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Bringing policy-making structure back in:
Why are the US and the EU pursuing different foreign
policies?
Sergio Fabbrini
Sergio Fabbrini is professor of Political Science at the University of Trento (Italy) where he directs the School of International Studies. He is also Recurrent Visiting Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of California at Berkeley (USA). He is the editor of the Italian Journal of Political Science. He has authored ten academic books, co-authored one book, edited and co-edited eight other books, and published several articles in scientific journals in the fields of comparative, American, European Union and Italian politics and political theory. Address: University of Trento, School of International Studies, via Verdi 8/10, I-38100 Trento, Italy – [email protected]
Daniela Sicurelli
Daniela Sicurelli is a Post-Doctoral fellow at the University of Trento (Italy). She has published an academic book and several articles in scientific journals in the fields of international and European Union politics. Address: University of Trento, Department of Sociology and Social Research, Piazza Venezia 41, I-38100 Trento, Italy – [email protected]
Abstract
While the major feature defining US foreign policy since the Cold War has been the use of coercive means such as military power and economic sanctions, the EU international role, despite recent attempts to develop military capabilities, remains that of a civilian power. Literature on transatlantic relations has explained this difference by stressing the different positions of the two actors in the international balance of power and pointing at their divergent value and normative frameworks. This article, by comparing the EU and US policy-making processes, introduces a further explanation. It argues that, although the two polities share the features of Compound Democracies, the different institutional organization of their foreign policy making processes has generated powerful incentives for pursuing different kinds of international action.
Key words: foreign policy, transatlantic comparison, development aid, security, international power
Published in International Politics, v. 45, n.3, 2008, pp 292-309.
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Introduction
Literature contrasting the European Union (EU) civilian/normative power with the United States
(US) military power is a growing industry (Manners, 2002; Whitman, 2002; Sjursen, 2006). EU
preference for supporting its own foreign policy (mainly) through development aid instruments and
US preference for supporting its own foreign policy (mainly) through military instruments have
been utilized for celebrating a basic (if not moral) distinction between the EU and the US as
international actors. Neo-realist and constructivist explanations of this difference prevail in the
literature. From a neo-realist perspective, such difference can be understood by making reference to
the positions of the US and the EU member states in the unipolar structure of power that took shape
after the cold war. While US foreign policy is ultimately the expression of the world military power,
EU member states, lacking comparable military resources, have opted for alternative strategies to
increase ‘stability of their external milieu’ (Hyde-Price, 2006, 226). They have used the EU as an
instrument for ensuring their regional hegemony, and they have done so primarily with soft power
means. From a constructivist point of view, the reason for the difference between the EU and US
foreign policies lies in the divergent views of the world consolidated in the two sides of the
Atlantic. This divergence is evident in the discourse of European officials, which shows that the EU
is constructing its identity as a normative power in sharp contrast to the US (Diez, 2005; Lucarelli
and Manners, 2006; Scheipers and Sicurelli, 2007).
Certainly, inter-state power relations and value and normative orientations of policy-makers
are important for understanding the different foreign policies pursued by the US and the EU.
However, what is lacking in those approaches is an analysis of the institutional processo through
which power relations and ideological justifications are transformed into policy decisions. We argue
that comparison between the two polities may prove fruitful in order to investigate the way their
foreign policy decisions are taken. What makes the EU and the US comparable is the fact that they
are different species of a common genus: the compound democracy. Compound democracies are the
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outcome of the aggregation of distinct and separated states (or territorial units) and their citizens.
Because of the asymmetrical relations between those units (in terms of demographic size and
economic capability), compound democracies are organized along the principle of multiple
separation of powers (at the centre and between the latter and the peripheral units). Compound
democracies (such as the US and the EU) are, thus, not just federal or federalizing systems, where
the power is separated only at the vertical level. Indeed, all the other established democratic federal
systems (such as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, and even India) are organized, at
the centre, along the lines of fusion of powers (that is they are parliamentary systems, although in
Austria the President is popularly elected). The only exception is Switzerland, which is another
species of compound democracy (not considered here because of its low level of international
exposure). Indeed, the US and the EU are both ‘peace pacts’ among distinct states. By design in the
US and by necessity in the EU, the building of a union of states has represented an attempt to go
beyond Westphalia, or better to domesticate the international relations of neighbouring sovereign
states. For this reason, both unions had to combine inter-states with supra-states features, because
the latter constitutes a guarantee for the respect of the former.
