From Coherence to Coheritization
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2018-05-15
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en
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Abstract
Over the past decade, EU external policy has become increasingly entangled by the notion of policy
coherence. Previously ‘siloed’ policy areas such as trade, agriculture, security, and development are
increasingly approached as challenges that can only be effectively resolved by addressing their positive
and negative interlinkages. While the European Commission is at times critical of the incoherencies
that arise out of these interlinked policy areas, it also calls to harness synergies between them. Paradoxically,
this approach to policy coherence thus both criticizes and embraces the existing structure of
global capitalism. This thesis argues that the Commission’s ambivalent approach to its external policy
can be best explained by combining insights from speech act theory and cultural political economy.
Agents and structures interact in a perpetual cycle of sense- and meaning-making (semiosis). Speech
acts are a way to express, reinforce, or change linguistic and extra-linguistic structures. By that, they
have a strong impact on the discursive realm, the institutional structure of the debate and the participation
chances of political actors. Through a combination of case study, social network analysis,
and interviews, the thesis suggests to understand the creation of policy coherence as a speech act, by
which the European Commission (re-)defines itself in relation to less industrialized countries, while
at the same time restructuring the discursive and institutional playing field of the European decisionmaking
on external policies.
Keywords: Policy Coherence, PCD, speech act, cultural political economy, development aid, DG DEVCO,
semiosis.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen