Why Sacrifice Sovereignty? A Non-Instrumental Explanation of State Support for Supranational Cooperation in EU Common Foreign and Security Policy

This dissertation presents a constructivist approach to explain varying levels of member state support for supranational cooperation in the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy in 2002 through 2004. It examines the possible effects of three independent variables—popular identification with Europe, normative parity between national foreign policy and CFSP institutions, and national threat perceptions, on the level of support for supranational reform of the CFSP during the European Convention and Intergovernmental Conference producing the proposals on CFSP eventually adopted in the Lisbon Treaty of 2007. After an in-depth analysis of four countries, Germany, Netherlands, UK and Greece, this study concludes that in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, the two ideational variables—level of identification with Europe and parity between national and EU foreign policy norms—are positively correlated with the level of support to supranationalism. Only in the case of Greece are threat perceptions the driving reason for Greek levels of support for reforms increasing the supranational character of CFSP. This suggests that ideational factors and threat perceptions offer two different routes to member state support for supranational integration in common foreign and security policies