Eu Foreign and Security Policy in Bosnia: The Politics of Coherence and Effectiveness

Description

This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU's foreign and security policy in Bosnia. Drawing on a wealth of fresh empirical material, it demonstrates that institutions are a key variable in explaining levels of common foreign security policy (CFSP) coherence and effectiveness over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign policy. The study concludes that the EU's involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU's international identity along the way. The book will be of great interest to researchers and students of EU politics, International Relations and Bosnian politics. -- .

Ana E. Juncos is Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Bristol -- .

'There is little doubt that the Balkans region has been the most important laboratory for the EU's foreign and security policy ambitions since the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. There is also little doubt that scholars and policy-makers continue to dispute the extent to which the EU has played a major role in confronting the problems of this region. In this well-researched and very convincing book, Ana Juncos analyses the EU's two decades of experience in Bosnia, arguing that the coherence and effectiveness of its policy are highly contingent on a range of factors that deserve wider attention in the literature on EU foreign/security policy.' Professor Michael E. Smith, University of Aberdeen 'In this astute analysis, Ana Juncos offers us a treatise on how the EU took on the challenge of Bosnia and how, in the process, it matured as an international actor. Combining empirical rigour with theoretical sophistication, this is a valuable addition to our understanding of how the EU can, and indeed, should, act as a stabilising force in its neighbourhood. It contains important lessons for how we conceive the EU's external role and how Europe's most troubled region was brought back from the brink. It is a book that deserves the widest possible audience.' Professor Mark Webber, University of Birmingham 'EU Foreign and security policy in Bosnia is a cogent analysis of the struggle for coherent and effective policy in the Western Balkans by the EU. In its masterly forensic account of the EU's foreign and security policy involvement in Bosnia the volume greatly deepens our understanding as to why the EU even now continues to seek policy success in Bosnia.' Professor Richard G. Whitman, University of Kent -- .