The paper starts with a puzzle. EU foreign and defence policy is, to a large extent, formulated by groups of officials who, being mostly based in Brussels and socialized to Brussels norms, engage directly and autonomously (from the cabinets) in policy-making interactions. These diplomats produce a culture of consensus, which informs all the negotiations, and has moved the decision-making process well beyond intergovernmentalism. Yet, in many cases, the most likely outputs of these policy processes reflect the lowest common denominator of the member states’ positions or the preferences of the biggest states (among other sources, data from an original database of the author).
The argument of the paper is that greater attention should be paid to the entire normative and practical structure of diplomatic interactions. First, the legitimacy of pursuing national interests should not be underestimated in any institutional environment, and is a well-established norm even in dense and largely autonomous settings such as EU foreign policy. Second, the transformative and behavioural consequences of socialization are thinner than often assumed. Third, diplomacy and negotiations are practice-based activities. Practices are highly repetitive, and real change is much more difficult to achieve than it is usually recognised.
By critically revising the meaning and boundaries of consensus, the paper shows how disaggregated, largely autonomous (from the national capitals) national officials systematically produce intergovernmental outputs. The social construction of EU foreign policy occurs only to a partial extent.
