Twelve tongues, one voice: An evaluation of European political cooperation

Abstract

Traditional integration theories disagree over the scope of the main foreign policy instrument of the European Union (EU), the so-called European Political Cooperation (EPC). While intergovernmentalism suggests that EPC actions are weak, neofunctionalism maintains that cooperation within the EPC framework is characterised by strong measures. In this article, we present a game-theoretic and statistical analysis of these conflicting propositions and show that European foreign policy making is much more diversified than predicted by the predominating theoretical approaches. A signalling game demonstrates that the exploitation of uncertainty by a possible profit-seeker outside the organisation can cause inadequate EPC decisions. The formal model also explores the extent to which joint interest in closer foreign policy coordination can help to overcome diverging national policy preferences. The empirical test of some game-theoretic hypotheses shows that European foreign policy making has become more intensive. The increasing number of declarations is, however, also a sign of the proliferation of non-committing statements. Logit regressions reveal a close relationship between the economic salience of an EPC target nation to the European Union and the intensity of an EPC reaction.

Vom ungeliebten Störenfried zum akzeptierten Paradigma? Zum Stand der (Neuen) Politischen Ökonomie in Deutschland

“…B. Holzinger 1994;Schneider 1995;Schneider/Seybold 1997). Ein von Moser, Schneider und Kirchgässner (1997) herausgegebenes Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Aussenwirtschaft fasst eine Reihe von Beiträgen meist europäischer Autoren unter dem Titel "Decision Rules in the European Union: A Rational Choice Perspective" zusammen.…”

Institutionalization, Policy Adaptation and European Foreign Policy Cooperation

“…Where institutions are lacking or weak (as in the formative years of EPC), states resort to self-interested decision-making based on their unique foreign policy traditions. These changes in institutional form and policy substance are tightly linked -while instrumental rationality can explain the intergovernmental origins and initially limited scope of EPC (Schneider and Seybold, 1997), its expansion, output and impact on EU states require sensitivity to arguments based on constructivism's socially inspired rational action.…”

“…34 The taboo against involving EC competencies was almost completely eliminated with the CFSP, which established a procedure to regularly use EC resources to implement and finance CFSP joint actions. One can also detect a change in emphasis from 'reactive' foreign policy actions taken in response to particular events, to more proactive actions (even common strategies) that anticipate problems and devote resources to handling them (Holland, 1991;Schneider and Seybold, 1997). In this sense EU foreign policy has moved from negative integration (protecting the EU from the unilateral foreign policy actions of its member states) to positive integration (acting with a single purpose in world politics to serve common goals).…”

Separating the Willing from the Able

“…Signalling and screening models have been widely applied in international studies. Areas encompass European foreign policy cooperation (Schneider and Seybold, 1997), international negotiations (Fearon, 1998;Sartori, 2002), trade policy (Brainard and Martimort, 1997), crisis bargaining (Schultz, 1998), international credibility of reforms (Rodrik, 1989) or human rights politics (Moore, 2003) -to mention just a few. Screening models are closely related to signalling models.…”