Performing Leadership in EU Foreign Policy: The Role of the High Representative in the European Union Global Strategy

This paper examines the nature of leadership in EU foreign policy. Despite broad agreement in the Lisbon Treaty to delegate significant formal leadership functions to the EU High Representative (EUHR) and the European External Action Service (EEAS), recent research has found that the exercise of leadership in EU foreign policy is contested (Aggestam & Johansson, 2017). The position of the EUHR is hybrid in nature and sits uneasily within the European governance system. Given this constrained context, what scope is there for leadership by the EU High Representative? Focusing on the formulation and implementation of the EU Global Strategy, this paper analyses the leadership strategies that the EUHR employed in the policy process. In contrast to mainstream leadership accounts that either emphasise personal or institutional factors, this paper draws on the ‘performative turn’ in International Relations theory and European studies to define leadership as a social role and speech act. This approach calls attention to the constitutive power of language in the performance of leadership. The empirical case study of the EU Global Strategy process sheds new light on how the EUHR employed two leadership strategies to circumvent the constrained state-based context of European diplomacy: (1) broadening the audience, and (2) framing threats. One of the conclusions drawn from the study is that the changing international context after the Brexit referendum result has offered new possibilities for the EUHR to perform leadership more effectively in the implementation of the EU Global Strategy.