Voltolini, Benedetta
(2013)
Lobbying in EU foreign policy-making towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: exploring the potential of a constructivist perspective.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis explores how constructivist insights could help us to form a more
complete picture of lobbying in EU foreign policy-making, with a special emphasis
on EU foreign policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It demonstrates that
non-state actors (NSAs) such as business groups, NGOs, solidarity movements and
think tanks, are important players in the EU’s foreign policy-making. By sharing the
constructivist views on the embeddedness of actors and assuming that actors interact
with each other in order to make sense of the world, this thesis investigates lobbying
on the basis of three analytical dimensions; namely roles, frames and levels. It is
shown that NSAs lobbying the EU play a consensual role, which is based on
mutually legitimising social interactions that do not challenge the EU’s actorness and
policies towards Israel and Palestine. When combined with the use of legal or
technical frames, these consensual forms of interaction are conducive to a re-framing
of EU policies towards Israel and Palestine. In contrast, confrontational forms of
social interactions, combined with the use of political frames are more recurrent at
the national level. Finally, this thesis analyses how the national level is used, when
NSAs lobby the EU. It concludes that there is a partial Europeanization of lobbying
carried out by NSAs based in member states. The EU and national levels tend,
however, to remain quite disentangled from each other. The argument presented in
this thesis is tested in three case studies (EU-Israel trade relations, the UN Report
following the war in Gaza in 2008-2009 and the EU-Israel Agreement on
pharmaceutical products), which represent important aspects of EU foreign policy
and were frequently mentioned by NSAs and officials. Moreover, the national level
is analysed in the cases of France, the United Kingdom and Germany, which are the
three big member states of the EU and crucial players in EU foreign policy.
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