BOOK REVIEW
The Foreign Policy of the European Union. By Stephan Keukeleire and
Jennifer MacNaughtan. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp.
xvii+392. £ 22.99 (paper); £65.00 (hard); ISBN-10: 1403947228 (paper);
ISBN-10: 140394721X (hard).
Dr Christine Reh
IPPR Volume 5 Number 1 (October 2009)
pp. 85-90
© 2009
International Public Policy Review • The Department of Political Science
The Rubin Building 29/30 • Tavistock Square • London • WC1 9QU
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ippr/
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BOOK REVIEW
The Foreign Policy of the European Union. By Stephan Keukeleire and Jennifer
MacNaughtan. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. xvii+392. £ 22.99 (paper);
£65.00 (hard); ISBN-10: 1403947228 (paper); ISBN-10: 140394721X (hard).
The external relations of the European Union (EU) have become a burgeoning
topic of research and a popular subject of teaching: few European or international studies
conferences do without a roundtable or panel on Europe’s global role; numerous research
projects and academic networks generate a steady stream of publications on the topic;
and courses on foreign policy are in high demand on European politics programmes,
undergraduate and postgraduate alike. This academic interest stands in some contrast to
the EU’s actual global actorness—unchallenged and acknowledged in world trade; active
but less consistent when it comes to “mixed competences” such as environmental policy;
criticised and contested with regard to crisis management and conflict resolution.
Stephan Keukeleire and Jennifer MacNaughtan’s The Foreign Policy of the
European Union was published in the European Union Series at Palgrave in 2008—
almost a decade after the Amsterdam Treaty entered into force and with it a number of
far-reaching institutional changes to Europe’s Common Foreign and Security Policy
(CFSP). The year 2008 also saw much activity in EU external relations—the launch of a
military bridging operation in Tschad; the preparation of a rule of law mission in Kosovo;
the breakdown of the Geneva ministerial meeting under the Doha trade round; agreement
on a climate and energy package that not only committed the Union to cut its greenhouse
gas emissions to at least 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, but pledged to increase the cut
to 30% should other industrialised countries agree to do the same. In their book,
Keukeleire and MacNaughtan cover the entire breadth of these activities: it is their
declared aim to look at EU foreign policy beyond the narrow confines of CFSP and
defence, and to assess how such policy can “shape and influence structures and long-term
processes” worldwide.1
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1
Keukeleire, S. and MacNaughtan, J. The Foreign Policy of the European Union (Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008) p. 4.
9:)
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On a market already rich in textbooks, research monographs and edited volumes
on the subject, The Foreign Policy of the European Union fills a niche in between theorydriven research monographs, such as Michael E. Smith’s institutionalist account of
foreign policy cooperation in Europe2 and more basic introductions to the topic, such as
Karen Smith’s European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World 3; it covers wider
substantive ground than Simon Nuttall’s excellent and comprehensive historical overview
European Foreign Policy4 or Jolyon Howorth’s single-issue study Security and Defence
Policy in the European Union 5; and it offers a welcome break from the dominant
analytical focus on Europe’s identity as a global actor—be it “civilian”, “military” or
“normative”—as developed prominently in Charlotte Bretherton and John Vogler’s The
European Union as a Global Actor.6
In their volume Keukeleire and MacNaughtan pursue two objectives: first, “to
provide an overview and analysis of EU foreign policy”, and, second, “to reappraise the
nature of EU foreign policy and foreign policy more generally”7. The latter objective
builds on their distinction between conventional foreign policy with its (alleged) focus on
“states, military security, crises and conflicts”, and structural foreign policy, which
“conducted over the long-term seeks to influence or shape sustainable political, legal,
socio-economic, security and mental structures.”8 The authors develop their approach
against the backdrop of a post-Cold War and globalising international context (chapter 1),
as well as the historic development of EU foreign policy cooperation from the Marshall
Plan to the Lisbon Treaty (chapter 2). They subsequently introduce Europe’s “foreign
policy apparatus”9 in a systematic, detailed and accessible way: chapter 3 discusses the
complex network of intergovernmental, supranational and bureaucratic actors behind EU
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2
Smith, M.E. Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Institutionalization of Cooperation Perspectives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
3
Smith, K.E. European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
4
Nuttall, S. European Foreign Policy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
5
Howorth, J. Security and Defence Policy in the European Union. (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2007).
6
Bretherton, C. and Vogler, J. The European Union as a Global Actor (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006).
7
Keukeleire, S. and MacNaughtan, J. The Foreign Policy of the European Union (Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008), p.3.
8
Ibid., p. 25.
9
Ibid., p. 329.
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foreign policy-making; chapter 4 turns from actors to processes, covering both de jure
competences and decision-procedures and de facto policy-practices; while chapter 5
looks at the interplay between European and national foreign policies in both a bottom-up
and a top-down perspective—a commendable exercise, given the much-discussed
problem of vertical “consistency” or “coherence” in CFSP. The six remaining substantive
chapters can be divided into two parts: chapters 6 to 9 are devoted to policies; chapters 10
and 11 cover issues of international cooperation. The first set covers “traditional
ground”—CFSP (chapter 6) and European Security and Defence Policy (chapter 7); yet,
true to the book’s aim of broadening our understanding of foreign policy they also
introduce external policies located in the first pillar, including trade, development and the
promotion of human rights (chapter 8) as well as internal policies with an external
dimension, such as justice and home affairs or environmental policy (chapter 9).
Following the discussion of three types of inter-regional cooperation—with potential
member states; with neighbourhood countries; with Africa—in chapter 10, the
penultimate chapter discusses cooperation with other “global ‘structural powers’”10 such
as the US, China and Russia as well as the EU’s embeddedness in multilateral
institutions. Chapter 12 concludes the book; unfortunately, it chooses to link the
argument back to theories of European integration and International Relations more
generally instead of focusing on the author’s potential contribution to foreign policy
analysis.
