Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy: A framework of EU foreign policy change

This book centralizes a set of questions: What happens to European foreign policy arrangements after a crisis hits? Is EU foreign policy changed as a consequence and if so, how and by whom exactly? And crucially: do things actually change?

While policy changes on a national level after a sudden crisis have been investigated, little has been done to find out how those processes work exactly within the EU. In this book, Ikani studies the decision-making processes of the European Union, to find out which factors determine if and how the EU decides to change its foreign policy course after crisis.

After explaining some of the theory, the book addresses five recent crises, as well as the policy changes that were made as a result: the Arabic uprisings, the Ukraine crisis of 2013/2014, the 'security crisis' that followed, the disinformation crisis, and the 2015 refugee crisis. Based on these cases Ikani created an analytical framework that students and researchers can use when looking to study policy changes in a different context. For example, if they want to know what the impact of the current war in Ukraine might be on European defense policies. But it can also be used to study how a worldwide crisis such as the COVID pandemic will effect domestic and foreign policies.
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