Professor Tobias SCHUMACHER (European Neighbourhood Policy Chair, College of Europe, Natolin campus), Professor Dimitris BOURIS (University of Amsterdam), and Ms Maja OLSZEWSKA (European Neighbourhood Policy Chair, College of Europe, Natolin campus) have just published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Global Affairs (2016), entitled: "Of policy entrepreneurship, bandwagoning and free-riding: EU member states and multilateral cooperation frameworks for Europe’s southern neighbourhood". The article is now available here.
The article discusses EU and NATO member states’ foreign policies towards their southern neighbourhood. After mapping their southern neighbourhood-related interests, it discusses how they have been pursuing these interests – to the extent that they exist – within and beyond the EU and NATO and examines whether this pursuit has resulted in concrete foreign policy action.
The article focuses on the EU Big-5, i.e. France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany, as well as Portugal, usually considered a "small state". This choice allows for both a most deviant and a most similar case comparison and contrasts policy entrepreneurship (France, Spain, Italy) vis-à-vis Europe's southern neighbourhood with bandwagoning and free-riding tendencies (Portugal) and a mix of opportunity-maximising and/or fence-sitting practices (United Kingdom and Germany).