It goes without saying that the US and the EU differ significantly in terms of
institutionalization of their compoundness (which is fully developed in the US and not yet in the
EU). However, they display similar institutional logics. For this reason, it seems reasonable to
investigate why they are pursuing foreign policies which differ in kind and not only in degree. In
other terms, it is worth asking why the EU has not become a military power, although at the
regional level, as it is the US, which is of course a military power at the global level. That
difference, in other words, cannot be explained only through the fact that the US is a much more
consolidated compound polity than the EU. This is true, of course. But, nevertheless it needs to be
explained why the still not-consolidated EU has chosen to follow a course of action which differ in
quality from the one followed by the US, notwithstanding they are facing similar challenges. For
understanding why US foreign policy is (primarily) based on military means and negative
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conditionality (sanctions) and its development aid policy is subordinated to security and defense
goals, and why the EU prioritizes development aid, and specifically the use of positive
conditionality (conditioned aid), as its main foreign policy instrument, it is necessary (also) to look
at the different institutional organization of foreign policy making in the two polities.
The article is structured as follows. First, we will identify the difference between EU and US
foreign policies, epitomized by their approach to security and development issues. Second, we will
discuss the argument of the EU and the US as comparable compound polities. If the EU and the US
are both compound polities, although with different stages of consolidation, then one might expect
differences in the degree and not just in the kind of foreign policy. Third, because that did not
happen, then we will argue that those differences to have to do (also) with the different institutional
organization of the foreign policy-making process in the two polities.
US and EU development aid and security policies
The focus on development aid or security policies epitomizes the different approaches to
foreign policy between the EU and the US. The group of the EU member states has historically
been the major donor of development aid, while the US has been the weakest donor (in percentage
of Gross National Income, GNI) for the last 30 years. Wagh et al. (2006) analyze the changes in
Official Development Aid (ODA) in the period 1960-2004 for two groups of countries: the group of
countries in the lowest level in percent of GNI (Italy, the US and Japan) and the group of the
greatest donors (Denmark, Luxemburg and Norway). Among these states, the US is the only donor
whose amount of aid shows a decreasing trend since the 1960s, whereas the group of EU member
states holds the highest position. In 2004 (before the enlargement to 10 new countries) the group of
the (then) 15 states members of the EU was the greatest donor internationally both in absolute terms
and in percentage of GNI, providing more than half of the global ODA. After the enlargements of
2004 and 2007 (the EU is now constituted by 27 member states), the EU has further increased its
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contribution to development aid in absolute terms. In 2005, after enlargement to 10 new states, the
EU provided 55% of global ODA. Thus, enlargement has not fostered substantial reallocation of
funds from development aid to other internal policies of the EU.
On the contrary, the US has considered development policy subordinated to its security
policy. It has allocated development aid on the basis of its own strategic criteria (Mavrotas and
Villanger, 2006). In 2006, for example, 36% of US development aid was directed to North Africa
and (especially) the Middle East as opposed to 14% of EU development aid to these areas. EU
member states have not prioritized strategic targets of development aid, with the exceptions of
France and Great Britain, that have favored their former colonies or those countries that have voted
in unison with them in the United Nations or UN (this is true also for Germany, and especially the
US, Mavrotas and Villanger, 2006). Moreover, the EU member states provided more aid to
multilateral organizations than the US. In 2005, for example, the fifteen member states of the EU
sitting in the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD allocated almost 30% of
their ODA to multilateral institutions. The amount of ODA the US allocated to multilateral
institutions in 2005 corresponded to 8% of the total US ODA (see Table 1). In other words, the US
allocated more than 90% of its ODA to unilateral aid, while the fifteen EU member states provided
a smaller percentage (70%) of their average ODA to unilateral aid.
