Constructing the EU Identity in the European Union’s Common
Foreign and Security Policy Discourse
Theresa Anagnostou-Hrubisko (11125608)
Submission Date: 29/07/2016
University of Amsterdam - Graduate School of Social Sciences Degree Programme: MSc International Relations
Thesis Project: European Security Politics
Word-count: 20 847 (excl. bibliography and long quotes) Thesis supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marieke de Goede
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my MSc thesis supervisor, Prof. Dr. Marieke de Goede, for her ongoing guidance and insightful encouragement in pursuing this challenging topic. I would also like to express my gratitude to my study adviser, Mrs Ariane Berends, for the invaluable support she provided. Prof. de Goede and Mrs Berends both helped me navigate through times when I stumbled upon obstacles on my journey to the successful completion of this thesis.
Table of Contents
Abstract……….………1
Chapter 1: Introduction……….……….……… 2
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework - Securitisation and Identity Construction Through Foreign Policy 2.1 Introduction to Theory……….……….……….…6
2.2 International Relations and the Worldview……….…….…….……6
2.3 Security, the Primary Focus of International Relations? ……….… 9
2.4 Language, Discourse, and Meaning Production……….……. 11
2.5 Discourse and Socio-Political Identity ………13
2.7 European Identity……….……….………..… 15
2.8 Viability of the EU as an International Relations Actor and its Foreign Policy…..………18
2.9 The Gap in the Literature……….……….………….. 20
Chapter 3: Design and Methods……….…….……….22
Chapter 4: Direct Assertion and Construction of the EU Identity in the EU’s External Relations and Foreign Policy 4.1 Introduction to the First Empirical Chapter……….………28
4.2 Depiction of EU Foreign Policy and the Purpose of European External Action Service .. 28
4.3 EU Shared Values and their Role in EU Security and Foreign Policy……… 30
4.4 EU Unity, Speaking in One Voice……….………….……….… 31
4.5 The Evolution of the Positive Role of the EU in the World - EU, The Guardian Angel of Human Rights, Peace, and Democracy……….……… 34
4.6 Conclusions of the First Part of the Analysis……….….……….………40
Chapter 5: Indirect Assertion of EU’s Identity - How Threats, Problems and Differentiation from the “Others” in EU’s Foreign Policy/External Relations Contributes to the Construction of EU Identity 5.1 Introduction - Main Threats Identified in the EU Foreign Policy………..…..42
5.2 The Changing Nature of Threat and the Urgent Need to Act……….. 42
5.3 Who We are Not - Differentiation from the “Others”………. 44
5.3.1 Human Rights and “Universal” Values Abuse………44
5.3.2 Relations with Russia as the EU’s Other……….………47
5.3.3 Terrorism………..……. 51
5.4 Conclusion off the Second Empirical Chapter……… 52
Chapter 5: Conclusion…….……….………….……… 54
Abstract
European Identity is not an embedded concept with which we could say every citizen of the European Union identifies. As a project, it was first introduced by the Copenhagen European Summit’s 1973 Declaration of the European Identity which recognised the political and social need for the establishment of a common pan-European identity, that would strengthen EU’s geopolitical and economic status. Literature addressing identity politics suggests that national or regional identities are not fixed but socially and politically moulded throughout time and by particular processes. Some of these are states’ Foreign Policy (Campbell, 1998) and the narratives of exclusion and delineation of the “self” from the “other”, a discourse equally found in Copenhagen School’s securitisation theory. Later modifications of the theory by other scholars, such as Didier Bigo, which deal with threat construction also along the lines of an identitarian axis were a particular inspiration for this thesis. With the gradual development of a common European foreign policy and security strategy, which goes beyond the individual concerns of the EU Member States, the possibility of linking identity to shared security concerns becomes more likely. While the emergent European Identity still remains a contested concept, when reading certain declarations of prominent EU politicians, such as High Representative Mogherini, it would appear that the Union situates itself as a unitary actor with shared identity and values when talking foreign policy, and even more so, security. The interest of this thesis lies with exploring the relationship between the potential of a European identity formation through the security agenda of the EU and the articulation of an external threat. Specifically, it aims to elucidate whether the Union’s security discourse operates with a sense of European unity/common identity and relates these to the identified threat perpetrator, or the “other”. In light of the changes and increased powers introduced by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, this will be achieved by focusing on the more recent narrative of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR) and the subsequent establishment of European External Action Service (EEAS) in 2010.
Chapter 1: Introduction
“Terrorists want us to be afraid. They try to spread hatred and fear, to create intolerance and to turn us against each other. This mentality has no place in our
societies, our lives, and our European Union”
(European Commission STATEMENT/16/761, 2016).
The quote above was selected to demonstrate the core theme at heart of this thesis - the European Union’s foreign policy narrative that combines security and identity. As you can see, it distinguishes between “us”, the EU citizens, and “them”, in this case explicitly the terrorists. However, whether we can speak of EU citizens and their respective societies as one unified body encompassed under a common EU community identity and values is not so certain. While European Union is an ongoing project that has long aspired beyond its original focus on economic and trade cooperation (Radeljic, 2013), it is yet to be determined how, and whether, we situate ourselves as social and political identity distinct from the rest of the world. Since the 1973 Declaration on European Identity which established the desire and need for the formulation of a true European identity, the community of EU countries has expanded and welcomed new members to its circles. Consequently, it further diversified its population through immigration channels (Hollifield et al, 2014) and developed its institutional structures and the powers these hold to a point that the EU has started to be perceived as an actor of international politics (Diez, 2014) - with its own, collective, European Foreign and Security Policy - and not a mere congregate of trade-allied states with individual nation-state-serving interests. However, as several authors point out (Cetti, 2013; Radeljic et al, 2013) the concept of European identity within the EU framework is both poorly defined as such and unevenly adopted by the citizens of individual Union member states, as the answers to EU Eurobarometer Survey’s question on identity indicate.
Inspired by constructivist and poststructuralist thinking in political science and the works of David Campbell (1998) on the security-identity nexus in the American foreign policy, Judith Butler’s contemplations on social identity formation (1990), and McSweeney’s article on the role of identity politics in securitisation practices (1996), the goal of this research is to examine not the nature of the aforementioned nascent concept of EU identity but whether it figures in,
or is possibly being constructed by, the Union's formal security discourse. Taking from Diez’s interpretation of the prominence of discourse in poststructuralist theory, which is essential for understanding the theoretical groundwork of this thesis, this analysis operates with the premise that as far as social identity formation is concerned “discourse constructs meaning through difference – and therefore through setting limits – [and] it is at the heart of analysing the role of foreign policy in identity construction” (2014: 320).
