Routledge The European Union's Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective: Beyond the “Actorness and Power” Debate (Routledge/UACES Contemporary European Studies)

This ground-breaking volume provides a new perspective on the EU’s foreign policy and offers a reconstruction of EU research that extends beyond narrow-minded concepts of ‘power’ and ‘actorness’. Focusing on two intertwined research questions, it presents a more sustainable base for studying EU foreign policy: What is the EU’s foreign policy quality in terms of ‘actorness’ and ‘power’ compared to other types of actors in international relations and global politics? What factors influence the EU’s foreign policy performance in comparison to states and international organizations? This guiding principle and application of a ‘grounded theory’ or ‘heuristic case study’ approach allows the book to deliver a structured comparative analysis of EU foreign policy, comparing findings across policy fields, different legal foundations and respective policy modes of governance. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of European Union studies, European Union foreign policy studies, international relations, and security policy studies. Review ‘This welcomed volume contains a systematic, comprehensive and well-argued comparative analysis of a highly topical issue in EU studies, at the same time providing a welcomed antidote to current pessimism regarding the EU's role in world politics.’ – Emeritus Senior Professor Walter Carlsnaes, Uppsala University, Sweden. ‘The edited book gently chips away the theory beyond merely looking at the power and actorness debates to reveal how the EU actually performs across a range of foreign policy issues by taking a comparative perspective that allows one to analyse between the declatory and operational European Union. Taking a case study approach across the three dimensions of governance/regulatory frameworks; peace and state building and crisis management and missions, it makes for compelling reading as it offers an insightful audit as it unpacks the foreign policy performance of the EU by drawing attention to challenges for collective action framed between normative discourses and interest articulation. It is informative and relevant for the practitioner and the researcher.’ - Professor Ummu Salma Bava, Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. 'Overall, this book is interesting for both those who seek a comparative analysis of the EU’s foreign policy and those who pursue more detailed research on the EU’s role, power and infl uence in international affairs.' - Manrico De Vincentis, The International Spectator, 2016 About the Author Ingo Peters is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and Executive Director of the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy, Germany.