Foreign policy analysis (FPA) in a classical sense entails focusing on agents (individuals or groups of individuals). In the case of the EU, FPA becomes more problematic. First of all, the question arises of what a foreign policy of the EU really means. The proposed paper defines EU foreign policy in a more narrow sense, restricting it to the CFSP/CSDP. Furthermore, the problem of identifying agents arises due to the complex institutional setup of the CFSP/CSDP. Although the final decisions are made at the level of the Council, the policy itself is drafted and prepared at lower levels of policy-making (working parties, committees and agencies). The paper will focus on these lower level policy actors of the CSDP policymaking process and assess their role in setting the discourse of EU’s foreign policies – a discourse, which is later used on higher levels of policymaking, like negotiation rounds and at the voting table of the Council. These actors are important because they are the ones that draft policies, materialize them in the form of written text, and thus set the discourse on a given topic. The hypotheses of the paper revolve around the assumptions that discourse is both shaped by and shapes norms, values and ideas (discourse theory, constructivism), which influence policy choices in institutions of the CSDP governance structures (newer institutionalist theories). Although discursive turns in new institutionalist approaches have already been developed (constructivist institutionalism, discursive institutionalism), there have been few or no attempts at all to translate them into an EU foreign policy analysis framework. The paper will attempt to propose such a framework and employ it on the analysis of the coordinative process in two cases of EU missions abroad, the EUPM Bosnia and EUTM Somalia.
