The EU has been singled out in the literature as a “normative power”, privileging cooperation and attraction rather than overt coercion in its conduct of foreign policy. In line with this aspiration, the EU has developed a specific foreign policy tool that has been institutionalized as a practice in its dealings with third countries, namely the so-called “political dialogues”. As of today, the EU conducts more than one hundred of such dialogues with almost all the countries of the world. This diplomatic practice is all the more interesting as it actually consists of a whole structure of dialogues unfolding at different levels, ranging from high-level officials to civil society actors via parliamentary representatives. Yet despite the salience of this practice, it has largely remained under-researched in the EU literature. Therefore, this paper proposes to explore the impact of the political dialogues promoted by the EU in its external relations. More specifically, by focusing on the communicative dimension of this social interaction and adopting a micro-level analysis, this research sheds light on the quality of these deliberative encounters in an attempt to understand whether the inherent benefits of a dialogue are fulfilled or not. From a theoretical perspective, an original framework of analysis is elaborated, featuring cutting-edge insights on the role of emotions and persuasion in the conduct of diplomacy. This theoretical framework is applied to the oldest and thickest dialogue that the EU currently conducts, mainly the dialogue with the United States of America with a special emphasis on the inter-parliamentary dialogue. Through the conduct of interviews with officials involved in these dialogues and participant observation in the meetings, this paper offers interesting findings regarding both the impact of these political dialogues and the distinctiveness of the European Union as a diplomatic actor.
