Old logics for new games : the appointment of the EU's High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy

Abstract

This article seeks to identify the main dimensions of the conflicts that arose around the choice of the European Union’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR). The article aims at developing a series of frames to describe systematically the nested games that surrounded the appointment and emphasise the interactions between party politics, institutional dynamics and intergovernmental bargaining. In the absence of an extensive literature, we have resolved to engage in a preliminary empirical exploration of the processes that led to the appointment of Catherine Ashton through an analysis of the Italian and British press on the different perceptions that prevailed in the two countries whose candidates were the main competitors in this highly controversial process. Our hypothesis is that, due to the relative lack of institutionalisation of the procedures and routines that characterised the HR’s appointment, member states would behave by following their institutionalised logics, based on intergovernmental bargaining.