Analytic eclecticism and EU foreign policy (in-)action

Ten years after the EU began to deploy crisis management operations, the underlying drivers are still disputed. This state of theory is partly due to the staleness of many theoretical debates in international relations (IR). In response, a number of scholars have recently called for analytic eclecticism. Analytic eclecticism seeks to combine causal mechanisms from various theoretical traditions where this promises new insights into real-world phenomena. This article sets out to provide such an eclectic framework for the purpose of analyzing EU foreign policy action. It argues that the interventions the EU has undertaken in the framework of its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) can best be explained by a two-stage model. At the structural level, CSDP operations have been caused by (1) the challenges and opportunities that various crises abroad presented; (2) the structural pressure for action that outside actors have brought to bear on the EU in the attempt to push the Union to accept a greater share of the burden of policing the world; and (3) the widespread assumption among elites within the EU that EU governments had some responsibility for righting the wrongs of the world. Beyond this shared, generic disposition, however, the interests of individual EU governments were shaped by far more parochial assessments of the costs and benefits of specific undertakings. The article examines these governmental calculations, and suggests a conceptual framework for analyzing their interaction with the three structural drivers behind CSDP.