Sabancı University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

EUROPEAN STUDIES SEMINAR

Why Sacrifice Sovereignty?
A Non-Instrumental Explanation of State Support for Supranational Cooperation in EU Common Foreign and Security Policy

Osman Sabri KIRATLI

(University of Massachusetts-Amherst)

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

12:30 - 14:00   FASS 2034

Abstract:

On 29^th October 2004, the heads of the member states of the European Union signed the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) in Rome, Italy. Even though intergovernmentalism was still the defining characteristic of common foreign and security policies, a gradual move towards more supranationalism in those sensitive pillars was evident. Differing state positions during the exhaustive debates and negotiations processes for Draft Constitution have revealed that the member states no longer hold the same level of sympathy and preference for the preservation of intergovernmentalism in the CFSP and ESDP. Such development poses a challenge for the ‘instrumentalist approaches’ of international relations which entail arguments about strategic calculations and instrumental logic of states in creating institutions. This study aims to develop a non-instrumental approach to explain state support for supranational cooperation in the EU Common Foreign and Security Policies. Based on the outcome variable- that is the level of support for supranational reform of the CFSP during the European Convention and the subsequent IGC in 2003-2004, four cases have been drawn for an in-depth analysis: UK, which has always been reluctant to extend the Community method to foreign policy cooperation; Germany, which has traditionally advocated for more supranational integration, and lastly, Greece and Netherlands, two states with relatively high levels of support for supranational reforms despite the lack of easily identifiable benefits from such an outcome.

P.S.: The seminar will be in English.