The Normative Power Europe concept popularized the essentialist claim that the EU’s internal constitution translates into its external behaviour. But how exactly does the EU’s internal identify affect foreign policy? Kai Hebel and Tobias Lenz contend that “what looks like the outcome of identity-driven processes … often results from political processes that are highly contingent”.
Read their article “The identity/policy nexus in European foreign policy” published in the Journal of European Public Policy to find out more about the nuts and bolts linking collective self-understandings and foreign policy outcomes.