The European Union's Roles in International Politics
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The European Union's Roles in International Politics

Concepts and Analysis

Ole Elgström, Michael Smith, Ole Elgström, Michael Smith

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eBook - ePub

The European Union's Roles in International Politics

Concepts and Analysis

Ole Elgström, Michael Smith, Ole Elgström, Michael Smith

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About This Book

This volume sets out explicitly and systematically to bring together the two strands of political science– the study of the EU's international activities, and IR theory – and thus to make a significant original contribution to a developing literature.

It provides both a conceptual and empirical argument, the volume provides an innovative perspective on the analysis of the European Union as an international actor, and on the ways in which EU actions are formed and have impact.

The volume deals with a number of topical issues in such areas as human rights, global governance and the roles of international organizations.

It offers a research agenda based on rigorous development of the framework for role analysis, and demonstrates the ways in which this agenda might be furthered.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2006
ISBN
9781134166770

1 Role theory and European foreign policy
A framework of analysis

Lisbeth Aggestam

The EU is not an island, it’s a part of a global community. For large parts of the world, the word Europe itself has become associated with a philosophy of humanity, solidarity and integration. Therefore the EU has to play a bigger role to work for the ‘global common good.’
(Javier Solana, EU High Representative for the CFSP, 2005a)
A commonly asked question about the European Union (EU) is whether it has a foreign policy that is more than the sum of its parts. Is the EU, in other words, a foreign policy actor in its own right rather than a mere aggregation of the lowest common denominator of EU member states’ foreign policies? What meaning is attributed to the EU as an agent of foreign-policy action? This chapter proposes that a role theory analysis will enrich our understanding of how to characterize European foreign policy. A role reflects a claim on the international system, a recognition by international actors, and a conception of identity (Le Prestre 1997: 5–6). The coherence and effectiveness of the EU in international politics are largely contingent on how widely shared and stable European foreign policy norms and rules of action are. European foreign policy is here given a broad definition and is understood as the EU’s international action.
This chapter aims to sketch out a framework of analysis based on sociological role theory that will suggest how roles are constructed, sustained and changed in foreign policy. A role analysis of this kind can deepen our understanding of agency and action in European foreign policy. It is important to point out, however, that there does not exist a single general role theory to draw on as to why, when and how certain role phenomena occur (Searing 1991: 1244). Hence, this chapter aims to outline the basic building blocks for how to construct a role analysis applicable to European foreign policy.1
The chapter is structured in six parts. The first part provides a brief account of the genealogy of sociological role theory and its inception to Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). The second part develops a structurationist approach to role theory that incorporates an institutional, interactional and intentional perspective of roles. The third part seeks to clarify the conceptual ambiguity that tends to accompany the role concept by distinguishing four different types. The fourth part elaborates on the sources of roles. Identity, it is argued, is an important socio-cultural source for the way in which roles are conceived. The fifth part considers how role conflict and instability relate to foreign-policy change. The chapter concludes with an analytical model that summarizes the framework of analysis.

Sociological role theory and foreign-policy analysis

Sociological role theory is derived from the theatrical analogy in which an actor is expected to behave in predictable ways according to a script (rule-based action) (Jackson 1972). The word ‘role’ comes from the theatre, where ‘rolls’ or ‘roles’ were originally the parts from which theatrical characters were read (Thomas and Biddle 1966: 6). The social or political actor resembles, therefore, the stage actor. The attraction of this conceptualization is that it highlights the relationship between the individual and social structure. The actor ‘operates with a script written for him which he has learnt at some point in the past . . . He is motivated to follow the script, to comply with the rules of the game’ (Bradbury et al. 1972: 43). Indeed, the sociologist Ernest Goffman (1959) used the dramaturgical analogy more literally when describing society as a stage on which individuals enter to play parts and assuming different ‘masks’. Importantly, role theory encompasses how human agents and social structures in a fundamental sense are dynamically interrelated.
It is because the individual plays roles that there is a discipline of sociology at all; roles are an ‘emergent’ property not understandable in terms of the qualities of individuals alone but developing out of the interaction of individuals in particular environmental settings and which then influence the behaviour of these individuals and possible future generations who are socialized or constrained to employ them. It is because individuals are role-players that their behaviour is neither idiosyncratic nor random.
(Bradbury et al. 1972: 43)
In a seminal article first published in 1970, Kalevi Holsti introduced the sociological concept of role into the field of foreign-policy analysis. Based on an extensive cross-national study, he set out to investigate decision-makers’ perceptions of their own nation, thereby focusing on the subjective dimension of national foreign policy.
A national role conception includes the policymakers’ own definitions of the general kinds of decisions, commitments, rules, and actions suitable to their state, and of the functions, if any, their state shouldperform on a continuing basis in the international system or in subordinate regional systems.
(Holsti 1970/1987: 12)
Holsti argued that a state’s foreign policy was influenced by its ‘national role conception’ which could help explain the general direction of foreign-policy choices (Holsti 1970/1987: 40). Importantly, he claimed that different role conceptions in some instances could address differences in foreign-policy behaviour between states; a correspondence that was supported in a later role analysis by Wish (1980, 1987: 95–6). A role conception, Holsti (1987: 38–9) stated, is a product of a nation’s socialization process and influenced by its history, culture and societal characteristics. This was a different approach compared to how the role concept had traditionally been used in IR theory. From a realist point of view, the sources of roles are predominantly systemic and based on material factors (Rosenau 1990: 213; Walker 1987: 271). Hence, in this type of analysis a state’s general role would be studied deductively in terms of the state’s position within a structure (for instance, in balance-of-power theory).
The novelty with Holsti’s study was that roles were not unfolded from abstract theoretical discussions, but analysed inductively in terms of the roles policy-makers themselves perceived and defined. The great strength of this approach is that it tries to take careful account of political reality as it is experienced by the policy-makers, who construct it in a dynamic interaction between rules and reasons (cf. Searing 1991: 1248). The findings of Holsti’s inductive research indicated that the practitioners of foreign policy expressed different and numerous roles than the general role stipulated deductively by academics (Holsti 1970/1987: 28). Significantly, this seems to suggest that roles have multiple sources and are not exclusively generated by the international distribution of power. Foreign policymakers, in other words, are neither completely free choosing agents, nor is their behaviour entirely determined by external structures.
The view of agency adopted in the analytical framework proposed here rests on the assumption that the actor’s mind-set is ‘theory-driven’, i.e. that foreign policy-makers in general have a need to organize perceptions into a meaningful guide for behaviour (cf. Holsti 1963; Jönsson et al. 2000: 10). Role theory, as it has evolved in sociology, captures many of these elements of how human thinking tends to be theory-generated. The role concept can be viewed as a cognitive construct, which evolves in correspondence with concepts of self in social reality. It simplifies, provides guidance and predisposes an actor towards one purposive behaviour rather than another. As Horrocks and Jackson (1972: 94) declare, ‘Role behaviour is a cognitive affective process because it is selective, internally organized, and interpreted by relational schema.’

