The French Exception Revisited. A Social-discursive Approach to French Security and Defense Policy within Europe and the Euro-Atlantic Area

French security and defense policy has taken a step change towards integration since the end of the Cold War, both within Europe (EU/CSDP and bilaterally, e.g. with the UK, Germany, and Italy) and the Euro-Atlantic area (NATO) more recently. However, while the range of scholarly explanations is broad – from realist relative-power arguments, budgetary and other liberal (-institutionalist) logics, to constructivist, identity-related approaches –, existing research is inconclusive when it comes to explaining the different (institutional) settings and scopes of French integrationist policies, struggling with questions about continuity or change of interests, strategy, norms, and identity. The paper argues that this deficit is due to the neglect of discursive approaches that understand the respective policies as constructions emanating out of social, discursive practice with particular French representations of reality and identity. It therefore suggests that French security and defense policies should be understood as a discourse/ discourses that develop different constructions of policies and that these discourses/ discursive formations have changed over time and cross cases. It sketches some empirical observations that shall serve as starting point for a larger analysis of French policy that has paramount implications for European politics. More theoretically, the paper elaborates that post-structuralist approaches to foreign policy analysis must not refrain from causality and explanation and thus contributes to a core dispute in the discipline that has not yet been addressed convincingly.