Similarly, according to David Campbell (1998), foreign policy may bear - through the ways in which it operates, verbally articulates, and interprets danger - the potential to secure identities. Campbell posits that “Foreign Policy (conventionally understood as the external orientation of established states with secure identities) is thus to be retheorised as one of the boundary-producing practices central to the production and reproduction of the identity in whose name is operates” (Campbell, 1998: 68). This analysis transposes this on the case of not a single European state but the EU as a whole wherein the Union represents the foreign policy and security interests of a set of actors - its member states - and organises their collective foreign policy discourse which in turn helps assert what/who is the EU. Reading the quote again, it becomes clear that such identity delineation through differentiation may indeed be taking place. Yet, it remains to be examined whether statements like ”…this [terrorist] mentality has no place in our societies, our lives, and our European Union” (European Commission STATEMENT/16/761, 2016) are present in EU security discourse so vocally or frequently that one could argue for their meaning producing powers with regards to embedding who the EU is, what values it holds dear, and which identity its members are deemed to share.
Constructivist and poststructuralist accounts of political identity indicate that identity, political and individual, is not given, but built through repetitive processes that shape and embed its character (Butler, 1990; Campbell, 1998; Glick-Schiller, 2009; Alforaiti, 2012; Diez, 2014). This identity narrative is also present and in fact inseparable from international relations and foreign policy. Identity is to be understood not as given, but moulded through complex processes consisting of multitude of binaries which invoke the logic of the “self”, that is to be asserted, in opposition to the “other”, which is to be feared (Burke & Stets, 1998; Campbell, 1998; Huysmans, 2000; Cetti, 2013). In case of the European Union and the identity of its members, Cetti briefly mentions that the pan-European identity is also one “that recognises itself only in the presence of what it is not” (2013: 116). Combining aspects of the theories of identity construction and securitisation, the EU as a society can recognise who/what it is by means of exclusion in its Foreign Policy - through the identification and articulation of that
which is not European, which is disruptive and threatening. Hence Foreign Policy of a state or political units is “not something subsequent to the state or the interstate system, but integral to their constitution” (Campbell, 1998: 60) which means that the EU, by speaking in one voice on matters of such importance as its external political relations reproduces itself into a new political unit with its own identity, regardless of its individual citizens’ acknowledgement. Radeljic argued that within the confines of the relatively short history of the EU identity project, “the discourse about the other(s) in Europe was very present”, especially “during the break-up of the Yugoslav federation” (2013: 6). Furthermore, irregular migration clearly figures as a serious external threat to the EU in the 2010 Internal Security strategy along with terrorism which also doubles in EU’s 2003 External Security Strategy. The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the rise of ISIS, and the resulting refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and beyond further exacerbated fear of migrants among Europeans (Zizek, 2015; Bigo, 2016). Moreover, sentiments surrounding the topic of the so-called migration and refugee crisis seem to be escalating, and in some cases, leading to what might be the renaissance of nationalist attitudes and increase of support of nationalist political parties across Europe. Are these developments paralleled in the discourse of EU’s official foreign and security politics, or can we perhaps succeed in observing a different line of thought, one that takes advantage of the security concerns that the Union faces collectively? While there is literature debating the contested nature of European identity or the feasibility of the project itself, there is a lack of direct examination of how Europe defines its “others” who or what they are and whether the political discourse of “us” vs “them” is present in the current European security and foreign policy agenda.
Thus, the aims of this Master thesis are twofold. Firstly, it seeks to establish whether the portrayal of Europe’s own identity and others is present in EU’s foreign policy discourse following the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty - which brought the EU closer to political and cultural convergence - with a specific focus on the statements of the office of the HR of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the EEAS as such. Secondly, it focuses on determining what form does such representation of “othering" take in the security narratives of the EU and tries to identify the main recurring types of threats and dangers articulated in the Foreign Policy of the EU. For example, the thesis examines whether groups, such as migrants, who were once considered as positive contributors to host countries’ labour markets, have indeed become “the other” in Europe, as some scholars suggest (Ceyhan and Tsoukala, 2002, Bigo and Tsoukala, 2008; Cetti, 2013). Cetti (2013: 116) argued that by portraying migrants in Europe as the “outsiders” they are placed in “binary opposition to the region’s ‘insiders’, the
populations of its nation states, who are thereby encouraged to regard themselves as the bearers of a privileged cultural identity that marks them out as specifically ‘European’” which is an argument that definitely deserves further exploration. Following are the research questions this thesis aims to answer:
In what way do European Union’s identity, values that underlie it, and the “others” who may help to define it, figure in the the Common European Foreign and Security Policy statements and documents since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty?
Is the portrayal of threats and the “other” contrasted to the EU’s “self”, its identity, and values?
To answer them, the thesis is organised in six chapters, where the second/following chapter reviews the relevant literature and introduces the key theoretical stances and assumptions of this thesis in more detail. The third chapter explains the design and justifies the choice of qualitative discourse analysis methods for the research at hand and introduces the importance of the selected body of EU security and foreign policy documents and statements. Consequently, the two empirical chapters ensue with thorough critical discourse analysis of the aforementioned sources which are evaluated based on demonstrating specific language associated with identity-construction in foreign policy while keeping in mind the statements external contexts, situating them within particular international political events when appropriate. Finally, the last chapter revisits the findings of the discourse analysis and attempts to draw conclusions which do not only serve descriptive purposes but provide a significant insight into the present and future of European Union studies and contribute to the body of scholarly literature on the theoretical juncture of identity politics and the politics of security.
Chapter 2: Theoretical Background
2.1 Introduction
In order to understand the concepts and theories underlying the assumptions of this thesis, the following chapter presents the schools of thoughts that influenced and shaped its focus. The first section looks at theories of international relations, particularly realism, constructivism, and poststructuralism and the influence these have on one’s worldview as well as approach to studying international politics. The second section moves on to address one of the most prominent features of IR, the concept of security, the fields of security studies and foreign policy, and the role of narratives and social identities. Consequently, the third sections pick up on the discussion of the importance of narrative, and explores the constructivist and poststructuralist literature informed by the ideas of discursive construction of meaning and identity. Section five then synthesises the overlapping features of security, foreign policy, and identity theory. Afterward, in order to be able to apply the aforementioned theories to the study at hand, the sixth sections introduces the EU identity declaration and the European integration project while the subsequent part explains why studying the EU as a unit of analysis within the study of international relations, and foreign policy in particular, is possible.
