Strategic Cultures In Europe PDF Download

This thesis sets out to examine the European strategic culture that is being carried by political elites around two themes: continuity-change and convergence-divergence. It empirically studies how the European Union and its member states perceive the important dimensions in the area of foreign, security, and defense policy. Although ideational factors have played an increasing role in building theory and analyzing foreign policy behavior since the “cultural turn” in International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis, two decades of research into European strategic culture still have some conceptual and methodological problems. To disentangle these problems, the main question for the research is: Is there a European strategic culture emerging? This thesis first analyzed the three member states’ strategic cultures (Germany, Ireland, and Poland) at the national level because they represent different groups with a view to the most important dimensions in characterizing the national strategic cultures within the EU. It then analyzed the EU strategic culture at the supranational level by focusing on official discourses of the EU institutions (e.g., European Commission, Council of the European Union, and European External Action Service) and their leaders (e.g., European Commission President and EU High Representative). In order to structure the comparison for a specific actor or between the member states or between them and the EU, the research period is divided into three consecutive sub-periods: 2000–2009, 2010–June 2016, and July 2016–2020. This periodization was based on the two strategic shocks crucial to Europe: the eurozone crisis and the UK’s Brexit Referendum.