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The european union's common foreign and security policy : transparency and effectiveness

Objectif

Until recently, the debate about the EU's capacity to establish itself as a credible actor in foreign affairs and the discussion over the legitimacy and transparency of supranational decision-making progressed mostly in isolation from each other. Yet, the more central institutions deal with foreign and security matters after the Kosovo conflict and the more they venture into the heartland of the nation-state, the more salient the question of legitimacy and participation becomes. The controversy over the restriction of access to Council documents in the area of foreign and security policy points to emerging research agenda, which combines both perspectives. However, many contributors to this de-bate assume an inevitable trade-off between fully informing civil society and the capacity of political actors to reach decisions and implement effective policies. Hardly explored is the contrary argument namely that effective, stable and legitimate decision-making mechanisms depend on the evolution of intermediary structures for transnational opinion formation. The proposed research project seeks to bring these strands of debate together by looking at the interrelationship between decision-making effectiveness and transparency in the field of the EU's foreign and security policy. It studies how the EU's decision-making for a deal with selected security issues and examines the extent to which these debates are reflected in the coverage of German, French and British media products. The projects aims to fill research gaps both in the area of foreign policy analysis and democracy theory. The most obvious contribution is to enhance my credentials for a career in academia through publications in international journals. After completing the two years as a post-doc at CEPS, I will be more widely employable both as a lecturer as well as a policy consultant. The project will also widen my area of expertise. My previous experience has been mainly in the area of integration theory and media studies. While I gained some experience in the field of the CFSP while working for the spokesperson of Commissioner van den Broek, the proposed project will substantially improve my knowledge in the field of foreign policy, security and defense. In the course of my research in Brussels, I hope to develop contacts with other researchers in this field as well as the broader foreign policy community. The building-up of transnational networks is particularly important for the empirical part of my research, which deals with media content analysis. The third training benefit associated with the research project is to hone my French skills needed for conducting some of the interviews.

Thème(s)

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Appel à propositions

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Coordinateur

CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN POLICY STUDIES
Contribution de l’UE
Aucune donnée
Adresse


Belgique

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Coût total
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