Discursively (de-)constructing European foreign policy: Theoretical and methodological challenges

At the gate

When standing on Place Schumann in Brussels looking east, the eyes meet a fairly large triangular building, which houses the European External Action Service (EEAS). ¹ The tall, heavy gate indicates – perhaps symbolizes – an institution of considerable aspiration or significance. This institution has a considerable staff (expected to reach 5000+ eventually), a sizeable budget, an organizational chart which some find impressive and, being tasked to represent the European Union internationally, also an important mandate and mission. ² It is one of the institutional interfaces between Europe and the world, and between European and world politics. Those visiting the EEAS website will know that it communicates with its environment, issuing news and statements and providing meeting schedules, photos and videos of top officials. Those who wish to can become a friend of the EEAS on Facebook. ³

If the EEAS is the physical, formal institution, there are other, informal, institutions of some relevance for the present article. Thus, the EEAS frequently organizes press conferences, explaining what it does and why. Moreover, the EEAS briefs other European institutions in a standard-operating-procedures fashion, including the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the European Council. Notably, despite functional similarities, the EEAS is not a European Ministry of Foreign Affairs but a European External Action Service, so it must regularly brief those in whose service it works. ⁴ Moreover, the world of diplomacy is a world of institutions, whether formal, informal, symbolic or ceremonial. Other informal institutions include meetings with diplomatic peers in foreign offices, state departments or international organizations, and thus the High Representative, Catherine Ashton, meets John Kerry, Yang Jiechi, Ban Ki-moon and many others. Finally, the EEAS can make use of and contribute to specific European institutions such as the Eurobarometer and Eurostat. The former informs EEAS officials that what they do may perhaps have a surprisingly high degree of approval from European citizens, including in countries not known for being particularly friendly to Brussels. ⁵ Eurostat contributes some of the (aggregate) European data that national statistical services systematically neglect, for which reason Europe is somewhat unknown to Europeans, including European scholars cherishing methodological nationalism.

The EEAS employs different means of communication, reflecting the variation of the audiences it aims to reach. The EEAS website is one such tool – both a means in its own right and a gateway to a rich variety of communication channels and forms. Ashton and top EEAS officials give speeches, and Ashton’s staff issue statements and provide news. ⁶ Presumably they are involved in drafting both Council of Ministers and European Council conclusions. Ashton might also, as Vice-President of the European Commission, be involved in authorizing mandates for white papers, green papers, communications and other kinds of policy documents. ⁷

This article aims at understanding the significance of this kind of institutional communication and how it resonates with existing discourses on foreign affairs. It does so by bridging two avenues of research: one focusing on relations between elite and public, and a second focusing on foreign policy traditions – thus illustrating some of the arguments that Caterina Carta and Jean-Frederic Morin have emphasized (IN PRESS). ⁸

In research on the relationship between foreign policy and public opinion, Gabriel Almond’s (1960) distinction between a ‘general public’, an ‘attentive public’ and a ‘policy and opinion elite’ has proved to be of lasting value. ⁹ According to Almond’s slightly provocative claim, the general public does not understand and, in any case, does not care about foreign policy, except perhaps during crises. The attentive public is a fairly exclusive and educated segment of the general public, and the elite can interact with the attentive public, at least in terms of more general or abstract reasoning. The policy and opinion elite comprises several groupings – diplomats, journalists, politicians, academics – who understand, to various degrees, the insights and rationales of policies and are thus in a perfect position to interact within the elite, as well as with the attentive public.

The present article focuses first and foremost on the interaction between the policy and opinion elite (POE) and the attentive public (AP) – not all types of interaction, but specifically discursive interaction. How does the policy and opinion elite articulate European foreign policy to the attentive public? Which abstract idioms, symbols or (historical) analogies are being employed, and which idioms are typically in the hearts and minds of the attentive public? In this context, the article examines the issue of contested discourses between, within and especially across EU member states, arguing that significant insight can be gained by means of analysing contested discourses within member states, including the degree to which these discourses have a transnational nature. In this respect, the article focuses on themes similar to those analysed by Caterina Carta (IN PRESS) and Thomas Diez (IN PRESS), even if the approach is slightly different. Subsequently, the article explicates two key terms, public philosophy and mythology, highlighting their crucial importance for the objectives of this article. The article then turns to what could be labelled ‘discursive shareware’ – that is, the overlaps that exist between different levels and segments of discourse.