2.2 International Relations and the Worldview
While there are other prominent IR theories, including different branches of liberalism, this section is primarily interested in addressing constructivist and poststructuralist thinking in IR which is best differentiated when understood in the historical and ideological realism that preceded them. Realism once used to be the dominant understanding of how the world works - what states do and who they are. However, the landscape of international politics - practice and academy alike - has changed significantly over the course of the last century (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan, 2008). Political realism is heavily marked by its materialistic understanding of the world as an anarchy in which states and power-distribution are the principal units of analysis - states are seen as concerned with securing their sovereignty, ensuring their survival, and competing or cooperating with each other the reasons of self-interest (Glaser, 2013).
As far as foreign policy is concerned, realists would argue that “the most significant driving forces behind foreign policy decisions are materialistic factors such as military power, economic power, and striving to attain as many resources as possible in order to survive in an anarchic environment” (Altoraifi, 2012: 32). Realist thinking views states as the principal international actors and interprets their behaviour in terms of rationality or utility maximisation. Epistemologically speaking, such understanding of the international system and its actors indicates that actions and motives are knowable through means of scientific analysis; and ontologically, that the things constituting this world - including states - are the way they are. They simply exist, its only the power relations between states and their capacities that change. However, the developments of the late 20th and early 21st century indicated that it might not be best suited for explaining certain developments of the international politics which, at times, seem to have been affected by more than just simple hard-power relations.
Constructivism, on the other hand, stands in opposition to the idea of fixed nature of the international system, and does not see it as conditioned by the doctrine of anarchy. Instead, as Wendt (1992: 391) famously wrote, “anarchy is what states make of it” - a principle transferrable beyond interstate interaction that implies that reality is socially constructed, not objectively given. For example, the successful conclusion of the Iran Nuclear Deal and the complex socio-political processes that shaped it, can serve to show that constructivism is better suited for explaining changes or deviances at international level for which the more static realist view of IR struggles to account. Agius (2013: 88) defines social constructivism as a theory that “brings to the fore the importance of ideas, identity, and interaction in the international system” in the process of creation - or construction indeed - of the world around us.
Hence, the ontology of constructivism is significantly different from that of realism, and such conception of the world which transcends to domestic and foreign politics has implications for one’s understanding of security too. Subjectivity, identities, perceptions, various agents and structures are all considered to play an important role in the constitution of social and political outcomes. While realism viewed international relations as a domain dominated by more or less stable interests of self-help, rationality, military, and power; constructivism places heavy emphasis on the fact that identities and interests are fluid, not fixed (Agius, 2013). Thus, they change during and by the processes of interaction and in the face of new situations.
Similar to constructivism, but even more critical in nature and the focus on the role of representations in IR analysis, is poststructuralism. This line of thought has developed mainly through the works of Derian, Ashley, Shapiro, Campbell, and feminist scholarship whose conceptualisation of the socio-political world as constantly changing and strongly-malleable by discursive representations openly owes a lot to the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Poststructuralism is a critical approach which focuses on the “importance of discourse, identity, subjectivity, and power” (Campbell, 2010: 2013), and examines how these elements influence our understanding, as well as nature, of knowledge.
Discursive representations and interpretations of particular topics, events, objects, or relations mould that of which they speak and produce its meaning. One of the main aims of poststructuralist writing it to scrutinise realities that are taken for granted and instead explore the power-knowledge relationship that lies behind this particular, and not necessarily objective, representation of a given issue (Derian and Shapiro, 1989; Campbell, 2010). Poststructuralists alert us to be wary of the discourse surrounding social events and issues such as wars, wealth distribution, and especially gender. Subjects are talked about in certain ways that are presented as objective representations or descriptions. Yet, the narratives are , in fact, what produces the knowledge. For example, the foreign policy discourse gives meaning to the subject of which it speaks, as when the person in the position of the High Representative of the EU for Foreign and Security Policy perpetually asserts the common EU values even prior to EU citizens’ actual awareness of their existence.
Poststructuralist approaches invite us to see individual discourses as meaning-producing practices which are situated within specific contexts and broader narratives (Campbell, 2010). The acceptance of such discourses along with their internalisation by individuals, societies, and states are heavily dependent on two things - relative power and reproduction (Butler, 1990; Stritzel, 2007). On the one hand, it is the positions of relative power or influence from which they were articulated that facilitate discourse’s salience; and on the other hand, it is the need for subsequent reproduction of the practices that constitute a given discourse. Moreover, this discursive tradition at the heart of poststructuralism also “emphasises the constitutive role of discourse in the production of subject identities” wherein discourse transcends its status of a
political instrument and it is politics that itself becomes “an essential part of discourse” (Diez, 2014: 603).
These theories clearly conceive of the world and the way it functions in different ways. As it was previously stated, the interest of this thesis not only stems from the assumptions of socially constructed reality in which discourse plays a constitutive role, but also adheres to the poststructuralist view that politics, IR included, is a realm of constant struggle over concepts where meaning production takes place (Diez, 2014). While this section provided a brief background, the following passage further elaborates how this relates to our notions of security.
2.3 Security, the Primary Focus of International Relations?
Security studies are often seen as the most important sub-discipline of international relations because they address what states arguably cherish the most - their security (Collins, 2013). Born out of the interest to avoid the terrible events and losses of the First World War, security studies focus on exploring the interactions between political units, mainly states, that are aimed at the assurance of survival and protection from threats - wherein survival and threats are identified as the main tenets of security. Indeed, this is just one of many definitions of what security means, and many claim that security is in fact an essentially contested concept. Until the 20th century, international relations were indeed mostly concerned with discussing which state poses a threat to another due to its expansionist interests and/or military capacity. However, in the modern politics of a world that witnessed two world wars, the end of the Cold War, and created a complex web of political, economic, and trade alliances, military threats no longer figure as the sole danger that states might face.
