Gaps in EU Foreign Policy

This book argues that theories of European foreign policy are performative: they create the objects they analyse. In this text, Larsen outlines the performativity approach to the role of theories based on the work of Derrida and goes on to examine the performative role of Christopher Hill's concept of Capability-Expectations Gap in the study of European foreign policy. Through examples from relevant literature, Larsen not only demonstrates how this concept sets up standards for the EU as a foreign policy actor (that are not met by most other international actors) but also shows how this curtails analysis of EU foreign policy. The author goes on to discuss how the widespread use of the concept of ‘gap' affects the way in which EU foreign policy has been studied; and that it always produces the same result: the EU is an unfulfilled actor outside the realm of “normal” actors in IR. This volume offers new perspectives on  European foreign policy research and advice and serves as aninvaluable resource for students of EU foreign policy and, more broadly, European Studies.

• European Union Politics
• European Studies
• European Foreign Politics
• Poststructuralism
• Gaps in EU foreign policy
• Politics
• Political Science

• Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen , Copenhagen, Denmark

  Henrik Larsen

Henrik Larsen is Professor MSO and holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European Foreign and Security Policy Integration in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His previous books include Discourse Analysis and Foreign Policy: France, Britain and Europe (1997), The ESDP and the Nordic Countries (with N. Græger and H. Ojanen, 2002) and Analysing the Foreign Policy of Small States in the EU: the Case of Denmark (2005).

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