Analysing the Position of the European Union in the United Nations System - An interdisciplinary Conceptual Framework

The topic of European Union (EU) participation in the United Nations (UN) system has only recently made it on the research agendas of political scientists. A first wave of studies tackled the subject primarily with approaches derived from EU foreign policy analysis. Parting from a critique of such approaches, this contribution engages in a two-fold effort of bridge-building: on the one hand, by injecting legal considerations into existing political science accounts, it presents an effort of interdisciplinary concept development; on the other hand, it uses global governance as an analytical lens for overcoming the divide between EU foreign policy studies and the discipline of International Relations. The resultant conceptual framework provides a useful analytical tool for getting to more comprehensive studies of the position the EU occupies in the UN system.status: publishe