ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the book’s analytical framework. It first explores the concept of EU foreign policy coherence between different policy areas. Its subsequent discussion is then focused on outlining how concepts developed for Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) help to conceptualize the EU’s behaviour in complex Association Agreement negotiations. Through an outline and adaptation of analytical models such as bureaucratic politics to the EU’s foreign affairs context, its utility for analysing EU negotiation behaviour is shown, and the theoretical model is then developed in detail. The model emphasizes, amongst others, the presence of divergent positions between individual institutional actors, their resistance to changing existing policies, and their autonomy in the EU’s external relations policy process as crucial elements determining the EU’s behaviour in complex negotiations. This chapter also briefly introduces the data collection and methods used, as well as discussing the book in the context of existing research.
