are more likely to receive a response on any given event than other regions. • This does not hold for human rights issues – counters expectations • However, neighborhood activity is only 1/3 total activity.

  12. Next Steps • Expand sample to 1994-2003 • Probit models with additional IVs • Expand outcome set: • European Parliament: substitution effect? • Commission: delegation? • Non-EU institutions: NATO, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) • Case studies of preference formation process

More Related