As stated in the introduction, the aim of this thesis is to study how and what threats are identifiable in the security discourse of the EU’s foreign policy. This reflects the assumption of the so-called deepening and broadening of security studies, which acknowledges the existence and potency of other than military threats, as well as the validity of other than state referent objects [referent object of security is ultimately the unit/subject that needs protecting from a threat]. One of the important contributions in this respect it the Copenhagen School’s [CS] securitisation theory and its introduction of five security sectors - military, political, societal,
economic, and environmental (Buzan et al, 1998; Emmers, 2010). In particular, this thesis is, to a large extent, informed by the second generation of securitisation theorists - such as Stritzel (2007, 2014), Balzacq (2005, 2011) and Bigo (2000) - and understands “securitization not as a ‘self-referential practice’ but as an intersubjective process” (Stritzel, 2014: 4).
Securitisation theory informs the assumption adopted in this research that language, speech acts, and the broader discourse in which they are situated have the potential to produce meaning - to create the very threat which they identify. Hence, threats are not necessarily objective or subjective, rather, they are discursively inter-subjectively constructed within the context of a particular narrative and political/social situation. Security threats are articulated by individuals or institutions in a position of relative influence and presented as existentially threatening the survival of the referent object (Bigo, 2000; Stritzel, 2014). For the purposes of this thesis, what is interesting here is the possibility to apply securitisation to non-state referent objects, such as the European Union and its society. This is because societal security is one of securitisation's branches of security and is also deemed to be a justifiable referent object with a “legitimate claim to survival” (Buzan et al, 1998: 36).
The key terms here are survival and societal security (Waever, 1993), and unlike the state security primarily concerned with preservation of sovereignty, “societal security is concerned with threats to its identity” by virtue of considering the argument that “if a society loses its identity, it will not survive as a society” (Roe, 2013: 177). Now, while it may sound provocative to operate with the EU’s society as one that possesses a collective identity, the fact that - as seen in the introduction’s quote - the EU foreign policy statements employ the word “we” in reference to the people and society of the EU - it is conceivable. Operating with the pronoun “we” in the EU’s foreign policy would not be possible if the discourse boundaries did not allow for such statements. As far as Waever is concerned, collective identity is “what enables the word ‘we’ to be used” (Waever, 1993: 17) which also corresponds with Diez’s argument that “discourse inscribes the boundaries of what can be articulated” (2014: 326). Therefore, ‘we’ could only be used because the boundaries of the discourse allow for its acceptance (McSweeney, 1996; Diez, 2014). Such an understanding of the EU’s societal identity does not deny the existence of other, co-constitutive (e.g. national, ethnical, religious) identities because societies are conceptualised as “multiple identity units” (Roe, 2013: 178).
So where does threat meet identity? If a state or society is presented as threatened, this will be reflected in the political unit’s foreign policy. While some scholars would argue that state’s foreign policy reflects and is shaped by its socio-political identity, according to Campbell (1998), prominence of fear and danger representations in the foreign policy of a state is constitutive of such state’s identity. Campbell’s book, Writing Security, traced the foreign policy practices that have constituted, maintained, and produced US identity (Campbell, 1998) and offered the reading of foreign policy as one that “shifts from a concern of relations between states that takes places across ahistorical, frozen, and pre-given boundaries, to a concern with the establishment of the boundaries that constitute, at one and the same time, the “state” and “the international system”” (Campbell, 1998: 61) . In other words, international relations are 1
not the product of political interaction between state units with stable identities and physical borders, but rather, they are the sketching board on which states constantly draw and fight for the lines of their identities.
By defining what is ‘foreign’, the foreign policy establishes that which is domestic - thus, boundaries are set and differences established. Crucial to Campbell’s foreign policy analysis is the performative function of language and its meaning as well as identity-producing capacities. Identity is seen as fluid, and (re-)shaped over time in accordance with the prevailing hegemonic discourse that defines it, directly or indirectly. The premise of this thesis is indebted to his conceptualisation of identity formation which is done through “the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an “inside” from an “outside”, a “self” from an “other”, a “domestic” from a “foreign”” (Campbell, 1998: 9). Yet, to better understand what is meant by performative function of discourse, the following section will further elaborate on the origins and meaning of this concept.
2.4 Language, Discourse, and Meaning Production
Discourse lies at heart of foreign policy. However, what exactly do we understand under the term “discourse”? This study conceives of discourse beyond the purely linguistic aspects of verbal and written utterances, and understands it as a congregate of utterances, repetitions, and contextual formations that surround, refer to, and at the same time produce a particular subject
emphasis as per the original text
of inquiry at a given point in time. Thus, discourse is a “specific series of representations and practices through which meanings are produced, identities constituted, social relations established, and political and ethical outcomes made more or less possible” (Campbell, 2010: 226). Discourse can both inform/construct and constrain foreign policy “that can be meaningfully and legitimately pursued” (Diez, 2014: 320). While Copenhagen School’s securitisation theory talks about performative language in relation to Austinian speech act utterances which illocutionary bring into being that of which they speak - the threat, this thesis adopts Claudia Aradau’s (2015) notion of performativity.
Aradau (2015: 68) argues that specific security discourses, through “repetition and iteration of particular discursive/material relations stabilise and destabilise boundaries” that in turn define the meaning of the subject which finds itself within or outside of these limits. Limits produced by performative discourse can be abstract/ideational and material. This approach to performativity and discourse is more in line with the Foucauldian tradition that pays attention to how broader discourses construct meaning (Diez, 2014: 319) and with Butler’s work on the socially constructed gender identity (1990) and social performativity (1996). In Performativity’s Social Magic (1996), she conceives of “the social performative” as “a crucial part not only of subject formation, but of the ongoing political contestation and reformulation of the subject as well” (Butler 1996: 125). One of the tenets of poststructuralism is that this process of meaning production involves definition through differentiation (Diez, 2014). This theme is also recurring in the theories of identity formation where assertion of one’s identity often takes place by delineating differences between the “self” and the “other”. Hence, if the foreign policy of a IR actor carries a threat narrative that establishes boundaries and speaks in dichotomies (inside/outside, us/them, member/3rd country-national, etc.), such discourse inherently constructs the identity/nature of those who produce it by projecting who they are through who they are not. In other words, one cannot perceive of identity “as a fact of society” (McSweeney, 1996: 85), but it too, is constantly discursively constructed through practices such as foreign policy. These principles of differentiation and threat narrative present in performative discourse are, once again, applicable to securitisation theory.