Throughout, the volume covers traditional textbook material in a systematic and
accessible way; it also discusses less well-known aspects of EU foreign policy, such as
the Council of Ministers’ substructure and the European Commission’s diverse
Directorate-Generates11; the systematic cooperation between member states12; the
external dimension of health and demography policies13; or the EU’s approach to
international financial institutions14 and its relationship to “Islamism”.15 Hence,
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10
Ibid., p. 298.
Ibid., p. 73.
12
Ibid., p.159.
13
Ibid., p. 249.
14
Ibid., p. 307.
15
Ibid., p. 322.
11
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Keukeleire and MacNaughtan certainly reach their first goal—their volume offers a
comprehensive well-structured overview and analysis of EU foreign policy. The
unusually broad approach taken, the wealth of information provided, the topical examples
and up-to-date facts given in the text and additional tables as well as the further readings
and sources suggested on the companion website make the book an accessible and
readable resource for anyone researching, teaching and studying EU external relations.
More scepticism is, however, in order when it comes to the authors’ second
goal—to reappraise the nature of EU foreign policy beyond conventional wisdom.
Indeed, the book’s twofold “conceptual backbone”
16
—the distinction between
conventional foreign policy and structural foreign policy,17and the definition of EU
foreign policy as “multipillar and multilevel, operating within a complex multilocational
web of interlocking actors and processes”
18
—appeals for two reasons: it allows us to
study foreign policy as an instance of multilevel governance, and it facilitates a
potentially more fine-grained assessment of the EU’s performance than its usual broadbrushed condemnation (or praise) as (in)coherent or (in)effective. Yet, the framework
suffers from a combination of overload and under-specification. First, the framework is
overloaded because the authors identify no less than six research themes: the tensions
between Atlanticists and Europeanists, between civilian and military power, between
intergovernmentalism and supranationalism, and between external and internal
objectives; the EU’s ambition to shape regional, national and global structures; and the
EU’s struggle with power.19 These themes have not only been somewhat exhausted in the
existing literature; their amalgamation also leaves the reader puzzling over what it is that
the authors, ultimately, want to explain: the nature and trajectory of EU foreign policy?
The way foreign policy decisions are reached? The distinction between the EU’s shortterm and long-term policy-goals and the reasons for reaching these goals? The Union’s
structural influence? The book touches upon all of these questions, yet it answers none of
them in systematic depth. Second, the framework is underspecified, because the authors
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16
Ibid., p. 34.
Ibid., p. 25.
18
Ibid., p. 34.
19
Ibid., p. 8.
17
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fail to translate their definition of structural foreign policy into an analytical framework,
and because they do not engage with the established literature on foreign policy
analysis—conventional or not. According to Keukeleire and MacNaughtan foreign policy
differs from external relations; the latter is about “maintaining relations with external
actors”, the former “is directed at the external environment with the objective of
influencing that environment and the behaviour of other actors within it, in order to
pursue interests, values and goals.”20 If this is, indeed, the case then the reader would
have expected a set of analytical tools that help her a) to identify such interests, values
and goals; b) to assess whether the external environment and actors within it have
changed; and c) to identify the scope conditions under which such change is likely.
Chapter 10, which contrasts the use of conventional foreign policy and structural foreign
policy in inter-regional cooperation, is a step in this direction. Overall, however, Stephan
Keukeleire and Jennifer MacNaughtan neither equip us with sufficient analytical tools,
nor do they give us a systematic empirical account of how the EU identifies its objectives
of structural influence, how its policies correspond to these objectives, and how structures
world-wide have (or have not) changed in response to Europe’s policy intervention.
As it stands, The Foreign Policy of the European Union convinces as a rich,
informative and in-depth account of EU foreign policy across its thematic board; yet it
will disappoint those readers who do, indeed, expect a systematic reappraisal of this
foreign policy as “structural.”
Christine Reh‡
REFERENCES
Bretherton, C. and Vogler, J. The European Union as a Global Actor. Abingdon:
Routledge, 2006.
Howorth, J. Security and Defence Policy in the European Union. Houndmills: Palgrave,
2007.
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20
Ibid., p. 19.
‡
Lecturer in European Politics in the Department of Political Science at the School of Public Policy,
University College London.
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87)
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Keukeleire, S. and MacNaughtan, J. The Foreign Policy of the European Union.
Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Nuttall, S. European Foreign Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Smith, K.E. European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World. Cambridge: Polity,
2008.
Smith, M. E. Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Institutionalization of
Cooperation Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
TWO BAILOUT PLANS FOR PLANET EARTH
BOOK REVIEW
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. By Jeffrey Sachs. London: Penguin,
2008. Pp. xi+386. £9.99 (paper); ISBN-978: 0141026152.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why The World Needs a Green Revolution and How it Can
Renew Our Global Future. By Thomas Friedman. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Group,
2008. Pp. 444. £20 (hard); ISBN-978:1846141294.
Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is the world’s
most active fire-fighting economist. Having, over the last twenty years, taken on the
liberalization of planned economies in the former Soviet bloc as well as the stubborn
problem of hyper-inflation in Latin America, Sachs has more recently, in The End of
Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time21, set his sights on designing multi-year,
multinational, and multibillion dollar projects to eradicate extreme poverty, control
malaria, and stimulate a four-fold increase agricultural productivity in Africa. His current
work, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet22, aims no lower; Sachs now
has a plan and budget to simultaneously mitigate global climate change, control
population growth, protect biodiversity, reduce extreme poverty, and forestall serious
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21
22
Sachs, J. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin, 2005).
Sachs, J. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (London: Penguin, 2008).