In the past few years decision‐making processes and the normative underpinnings of EU external relations have become subject to intense debate in the European institutions, member states and the wider public. Previous research suggests that there is variation in the extent to which individual domains of EU external relations are politicized and contested. This special issue aims to theorize further and investigate empirically this, using the example of European development policy and its relations with other external policies. We introduce two new mechanisms that drive politicization dynamics. We argue that politicization can be diffused horizontally from one policy field to another, which we call horizontal politicization. We also investigate how the politicization of EU external policies in third countries occurs and influences politicization dynamics in the EU, which we call outside‐in politicization. The introduction to the special issue presents our theoretical approach and summarizes the key findings from the special issue.

Within the European Union (EU), the neoliberal trade policy has not only survived the global financial crisis (GFC) and Eurozone crisis, but has been reinforced throughout these crises. • This has been helped by a legitimizing discourse by the European Commission that has continuously depicted free trade in a favourable relationship vis-à-vis the GFC and the Eurozone crisis. • Empirically, this article shows how between 2008 and 2012, the EU trade discourse has been subtly adapted to the changing crisis environment: from defensive, over offensive-desirable and offensive-necessary towards necessary-but-not-sufficient at the time of writing. In the tradition of critical discourse analysis, we also point at the problematic assumptions and logics held by the discourse. • Theoretically, it is shown how subtly adapting discourse to a fluctuating context can effectively limit policy change and legitimize continuity. The crisis starting in 2008 has not led to the demise but to the reinforcement of neoliberalism, not least within the European Union (EU). We argue that this can also be observed in the EU's external trade policy, where the European Commission's discourse has continued to legitimize neoliberal trade through subtle re-articulations of the relationship between free trade and the crisis. In this respect four stages can be discerned: defensive, offensive-desirable, offensive-necessary and necessary-but-not-sufficient. These subtle adaptations are articulated as coherent with the internal Eurozone crisis, although we show that their assumptions can be challenged. Theoretically, we engage in a critical analysis of the Commission's trade discourse in the context of the crisis. Empirically, we focus on the different EU Trade Commissioners' discourses between 2008-2012. The article shows how subtly adapting discourse to a fluctuating context can effectively limit change and legitimize continuity.

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The proliferation of aid donors and channels for aid and the resulting fragmentation brings about huge costs for developing and donor countries and has a detrimental effect on the impact of aid. Coordination is presented as a strategy to help resolve this problem and has been at the top of the development agenda in the past decade. The EU has on many occasions expressed its ambition to foster this agenda and strengthen internal EU coordination. However, the few existing contemporary studies suggest that the implementation of coordination is fairly low. This article seeks to understand this gap through an empirical analysis of EU coordination in Tanzania and Zambia. The findings reveal that the EU's internal and external coordination role has indeed been limited. It is argued that challenges to EU coordination can partly be explained by institutional factors, but that ideational and political elements should also be considered in order to gain a more profound understanding.La prolifération de donateurs d'aide et de mécanismes de développement et la fragmentation qui en résulte génèrent des coûts considérables aussi bien pour les pays en voie de développement que pour les pays donateurs et ont un effet néfaste sur l'impact de l'aide. Au cours de la dernière décennie, la coordination, vue comme stratégie pour résoudre ces problèmes, se situait en haut de l'agenda de la politique de développement internationale. À maintes reprises l'UE a exprimé son ambition de stimuler cet agenda et de renforcer la coordination interne au sein de l'UE. Mais les rares études contemporaines suggèrent que la mise en oeuvre de la coordination a été très faible. Cet article cherche à comprendre ce gap au moyen d'une analyse empirique de la coordination de l'UE en Tanzanie et en Zambie. Les résultats révèlent qu'effectivement le rôle de coordination interne et externe de l'UE dans les pays susmentionnés a été limité. Il est clair que les défis pour la coordination de la part de l'UE peuvent être expliqués partiellement par des facteurs institutionnels, mais qu'il faut aussi tenir compte de facteurs idéationnels et politiques pour arriver à une compréhension plus approfondie.

The European Union's development policy has become increasingly intertwined with other policy fields, which erodes the objectives of this policy domain in their own right. We specifically look at the linkages with migration policy, which has been a highly politicized EU policy domain. This article assesses the EU migration-development discursive linkages by addressing two related questions: how and to what extent has this nexus been politicized in Europe? We focus on two dimensions of politicization, namely salience and the polarization of opinions within the context of national parliaments. Through a conceptualization of argumentation lines this article sheds light on how the nexus has been translated into political communication by political actors. We conclude that there are varying, often opposing, argumentation lines on how the migration-development nexus is conceivedthat are more complex than the distinction between 'preventive' and 'restrictive' approaches as identified in the literature on EU external migration policy.