Researching European Foreign Policy: Some Fundamentals
| Published date | 01 October 2008 |
| Date | 01 October 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2008.00327.x |
| Author | Michael E. Smith |
| Subject Matter | Research and Analysis |
Research and Analysis
Researching European Foreign Policy:
Some Fundamentals
Michael E. Smith
University of St Andrews
The emergence of European foreign policy (EFP) as a fairly distinct field of inquiry involves
contributions from several traditions within political science: international relations, foreign policy
analysis and European integration. This eclecticism however can make it extremely difficult to
reach consensus on the fundamental definition and boundaries of the field. To help alleviate this
problem, and to stimulate further thinking on the topic, this article address several fundamental
questions of research design regarding positivist scholarly inquiry in this field. These include, inter
alia, the problematisation of EFP as a research question, the role of independent and dependent
variables and the role of systems and actors within the field.
The emergence of European foreign policy (EFP) as a distinct field of inquiry
presents a number of challenges and opportunities to political scientists. For the
purposes of this article, I define EFP as the study of how European states (most of
which are European Union members) co-ordinate their activities in the realm of
foreign policy, whether through co-ordinated national foreign policies, European
Union (EU) policies and institutions or any apparent and deliberate mix of the two.
EFP can therefore involve European non-EU Member States, can involve wide
variance in terms of how much the EU plays a role in determining foreign policy
and can apply to activity directed towards both European and non-European actors.
Given this breadth, EFP effectively comprises at least three major research fields,
each with its own assumptions, priorities and theoretical underpinnings. The first
involves traditional foreign policy analysis (FPA) or comparative foreign policy
(CFP), and focuses on policy processes within, and variation among, nation states.
The second involves standard theories of international relations (IR) or interna-
tional co-operation among (supposedly) egoistic states, focusing in particular on the
relationship between national preference formation and strategic interaction. And
the third involves the study of European integration, where strict assumptions
about the distinct nature of national preference formation may be relaxed to a
considerable degree, and where distinctly ‘European’ factors – history, culture and
institutions for example – often exert a stronger, though possibly more subtle,
influence than is assumed by classic theories of FPA or IR (Carlsnaes and Smith,
1994; Ginsberg, 1999; Hill and Smith, 2005; Hill, 1998; Nuttall, 2000; Soetendorp,
1999; White, 1999 and 2001).
The critical link between these fields involves the growing role of the EU as a major
reference point for EFP, so much so that it is becoming increasingly difficult to
POLITICS: 2008 VOL 28(3), 177–187
© 2008 The Author.Journal compilation © 2008 Political Studies Association
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