Table 1 here
US and EU development aid policies differed not only in quantitative terms but also in their
approaches to conditionality, although that difference has decreased in more recent years. US
development aid policy tends to be based on negative conditionality. The US has extensively used
sanctions (economic, military, diplomatic and financial restrictive measures) as a foreign policy tool
since the 1980s. The use of restrictive measures as an instrument for US foreign policy has
increased after the end of the Cold War, although not in Latin America (Marinov, 2004). Among
the countries where the US has recently imposed sanctions are its main foes, such as Iran, Iraq,
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North Korea and Syria. The EU has proved less oriented than the US towards the imposition of
sanctions (Hazelzet, 2005), preferring to pursue a policy of positive conditionality. Certainly, with
the end of the Cold War, also the EU has started to use sanctions as an instrument of its foreign
policy. In fact, the number of sanctions imposed by the EU has steadily increased since the 1990s.
In the year 2000, both the EU member states and the US were involved in 70 per cent of all cases of
sanctions applied on illiberal governments (Marinov, 2004). Nevertheless, a difference in the two
approaches to foreign policy remains, given the fact that the EU tends to privilege positive
conditionality measures.
If the US has been a laggard in development aid policy, it has been a formidable front-
runner in military policy. In particular its military expenditure has dramatically jumped after the
terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The exercise of military power has been the main feature of
US foreign policy since the end of the 1990s and specifically during the period 2001-2008 (see
Figure 1). On the contrary, the EU, that has not even a military budget, has used the military
resources of some of its member states only in the framework of broader UN (and NATO) missions.
Since 2003, when the first mission took place, the EU has carried out only four military missions
(two in Congo, one in Bosnia-Herzegovina and one in Macedonia). Moreover, these missions had a
short mandate and were restricted to small geographical areas.
Figure 1 here.
In sum, in the period following the end of the Cold War, when the Treaty of Maastricht set
the legal basis for CFSP, the US and the EU have pursued radically different strategies in the
international system. The EU has focused mainly on development aid policy, thus promoting
(explicitly or implicitly) the idea of itself as a civilian power. The US has focused mainly on
security policy, thus favoring (explicitly or implicitly) an interpretation of itself as a military power.
Is it plausible to assert that the former is the champion of soft power and the latter of hard power
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(Nye, 2004)? How could we explain the differences between the EU and the US approaches to
security and development (as synthesized in Table 2)?
Table 2 here.
The institutional structure of compound polities
What makes the EU and the US comparable
The EU and the US are two different species of the same political genus: the compound
democracy model (Fabbrini, 2007). The compound model is proper of polities which have the
features of both an inter-state (intergovernmental) and a supra-state (supranational) organization. A
compound polity is a union of states and their citizens. At the founding moment, states are the basic
units of the polity, in the sense that citizens intervene in the founding as members of one or another
of the constituent territorial units. Through the union, the states agree to pool their sovereignty
within a larger integrated supra-state or supranational framework. They do so because such unions,
to use the formidable expression elaborated by Hendrickson (2003), are primarily peace pacts. In
their own way, both the US and the EU are an attempt to go beyond balance of power system for
promoting peace and cooperation between independent states sharing a common territory.
In the US, the thirteen states wanted to avoid the experience of the European state system,
where war was the final arbiter of the inter-states relations of power. Indeed, the creation of a
European-type state system in the new world, with its implications of fostering rivalries between
sovereign units, would have created opportunities for intervention by the great powers of the old
world, thus jeopardizing the recently acquired independence of the new world (Deudney, 2007). At
the origins of post Second World War European integration stood the idea that a new war between
traditionally rivaling states should be avoided favoring their cooperation on economic issues (Haas,
1958), thus entrusting the management of the security side of the peace pact to a non-European
power as the US (called to exercise its leadership, however, within the multilateral structure of
NATO, Ikenberry, 2006). Although in different historical periods, the building of a compound
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polity was considered to be in both shores of the Atlantic the only viable answer to the twin dangers
of anarchy or empire, dangers which have been regularly produced by the Westaphalian inter-states
systems of balance of power. One might add that the US was the explicit answer to an implicit
threat of war, whereas the EU was the implicit answer to explicit experiences of war. In both the EU
and the US, the post-Westphalian strategy has implied the formation of a institutional structure
which segments sovereignty rather than centralizes it.
