EU:s gemensamma utrikes- och säkerhetspolitik - En studie om dess uppkomst och institutionella utformning

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to explain the emergence of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, and its institutional shaping, by using elements of Neofunctionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism. Using Neofunctionalism, the Common Foreign and Security Policy can be explained both as a side-effect of Europe's economic integration, and as a way to maintain the former and the European Union's position as an economic superpower. The institutional shaping is a result of lack of convergence between important national interests. Therefore it rests on a firm intergovernmental base, with rigorously limited use of supranational decision-making. For Liberal Intergovernmentalism, geopolitics and ideology, and to a certain level log-rolling, have played important roles. The reunification of Germany convinced France to form an alliance between the two countries. France, determined to achieve an economic and monetary union, thus offered Germany a political union, including a Common Foreign and Security Policy on intergovernmental terms. Because of their existing big-power status, France and Great Britain had no interest to delegate national sovereignty. Hence they made sure to minimize supranational decision-making within the institutional framework, despite pressure from small and medium sized states, as well as Germany, a category of states that had long sought ways to enhance their respective foreign and security policy capacities.