Contested discourses between and within EU member states

Research on foreign policy and discourse has frequently focused on national discourses and their impact on political approaches to European foreign policy (Aggestam, 2004; Hellmann, 1996; Larsen, 1997; see also Larsen, IN PRESS). This literature can be seen as a discursive variant of research on the interplay between national and European foreign policy (Hill, 1983, 1996; Manners and Whitman, 2000, 2010; Wong and Hill, 2011) – that is, research emphasizing the significance of national foreign policy for the genesis and dynamics of European foreign policy. While this literature has proved to be highly informative and is probably the best available on relations between member states and EU foreign policy, it is also characterized by a number of weaknesses. ¹⁰

In the first place, it tends to reify the national, thereby downplaying the contested nature of both national and, to a lesser extent, European foreign policy. Moreover, it focuses on only one dimension of contested policy – that is, it highlights how foreign policy is contested among EU member states and downplays different worldviews and preferred foreign policy directions within member states. Finally, it somewhat downplays processes of Europeanization – that is, the impact of Europe on member states’ institutions and policymaking processes. These tendencies constitute classic examples of analytical trade-offs, obviously implying that the alternative is also characterized by its own distinct configuration of strengths and weaknesses.

The second potential source of inspiration is the huge body of literature that we label foreign policy analysis (FPA), which is nothing short of overwhelming in terms of scholarship (Hudson, 1995). Reaching back to the 1950s, it has a long tradition and a mutually constitutive relationship with International Relations as a discipline; given the incredible range of approaches and theories within FPA, it can be considered an analytical goldmine that awaits European gold-miners, and its numerous examples of best practice studies suggest it should be an obligatory first stop as a source of inspiration. However, interfaces between the FPA tradition and research on European foreign policy are very limited (Carlsnaes, 2007; Carlsnaes et al., 2004; Carlsnaes and Smith, 1994; White, 2001). It seems that the two parties never entered into a lasting or giving relationship. Matchmakers have been few and prime representatives of the tradition have never found the EU case particularly attractive, in stark contrast to the case of the United States. By contrast, scholars in Europe tend to find the FPA tradition too US-centric, too positivist and too state-centric. Scholars in Europe tend to abandon the analytical rigidity of FPA and embrace a kind of analytical realist naturalism (as understood within the arts).

In order to create an alternative perspective, it is fruitful to examine some historical and contemporary examples of contested foreign policy discourses. When, in 1939, E.H. Carr engaged in criticism of liberalism – especially what he called ‘utopian idealism’ – he was first and foremost criticizing a distinct foreign policy tradition in Europe (Carr, [1939] 2001). His target was British liberal internationalism, but the tradition was not unknown on the European continent, for example in France, Scandinavia and elsewhere. By contrast, it had been effectively repressed in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and other countries where authoritarian or totalitarian rule had been introduced. E.H. Carr not only criticized; he criticized from a position: pleading for appeasement, i.e. a distinct form of limited engagement (Haslam, 2000; Sylvest, 2007, 2009). Hans Morgenthau (1946) phrased Carr’s message slightly differently but the target was identical, although extended to include also, and perhaps especially, the American (Wilsonian) liberal tradition. When Jean-Yves Haine (2009) criticizes European liberal internationalism, he essentially replicates Carr’s and Morgenthau’s criticisms, although he situates his analysis and criticism in the early 21st century. Hence, criticism of liberal internationalism seems to be a constant (see also Paris, 1997). As both Carr and Morgenthau are famous early representatives of the realist theoretical tradition, we witness here also an example of the connection between theoretical orientation and criticism of political practice, including the discursive dimension of political practice.