The US compound polity
Since the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia in 1787, the US has been explicitly
designed as a ‘compound republic’ (Ostrom, 1987) or a ‘republic of republics’ (Forsyth, 1981).
Sovereignty was fragmented between the federated states and the federal state, and thus between
separated institutions within the latter (Senate, House of Representatives and President). Once
defined the few competences of exclusive control by the federal centre, all the remaining ones were
recognized as proper of the federated states. At the federal centre, the separation among
governmental institutions was further secured by giving them different institutional interests to
protect. Or better, connecting each of them to a different electoral constituency and staggering the
time frame of their institutional mandate. This created incentives for the formation of multiple and
concurrent majorities in the separated institutions at the various levels of the system, in such a way
that an ‘institutional ambition’ could check another ‘institutional ambition’. Because the
jurisdictional powers of these various institutional entities have to overlap for making possible the
functioning of the checks and balances mechanism, inevitably such overlapping has also generated
decision-making paralysis or stalemate in crisis situations, the most dramatic instance being the
Civil War of 1861-65.
Nonetheless, the US compound polity was able to institutionalize itself thanks to particular
conditions, namely a low involvement in international affairs (which were European affairs in the
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19th century), thus reducing the incentives to centralization (Mead, 2002). Indeed, in the 19th
century, foreign policy was largely controlled by the state representatives in the Senate (the
senators, in fact, were nominated by the state legislatures till the XVII constitutional amendment of
1913). For all that century, the US did not have a military policy as such. The same Civil War was
militarily run from the Congress more than the presidency. The US has to wait the end of the
Second World War for building a stable military establishment directed by the defense department
(Snow and, Drew 1994). Thus, for a long time, the US was a security-consumer (and not a security-
producer as it has become since the second half of 20th century), benefiting from British marine
protection, thus dedicating its own resources and energies to continental enlargement and the
building of a common trans-states market (Fabbrini 2004). Indeed, the new republic was able to
legitimize itself by virtue of the economic success that ensued from the ever-expanding nature of its
continental market (Goldstein, 2001). Isolation from European affairs and promotion of internal
economic growth contributed to create the conditions for institutionalizing the compound republic.
After the Civil War of 1861-65, it become usual to say, in intellectual as in the ordinary language,
‘the US is’ instead of ‘the US are’ as in the previous period (Wiebe, 1995).
US compoundness was challenged between the end of the 19th century and the Second
World War. Under the pressure first of tumultuous domestic industrialization and then of growing
international exposure, the US started to alter its traditional institutional patterns and to create a real
and proper federal centre (Skowroneck, 1987; Higgs, 1987). It needed a viable federal state, both to
regulate the economy and, above all, to promote and preserve its geopolitical interests. Politics
became nationalized as never before, thus upsetting the equilibrium which favored the states in the
19th century. If nationalization of American democracy in the first half of the 20th century entailed
redefinition of the matrix which connected states and federal powers, its internationalization in the
second half of that century required a radical restructuring of the decision-making relations between
the latter (Orren and Skowroneck, 2004). However, that restructuring took place within an unaltered
constitutional framework (Ackerman, 1991). After the Second World War the US has come to
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institutionalize two different decision-making regimes, one involving all the institutions of
government in domestic policy and one restricting decision-making to few actors in foreign policy
(Wildavsky, 1975). It was a political convention which introduced two different practices within the
same constitutional order.
Thus, the country’s international involvement triggered by the Second World War and
subsequently the Cold War has provided the President with the ideological justification he never
had to become more influential than Congress in foreign policy (Schlesinger, 2004). In terms of
external sovereignty (Krasner, 1999), the US became much less fragmented than in the past.
Certainly, the defeat in Vietnam and the resignation of President Nixon following the Watergate
scandal triggered a mobilization of interests and institutions opposed to presidential centralization.
Congress regained significant influence in the field of foreign and military policy, while the
credibility of the presidency collapsed to an equal extent (Polsby, 2004). From the 1970s to the
1990s, presidential leadership was constantly challenged, regardless of the President’s party
(Calleo, 2000). This produced a ‘new political disorder’ even in foreign policy (Dahl, 1994).
Indeed, foreign policy was privatized as it happened in many regulatory policies (Jervis, 1999).
Moreover, the tendency for a separated system to foster political disaggregation and to confuse
governmental responsibility was heightened by the institutionalization, between 1969 and 2000
(formally, in 2001-2002 the Senate had a Democratic majority by one vote), of a divided
government regime, with each of the two parties in control of one of the separated institutions of
government (Ware, 2002).
Yet, the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001 restored large margins of maneuvering to
the President, also because in 2002-2006 the US had again a unified party government, with the
Republicans in firm control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency (Hacker and Pierson,
2005). In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the presidential leadership of the separated
government has become unquestioned. Indeed, analyzing how that leadership was exercised by
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President George W. Bush, some scholars (Rudalevige 2005) have spoken of the return (after the
experience of the 1960s) of a ‘new’ imperial presidency, while others (Lieven, 2004) have
compared the US of the beginning of 21st century to the centralized European great powers of the
beginning of the 20th century. However, the mid-term congressional elections of 2006 which
registered the success of the Democrats in both the House of Representatives and Senate, creating a
new divided government, have again introduced powerful constraints on the decision-making
primacy of the President. After all, Congress still retains its formidable powers of checks and
balances on presidential behavior, although it decided not to use them in the previous period of
unified Republican party government (Mann and Ornstein, 2006).
In sum, in the US, the post Second World War challenges coming from the international
exposure have been met by a political convention between the main institutional actors. This
political convention recognized the President as the main actor of foreign policy, although he had to
exercise his leadership within the constraints of the constitutional system of checks and balances
(Fabbrini, 2005).
The EU compound polity
The growth of the EU in the second half of the 20th century represents a radical
transformation of European politics (Judt, 2005). The EU is the most advanced experiment in the
construction of a supranational or supra-states system in existence worldwide today (Hix, 2005).
The EU is not an international organization because it has supranational features which
institutionalize, and thus constrain, the cooperation among previously rival states. Though formally
still sovereign, the European nation states have witnessed the migration of a considerable amount of
their sovereignty to the supranational institutions. Gradually, the European nation states have
become EU member states (Sbragia, 1994), with few exceptions such as Norway and Switzerland.
A silent divorce between sovereignty and authority has thus occurred in Europe (Caporaso, 2000).
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Decision-making power over a growing number of traditionally domestic policy issues has been
transferred from the member states to the Community institutions. Of course, the nation states are
part of those institutions, but their individual representatives participate in a collective decision-
making process that dilutes their influence and power as single member states. Authority over the
decisions that they must implement at home is shared with other member state and Community
officials and representatives.
As it happened with the US, the institutionalization of the EU was made possible by a
specific condition: its international isolation during the long Cold War period. Such isolation,
however, was protected by NATO's system of military alliance (Fabbrini, 2004). If it is true that
the EU started as a peace pact, it is also true that the pact among its member states was militarily
guaranteed by a ‘third’ power, acceptable to all also because it was (geographically) a non-
European power (Ickenberry, 2000). Thus, with a financial budget unconstrained by military or
security spending, the EU member states were able to foster economic and social development
which ensured the overall institutional success of the integration process. As it has become
institutionalized, the EU has gradually acquired the features of a proper compound polity. At the
supranational level, the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the Commission and the
European Parliament have come to share the decision-making power. Although at the very
beginning of the integration process the Council of Ministers was the predominant institution, the
development of the integration process strengthened each of those institutions without decreasing
the power of the others. Indeed, in multiple separations of power systems, the relation between
separated institutions has a positive-sum game character (and not a zero-sum game one as in fusion
of powers systems).
