The European Union's Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective ─ Beyond the "Actorness and Power" Debate

This ground-breaking volume provides a new perspective on the EU’s ‘actorness’ and ‘power’ and undertakescomparative foreign policy analysis. In doing so, it asserts that only a solid comparative research design will reveal the specific features of EU ‘actorness and power’ and its possible evolution across issues. This guiding principle and application of a ‘grounded theory’ or ‘heuristic case study’ approach - combining evaluative with causal analysis in terms of a comparative design - is applied to the case study research in order to provide a truly a structured comparative analysis of EU foreign policy. It thus also allows for a comparison of findings across policy fields, especially CFSP matters with foreign economic policy, both related to fundamentally different legal foundations and respective policy modes of governance.

It focusses on two intertwined research questions, which provide for a more sustainable base for qualifying the EU’s foreign policy in comparison to states or international organizations:

1. What is the EU’s foreign policy quality in terms of ‘actorness’ and ‘power’ compared to other types of actors in international relations and global politics, first and foremost states and intergovernmental organization?

2. What factors influence the EU’s foreign policy performance in comparison to states and international organizations?

The European Union’s Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective will be of key interest to European Union studies, European Union Foreign Policy studies, International Relations, and Security Policy studies.

Ingo Peters is associate professor of Political Science at the Freie UniversitA?t Berlin and executive director of the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy. His teaching and research activities are concentrated on German foreign policy, European security governance and transatlantic relations as well as International Relations.