Criticism of the opposite political position has, likewise, been a constant. There is a long discursive line from Norman Angell’s criticism of power politics, via Ernst Haas’ criticism of the notion of balance of power, to Mario Bettati and Bernard Kouchner’s (1987) argument for an international right to intervene, provided interventions are prompted by humanitarian concerns. A fairly similar reasoning lies behind R2P, the newly established principle of a responsibility to protect (see Knudsen, 2013). Terry Nardin (2006) has well examined how such a right can possibly be supported by philosophical arguments – that is, at the level which, in the present context, is of most relevance. Others have examined R2P concerning more operational policy concerns, thus overlooking that the prime function of R2P is to organize the politics of prevention and intervention, not to determine whether intervention in Darfur is more urgent than in Libya or the appropriate balance between intervention and prevention (for a critical overview of these debates, see Chandler, 2009). While we should expect principled positions to appear in debates on operational issues, we should not expect too much determinism. For the present purpose – identifying the contours of broad schools of thought – a few additional examples suffice.

Jane Sharp (1997) has delivered a devastating criticism of British conservative internationalism, especially in the context of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Joschka Fischer (2011) has forwarded similar arguments vis-à-vis the doctrines of German foreign policy as defined by Angela Merkel’s government – that is, limited engagement and high levels of risk aversion.

There are other distinct European foreign policy traditions – isolationism, commercial internationalism and the tradition cherishing development policy, for example – but in the present context, we do not need to go into further detail (see Jørgensen, 2013). We have already seen how politicians and academics make use of distinct idioms – such as ‘utopian idealism’, ‘Munich’, ‘Maginot’ – when analysing a given state of affairs or characterizing their opponents. In other words, when addressing their attentive public, they make use of certain discourses, and because the attentive public has certain insights into foreign affairs, we can speak about a certain discursive shareware. Before examining discursive shareware, two follow-up questions should be addressed.

Recalling that Almond wrote about foreign affairs within a state, one question concerns the degree to which national experiences can be or are replicated at the European level. This might be difficult. According to Vivien Schmidt, ‘the lack of connection between spheres of discourse is a frequent occurrence in the European Union’ (Schmidt, 2008b: 311). According to Paul Statham, options for such replication are limited:

Applying this formula to a Europeanized politics, we believe that the ‘attentive public’ has been very much smaller than it usually is in domestic politics. This is supported by our findings that civil society mobilization is weak in discursive influence. A consequence of this very small attentive public from civil society over Europe is that the mass media has taken center stage as the actor representing the public (2010: 301).

Although this conclusion concerns European integration, it is difficult to see why it should not also apply to the field of foreign policy, perhaps even more so than for European politics as such. Essentially, we do not know whether this is the case, particularly because the triangle consisting of ‘discourse’, ‘public opinion’ and ‘foreign policy’ has been under-researched. The first leg – discourse–public opinion – is first and foremost characterized by a remarkable gap, if not an ocean, between on the one hand, discourse-oriented scholars who work within the interpretive tradition and, on the other, scholars working in the tradition of positivist empiricism. Bridges between these two worlds are extremely rare. The second leg – discourse–foreign policy – has caught some attention, as can be seen from the examples provided above, but these examples are exceptions to the rule that foreign policy analysts ‘don’t do discourse analysis’ and vice versa. The third leg – public opinion–foreign policy – is of some significance concerning national foreign policy, not least American foreign policy, but is almost absent when it comes to European foreign policy. Officials at the EEAS will have a hard time finding data on Europeans’ opinions on or attitudes to European foreign policy.

In short, we might find a fragmented public sphere and a relatively limited attentive public in Europe. Existing research points in this direction, yet further study is needed in order to reach a more decisive conclusion. This potentially fragmented public sphere can be seen as bad for processes of public deliberation on the direction of European foreign policy, yet analytically, it should make the task of understanding the dynamics of European foreign policy relatively easier. Seemingly, such understandings have to be complemented by studies of media coverage of foreign affairs.

The second question is whether the foreign policy traditions and their key idioms somehow connect to the EEAS. The answer is that it varies. Members of the isolationist (often nationalist and populist, though not always) tradition generally do not aim at influencing the direction of European foreign policy. They aim at destroying it, thereby performing the role of the ‘enemy within’. When examining the foreign policy thinking within Le Pen’s Front National and among UK Independence Party supporters, segments of British Conservatives, Vaclav Klauses and Kazcinskis, Lega Nordists, Vlaams Blok and Scandinavian progress parties, studies consistently conclude that their discourse is not only directed at their political opponents but also at the institutions that have been built and are occupied by political opponents (see Swyngedouw et al., 2007). Studies also conclude that isolationist populists generally do not care about global affairs, except when certain debates (for example, border issues) can be politicized. It should be added that not all European nationalists are hostile to the EU: indeed, both the Lega Nord and the Front National were once friends of the EU, the former finding the role of EU regions attractive, the latter using the EU instrumentally in its blatant anti-Americanism. Catalan, Basque, Scottish and Welsh nationalists, to mention just a few, turn their criticism towards their national capitals and the politics they represent, not Brussels. While the EU might function as a partner vis-à-vis national capitals, European foreign policy is for these nationalists often a horizon too far.