Thus, the EU has developed its supranational side without detriment to its intergovernmental
one. It was this combination which has produced the so called Community method which has
affected a growing number of public policies. However, once the EU has had to face (with the end
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of the Cold War) the new challenges coming fro the transformation of the international system
(Cox, 2006), this method was not applied to foreign policy. With the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, the
EU has inaugurated three different constitutional orders in the form of three pillars. The First Pillar
(concerning economic and social policies) is supranational whereas the other two (concerning
foreign and justice policies) are intergovernmental. Certainly, even with the creation of an
intergovernmental pillar, the EU member states are no longer able to exercise exclusive authority on
their external sovereignty (Smith, K.E., 2003). Certainly, a form of cooperation has started among
them on security and defense. Nevertheless, foreign policy making has maintained a strong
decentralized character. Thus the EU has come to control those policies that, within federations, are
located in the federated states, while the traditional competences of the federal level in federations
(such as foreign policy) remained largely in the hands of the EU member state. This is why Sbragia
(2005) has defined the EU a ‘reversed federal state’. Once defined the institutional analogies
between the US and the EU, it is thus possible to address the question of why they have pursued,
after the end of the Cold War, different foreign policies. A foreign policy focused mainly on
security, in the case of the US, and a foreign policy focused on development aid, in the case of the
EU.
Foreign policy making in the US and the EU
Foreign policy-making in the US
With the end of the Cold War and especially after the terrorist attack of 11 September, 2001,
the affirmation of national sovereignty has become the guiding principle of US foreign policy
(Jervis, 2005). Security and military policy, already under the control of the presidency, has become
even more centralized. Indeed, after 11 September, within the presidency, foreign policy came to be
controlled more by the defense department than by the state department (Burke, 2007).
Development aid policy, on the contrary, has remained largely decentralized and fragmented. Thus,
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with the War on Terror, the presidency and its military branch have claimed a sort of unquestioned
supremacy in deciding the reaction to crisis situations and external unconventional threats. Indeed,
President George W. Bush has even tried to make a step further. Through a daring interpretation of
article II, section 2.1, of the constitution (‘The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States…’), President George W. Bush has claimed to have the power also to
declare and not only to make the war (contrary to what the constitution, art. I, section 8.11, recites:
it is the power of Congress ‘to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make rules
concerning Captures on Land and Water’) (Campbell, Rockman and Rudalevige, 2008). Thus, in
the 2000s, concentration of powers in the hands of the President has gone hand in hand with a
foreign policy focused mainly on military intervention.
Centralization of decision-making has taken place also with respect to sanctions policy. US
policy-making in this field, although officially fragmented, has become de facto largely centralized
in the hands of the President. Certainly, decisions related to suspension of aid or related to trade
sanctions are subject to the ordinary legislative procedure. If the President opposes its veto to a
sanction approved by the Congress, the latter has the power to override it. As it did in 1986, for
example, when the Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto on the law introducing severe
sanctions against South Africa (through the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act). However, despite
the 1986 case, the Congress rarely had the capacity to override the veto of the President. De facto,
the President has come to acquire the authority to waive application of sanctions every year and,
given its diplomatic prerogatives, has played a central role in the management of those sanctions
(Hazelzet, 2005). While security and sanctions policies have gone through a centralization process
within the presidency, development aid policy has remained fragmented between the Congress and
the President.
