"Inter-organizational Sparring in the EU’s Informal Sphere: the Case of CFSP"

Stacey, Jeffrey. (2005) "Inter-organizational Sparring in the EU’s Informal Sphere: the Case of CFSP". In: UNSPECIFIED, Austin, Texas. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the Introduction]. ...Those scholars engaged in charting the EU’s informal sphere may yet save the regionalism sub-field from a similarly blind fate. In doing so they have the potential to substantially deepen our understanding of the world’s most prominent political experiment to date, for the quotidian outcomes of EU governance may not be fully comprehended without an understanding of the recursive relationship between the EU’s formal and informal rules (the latter of which tend to be as consistently adhered to by EU actors as the former). This paper seeks to aid in this endeavor. It will do so firstly by anchoring the later empirical sections in the theory of rational choice historical institutionalism (RCHI), a necessary grounding that attempts to avoid a somewhat common trend of regionalist scholarship—viz. describing empirically without explaining theoretically. This theoretical hybrid of two of new institutionalism’s three variants seeks to compensate for the individual weaknesses of RCI (rational choice institutionalism) and HI (historical institutionalism) while accentuating their strengths. In essence, RCHI theory is based on rationalist assumptions but takes account of the increasing returns of political phenomena. Secondly, the paper will attempt to subject RCHI’s hypotheses to the evolving political powers of the EU’s new foreign policy czar, officially known as the Common Foreign and Security Policy’s (CFSP) High Representative (HR). Former Spanish foreign minister Javier Solana, the EU’s first HR, has now had several years to begin defining the role of the HR, in the course of which he and the Council have agreed to a number of new informal rules regarding the HR’s relationship with the Parliament. The Parliament, naturally, has sought to augment its authority in the process (the degree to which will be explored below). Thus, this paper will examine internal informal dynamics in an area of the EU that has yet to be explored, at least, from the standpoint of new institutionalist theory.

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