Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy

Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy provides an analytical framework that serves to investigate the way the EU adapts its foreign policy in the wake of crisis.

Whereas a range of studies dedicated to foreign policy stability and change exist for the US context, such analyses are rare for the analysis of EU foreign policy change. Changes to EU foreign policy, this study proposes based upon an in-depth investigation of recent foreign policy change episodes, are not captured well using these existing accounts and typologies of policy change from other fields of study.

Offering a new perspective on the question of change, Ikani proposes an analytical framework focused on how institutions and temporal context impact the decision-making process on change. She provides an original revised typology of change, proposing two forms of foreign policy change, symbolic change and constructive ambiguity, as frequent and important outcomes of the EU decision-making process.