This book examines lobbying in EU foreign policy-making and the activities of non-state actors (NSAs), focusing on EU foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It sheds light on the interactions between the EU and NSAs as well as the ways in which NSAs attempt to shape EU foreign policies. By analysing issues that have not yet received systematic attention in the literature, this book offers new insights into lobbying in EU foreign policy, EU relations surrounding the conflict and the EU’s broader role in the peace process. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political science, international relations, EU politics, EU foreign policy-making, Middle East studies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

EU foreign and defence policy is largely formulated in the working parties and committees of the Council of the EU and the vast majority of decisions in this field are made by the national diplomats working in the around 35 groups of the CFSP/CSDP. Although the importance of these committees and their participants has been increasingly recognised, we still know relatively little about them. Using an original database of 138 questionnaires and 37 interviews, this book addresses this lack of knowledge, studying what these committees do and how they negotiate and resolve issues. It explores three key areas: the formulation of the national position; the identity of CFSP/CSDP policy-makers; negotiation practices and outputs. In doing so, it provides an innovative observation point from which EU foreign policy can be analysed. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU foreign and defence policy, external relations of the EU, European integration and politics, diplomacy and more broadly international relations.

This book sheds new light on how lobbying works in the European Union. Drawing on the first-hand professional experience of lobbyists, policymakers, and corporate and institutional stakeholders, combined with a sound academic foundation, it offers insights into successful lobbying strategies, such as how alliances are formed by interest groups in Brussels. The authors present key case studies, e.g. on the shelved EU-US trade deal Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), lobbying scandals, and the role of specific interest groups and EU Think-Tanks. Furthermore, they highlight efforts to improve transparency and ethical standards in EU decision-making, while also underscoring the benefits of lobbying in the context of decision-making. Understanding the tools and techniques of effective lobbying, as well as the dynamics and trends in EU lobbying, will allow professionals involved in the lobbying process, such as policymakers and corporate and institutional stakeholders, to improve their performance and achieve better results when pursuing their respective interests.

During the last two decades the study of European foreign policy has experienced remarkable growth, presumably reflecting a more significant international role of the European Union. The Union has significantly expanded its policy portfolio and though empty symbolic politics still exists, the Union’s international relations have become more substantial and its foreign policy more focused. European foreign policy has become a dynamic policy area, being adapted to changing challenges and environments, such as the Arab Spring, new emerging economies/powers; the crisis of multilateralism and much more. The SAGE Handbook of European Foreign Policy, Two-Volume set, is a major reference work for Foreign Policy Programmes around the world. The Handbook is designed to be accessible to graduate and postgraduate students in a wide variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. Both volumes are structured to address areas of critical concern to scholars at the cutting edge of all major dimensions of foreign policy. The volumes are composed of original chapters written specifically to the following themes: · Research traditions and historical experience · Theoretical perspectives · EU actors · State actors · Societal actors · The politics of European foreign policy · Bilateral relations · Relations with multilateral institutions · Individual policies · Transnational challenges The Handbook will be an essential reference for both advanced students and scholars.

How do smaller member states promote their interests in EU foreign policy and external relations? EU membership can be seen to affect member states’ foreign policy in two ways, either by restricting national policies or empowering states in a challenging global environment. There is a general agreement, however, that the member states, especially smaller ones, have to engage actively in policy-making in order to promote their particular interest. This cross-policy comparison of the behaviour of Czech Republic’s representatives in the Council and the methods they use to influence the decision-making applies categorisation from lobbying literature to analyse the behaviour of the member state’s representatives and contributes to two strands of scholarship on European Union politics - decision-making in the EU and Europeanization. The book maps the methods of interest promotion that can be used by a member state and analyses the differences in interest promotion across external policy areas.

This book elucidates the link between the politics of a now seemingly permanent crisis in Europe and the politicisation of European integration. Looking at the epistemic dimension of crises, it suggests that the way in which a crisis is framed and contested determines its potential impact on the level of politicisation of European integration. Europe is more challenged and contested today than it has even been, facing crisis of an almost existential kind. Yet, political crises are manufactured and narrated, so Europe has the possibility to intervene and ‘bring about her recovery’, instead of letting these crises prove terminal. This book explores the political process in and through which certain events come to be framed as constitutive of a moment that requires a decisive intervention. It shows that crises require a double framing: a situation needs to be identified as one of crisis in the first place and, subsequently, the nature and character of the crisis need to be specified. By examining a wide range of policy areas, the book demonstrates that framing of crises, i.e., identifying one situation both as a crisis and a crisis of a particular kind, contributes to the politicisation (or depoliticisation) of the process of European integration. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issue of Journal of European Integration.