As the OECD (2007) comments, ‘the growing number of official United States Government
entities that deliver foreign aid (perhaps as many as fifty separate government units) operate with
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considerable autonomy. While they carry out their functions under the general guidance of the
secretary of state, they have sometimes surprisingly weak linkages to each other and relatively
modest systematic opportunity to co-ordinate their respective parts of United States Government
aid’. USAID, the largest of these bodies, has to respond to several committees of a Congress, which
was, during its Republic domination of 1995-2006, quite skeptical of development aid programs
(Thiel, 2004). In those twelve years the development aid budget was severely cut. Republican
leaders, included the arci-conservative Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee during the 1990s, even proposed the elimination of USAID within a radical reform of
the state department (Hook, 2003).
In sum, the war on terror has further accelerated the Westphalization of the US. A
contradictory outcome for the country that had most contributed to create the multilateral structure
of the international system after the Second World War. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, without UN
Security Council authorization, epitomizes such transformation of the US. A transformation
supported also by important sectors of the Democratic Party, as shown by the bipartisan refusal in
Congress to ratify international treaties such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto
Protocol during the first George W. Bush presidency (2001-2004). One might argue that the US,
which at the end of the 18th century tried to go beyond Westaphalia, has become at the beginning of
the 21st century the strongest supporter of the Westaphalian interpretation of sovereignty
(Hendrickson, 2006). National sovereignty (captured by the ‘America first’ motto) was affirmed as
the guiding principle of US international choices. Keohane (2002, 744, italics in the text) has
remarked that, ‘as the EU has moved away from classical conception of external sovereignty, the
United States has continued to embrace it, contributing to divergence in their policies, and to
increasing discord in their relationship. I do not claim that their different notions of sovereignty are
the principal cause of strains in the Euro-American relationship. However, they are good indicator
of divergence’.
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Foreign policy-making in the EU
While US foreign policy went through a process of Westphalianization, the EU has
developed a ‘post-modern’ (Caporaso, 1996), ‘extra-national’ (Smith, M., 2003) or ‘post-
Westphalian’ foreign policy’ structure (Manners, 2002). A post-Westphalian foreign policy
structure lacks ‘the key central institutions and instruments characteristic of foreign policies based
on statist or what might be termed modernist assumptions, but nonetheless significant as an
expression of trends in global politics more generally’ (Smith, M., 2003, 558).
The end of the Cold War has called the EU to assume a larger international responsibility.
However, with the decision taken at Maastricht (1992) to subtract foreign policy making from the
Community method (which emphasizes the role of the supranational institutions such as the
Commission and the European Parliament), the chances for the development of a supranational
foreign and security policy were institutionally curtailed. Also the recently created European
Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) (1999) was interpreted as manly an intergovernmental policy
(Howorth, 2007). Even the Constitutional Treaty of the EU, approved by all the member states in
October 2004 in Rome and thus rejected by French and Dutch voters the following year, which
aimed to merge the three pillars, preserved nevertheless unanimity voting for most CFSP and ESDP
decisions. A principle thus transferred in the Lisbon Reform Treaty of December 2007. Certainly,
by fostering inter-state coordination, the EU has tried to build a foreign policy that is different from
the sum of the foreign policies of its member states. At least, the EU has not 27 different foreign
policies and certainly a process of cross-pillarization has developed in more recent years. As Stetter
(2004, 724) remarked, ‘functional context of the EU polity in general and EU foreign policies in
specific have fostered the emergence of a cross-pillar politics setting in EU foreign affairs’.
EU official documents (such as the European Security Strategy or ESS adopted in Rome by
the European Council in December 2003, see Berenskoetter 2005) show the ambition of the EU to
17
become a global player in both security and development policies, able to face international threats
such as terrorism and poverty. However, different interests among its member states have precluded
the EU to pursue a common (that is, supranational) policy in security issues. Indeed, the Iraq war
exemplified the difficulties facing the EU at that regard. Given the institutional impossibility to
develop a EU foreign and security policy, development aid has proved to be an excellent arena for
the EU’s will to increase its presence in international affairs. In fact, development aid policy falls
within the procedure of the First Pillar. According to this procedure, the Commission has the
monopoly of policy initiative, and the European Parliament has co-decision making powers with the
Council (operating under the clause of qualified majority voting). EU member states do not have
veto powers with respect to First Pillar decisions. EU member states provide funds for development
aid programs, but the Commission has a certain degree of autonomy in the management of those
funds. Thus, while US policy making concerning development aid is fragmented and subordinated
to geo-strategic considerations, EU development aid policy is based on a more supranational logic,
with Brussels institutions playing a relevant role. As Thiel (2004, 16) remarked, ‘the European
Commission and Parliament have (relative) freedom in pursuing trans-national goals through the
funding of EU’s aid’.