2.5 Discourse and Socio-Political Identity
Constructivist and poststructuralist accounts of political identity indicate that identity, political and individual, is not given, but built through repetitive processes that shape and embed its character (Butler, 1990; Campbell, 1998; Glick-Schiller, 2009; Alforaiti, 2012; Diez, 2014). Identity is to be understood not as given, but moulded through complex processes consisting of multitude of binaries which invoke the logic of the “self”, that is to be asserted, in opposition to the “other”, which is to be feared (Burke & Stets, 1998; Campbell, 1998; Huysmans, 2000; Huddy, 2001; Cetti, 2013) and one can immediately spot how this fits in with theories of performative discourse and securitisation. Identity is “fluid, contingent, and socially constructed” (Huddy, 2001: 128), so are our understandings of threats which play a key role in its production.
The traditional social identity theory argues that members of minority groups ‘B’ [e.g. ethnic or religious group] within a society ‘A’ would have more salient identity inclination to their minority subgroup ‘B’ than the supragroup ‘A’. Contrary to that, this thesis operates with the position that the salience of a socio-political identity mainly depends on the discursive threat and difference construction with which members of such society are presented. On the other hand, there is an overlap with the securitisation theory and poststructuralist understanding of the role of threat discourse of difference in foreign policy, and its implication on political identity formation. In particular, embraced in this work are the principles of social identity theory that posit othering, differentiation, and ingroup-outgroup rhetoric as constitutive of identity, as they are compatible with the features of securitisation’s threat narrative. The focus on the security discourse - which employs the language of the “self”, that is to be protected, in opposition to the “other”, which represents the threat - was demonstrated by several second generation securitisation scholars (Ceyhan and Tsoukala, 2002; Karyotis, 2007; Karyotis and Skleparis, 2013).
Reading the identity-threat nexus this way, “the constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity or existence: it is its condition of possibility” (Campbell, 1998: 13). A community first requires the constitution of the other, of something that threatens it in order to define who the community is - what socio-political identity it possesses. The “other” is defined as someone or something foreign, who or which lacks the membership in the community that articulates and produces the meaning of the “other”. Therefore, this thesis operates with the notion that the outgroup nature of the “other”
and the ingroup membership of the “self” play a significant role in the (re-)definition of political identity (Triandafyllidou, 1998: 593). This is not to say that ingroup similarities are not important for identity construction. However, it stresses the significance of “outgroup difference” (Huddy, 2001: 145) especially in situations where there is a projected “common fate” of the ingroup, while at the same time, the ingroup members perceive an “outgroup threat” from the “outsiders” (Huddy, 2001: 136). “The state, and the identity of “man” located in the state, can therefore be regarded as the effects of discourses of danger that more often than not employ strategies of otherness” (Campbell, 1992/1998: 51) and as the ability to decide who is a member of a community and who is a non-member, a foreigner (Campbell, 1992/1998; Triandafyllidou, 1998).
Just like with the production of meaning through discourse, articulation and repetition of difference are required to establish one’s identity in opposition to that of the other. This process is continuously taking place in public speeches, institutional practices, foreign policy documents, etc., and functions best when accompanied with the language and symbolism of a particularly threatening danger. Diez’s 2014 article highlights the “crucial role of foreign policy in identity construction” where “discourse” produces “meaning through difference” and “through setting limits” (2014: 321). In this view, foreign policy is a battlefield of constant “discursive struggle” over “meaning production” (Diez, 2014: 319, 321), a process strongly present in the ongoing constitution of the EU identity. This discursive foreign policy struggle affects the definition of EU identity on three levels. Namely, they are the levels of: “the individual discourse participants”, “the discursive positions” of collective actors, and “the overall discourse” where the contesting positions on a given matter “are not only pursued by collective actors, but also shape the latter’s identities” (Diez, 2014: 321). Therefore, the fact that there are different audible voices presenting competing views on the interests and nature of the EU’s foreign policy does not negate the existence of the EU identity construction through foreign policy formulation and practice. On the contrary, if one takes Campbell’s and Diez’s approach to identity formation through contesting discourses of foreign policy, this discursive political struggle is essential for the very definitions of limits that shape the EU’s identity.
Complementary to the narrative of difference and otherness is another tool through which political community forms its identity - role projection and acquisition. By identifying norms and principles that the community promotes or claims to follow, it self-categorises itself and
takes on a specific role (Burke and Stets, 1998). Such role embodies the “expectations about the proper behaviour for a given identity” (Thies, 2003 in Altoraifi, 2012: 37) and the EU is no stranger to projecting norms and identifying itself as a specific role-holder in the world affairs. To sum it up and relate this theory back to the research question, based on what has just been explained, if there is an EU identity, we can expect it to assert itself through “self”/“other” differentiations, role acquisition, and repetition of these articulations.
2.7 European Identity
In 1973 at the Copenhagen European Summit, “The Nine Member Countries of the European Communities” [Community] proclaimed their intention to establish a common concept of European identity. The aim was to improve the Community’s efficiency in foreign relations and their general standing in the “world affairs” (OOPEC, 1973/2013: 2). In this Declaration on European Identity [Declaration], the heads of state or government of the nine Member States recognised the need to overcome “past enmities” and argued that “unity is a basic European necessity” (OOPEC, 1973/2013: 2). This was seen as necessary in order “to ensure the survival of the civilisation which they have in common” (OOPEC, 1973/2013: 2). While it is an interesting and very strong statement; it has received surprisingly little attention on the side of the Community’s population, which I believe, have been mostly unaware that such a thing has ever been uttered. On the other hand, even the political science and EU studies scholars have not paid much heed to it, despite the fact that the Declaration announced several important goals. It acknowledged the Community’s “intention of carrying the work further in the future in the light of the progress made in the construction of a United Europe”, paying due attention to their “common heritage, interests, and special obligations” (OOPEC, 1973/2013: 2).
It was clear from the very outset of the Declaration on European Identity and what was to become the EU, the EU’s identity and foreign policy were directly related. Especially striking is the emphasis the Declaration placed on definition of foreign policy standards and common aims of the Community, which featured as the key component of the statement itself. The desire for cooperation with the Middle-East, the Mediterranean and African countries was identified as one of the main goals of the Community while “friendship” with the US based on common heritage was highlighted as equally important. Another external relations dimension identified was the Community’s position toward their trade and political relationships with
“Asia” and the “Latin America” (OOPEC, 1973/2013: 4). Throughout the text, the message is clear: the Community expressed its determination “to establish themselves as a distinct and original entity” (OOPEC, 1973/2013: 4), clearly delineating themselves from the other actors in the IR realm. Therefore, the previously suggested link between the foreign policy of the EU and its identity was already present at this stage. One cannot disregard the straightforwardness of the following sentence of the Declaration, which is self-definitional:
“In their external relations, the Nine propose progressively to undertake the
definition of their identity in relation to other countries or groups of countries.” 2
(OOPEC, 1973/2013: 4)
Thus, from the very beginning, the Community was ready to define its identity in relation to that of the others. This was to be achieved through its external relations, even prior to the official establishment of some form of common foreign policy by the Maastricht Treaty in the 1990s.
