Speaking With a Single Voice

The EU as an effective actor in global governance?

Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt, Sophie Meunier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138057142
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317509257
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Under what conditions does the internal cohesiveness of the European Union determine its external effectiveness on the world stage? This book asks this question, investigating the frequent political assumption that the more cohesive the EU presents itself to the world, the more effective it is in achieving its goals. Contributions to this book explore this theory from a range of perspectives, from trade to foreign policy, and highlight complex patterns between internal cohesiveness and external effectiveness. These are simplified into three possible configurations: internal cohesiveness has a positive impact on external effectiveness; internal cohesiveness has no impact on external effectiveness; and internal cohesiveness has a negative impact on external effectiveness. The international context in which the EU operates, which includes the bargaining configuration and the policy arena, functions as an intervening variable that helps us to explain variation in these causal links. The book also launches a research agenda aimed at explaining these patterns more systematically and determining the marginal impact of cohesiveness on effectiveness. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Speaking with a single voice: internal cohesiveness and external effectiveness of the EU in global governance

Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt and Sophie Meunier

ABSTRACT Under what conditions does the internal cohesiveness of the European Union (EU) determine its external effectiveness? In a first step, this introduction probes the frequent assumption that the more cohesive the EU presents itself to the world, the more effective it is in achieving its goals. The empirical contributions to this collection, which range from trade to foreign policy, highlight instead three configurations of internal cohesiveness and external effectiveness: internal cohesiveness has a positive impact on external effectiveness; internal cohesiveness has no impact on external effectiveness; and internal cohesiveness has a negative impact on external effectiveness. The international context in which the EU operates, including the bargaining configuration and the policy arena, functions as an intervening variable in these causal links. In a second step, this introduction launches a research agenda aimed at explaining these patterns more systematically and determining the impact of cohesiveness on effectiveness.

INTRODUCTION

Politicians and media analysts often share the intuitive assumption that the European Union (EU) would be more effective on the world stage if only its member states were to ‘speak with a single voice’. This assumption that being more internally cohesive typically translates into more external influence was indeed a motivation behind the 2004 Constitutional Treaty’s and the 2009 Lisbon Treaty’s drive to increase the competence of the EU in a variety of policy areas and international settings. For example, as Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former French president and president of the European Convention, noted: ‘Only in this way will [the EU] be able to return to carrying out a leading role in the world’ (Real Academia de Ciencias Economicas e Financieras 2010). More recently, in the Ukrainian crisis, many analysts and policymakers urged the EU to speak with one voice in order to weigh more on Russia’s actions (Martin 2014).

Like policymakers, the first wave of academic literature assumed a direct, positive correlation between the degree of internal cohesiveness and the EU’s ability to be effective in its external actions (Laatikainen and Smith 2006; Meunier 2000, 2005). Recently, however, a second wave of scholarship has actively started to question the causal links between actorness, cohesiveness and effectiveness (Elsig 2013; Falkner and Müller 2014; Gehring et al. 2013; Jørgensen et al. 2011; Niemann and Bretherton 2013; Oberthur and Rabitz 2013; Thomas 2012). The conjunction of the expansion of external powers brought about by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (referred to in this contribution for reasons of simplicity as the Lisbon Treaty) and by the accumulation of examples of the EU’s seeming ineffectiveness in the international realm prompted this new line of inquiry.

Is this assumption of a ‘one voice mantra’ (Nicolaïdis and Macaj, this collection) supported empirically and theoretically? The primary objective of this collection is to probe the claim that being united makes the EU more effective in global governance. The empirical contributions explore whether there is a single template for the way Europeans behave and succeed on the international scene. Sometimes assuming a cohesive position is accompanied by the EU imposing its will internationally; sometimes it is not. When acting as a regional power, the EU is able to speak with one voice and to succeed in imposing many of its norms and principles on neighboring countries. When acting as a global political actor in international organizations, however, the picture is more complex. Examples abound of international negotiations where speaking with a single voice was an insufficient condition for the EU’s external effectiveness (Conceição-Heldt, this collection). In global governance overall, the EU resembles more a cacophony of voices unable to develop or defend a common position over time (e.g. in foreign direct investment or foreign policy).

We engage and build on the recent literature by specifying further the conditions under which internal cohesiveness impacts the degree of external effectiveness of the EU in world politics. For now the mechanisms through which ‘speaking with a single voice’ affects effectiveness are poorly operationalized. Based on the famous insights by Thomas Schelling and later Robert Putnam, we know that disunity can sometimes be a source of strength, used as a bargaining chip in international negotiations (Putnam 1988; Schelling 1960). At times, the EU has exploited its disunity strategically in order to increase its bargaining power (Meunier 2005; Meunier and Nicolaïdis 1999; Smith 2010b). But we know little about the conditions under which presenting a single message with a single voice to the rest of the world helps or hinders European objectives in international negotiations. In addition, we expect the international context in which the EU operates, including the bargaining configuration and the policy arena, to be an important intervening variable, shaping the EU’s ability to translate internal cohesiveness into external effectiveness.

