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This book provides a timely evaluation of the EU's ability to act internationally and coordinate policy in a time when it also seeks to meet shifting demands of international cooperation. These include global sustainable development, the challenge of multilateralism and the changing geopolitical order.
Analysing the networks of officials and policy professionals in EU development policy, the book yields theoretical insights into dominant processes that characterise EU governance in international cooperation and assesses their role for policy coordination. Overall, this book concludes that EU policy coordination evades intergovernmental control and demonstrates how the agency of EU institutions depends on efforts of member state officials to defend their priorities and identities. Finally, it shows the need to better understand the EU as a collective international actor, beyond the widespread concern with institutional adjustments, which continuously fail to produce the intended outcomes.
This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU politics, EU foreign policy, EU external relations and more broadly to international relations and international development.
List of contents
Introduction 1. Norms and Networks for EU Collective Action 2. Politics of Collective Action in Development Cooperation 3. Transnational Agency and Bureaucratic Authority 4. Governmental Control and Consensus 5. Public-private Entrepreneurship. Conclusion. Appendix: List of Interviews
About the author
Sebastian Steingass is Academic Assistant of Political Science and International Relations in the European Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the College of Europe, Natolin campus, Poland.
Summary
This book provides a timely evaluation of the EU’s ability to act internationally and coordinate policy in a time when it also seeks to meet shifting demands of international cooperation.