To show that the EU has, or is building its identity through the foreign policy discourse, apart from the language of otherness and difference, we must be able to spot indications of shared norms and values. Identity of any person, institution, or a political unit is most often characterised through its defining features, so what would these be in the case of the EU? Ian Manners, whose 2002 article coined the term “normative power Europe”, argues the EU projects and constructs itself around the following “five core norms” - “peace”, “liberty”, “rule of law”, “democracy”, and “human rights” (2002: 242). These values are also echoed in the Copenhagen Criteria - a set of criteria a state must fulfil prior to accession to the EU - which identify the following principles as compulsory: democratic rule, society based on a rule of law, “respect for human rights and protection of minorities; a functioning market economy; and the ability to take on the obligations of membership” (Bindi, 2010: 29). Furthermore, it is considered common knowledge that besides the EU’s common trade policy, the Union supports “global-free market economy and neoliberal international order”, along with political multilateralism (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan, 2008: 18). Other defining features can be read from Keukeleire and Delreux’s work on the EU’s foreign policy, who put forward its humanitarian and development aid contributions as well as the EU’s environmental leadership
Emphasis added. 2
(2014: 3). To close off the list of shared principles upon which the European Union is based, one must not forget the famous acquis communautaire - the body of legislation of the European Community and Union by which all pre-accession and member states must abide.
It is also important to highlight the fact that the rich scholarship on the role of the EU in global affairs has significantly contributed to the creation of groups of ideas as to what Europe is. These include the civilian (Duchene, 1970) and normative (Manners, 2002) power Europe concepts, EU’s structural foreign policy framework (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan, 2008) and several others, which in themselves by the very nature of analysing the role and nature of Europe in this light represent and constitute the EU “as an international actor with specific qualities which make it different” from the rest (Lucarelli, 2008: 24). However, what the literature most commonly addresses in relation to the EU norms and world politics is the concept of normative power Europe [NPE] (Ferreira-Perreira, 2010; Diez, 2013 & 2014; Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014; Manners, 2015) where the “normative power is the ability to shape normality” (Manners, 2015: 300). Diez (2013: 194) sums up Manners’ (2002) normative power premise into saying that “Europe represents a novel kind of power, which pursues normative aims through predominantly normative means”. Linking this back to the gravity of norms in community’s role and identity definition, one should see why the fact that the EU disseminates certain norms - its principles and values - is important. By projecting its normative aims to its partners, be that neighbours or more distant international actors that the EU addresses in its foreign foreign policy, the EU ascribes itself a certain role - of a free-market economy/democracy/freedom of expression/human rights/environmental protection/ energy sustainability promoter and protector. The imposition of these norms through bilateral relations conditionality and other foreign relations tools not only transforms the external world, but heavily impacts the construction of what the EU is as an entity with a set of values and an identity. Hence, even if not “originally” present, through differentiation and norms the EU (re-)constructs its own identity - after all, the pioneer of gender identity theory, Judith Butler (1990: ix), argued that “there is no original identity”, and so, even the EU must start somewhere to produce the very meaning of its own identity.
2.8 Viability of the EU as an International Relations Actor and its Foreign Policy
The truth is, the question is no longer whether EU “is an international actor” but “what kind of actor it is” (Diez, 2014: 320). According to Campbell (1992/1998), foreign policy precedes political unit formation in identity terms, as through it the identity is not only expressed but also moulded. The idea that foreign policy is essential in forming given political unit’s identity and that this is also the case for the EU, was already hinted at by Lucarelli in 2008. The premise of this thesis is that the milestone 2009 Lisbon Treaty further reinforced the political legitimacy of the European Union to act as a recognised international relations actor. Two of the Lisbon Treaty’s important contributions are the creation of “the office of the EU minister of foreign affairs” (Verola, 2010: 44) and the stronger, more centralised, foreign policy framework. This could be partly attributed to the nature of our era - in the age of globalisation and Europeanisation, the “increasingly helpless, member states’ governments turn to the EU to respond to questions they are incapable of answering” on their own (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan, 2008: 18).
Approaching the analysis of the EU’s foreign policy through a theoretical lens which combines aspects of the identity construction and securitisation, The EU can be seen in a new light. As a society, the EU can constitute who/what it is by means of exclusion in its foreign policy - through the identification and articulation of that which is not European , which is disruptive 3
and threatening. Hence foreign policy of a state or political unit such as the EU is “not something subsequent to the state or the interstate system, but integral to their constitution” (Campbell, 1998: 60). This means that the EU, through the CSFP policy, EEAS speeches and press releases attempts to prepare the discursive conditions of speaking in one voice on matters of such importance as its external political relations. Strictly speaking, by employing the narrative of “us” [the EU] and “others”/ “them” who threaten our security, the EU reproduces itself into a political unit in its own right, with its own identity - regardless of its individual citizens’ conscious acknowledgement.
Thus, unlike the traditional understanding of foreign policy - which conceives of foreign policy as the sovereign state’s “raison d’être” as well as such state’s prerogative (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan, 2008: 8) - this thesis adopts Campbell’s (1992/1998) conceptualisation in which
non-EU
foreign policy is “one of a range of practices that make up the discourses of danger” and fear through which limits of “domestic” and “foreign” are set and within which identities are constructed and reconstructed (Campbell, 1998: 62). Drawing from Hobbes, Campbell’s argument focuses on the “practices of “otherness” and articulations of the “foreign” which in turn constitute the “self” (1998: 58). In other words, a world of dichotomies - inside and outside; domestic and foreign; safe and dangerous - is discursively constructed. This is effectuated through “multiple strategies of otherness [which] give rise to identities that only exist in [such] historically specific and spatially defined locations” (Campbell, 1998: 60). It is precisely “these strategies of otherness [that] made foreign policy possible” (Campbell, 1998: 60) and so heavily focused on the provision of security. Borrowing from Hobbes, Campbell posits that people are best ruled under the imposition of what he names “the evangelism of fear” where the population of a political unit complies with its internal and external policy on the grounds of “the promise of security” (1998: 61). Hence, we are presented with an ongoing discursive struggle which projects dangers in the form of the “other” and the “foreign”. This binary struggle dominates the foreign policy and constructs identities in the process. In this fashion, security articulations and identity formation go hand in hand - one cannot do without the other.