For members of the commercial internationalist foreign policy tradition, the EEAS might be of interest but it is DG Trade that is of crucial importance – not least when representing European commercial interests, e.g. in negotiations of bilateral trade agreements or during deliberations within multilateral institutions. As commercial interests can be promoted or protected by different means, the tradition is split along a range of lines – free traders versus protectionists, for example.

No matter the differences between and within traditions, data are available and the traditions can be researched and, to some degree, already have been. The advantage is that a focus on foreign policy traditions avoids the traps of methodological nationalism. The analytical challenge is to connect research on foreign policy traditions, discourse and the EEAS.

Public philosophies

One important notion for this article is public philosophy – coined by Samuel H. Beer (1978), elaborated by Margaret Weir (1992) and recently further refined by Paul Schumaker (2008). ¹¹ It is probably difficult to underestimate the analytical importance and possibilities embedded in the distinction between public philosophy, policy and administrative programmes. In the words of Margaret Weir, public philosophy

expresses broad concepts that are tied to values and moral principles and that can be represented in political debate in symbols and rhetoric … Public philosophies play a central role in organizing politics, but their capacity to direct policy is limited; without ties to programmatic ideas their influence is difficult to sustain (1992: 207–208).

Political rhetoric is often characterized by vague notions, ambiguity and generous inconsistency, leaving plenty of space for connotation (for a thorough analysis of the discrete charm of ambiguity, see Rayroux, 2013). Often, it is precisely such qualities that make political rhetoric work. Let us now turn to Paul Schumaker, who explains:

Public philosophies, like political ideologies, provide fairly comprehensive and coherent sets of ideas about politics. Both provide beliefs about how political communities are governed, ideals about the goals that should be sought by political communities, and principles providing broad guidelines for achieving those goals (Schumaker, 2008: 1).

Schumaker not only defines public philosophy, but also provides a framework for generating, describing and analysing public philosophies. He emphasizes that public philosophies are promising for public policy debates that can function as an alternative to ideological warfare.

The notion of public philosophy provides direction and guidelines, especially concerning what to look for, and is therefore immensely helpful for research into the discursive dimensions of foreign policy.

Discursive shareware

Communication between POE and AP is largely handled by means of abstract concepts, symbols, principles and a range of mythologies – that is, by means of what sometimes, cf. above, is called public philosophies. Such philosophies are shared, but only to some extent. In order to understand the function of public philosophies, it might be helpful to distinguish between four levels:

In the context of this distinction between four (and a half) levels, three issues merit closer attention. The first concerns the relationship between the POE and AP. In Europe, the AP seems to be rather compartmentalized, partly because each level has its distinct constituencies, partly because communication tends to take place in different languages and, finally, because the European foreign policy tradition has been cultivated at a certain distance from both the general and the attentive public. Notably, the tradition in question is different from what is otherwise referred to as tradition in this article. ¹² However, compartmentalization can also be exaggerated. Differences between globalization, mondialization and globalisierung do not seem that impressive, even if their connotations can be significantly different. Moreover, it is not that different from the US case, where interplays between different levels also occur. Finally, even if the European AP does exist, it might be that it is not fully conscious of its own existence –although in February 2003, when a considerable segment of the AP demonstrated throughout Europe against the Iraq War, it demonstrated its presence (Habermas and Derrida, 2003). It should be noted that I take a European perspective on compartmentalization – that is, how European citizens are divided into a number of segments, among which some are nationally defined, whereas others are defined by foreign policy traditions. Although Nicholas Aylott (2002) also analyses compartmentalization, he focuses on how Scandinavian parties compartmentalize European integration issues, for instance by means of referenda, suspension of party discipline and sequencing different party goals (office, policies, voters, unity). While Aylott analyses the strategic behaviour of social democratic parties in a national context, I focus on the normative superstructure that the policy and opinion elite employs when presenting reasons for action. With such a focus, my explanandum concerns the issue of how action templates, including world views, principled beliefs and causal beliefs (cf. Brommesson, 2010; Hudson, 1999) are reflected in public discourses. While these discourses rarely follow party division lines – indeed, that is one of the reasons why party leaders employ compartmentalization in the sense used by Aylott – the discourses do provide bridges of understanding between the POE and the AP. Research on the two types of compartmentalization seems therefore complementary rather than competitive. A joint research agenda thus appears highly promising.

