Constructing the CFSP: The Utility of a Cognitive Approach

2003/08/19 by Ben Tonra · 13 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cognition #Computer science #Computer security #Economics #European Union Policy and Governance #European union #Foreign policy #Global Peace and Security Dynamics #International Relations and Foreign Policy #International trade #Law #Law and economics #Political science #Politics #Psychology #Reciprocal #Security policy

paper · open access · doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00443

published in JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies 41(4), 731-756 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2003/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Abstract Traditional analyses of the European Union's common foreign and security policy (CFSP) tend to characterize it either as an effete and declaratory expression of lowest common denominator politics, or as a limited framework for median‐interest foreign policy bargaining. Even at a modest empirical level, however, these representations of CFSP fail to convince in view of its development in recent years. This article will argue that a cognitive approach towards the study of CFSP opens up new and crucial vistas for analysis, and offers some striking conclusions on the reciprocal relationship between CFSP and national foreign policies and the transforming capacity of the CFSP vis‐à‐vis national foreign policies, including their ‘Europeanization’.

Citations

• Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach
• Norms, culture, and world politics: insights from sociology's institutionalism
• Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination
• Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics

Related

• Constitutional Law of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy
• Operationalising the decentring agenda: Analysing European foreign policy in a non-European and post-western world
• The CFSP as an aspect of conducting foreign relations by the United Kingdom: With special reference to the Treaty of Amity & Cooperation in Southeast Asia
• The logic underpinning EU crisis management operations
• Europe’s Strategic-imagination Deficit