As previously shown, the first mention of some European foreign policy was already present in the 1973 Declaration, and consequently, properly introduced by the EU’s introduction of Common Foreign and Security Policy [CFSP] in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Significant changes, which attributed “the EU with greater responsibility and power in addressing foreign relations” (Bindi, 2010: 34), were made to the contents of the Maastricht Treaty when the Treaty of Amsterdam was signed in 1997 and the position of High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (High Representative) was created. The HR is an important role which puts the incumbent not only in charge of coordinating the CSFP but makes the them also the acting Vice-President of the European Commission. The Lisbon Treaty, signed in 2009, represented another significant move forward. The latter not only boosted “the coherence, effectiveness and visibility of the EU’s foreign policy” (Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014: 2) but also lead to the creation of the European External Action Service [EEAS].
This thesis acknowledges the dual aims of the EU’s foreign policy - external and internal. On the one hand, its foreign policy establishes the EU’s political interaction with external actors. On the other hand, however, the EU’s foreign policy can have internal objectives striving for influencing and shaping the EU’s internal modus operandi. These are dominated by actions that are meant to lead to the strengthening of European integration and enhancing the European
identity, for example, through emphasising “the specificity of the European approach to
international politics” and differentiation of the “EU from other actors” (Keukeleire and MacNaughtan, 2008: 13).
What is important to take from this are the following two facts. First, and quite important on its own, is that “the EU is no longer simply the product of foreign policy” (Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014: 3), which explicitly accounts for the constitutive nature of foreign policy in EU identity creation. Secondly, “it also has a foreign policy, which is conducted through various channels and toolboxes” (Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014: 3). The EU is recognised as a 4
functioning international actor (Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014: 3).
2.9 The Gap in the Literature
Up to this date, there is no work that could parallel Campbell’s Writing Security for Europe. However, as the theory review above demonstrated, due to the sound logic and external validity of Campbell re-theorisation of foreign policy and its compatibility with elements found in both securitisation and identity theories, the quest for identity through foreign policy can also be applied to the analysis of the EU’s external policy. While it is true that the EU is not the same type of actor as individual nations states or the federal ones, like the US, it disposes of two crucial features of a “state” by having its own foreign policy and identity - with the latter being produced in the process. Both, the Declaration on European Identity (OOPEC, 1973/2013) and the literature reviewed for this thesis (Diez, 1999; Keukeleire & MacNaughtan 2008; Keukeleire and Delreux, 2014; Diez, 2014), suggest that the EU wants to differentiate itself from other actors in its foreign policy and identity, while directly linking the former to the constitution of the latter. Moreover, I believe this ‘EU identity’ is already present, yet unacknowledged, and the demonstration of the process through which it has been forming itself
emphasis as per the original text
is a significant and necessary step forward in the scholarly debate that, so far, only discusses it as a possibility. However, as it has been previously mentioned the mere fact that the EU is enabled to regularly use the pronoun “we” - instead of the more impersonal “the EU”, and articulate shared foreign policy goals as well as dictate social and political norms - is representative of group articulations which establish its own identity (Waever, 1993: 17; van Dijk, 2006: 119).
Even though there have been studies that either analysed the workings of the European integration project or the nature of the EU’s foreign policy [with respect to the types of policies the Union promotes], little has been said about what these “policies tell us about the EU” (Lucarelli, 2008: 24). An attempt at looking at foreign policy link with EU’s political identity was made by Lucarelli (2008), her study, however, dates prior to the essential enactment of the Lisbon Treaty and the external policy articulations that followed. Elsewhere in writing on the EU’s foreign policy discourse, Diez (2014) concentrates on the relationship between the nature of foreign policy and the academics who study it, pointing out the mutually constitutive character of their relationship while not really having the opportunity to do a discourse analysis of the EU’s foreign policy articulations.
Thus, the explicit analysis of the EU foreign policy discursive struggle over production of the EU identity remains under-explored, especially in the more recent times when the potential for such practice intensified post-Lisbon Treaty. To this date, there is no equivalent of David Campbell’s Writing Security for Europe. Ergo, it is this lack of such work that this thesis aims to rectify. It not only enriches the international relations and European Union Studies theoretical scholarship, but offers insights based on practices that shape the possibly unacknowledged, yet present, European Identity.
Chapter 3: Research Design and Methods
The interest of this thesis lies with exploring the relationship between the process of a European identity formation and the EU’s security agenda with its articulations of external threats. More specifically, the goal is to elucidate - In what way do European Union’s identity,
values that underlie it, and the “others” who may help to define it, figure in the the Common European Foreign and Security Policy statements and documents since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty? And secondly, is the portrayal of threats and the “other” contrasted to the EU’s “self”, its identity, and values? It is clear from the formulation of these research interests
that one must focus on the language and broader discourse.
Therefore, the thesis will employ qualitative research methods as its objectives are not quantitative nor quantifiable but focused on the particularities of political discourse and its formative/constructive capacities. As the primary concern of this particular research is to examine the discursive encounter and combination of political identity and security politics within a specific wing of European Union politics - its External Action Service - critical discourse analysis has been selected as the most suitable option for this endeavour. Reasons for that are twofold. It methodologically corresponds not only with the Copenhagen School’s securitisation theory (Buzan et al, 1998) and the role it attributes to the power of language, but also with the theory on identity construction [trough discursive practices] adopted in this research (Butler, 1990; 1993; Campbell, 1992/1998; Huddy, 2001).
Following Salter and Mutlu’s understanding of the broader discourse analysis method, it can be employed for a meticulous study of “writing, speech, and other communicative events” (2013: 113). The purpose of doing so is to provide “meaning to the social world surrounding us” (2013: 113) which the discourse shapes. Moreover, as the theory chapter explained, statements form broader discourses over period of time, in a process of struggle over meaning production accompanied by salient repetition of the articulated frames. Therefore, this thesis must look at a large number of individual statements over a longer period of time, because their meaning producing capacity can only be understood in their more complex environment and in relation to one another.
