Stephan Keukeleire

Reappraising diplomacy: structural diplomacy and the case of the European Union

Diverse shifts have taken place in both the daily practice and academic analyses of diplomacy. The authors argue that the various conceptualizations do not sufficiently take into account that diplomacy is increasingly concerned with influencing or shaping structures. The aim of this article is therefore to reappraise the nature of diplomacy in general and of the European Union in particular by elaborating on the concept structural diplomacy. This concept refers to the process of dialogue and negotiation by which actors in the international system seek to influence or shape sustainable external political, legal, economic, social and security structures at different relevant levels in a given geographic space (from the level of the individual and society, to the state, regional and global levels). The EUs institutional and diplomatic set-up allows it to conduct structural diplomacy. However, the extent and effectiveness of this diplomacy strongly differ depending on the regions in question.

The security–development nexus and securitization in the EU's policies towards developing countries

This article assesses how and to what extent the European Union (EU) uses a security perspective to define and shape its relationship with the developing world. In order to evaluate the EUs development policy and its relations with developing countries we link the concept of ‘security–development nexus’ with the concept of ‘securitization’. The article examines whether securitization can be observed with regard to four dimensions: discourse, policy instruments, policy actions and institutional framework. The analysis demonstrates a securitization of the EUs development policy and its relations with developing countries, particularly in Africa. However, paradoxically, the securitizations extent and nature suggest that the EU can also use it as a way to avoid a more direct involvement in conflict areas.

Beyond EU navel-gazing: Taking stock of EU-centrism in the analysis of EU foreign policy

Whilst concerns about the EU-centric character of EU foreign policy analysis have become more frequent in recent years, a systematic toolbox for diagnosing and remedying this problem is still lacking. This article’s contribution is twofold. First, it proposes a new typology of three approaches to foreign policy analysis, offering conceptual body and nuance to the debate on EU-centrism. The typology can be used for scrutinising existing analyses, as well as for shaping new research projects. Second, this typology is applied in a meta-analysis of post-Lisbon EU foreign policy scholarship: a built-for-purpose dataset of 451 articles was analysed, covering all work on EU foreign policy published in seven key journals for the period 2010–2014, was analysed. It was found that academic work on EU foreign policy wass indeed rife with EU-centric research questions, and, moreover, that this is the case irrespective of either the policy area under study or the focus of the journal.

Informal division of labour in EU foreign policy-making

ABSTRACT On many issues in European Union (EU) foreign policy-making, political steering and operational action are provided by an informal, self-selected group of actors. Although this informal division of labour is an important phenomenon, it has largely escaped the radar of EU foreign policy scholars. This article aims to fill that gap. Applying an inductive approach, it presents empirical observations from the fields of crisis management and external climate policy, illustrating the occurrence of informal division of labour. It subsequently provides an analytical framework to map the key dimensions of its different manifestations: the enabling factors, starting point, subject, institutional embeddedness, exclusiveness and durability of informal division of labour. Four possible effects on EU foreign policy-making are then discussed: an increased internal and external effectiveness; and a strengthened internal and external legitimacy. The article concludes by presenting suggestions for further empirical research on this phenomenon, as well as for theorizing it.

Competing structural powers and challenges for the EU's structural foreign policy

This article contends that, in order to understand global affairs, not only crises and conflicts need to be examined, but also long-term processes which result from the competition between structural powers. These structural powers have the potential to set or influence the organizing principles and the rules of the game in other countries and regions as well as the international system in general. The article focuses on the European Unions potential as a structural power. Examining where the EU has succeeded and where it has failed to behave as a structural power, it argues that the EU is losing the structural power game against competing structural powers in its neighbourhood, specifically Russia in the EUs eastern neighbourhood and the multifarious phenomenon of “Islamism” in the EUs southern neighbourhood.

Analysing the Position of the European Union in the United Nations System: Analytical Framework

Chapter 1 underscored the growing importance of the EU’s engagement in global multilateral fora under the UN umbrella. This tendency, emblematically reflected in the two influential EU policy documents of 2003 – the Commission communication on ‘The EU and the UN: partners in effective multilateralism’ and the European Security Strategy (European Commission, 2003; European Council, 2003) – sparked substantive research interest in the topic. Where the EU’s participation in UN fora had been predominantly examined by legal scholars before (BrA¼ckner, 1990), analysts of EU foreign policy began to turn to the subject from the early 2000s onwards (Jorgensen, 2007, p. 509).

Analysing Foreign Policy in a Context of Global Governance

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.

Decentring the analysis of EU foreign policy and external-internal legitimacy: (re-)introducing polity

ABSTRACT This article intends to further refine the multi-tiered debate on legitimacy in EU foreign policy by examining the external legitimacy of EU foreign policy within the wider context of the internal legitimacy of other polities in third countries, regions or societies. Through (re-)introducing and further developing the “polity” concept, this contribution presents a framework for analysing and comparing the (output) legitimacy of different authority structures within a given area. It calls upon scholars and practitioners to approach relevant polities in a decentred way, beyond state-centrism and before normative judgement about a polity’s nature (whether it is state-, ethnicity-, religion-, warlordism-based or a combination of these). The main argument is that, by gaining insight into the legitimacy of different kinds of polities in areas of interest to EU foreign policy, we gain insight into challenges and opportunities for the EU’s legitimacy and for the efficiency and effectiveness of its foreign policy.

Operationalising the decentring agenda: Analysing European foreign policy in a non-European and post-western world:

Eurocentrism in the analysis of European foreign policy often renders scholars blind to other world views and realities, although engaging with these may be critical for understanding the relevance and impact of this policy in other parts of the world. Notwithstanding calls for decentring the study of International Relations and European foreign policy in particular, scholars of European foreign policy generally lack the tools and conceptual lenses to overcome Eurocentrism in their analyses. This article proposes an analytical framework to systematically open up for difference, and to see and understand dynamics and realities that go beyond dominant Eurocentric accounts, while trying to avoid the pitfalls of simplification and knowledge fragmentation. The framework consists of six partially overlapping decentring categories – spatial, temporal, normative, polity, linguistic, and disciplinary decentring – and is developed through two dimensions of the Decentring Agenda proposed by Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis: ‘provincialising’ (questioning Eurocentric perspectives) and ‘engagement’ (learning from other perspectives). In this way, this article aims to support scholars of European foreign policy in overcoming Eurocentrism and in operationalising the Decentring Agenda.