Expected interests, or just interesting expectations? - How the EU’s bodies promote and prioritize policies in the EaP and ASEAN

Abstract

This thesis takes its starting point in that policy promotion previously has been discussed mainly as values or norms, and argues that policies are also constructed of interests. As such, this thesis examines the behaviour of the EU’s bodies when promoting and prioritizing policies in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN). It asks and answers the question of which policies that the bodies promote and prioritize, and whether the same policies are equally important in each of the regions. Two hypothesises are set up for the expected behaviour of each institution – the European Parliament (EP), the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. They build on the theoretical framework of institutionalism and role theory, and are tested through a basic data analysis (BDA). The model provides an analytical framework of characteristics and codes by which the content of documents provided by each of the three institutions, i.e. action plans and declarations are coded. Hence, this thesis use a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methodology, through which both the content of the text as well as the frequency of codes becomes evident. The conclusion is that there is a clear difference between promoting and prioritizing policies, as well as in how the EU’s bodies choose to behave in different regions. The concluding remark is that the bodies of the EU can be argued to behave on both self-interests as well as on basis of urgency.