More specifically, the research operates with critical discourse analysis [CDA], which “regards `language as social practice' (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997)” (in Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 1) that
can have powerful influence when situated as well as understood within a specific context and uttered or repeated by powerful actors of a given structure and society (Wodak, 2000; Wodak & Meyer, 2001). This is an important point of departure for the logic of this thesis, which is based on the assumption that discourse (written or spoken), such as the EU official rhetoric of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the External Action Service policy - can be seen as social practice. Mostly initiated by a powerful group of individuals and institutions which together function as a collective actor, foreign policy and security discourse is a social practice with the potential to (re-)produce meaning of things [objects], relationships, attitudes, values, norms, and identities. These objects are given new meanings, and are thought of in a specific way presenting a specific type of knowledge, by the discourse dominating the discursive struggle. Consequently, other members of the society - within which this struggle over meaning takes place - pick up on the constructed narrative which, through further reproduction and internalisation, becomes the new common knowledge.
The above description of meaning production taking place in the confines of our societies through discourse as a practice is not far from the understanding of the cruciality of discourse in the securitisation’s theory threat and (in)security construction. In the basic premise of CS’s securitisation theory, language - particularly one of fear and survival - plays a prominent role in the construction and practice of security. Thus, it is in accordance with the logic and methods of both theories to employ critical discourse analysis to reveal any identity-constructing articulations in the security narrative of the EU.
For this reason, the analysis looks at the EU’s official statements voiced by the office of the High Representative and the EEAS. When grouped around a specific subject/topic, these articulations of foreign relations stances and goals form the discourse that defines the subject at hand topic - in this case the matters of importance to the EU’s foreign policy. In fact, as Foucault would argue, these discourses turn into practice and “form the objects of which they speak” (1972: 49). This “formative” power of language is what Austin (1962) calls “performativity” of discourse and is a subject that received significant scholarly attention which also proliferated to the field of critical security studies (Stritzel, 2007; Salter and Mutlu, 2013; Aradau et al., 2015). The fact that this thesis employs critical discourse analysis as the method of choice reflects the assumption that discursive practices do dispose of constructive powers. Hence, selecting it indicates that the method itself is “performative”, and may construct a particular account “of the way in which the world is composed” (Aradau et al, 2015: 59).
Therefore, conducting discourse analysis of the press releases and policy documents of identified discourse-shaping political figures and bodies is deemed relevant. Their content is perceived to be not only describing reality but also constructing its meaning in the process. If so, the process which creates this meaning, in this case the articulation and assertion of some “European identity” and “EU values” in opposition to a projected threat/“the other(s)”, must be traced over a given period of time in a selected pool of documents where such formative discourse is potentially to be found. Deriving from previous works which indicated possible links between security discourses and political identity (Campbell, 1992; McSweeney, 1996; Bigo, 2000), it is the premise of this research that external threat articulation in foreign policy discourse may serve as an arena in which an identity is constructed. For example, an identity ‘A’, can be constructed in opposition to the articulated threat(s), ‘B’, which feature in states/ alliance’s foreign policy. Thus, this discourse analysis seeks to observe the presence and “relationality” (Aradau et al, 2015: 63) of an identitarian-threat axis in the speeches, press releases, and policy documents by the embodiment of EU’s foreign relations and its external policy proxy - the post-holder of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy which is also the Vice-President of the European Commission, and the head of the European External Action Service.
This us undertaken in the two empirical chapters which work with critical discourse analysis of the aforementioned sources. The foreign policy and security narratives are evaluated based on demonstrating specific language associated with identity-construction, while keeping in mind that the individual statements are also situated within external contexts and possibly particular international political events.
Furthermore, the empirical analysis looks for signs and indications that show how Europe defines its “others”, who or what they are and whether the political discourse of “us” vs “them” is present in the European security and foreign policy agenda. Drawing on Aradau et al (2015) and their operationalisation of discourse analysis through one of the principles of “relationality” (2015: 63), it will focus on the previously mentioned “performativity” of specific security discourse. A given discourse can, through “repetition and iteration of particular discursive/material relations stabilise and destabilise boundaries” (2015: 68) which may be abstract or material. Identity is an integral concept of this thesis which it also views the identity itself as a boundary - an abstract and fluid boundary delineating one entity apart from another that is not stable but constantly evolving in response to the repetitions and assertions of
dominant discourse (Butler, 1990; 1993). Because identity articulation and assertion can be abstract at times and conducted implicitly, the analysis cannot solely focus on explicit mentions of concepts or selected terminology. Instead, a meticulous read of all the selected documents is necessary as machine text analysis, with a tool such as LexisNexis, would not be suitable for the depiction of intersubjective meaning/identity construction.
As it was previously mentioned, EEAS and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission [HR] statements were selected as the person holding this post is deemed to be the significant authority. Specifically, the HR is “the single authority” in the field of EU’s foreign relations and the “lead actor on CFSP/CSDP” (CFSP 2009 Annual Report: 5), who, for the purpose of this research, is deemed to exert sufficient influence. As far as “performativity” and repetitive 5
iterations that can create meaning are concerned, the HR is considered to be in a suitable position of power. Out of the 1909 statements by the HR articulated by her alone, or jointly 6
with other prominent actors, 1750 statements were reviewed. As the full functionality of the post of the High Representative in its current form only appeared in 2010, this also happens to be the first full year in which HR statements were published online on the official EEAS.europe.eu website - even prior tot he launch of the EEAS service itself. The analysis examines the period from 2010 until the end of June 2016. In this time-frame, the EU witnessed two different HRs, Baroness Catherine Ashton, who served as the EU’s High Representative/Vice President of the European Commission until the end of October 2014, and the incumbent HR Federica Mogherini from November 2014.
It is important to mention that the analysis only works with the statements by the High Representatives’, and not their Spokespersons, as these too, are available on the same website. This decision was intentional, and is grounded in two reasons. First, the volume of data would be unfeasible for timely analysis if the spokesperson’s statements were to be included. Secondly, and most importantly, the spokesperson does not dispose with the same level of authority and influence, and therefore, their statements are of lesser importance for obvious reasons. Analysing Spokesperson’s statements would not correspond to the line of theoretical argumentation presented earlier in this thesis, which requires a person, or a collective actor,
“performativity” to be understood the way Aradau et al (2015) use the term, not as a single performative 5
utterance of the classical Copenhagen School (Buzan et al, 1998) “speech act” way. These statements are publicly available at the EEAS.europa.eu/statements website. 6