The second issue concerns the relationship between public philosophy and foreign policy. Whether they contribute to uploading or downloading, public philosophies do not explain foreign policy as such – that is, as policy. However, they do help us to better understand reasons for action – that is, the process of legitimizing European foreign policy. As foreign policy is a broad church, all sorts of reasons come into play: for instance, an ethics of responsibility; obligations we owe to a third party or to ourselves as Europeans; historical analogies (such as European integration as the antithesis to European power politics); the dialectical construction of Self and Others (anti-Americanism, anti-Muslim, anti-Soviet, libertarian havens). In this fashion, public philosophies help us understand how the politics of foreign policy is organized. In order to do so, it might be helpful to employ the notions of uploading and downloading. When actors make reference to a certain public philosophy, they download, for instance, principles that guide operational policymaking. By contrast, uploading happens when a foreign policy instrument is turned into a principle, when means become ends. Thus, negotiations can be considered a means in the conduct of foreign affairs, yet can also be turned into an end in itself – for instance, opposing the employment of coercive means. The notions of uploading and downloading can be traced back to the early theories of European integration – cf. neofunctionalism and its focus on the likelihood of national competences being uploaded to a European political community. Over time, such uploading might be followed by processes of downloading – cf. the effects of international institutions in neoliberal institutionalism (Keohane, 1989) or the effects of the Euro-polity on national institutions and processes of policymaking (Börzel, 2002).They help us understand how the politics of foreign policy is organized.

The third issue concerns the increased public philosophy activity at the global or international (or, rather, transnational) level, not least the increasing number and multiple kinds of actors involved. The emergence and importance of transnational actors has been demonstrated in, for example, the processes leading to the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the adoption of the R2P, the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals, the treaty ban on anti-personnel landmines and the treaty on small firearms (Groenleer and Rijks, 2009; Krause, 2002; Long, 2002). The increased activity and the emergence of new kinds of actors might imply that representatives of traditional foreign policy traditions feel challenged, not least because they no longer seem to enjoy a monopoly on defining directions and means or on controlling communication. There might occasionally have been certain tensions between representatives of foreign policy traditions and professional diplomats, but the new challenge is very different. Parts of the European attentive public subscribe to international actors and communicators, and sometimes the EU chooses to do the same. Hence, the EU is not only a nation writ large, projecting its values and interests. It is also a micro-cosmos of the world, reflecting the global normative superstructure in a second-image reversed fashion. ¹³ The EU might be the world region that most consistently contributes and subscribes to global norms and, in addition, seeks to promote these norms globally.

Analytical potentials and limits

In general, the attentive public employs public philosophy concepts and is sufficiently attentive to understand the significance of the concepts employed by the policy and opinion elite. Almond did not use the notions of public philosophy and mythology, and he did not write about Europe. However, the employment of public philosophy and mythology does not seem to cause serious problems, as it is merely a question of providing more refinement and nuance. By contrast, the application of his ideas to the case of Europe does provide some serious analytical challenges. ¹⁴

The attentive public, to the degree that it makes sense to keep the notion in the singular form, does not know where, exactly, to look for the policy and opinion elite’s discursive communication. Subscription to the EEAS’ statements does not do the trick. According to Stefan Lehne (2011), these statements sometimes happen to be mere empty words, issued in order to appear as a significant player but without the substance necessary to issue statements of consequence. The same applies to the minutes of European Parliament debates, in part because members of the European Parliament have only limited interest in or responsibility for European foreign policy. Academic books and articles are generally too academic and do not necessarily contribute to legitimizing European foreign policy. European media tends to either believe that there is nothing of significance to report, or to make the EEAS as such (or other institutions) the theme of their stories, rather than the politics or specific policies (for academic studies of the EEAS, see Barber, 2010; Carta, 2013; Duke, 2010; Vanhoonacker and Reslow, 2010). While the media find member states’ criticisms of the EEAS worthy to report, they find considerably less ‘news quality’ in policy reviews of, for example, the European Neighbourhood Policy.

