Discourse Analysis and Foreign Policy Analysis: Introducing Speech Act Theory in European Foreign and Security Policy

Asbtract This paper elaborates on an FPA approach of EFP and on the added value of certain social constructivist approaches relying on discourse analysis. While discourse analysis has sometimes been presented as competing with traditional approaches of FPA, both can also be seen as complementary, we will draw on a revised FPA framework (White, 2001) and highlight how a discourse analysis approach can help understanding the integration and formulation of European foreign policy, i.e. the processes through which actors interact to define issues on the European agenda and build up capabilities at both national and European levels. We suggest too that discourse analysis approaches can also account for the patterns framing the use of these capabilities in given contexts to achieve particular outcomes, and therefore shed new light on the implementation of European foreign policy. These approaches provide interesting and complementary tools for an analysis of the patterns and processes of foreign policy. In the case of EFP, they help overcome some of the major limitations of the EU-asan-actor approach (focusing on policy patterns rather than processes) and structural perspectives (mostly confined to macro-level analyses). Patterns and processes need to be analysed jointly if one is to develop comprehensive foreign policy analyses connecting agent-based and structural factors.