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This article looks at ways in which the EU's institutional representatives and individual civil servants of the Commission and the European External Action Service frame their discourse on the EU's international role and values. It proceeds as follows. Firstly, it introduces the data and methodology employed in Discourse Historical Analysis. Secondly, it presents a section to illustrate the metaphors that have been adopted to organise collected material. It identifies three main patterns of discourse-making and associates them with metaphors coming from the Western European literature tradition: two figures coming from Voltaire's Candide – Candide and Pangloss – and a character from a Mozart opera, Don Giovanni. Finally, the article focuses on perceptions of the EU's international actions and its core underlying values.

The European Union (EU) diplomatic system can be conceived as representative of a system of governance, and, through this, of its constitutive independent units. The way in which the EU's political system is represented through diplomatic practices is telling of two interrelated aspects of the EU's international actorness. First, it reveals the link between the foreign policy of a non-state actor and sheds light on the division of competences that characterises the EU's foreign policy-making system. Second, it highlights the complex institutional and organisational features of a non-state diplomatic system. This article locates the puzzle of EU diplomatic activity in the general debate about changes in the institution of diplomacy. Secondly, it explains how post-Lisbon institutional arrangements have been translated into practice in two multilateral delegations: the delegation to the UN and the mission to the WTO in Geneva. It finally draws some preliminary conclusions. The article concludes that beyond competition over the attribution of competences in the EU's diplomatic governance, different ideas coexist about what 'locating the EU in the international scene' means. Pursuing a 'single voice' by unifying forms of external representation is not necessarily perceived as the most convenient strategy envisaged by all EU actors. While institutional actors tend to believe that coherence and strength may descend from a more unified system of representation, the member states tend to believe that, in certain circumstances, differentiation could increase the EU's strength.

This article aims to present an overall portrait of the Union as an international actor, as stemming from the visions that officials working in the delegations of the European Commission hold. The analysis proposed draws on different sources. First, an analysis of speeches, declarations, official statements and informative materials published on some 80 websites of the delegations. These websites propose a standardized presentation of 'the EU as a global player', which can help us to define the official position of the European Commission on the issue. An unofficial picture of the EU as a global player stems from the analysis of 48 semi–structured interviews. Although there is relative similarity in the presentation of the EU's international image, these offical and informal intepretations are not always interchangeable.

This edited volume explores European cultural diplomacy, a topic of growing interest across the scholarly and applied public policy communities in recent years. The contributions focus on Europe, culture and diplomacy and the way they are interlinked in the contemporary international context. The European Union increasingly resorts to cultural assets and activity for both internal and external purposes, to foster European cohesion and advancing integration, and to mitigate the demise of other foreign policy components, respectively. This calls for an analysis of the strategic role of culture, especially as it relates to the realm of EU external action. The chapters provide a conceptual discussion of culture in international relations and examine how this concept relates to cultural diplomacy and cultural strategy. The authors discuss roles and relationships with the EU's 2016 Global Strategy and current EU attempts to foster the EU's political and societal resilience.

1 Caterina Carta, Introduction: Cultural Diplomacy in Europe: Between Domestic and International Arenas -- PART I. Setting up the institutional machinery: tuning the different voices of European Cultural Diplomacy -- 2 Richard Higgott, EU Cultural Diplomacy: A Contextual Analysis of Constraints and Opportunities -- 3 Stuart MacDonald and Erik Vlaeminck, Culture, Language and Strategy: Definitions and Discourse in the EU's Strategic framework for Culture in External Relations -- 4 Caterina Carta and Angel Badillo, National ways to Cultural Diplomacy in Europe -- 5 Riccardo Trobbiani and Lina Kirjazovaite, EU Cultural Relations with the MENA -- 6 Silviu Piros and Joachim Koops, Capacity building in higher education as a catalyst for EU education diplomacy -- PART II. The role of Intra-European Cultural Diplomacy in the age of populisms -- 7 Richard Higgott and Virginia Proud, 'The Populist Nationalist Zeitgeist' and the Limits of European Cultural Diplomacy -- 8 Virginia Proud, Culture Under Populism; a nationalist agenda in an EU context -- 9 Caterina Carta and Eleonora Belfiore, 'Reaching across the fault lines?': The role of Cultural Diplomacy in post-Brexit Europe -- PART III. Perspectives on the future -- 10 Riccardo Trobbiani and Andrea Pavon-Guinea, Navigating Uncertainty: The Future of the EU cultural relations -- 11 Caterina Carta and Richard Higgott, Conclusion: Considerations on the strategic deployment of culture in Europe and beyond

Acknowledging the role of discourses as the entry door to social reality, the article highlights the value that discourse analysis (DA) can add to the cognate fields of foreign policy analysis (FPA) and international relations (IR). It argues that DA offers researchers an analytical platform to focus in parallel on the interaction between levels of analysis traditionally considered as separate (domestic/international, agent/structure, text/context). The first section of the article discusses the framing, generative, performative, and coordinative functions of discourse and highlights how DA helps disciplinary cross-fertilization. The second section reviews the way in which various perspectives on DA have approached the cognate fields of FPA and IR and makes the case for moving across theoretical and disciplinary boundaries. The third section critically reviews the methods of analysis that allow scrutinizing the connections between texts and context and the performative power of a word.

This introductory contribution frames the theoretical and methodological endeavour of the special issue. The underlying goal of the special issue is two-fold: On the one hand, it aims to shed light on the diversity of discourse theories and related toolkits for analysis. On the other hand, it aims at applying these approaches to the European Union's (EU) discursive practices, with special attention to foreign policy discourses. All contributions revolve around a central focus: the manifold ways in which various EU institutional, national or societal actors employ different discursive strategies (such as justification, legitimation, and argumentation) related to foreign policy with bilateral partners; within multi-lateral milieus or vis-a-vis domestic audiences. In the last section, the contributions to this special issue are briefly summarised. Adapted from the source document.

This article explores Russia's impact upon the cohesion of the European Union International Society (EUIS). The analysis proceeds from a systematic categorisation of Member States' positions towards Russia, using an ''index of friendliness towards Russia'' based on various indicators. This index allows us to analyse the relative positions of Member States towards the Eastern neighbour and to order them along an ideal continuum which goes from ''normative adamant'' to ''normative docile''. By taking a broad perspective of the different national attitudes, this article offers an innovative approach to the key question of EU-Russian relations. Existing cleavages and social differences among the members bear an important divisive effect on the development of the EUIS. The present analysis explores adherence to norms deriving from the widely accepted institutions of sovereignty and the market. While there is no doubt that these institutions boast complete devotion on behalf of EU Member States (MSs), translation into both common language and action proves to be hindered by social differences among members. The difference among the preferences of Member States towards Russia is then compared to the preferences expressed by the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during the 6th legislature. The analysis of MEPs' voting behaviours towards Russia explores whether there is a coincidence between the positions of the MSs and those of the MEPs, as representatives of the EU's societies.

Leading scholars in discourse analysis and European foreign policy join forces in this book, marking a real breakthrough in the literature. Not only do they offer original perspectives on European foreign policy, but they bring together various theories on foreign policy discourses that remain too often isolated from each other. The volume is the first full-length study on how to apply different discourse analytical approaches and methodologies to European foreign policy. The paperback edition makes for a unique course text.