The secondary objective of this collection is to launch a research agenda to evaluate the impact of EU cohesiveness on global outcomes. We pose many questions yet to be explored and suggest ways to move forward theoretically. Specifying the conditions under which internal cohesiveness affects the outcomes of the EU’s global actions, given a constant set of power and interests, could have useful implications beyond EU studies.

The introduction proceeds in five parts. First, we define and operationalize the concept of internal cohesiveness, which is the degree to which decision-making rules produce a single message spoken with a single voice. Second, building upon the recent literature on international institutions performance, we define and operationalize the concept of external effectiveness as the ability to influence outcomes. Third, we explore three different possible configurations of internal cohesiveness and external effectiveness, both theoretically and empirically: internal cohesiveness has a positive impact on external effectiveness; internal cohesiveness has no impact on external effectiveness; and internal cohesiveness has a negative impact on external effectiveness. Fourth, we analyze variation of internal cohesiveness on effectiveness by bringing in the external context, including the bargaining configuration and the policy arena. Fifth, we sketch a future research agenda to determine theoretically the impact of cohesiveness on effectiveness.

1. INTERNAL COHESIVENESS: DEFINITION AND OPERATIONALIZATION

In order to conceptualize the independent variable behind the assumption that unity creates strength, we first define internal cohesiveness, which we present as the fourth stage in the continuum toward actorness. We then operationalize internal cohesiveness through the competences by which preferences are aggregated internally and represented externally.

Internal cohesiveness: a definition

The literature on European integration employs three close, but different, concepts related to internal cohesiveness: cohesion, consistency and coherence. First, cohesion, which is at the heart of the eponymous EU policy, means the reduction of regional and social disparities (Hooghe 1996). Higher cohesion suggests a greater convergence of member state preferences. Second, consistency, which has been used often when addressing European foreign policy, means that EU policies in one area should not undermine or cut across policies in other areas (Nuttall 2000). Third, coherence is, according to Gebhard’s definition, a higher stage of structural harmonization and comes in four distinct variations: vertical coherence (concertation of specific policies with general EU political commitments); horizontal coherence (concertation between institutional entities at the same hierarchical level); internal coherence (integration of technical procedures within a policy area); and external coherence (consistency with which the EU presents itself to third parties) (Gebhard 2011).

Whereas Gebhard discusses external coherence as being ‘determined by a range of internal coordination processes’ (Gebhard 2011: 108), we prefer to speak of cohesiveness – a common concept in the psychology literature, where it is traditionally defined as ‘the resultant forces which are acting on the members to stay in a group’ (Festinger 1950: 274). The concept of cohesiveness captures the intuition that the EU will be more effective on the international scene by being united internally. It is a measure of the resistance of the members to leave the group, their willingness to co-ordinate their efforts, and their overall level of ‘team spirit’. When it comes to displaying cohesiveness to the rest of the world, it is the degree to which the group comes up with a single message and manages to present that message with a single voice, without members of the group breaking away and undermining the collective message.

In this way, we take an institutionalist approach to cohesiveness and locate it as the last step in the sequence toward actorness. Theoretically, the notion of EU actorness has been inspired by debates in comparative politics and international relations, in particular negotiation analysis. Bretherton and Vogler (2006) have posited that the EU’s ability to act on the world stage depends on the notions of presence (the ability of the EU to exert influence beyond its borders), opportunity (the structural context of action) and capability (the internal context of EU action). However, these broad concepts remain rather vague, making operationalization difficult. Another strand of the literature specifically conceptualizes the EU’s role in global economic governance (Dür and Elsig 2011; Dür and Zimmermann 2007; Meunier 2005; Poletti and De Bièvre 2014; Woolcock 2010; Young 2011). Here we build on the conceptualization of actor capacity in global governance developed by Jupille and Caporaso (1998) and argue that the four dimensions – authority, autonomy, external recognition and internal cohesiveness – follow a logical sequential order. Internal cohesiveness, the independent variable of the present study, cannot happen unless the other three dimensions have already been fulfilled.

Authority: extent of delegated competences

In our updated actorness framework, the first step toward the EU’s capacity as an external actor is its authority to act on behalf of the collective. Similar to Jupille and Caporaso (1998: 216), authority refers here to the extent of delegated competences from the member states to the EU, which can take many different shapes and varies greatly by policy area. The delegation can be full, with competence over a particular policy area delegated almost exclusively to the EU, such as in trade policy (Conceição-Heldt, this collection). The delegation of authority can be partial, with some mixed competences, such as in environmental policy (Delreux, this collection) or, as in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), contain both co-ordination and supporting ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Speaking with a single voice: internal cohesiveness and external effectiveness of the EU in global governance
• 2. When speaking with a single voice isn’t enough: bargaining power (a)symmetry and EU external effectiveness in global trade governance
• 3. Divide and conquer? China and the cacophony of foreign investment rules in the EU
• 4. EU actorness, cohesiveness and effectiveness in environmental affairs
• 5. One voice, one message, but conflicting goals: cohesiveness and consistency in the European Neighbourhood Policy
• 6. The European Union in the United Nations: an effective external actor?
• 7. Beyond ‘one voice’? Global Europe’s engagement with its own diversity
• Index