As opposed to development aid, EU sanctions policy remains institutionally fragmented.
Most decisions related to economic and financial sanctions are included in the Second Pillar and
therefore require unanimity in the Council. A Common Position of Joint Action needs to be adopted
by unanimity in order to impose sanctions on specific countries (articles 60 and 301), although
decisions related to the implementation of those sanctions require qualified majority voting and the
Commission has room of maneuver in deciding how to implement them. This cumbersome
procedure explains why the EU cannot easily pursue a sanctions policy as the US does (Hazelzet,
2001). Moreover, EU law does not provide its member states with incentives to carry out unilateral
sanctions. The Treaty of the EU allows member states to impose unilateral sanctions only if those
sanctions do not conflict with EU foreign policy (Kern, 2006). EU foreign policy concerning
18
sanctions is based on the notion of preferences for UN regimes (Kreutz, 2006), which provides a
further obstacle to unilateral decisions of the EU member states (Hazelzet, 2001). Indeed, the
increased use of sanctions by the EU since the 1990s can be explained with the fact that most of
those sanctions have been in accordance with UN resolutions (Drezner, 2003).
Conclusion
The institutional analysis of foreign policy-making might help to better understand why the
EU and the US pursued different approaches, thus integrating realist and constructivist
explanations. That analysis shows that the foreign policy strategies of the two compound polities
are rooted in different structures of foreign policy making.
Although the US and the EU share the features of compound polities, the different
institutional organization of the policy process has generated powerful incentives for pursuing
different kinds of international action. These institutional mechanisms have been important, not
only in mediating between external challenges and internal adaptation, but also in promoting
different ideological justifications of international action. The US has reacted to the Cold War and
thus to the 11 September, 2001 terrorist attacks with a further centralization of its foreign policy-
making process in the hands of the President and an utmost re-affirmation of its external
sovereignty. This has pushed foreign policy instruments (as development aid) not compatible with
the security interests in a secondary position. In the EU, on the contrary, institutional constraints
have opposed centralization of CFSP and ESDP decision-making process, including the use of
unilateral sanctions. Given these obstacles to centralization of security policy, the EU has reacted to
pressures for playing a more active role internationally by developing a civilian, rather than
military, policies. Policies such as development aid which are largely controlled by supranational
institutions. If it is true that the EU is a civilian/normative power by self-representation, then it is
also true that it has become so also by necessity. In sum, without discarding the influence of
19
external factors and the relevance of ideological justifications, it seems plausible to conclude that
the different internal organization of foreign policy making has contributed to the development of
different kinds of foreign policies strategies in the US and the EU.
20
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Tables and figures
Table. 1 Distribution of ODA to Multilateral Organizations in 2005
US DAC EU countries
million $ % million $ %
ODA to unilateral
programs
25.279 92 47.725 70
ODA to
Multilateral
Organizations
2.343 8 8.020 30
ODA total 27.622 100 55.745 100
Source: elaboration of data from OECD (2007).
Fig. 1. US Military expenditure since 1998
300
350
400
450
500
550
600
650
700
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Years
Dol
lars
(bi
llion
s at
200
7 pr
ices
)
Source: Shah, A. (2007)
27
Table 2. EU and US approaches to security and development
US EU
Security Based on the value of national
security and on the use of hard power
instruments (since the Cold War).
Based on the value of international
law and of the use of soft power instruments
(despite attempts to develop military power).
Development Mainly based on sanctions and
subordinated to national security goals.
Mainly based on aid and oriented to
broader goals of structural stability.
