Explaining the European Union's Foreign Policy: A Practice Theory of Translocal Action

Description

The European Union was created for the purpose of encouraging peace on the continent, but today is increasingly active globally in areas such as diplomacy, development, humanitarian and consular aid, and civilian and military crisis management. Yet we know little about the forces that drive the Union to interact, influence and intervene outside its borders. This book offers a new theoretical perspective that explains how EU collective action is driven by practice, such as diplomatic routines and crisis management procedures. Using global case studies, Ekengren shows how the EU's representatives perform these routines, or transnational practices, across particular 'locales' around the globe, from Kosovo to Haiti. By connecting transnational and local forces in the explanation of EU foreign policy action, he presents an outline of a practice theory of translocal action. Scholars, policymakers and journalists will find this theoretically ground breaking book essential in understanding the European Union's foreign policy.

Magnus Ekengren is Professor of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Belgium. He is a former Swedish diplomat and was previously Deputy Director at the Policy Planning Unit of the Swedish Foreign Ministry. His publications include The Politics of Security Sector Reform: Challenges and Opportunities for the Eropean Union's Global Role, co-edited with G. Simons (2011), and The European Union as Crisis Manager: Patterns and Prospects, with A. Boin and M. Rhinard (Cambridge, 2013).

'Ekengren's deft application of Bourdieusian practice theory to EU agency is a timely remedy for the famously undertheorized field of European studies.' Iver B. Neumann, author of At Home with the Diplomats