Union Europea

Foreign policy, globalization and global governance The European Union's structural foreign policy
Stephan Keukeleire * , Simon Schunz * *
Paper prepared for the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union
Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, Riga, 25-27 September 2008
WORK IN PROGRESS – Please do not quote
Table of contents
I.
II.
III.

Introduction
Analytical framework: corecomponents of foreign policy analysis
Conceptual foundations: foreign policy seen through the lenses of IR theories,
globalization and global governance

1. Traditional approaches to foreign policy analysis and the challenge of globalization
1.1. Traditional views on foreign policy - the classical IR theories and constructivism
1.2. The challenge: globalization and the necessity to rethinkforeign policy
(analysis)
2. In quest of alternative concepts: exploring possible synergies between global governance
and foreign policy (analysis)
2.1. Defining global governance: political programme, normative and analytical
concept
2.2. Global governance as an analytical concept applied to foreign policy (analysis)
3. Summary: contrasting traditional and alternative approaches to foreignpolicy analysis neglected areas, new insights
IV.

Structural foreign policy as a conceptual framework for studying foreign policy
in a context of globalization and global governance: The example of the European Union

1. (Re)conceptualizing foreign policy for the 21st century: towards a structural foreign policy
2. The European Union as a global actor: structural foreign policy in practice3. The promises and pitfalls of using the concept of structural foreign policy for the analysis
of (EU) foreign policy
V.
*

Conclusion

Jean Monnet Professor in European Foreign Policy, Institute for International and European Policy, Leuven
University; Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges (stephan.keukeleire@soc.kuleuven.be)(http://www.exploring-europe.eu/foreignpolicy).
**
Junior researcher on the project “The EU and multilateral global governance”, Ph.D. candidate, Institute for
International and European Policy and Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, Leuven University
(Simon.Schunz@soc.kuleuven.be).

VI.
I.

Bibliography
Introduction

“Globalization”, in short the “widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnectedness” (Heldet al. 1999: 14) that has predominantly been observed over the past two decades,
has effects on just about every aspect of social life (Scholte 2005). Not in the least, it poses a challenge to (i) the territorial organisation of politics, calling the state-centric view of the international
system into question, but, according to some, also to (ii) politics itself.
About a decade ago, thisgeneral observation led New York Times analyst Thomas Friedman
to predict that globalization would become “the next great foreign policy debate” (quoted in
Rodrik 1997: 1). Had it really been held, this debate would probably have focused on two related
questions. Firstly, it would have had to explore what globalization means for the making and
conduct of foreign policy, “whether foreign policyremains a key site of agency in international
relations, or whether it is being steadily emptied of content” (Hill 2003: 16). From a radical “end
of history” perspective (Fukuyama 1992), this question would have been answered negatively
arguing that globalization has “rendered foreign policy redundant” (Hill 2003: 13). In this view, it
is not so much the “foreign” that is necessarily bound todisappear, but the “policy”: if liberal
democracy and the free-market economy become the dominant organizing forms of social interaction in all parts of the world, not much is left to negotiate about. 1 By contrast, more moderate
voices would have pointed out that it is not so much foreign policy as such, but rather certain
dimensions of it, like classical diplomacy, which globalization places on...