Structuration: institution, interaction and intention

The epistemology informing the role theory framework developed in this chapter seeks to incorporate both the individual and structural nature of behaviour. The agency in foreign policy is conceptualized in terms of a ‘situated actor’ whose behaviour is guided by both rules and reasons in foreign policy (Adler 1997; Hay 1995: 190; see further Aggestam 2004: 36–8). As March and Olsen (1998: 12) assert:
Political actors are constituted both by their interests, by which they evaluate their anticipations of consequences, and by the rules embedded in their identities and political institutions. They calculate consequences and follow rules, and the relation between the two is often subtle.
Both of these elements of behaviour are accounted for in a framework provided by role theory. Role concepts can provide an essential link between agent and structure, as they incorporate the manner in which foreign policy is both purposeful and shaped by institutional contexts. As Hollis and Smith (1990: 168) argue, ‘Role involves judgement and skill, but at the same time it involves a notion of structure within which roles operate.’
This conceptualization of a dual process of structure and agency can be linked to Giddens’s theory of structuration, which seeks to reconcile a focus on structures (the conditions of social and political interaction) with sensitivity to the intentionality, reflexivity, autonomy and agency of actors (Giddens 1979, 1984). Rather than viewing social structures as non-subjective and external to actors, Giddens (1984: 172–4) argues that ‘society’ is manifestly not external to individual actors in the same way as the material environment. The structures – the continuously reproduced rules and resources – do not have any independent objective existence external to actors, nor are they purely subjective. The process of structuration means that actors and structures are only separable on an abstract, analytical level, since structures are upheld by ongoing processes of structuration. Agency and structure are two sides of the same coin (Hay 1995: 197).
To bring down the level of abstraction and to make structuration theory applicable to empirical analysis, we will develop a role analysis that incorporates three important perspectives – institutional, interactional and intentional – of how roles are constructed, sustained and changed. This, it is argued, produces a richer and more nuanced understanding of roles and represents one way in which we may conceive of the interrelated relationship between structure and agency in foreign policy.

Institution

The predominant approach to role analysis is the one that considers roles as deeply embedded in institutions, structuring the range of roles available and the way in which they are played. In other words, institutions, not the actors themselves, determine roles. In sociology, this type of role theory has been applied to the analysis of how normative constraints of society are represented in a system of roles, within which the individual is socialized (Jackson 1972: 1). Actors are expected to perform certain roles given a particular social order. The sharing of norms and expectations creates networks of rights and obligations (Jackson 1972: 3–4). An institutional perspective is important to integrate in our theoretical framework, as it helps us conceptualize how intersubjective beliefs and political culture influence foreign policy, as well as how different international institutions generate expectations of certain role behaviour.
Institutions can be understood as both ‘a general pattern or categorization of activity’ and ‘a particular human-constructed arrangement, formally or informally organized’ (Keohane 1994: 47). Young (1989: 32) defines institutions as ‘social practices consisting of easily recognized roles coupled with clusters or rules or conventions governing relations among the occupants of these roles’, and argues that the states system can be considered an institution in this sense (Young 1989: 33). Apart from this broad definition, an institution can also be a more specific organizational arrangement, like the EU. Whether it is a broad or more narrow conception of institution, the important criterion for being considered an institution is that ‘rules must be durable, and must prescribe behavioural roles for actors, besides constraining activity and shaping expectations’ (Keohane 1994: 49).2
The reason why this institutional perspective needs to be supplemented is that it does not take enough account of the agency as a ‘situated actor’ nor does it incorporate the dynamics of structuration. Individuals are only relevant in so far as the roles they occupy within these structures; ‘there are significant similarities in the performance of actors taking the same part, no matter who the actors are’ (Thomas and Biddle 1966: 4). As Rosenau (1987: 45) states, ‘there is no individual apart from the network of systems in which he or she is embedded’. Structure is thus largely seen to constrain and even determine agency. Individuals are presented with roles that are built into an institution’s structure and will continue to exist whether or not these individuals choose to play them. This perspective leaves little scope for interpretation and innovation of the agency, and thus runs the risk of making the analysis static and deterministic.
To be sure, the role analysis developed in this chapter acknowledges the institutional argument that a role as a set of norms and expectations...

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