Winds of Change: The Europeanization of National Foreign Policy

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Maastricht European Studies Papers 2007/01 Bennet Strang Thus, Ireland, Austria, Finland and Sweden can be taken as examples of states which all have adapted their foreign policy regimes in response and adaptation 35 to joining the EU 36 (Wong, 2005). Accordingly, they moved from neutrality to post-neutrality. EU membership has, in a similar vein, Europeanized Spain’s foreign policy 37 . As a result, it acquired a distinctive EU profile (Torreblanca, 2001). Thinking further about the incremental top-down adaptation process in which states are reactive and muddle themselves through, one should not expect identical outcomes from adaptation. The reason is that the states’ different domestic ‘seedbeds’ condition dissimilar national repercussions (Wong, 2005). This is the same in the foreign policy domain, where “…the pre-existing orientation of external relations which Member States...” (Manners/ Whitman, 2000, p. 262) have needs to be taken into consideration 38 . Those ‘orientations’ sometimes find their expression in a national foreign policy domaine privé, which no member state would accept to be affected by eventually conflictual EU positions (Hill, 1983). One can, thus, safely say that “…adaptation is more a function of attitude than time…” (Manners/ Whitman, 2000, p. 248). Subsequently, the two forms of adaptation, i.e. both rationalist adaptation with preferences remaining stable and constructivist adaptation, where policy learning 39 results in a change of preferences, will be dealt with. Turning, as above-mentioned, to both constructivist and realist approaches, the rationalist perspective holds that adaptation takes place according to the logic of consequentiality. This means that egoistic actors take the self-interested and strategic decision to carry out adaptation only when it is in the state’s rational interest (de Flers, 2005). Nonetheless, this approach is not all-explanatory, as it only covers half of the picture. Therefore, it needs to be complemented by a social constructivist perspective, focusing on 35 National adaptation refers in this context to the change in content of the countries’ foreign policies. 36 Obviously, “EU adaptation appears to play an important role in the ‘modernisation’ of Member States’ [twenty-first century] foreign policies…” (Manners/ Whitman, 2000, p. 246). 37 After the country had emerged from Franco’s dictatorship, it needed to consolidate the young democracy and regain international esteem. For this purpose, an extensive foreign policy transformation set in, which was triggered by EU membership and in the course of which Spain abandoned its neutrality by achieving NATO membership (Torreblanca, 2001). 38 Hence, “[i]f domestic modifications occur, their extent and their inherent mechanisms will depend not only upon the European input, but also upon the particular conditions of the national level on which they act…national opportunity structures…” (Major/ Pomorska, 2005). 39 Policy learning can be defined as “‘…actors chang[ing] not only how they deal with particular problems but also their very concept of problem solving – resulting form the recognition that they and other actors face similar conditions, have mutual interests, and share aspirations’” (Ruggie quoted in Sjursen, 2003 p. 17). Having learned from the devastating disunity in the course of the Iraq crisis, the Member States devised the European Security Strategy (ESS), which is an example and outcome of policy learning (Mahncke, 2004; Lebl, 2004). 12
Maastricht European Studies Papers 2007/01 Bennet Strang rules, norms, identity, ideas and communicative action 40 (Sjursen, 1999; i Fanés, 2001). Those, undoubtedly, also play a role besides purely rational explanations. According to the constructivist logic of appropriateness 41 , actors adhere to social rules prevailing in institutional settings. Hence, Europeanization might change their preferences as they undergo learning and socialization processes. Those result from social interactions in the process of dealing with foreign affairs at a European level 42 (de Flers, 2005). 4.2.2 National Projection “…[P]rojecting a particular set of [domestic] concerns...[into the international arena]” 43 National projection 44 might be seen as complementing and mirroring adaptation. Whereas the latter is a top-down process impacting upon reactive states, the former represents a bottom-up procedure, with which states actively upload their national policy preferences onto the European level. They, thereby, reduce both the risk and costs associated with misfit and subsequent adaptation and increase their international influence (Wong, 2005). Both the Netherlands and Austria, for example, have managed to upload their positions on human rights (Manners/ Whitman, 2000), just as Spain has succeeded in selling its foreign policy prerogatives 45 to the EU. Those were, accordingly, Europeanized and the EU was driven to adopt a foreign policy stance to Spain’s liking in the latter’s areas of interest. In this uploading process, the EU is turned into and used as an extremely forceful amplifier of national interests 46 (Torreblanca, 2001). Although it might at first sight be 40 This concept has been developed by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. 41 Linked to this logic is a phenomenon called normative isomorphism, or socialization logic, which relates to a situation in which individuals with similar professional and educational backgrounds work together (e.g. in the Political and Security Committee (PSC)) and, thereby, start to perceive of things eventually in the same vein. The process conditioning this outcome is commonly referred to as crossloading, which is exactly defined as “the exchange of ideas, norms and ‘ways of doing’ things between countries or other entities for which the EU sets the scene” (Major/ Pomorska, 2005). In this regard, “…Europeanisation in foreign and security policy operates through a voluntary horizontal [learning] process…[in an EU forum]” (ibid.). 42 Social constructivism, hence, emphasizes the force of ideas and their role in shaping policy actors’ behaviour, the deep impact of normative structures on both identity and interest formation, the possibility of soft power, identity production and the value of knowledge as an influential key factor (Katzenstein, 1997; Manners/ Whitman, 2000). 43 (Hill, 2003, p. 31) 44 See Appendix, Annex 1. 45 Those include “…Latin America or the Mediterranean, in which the EU had minor or marginal interests…” (Torreblanca, 2001). 46 Another example would be the Baltic States, which have sought and acquired the ‘European backup’ in their conflictual relationships with Russia through EU membership and, thereby, subsequently lent additional weight to their positions (Mahncke, 2004). 13
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