Specialisation in EU small states’ foreign policy: a new research agenda

Academic literature has long identified specialisation as one of the most important ways through which small states overcome the structural disadvantage of their size. There are many examples of specialisation for which individual EU members states are well-known or they praise themselves: Sweden and the gender dimension of CSDP operations, Estonia and cybersecurity, the Netherlands and the rule of law and Czechia and transition assistance. Despite the accepted value of specialisation, the academic debate does not offer a working definition and/or conceptual categorisation of what it means for a state to specialise in foreign policy or how to identify processes of specialisation and their perceived/effective existence. This is both surprising, given the alleged importance of specialisation for small states’ success, and obfuscating, because the lack of definition prevents us from studying the specialisation processes and implications in a systematic and comparative manner. This paper aims to offer a working definition and categorisation of the concept of "foreign policy specialisation". We argue that specialisation is too significant a concept not to be properly defined, especially in terms of how it is put in practice by EU member states. We also posit that distinguishing between a specialisation proper and other forms of foreign policy prioritisation opens up a number of important research questions. Constructing future research around the concept of specialisation would allow us to understand better not only the foreign policymaking of small states but also the dynamics and results of broader European foreign policy.