Importantly, the policy and opinion elite is a composite entity. Its policy segment is collective in decision-making (when decisions are possible), yet often separate when legitimizing political positions and actions. Legitimizing is not often a matter of asking ‘why did we decide to take European foreign policy in direction X’, but rather of highlighting ‘how I managed to safeguard aspect Y, which is precious to all of us, the people of country Z’. Despite the facts that the policy and opinion elite is a composite entity, the national representatives typically do not contribute to European discourse and European media are not a channel for communication, some exceptions do exist. Books by Chris Patten, Robert Cooper, David Spence, Joschka Fischer, Simon Nuttall and many others have contributed to the genesis of a European public sphere in the field of foreign affairs. Likewise, it would be possible to analyse the changing discourses over time of, for example, Relex Commissioners, Development or Trade Commissioners and, not to be forgotten, High Representatives. Similarly, all EPC, CFSP and E/CSDP statements and declarations are available, although they have never been systematically analysed (whether by means of content analysis or of discourse analysis). For some reason, analysts have either avoided analysing political discourse or have uncritically reproduced it, for example writing about the EU’s strategies vis-à-vis country X, Y or Z without even attempting to use the term ‘strategy’ analytically, or writing about policies A, B or C without examining which kind of policy, if any, the declared policies represent. As previously demonstrated, there are significant gaps between practitioners’ and analysts’ discourses: the former refer to median line politics (e.g. Nuttall, 1992, 2000), the latter refer, endlessly, to lowest-common-denominator politics (Jørgensen, 1997).

In the European context, the policy and opinion elite is, to a considerable degree, an abstraction, not least because the policy and opinion elites seem to live in different worlds. Concerning European foreign policy, some media editors and commentators subscribe to two doctrines of European foreign policy: ‘does not exist’ and ‘does exist but is bound to fail’ – distinct discourses in their own right (see Jørgensen, 2004). Other segments of the media tend to follow national politicians’ example and, perhaps with a view to segments of media markets, tell their readers ‘the national story’, the story from the perspective of country X or the ‘what’s in it for us’ story. Some academics tend to summarize media coverage (especially in the English language), regarding it not as a discourse to be analysed, but as a shortcut to sources of the true state of affairs. Thus, their studies become merely a concentrate of media coverage, especially coverage by English-language media.

Sometimes the policy elite seem to believe that it is sufficient to download global principles and add declaratory policies and some administrative programmes in order to constitute a world-class international player. No wonder, then, that they are less than keen to legitimize their political actions, leading us to a state of affairs in which there is limited policy discourse to analyse.

Conclusion

The discursive processes of constructing European foreign policy have increased in terms of both scope and density. Over time, ever more policy areas have been included in the politics of European foreign policy, and ever more dense discursive fabrics are being woven by the policy and opinion elite. In other words, an ever more impressive dataset avails itself for analysis. However, relatively few analysts have engaged in this field of research. While the dynamics of policymaking have been documented in numerous studies, the dynamics of the politics of European foreign policy have attracted limited interest. ¹⁵ This article has pointed to potential points of departure, including a focus on foreign policy traditions and the public philosophies, mythologies and world views they make use of. Drawing on Almond’s classic study, a distinction was made between, on the one hand, the policy and opinion elite and, on the other, the public (divided into the attentive and the general public). Moreover, the analytical perspective was changed from one characterizing the dominant (vertical) mode of analysis to a horizontal perspective on the politics of European foreign policy. Subsequently, the article outlined analytical potentials – that is, reflections on the feasibility of a number of avenues of research. While not underestimating the degree to which the policy and opinion elite, as well as the attentive public, are compartmentalized, it was argued that Almond’s concept is applicable in studies of the politics of European foreign policy. Moreover, the article pointed to the promise of engaging analytically with the discursive practices of the EEAS and other key European institutions.