Transgovernmental networks and rationalist outputs? The partial social construction of EU foreign policy

Abstract

EU foreign policy has gone beyond intergovernmentalism. It is largely formulated by (Brusselsbased) national officials, in a process characterised by a high number of cooperative practices, diffuse sentiments of group loyalty and possibly argumentative procedures. Yet, in many cases, the most likely output of this process reflects the lowest common denominator of states' positions or the preferences of the biggest states. The article intends to investigate this puzzle. In the first part, it corroborates its existence by using answers from an original database of 138 questionnaires and 37 interviews with EU negotiators. Next, it argues that cooperative practices remain often subordinated to nationally-oriented ways of doing things. Consequentialist practices perform an anchoring function, in that they define the parameters around which (social) practices operate. The last section looks more closely at the sites of and meanings attached to EU foreign policy-making. By discussing national diplomats' conspicuous leeway in Brussels, it also argues that negotiating practices are performed through a mix of partial agency and persistence of national dispositions. On a whole, changing practices is difficult, even in dense and largely autonomous settings such as EU foreign policy. The social construction of EU foreign policy occurs only to a partial extent. There is wide consensus that the foreign policy of the European Union (EU) has moved beyond intergovernmentalism. Although cooperation in foreign policy remains firmly in the hands of the member states, primarily gathered in the Council of the EU (hereafter: Council), the interactions between national representatives are hardly characterised by bitter disputes among ministers, zero-sum negotiations and detailed cost-benefit analyses of every diplomatic move. This consensus is built on very solid grounds. The literature has convincingly revealed that EU foreign policy is, to a large extent, formulated by groups of officials who, being mostly based in Brussels and sharing a set of common practices, engage autonomously (from the cabinets) in policy making. These dynamics produce a culture of consensus, which instils EU foreign policy with cooperative solutions and (possibly) collectively legitimised policies (e.g.