“Accommodation Beyond Self-Interest: Identity, Policy Paradigms, and the Limits of a Rationalist Approach to EU Policy Towards Central Europe”

Sedelmeier, Ulrich. (1999) “Accommodation Beyond Self-Interest: Identity, Policy Paradigms, and the Limits of a Rationalist Approach to EU Policy Towards Central Europe”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, PA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The paper argues that rationalist approaches cannot fully account for the European Union’s policy towards the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). EU policy accommodates the preferences of the CEECs to a greater extent than an account based on purely material interests on the part of the EU would expect. The paper argues that we need to take ideational factors into account to explain the outcome, namely the EU’s collective identity and sectoral policy paradigms. EU identity towards the CEECs includes the notion of “special responsibility” that prescribes purely self-interested behaviour by policy-makers acting on behalf of the EU, and prescribes a degree of accommodation of the CEECs’ preference in EU policy. This aspect of the EU’s collective identity becomes politically salient through the advocacy of policy options that are in line with this identity. In the case of the association policy, these policy advocates were primarily located inside the Commission, with a loose supportive coalition among the member state foreign ministries. However, to understand how much advocacy of an accommodation of the CEECs’ preferences affects policy across the various sub-areas of the association policy, we need to understand which factors mediate this policy impact. The paper argues that the policy paradigms that underpin EU policy in the various policy areas covered by the association policy are a crucial mediating factor, which can only be captured by a sociological institutionalist approach.

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