The European Union is still emerging as a fully fledged foreign policy actor. The vagaries of this process are clearly visible, yet insufficiently explained in the EU policies towards the post-Soviet space. EU Foreign Policy and Post-Soviet Conflicts examines EU intervention and non-intervention in conflict resolution, with a specific focus on the EU’s role in the post-soviet conflicts in the South Caucasus and Moldova: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. It explains how EU foreign policy affected these conflicts, but more importantly what EU intervention in these conflicts reveal about the EU itself. Based on extensive field research, the author argues that the reluctant EU intervention in post-Soviet conflicts results from a dichotomous relationship between EU institutions and some EU member states. Popescu argues this demonstrates that EU institutions use policies of ‘stealth intervention’ where they seek to play a greater role in the post-Soviet space, but they do so through relatively low-profile, uncontroversial and depoliticised actions in order to avoid visible Russian opposition. Exploring an array of questions related to the EU as a foreign policy actor, this book traces the politics of conflict intervention by EU institutions using original empirical data related to the EU decision making process and will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, conflict resolution, foreign policy and Post-Soviet politics.

This book provides an original, rigorous and theoretically-grounded investigation into varying EU efforts to advance intercultural dialogue (ICD) in the framework of its foreign policy towards the Mediterranean during the period 1990-2014. From the end of the Cold War, the EU has increasingly invested in both rhetoric and resources on ICD promotion. In spite of this commitment, the EU has never offered a clear and permanent understanding of what this concept entails and has been actually aimed at. By adopting a FPA standpoint and approaching ICD as one of the foreign policy instruments developed by the EU to address the relations with its Mediterranean partners, this book exposes the causes and the modalities of the contradictory development of this relevant and long standing element of EU foreign policy. De Perini investigates change and continuity in the promotion of this tool, and provides in-depth knowledge of what ICD has actually meant for the EU: from the development and launch of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership or Barcelona Process, to the revision of the European Neighbourhood Policy following the Arab uprisings. The book shows that the EU’s advancement of ICD in its foreign policy has gone through three distinct phases: ‘emergence’ (1990-2001), ‘consolidation’ (2001-2010) and ‘professionalisation’ (2010-2014). Empirically the book provides the first comprehensive and integrative analysis of all aspects of EU efforts to promote ICD. The book exposes a series of trends, limits and contradictions of EU foreign policy which are increasingly relevant today. In particular, it shows that over the last twenty-five years, the EU has addressed a set of persistent challenges characterising its relations with Mediterranean countries and people, namely challenges connected to regional conflicts, religious fundamentalisms, xenophobic attitudes towards Arab/Muslim migrants and related social tensions. As these challenges are still major issues in the current EU agenda and in the broader debate about EU foreign policy, this book provides rich and original empirical knowledge to an understanding of how the EU has decided to address these phenomena at different moments of its recent history.

This book analyzes how international organizations and the European Union engage with civil society to pursue their policy goals. Multi-stakeholder initiatives, private-public partnership, sub-contracting, political alliances, hybrid coalitions, multi-sectoral networks, pluralist co-governance, and indeed foreign policy by proxy are all considered. Bringing together the most advanced scholarship, the book examines trade, environment, development, security, and human rights with reference to both EU and global institutional settings such as the WTO, UN Climate Summits, FAO, IFAD, ICC, UNHRC, UNSC, and at the EU level the DG FISMA, TRADE, CLIMA, DEVCO, HOME and ECHO. The book also studies the use of NGOs in the foreign policy of the EU, USA, and Russia. This changing politics and the polarized debate it has generated are explored in detail.

Constructing a Policy-Making State? sets out to examine the processes by which Europeanization takes place. Europeanization is defined as the process by which the key decisions about public policies are gradually transferred to the European level (or for new policy areas, emerge at the European level). This is in contrast to definitions of Europeanization which focus on the adaption of member states to European public policies. Thus, the main focus is whether a European Union 'policy-making state' is being created via changes in the distribution of power between member states and the European level institutions over time. In addition to several overview chapters (such as on agenda setting in the EU), there are twelve sectoral studies which analyse the differing trajectories and outcomes of the Europeanization process and the extent to which the European Union can make 'authoritative allocations'. The case studies have been selected in order to illustrate the degree of cross-sectoral variation in the process of Europeanization, from sectors which have yet to see very much Europeanization, such as health, to sectors such as competition policy which are almost fully Europeanized. The book is consciously multi-theoretic in its approach, drawing on a range of theories and concepts, from theories of European integration, to theories of public policy processes.