Since the polls first started to indicate that any election result other than a Hung Parliament was highly unlikely, politicians from the two major parties in particular have warned ominously of the inherent instability that would ensue if theirs was not returned with a clear majority.  Meanwhile, pundits and the “commentariat” have looked to our European neighbours for comparisons, with Germany and Italy perhaps the two most frequently cited examples of what coalition government might mean. 

Throughout these debates, there has been an undertone first that sharing power is something that is simply “not done” here (one commentator declared on Thursday night that coalitions are what they do “over in Europe”); and second that somehow having a smaller party in the position to make or break any potential new government is inherently illegitimate.  Why should the Liberal Democrats, with just 23% of the vote and 57 seats in the House of Commons (fewer, lest we forget, than they had in the previous Parliament) be able to somehow hold the country to ransom?

The reality, I would argue, is somewhat different.  If the last few elections in the UK have shown us anything, it is that the mass, tribal politics of old are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, while the 3-digit majorities delivered to New Labour in 1997 and 2001 are evidence simply of how anachronistic and inherently disenfranchising the ‘first-past-the-post’ system has become. 

Membership of the two big parties is in long-term decline.  Meanwhile, no party has won over 50% of the vote since the Conservatives in 1935 (with 53.5%), while the landslide victories of 1983 and 1987 for the Tories, and 1997 and 2001 for New Labour saw them receive 42.4% and 42.25, and 43.2% and 40.7% respectively – not the proportion of the vote that their massive Commons’ majorities would imply. 

Perhaps more importantly, as a consequence of devolution over the last 13 years regional governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland either are – or have been – governed by coalitions (indeed, in the case of Northern Ireland this has been a prerequisite for peace), elected using systems incorporating some form of proportionality.  The results may have been awkward and at times uncomfortable, but rather than leading to chaos and instability, they have been characterised by compromise, negotiation and the abandonment (or at least postponement) of parties’ more ideologically-driven or extreme policy positions – a situation, moreover, that would be recognised in many local councils around the country.       

So will 2010 be remembered as the election where the political system finally caught up with what the voters actually want?  Potentially, yes.  One of the main messages that the various party leaders sought to communicate over the last month was that the UK needed a new type of politics, and the electorate seems to have taken them at their word.  Against a back-drop of economic turmoil, rising unemployment and anxiety over the future, our political leaders find themselves in a position that many of their European counterparts will be only too familiar with: one where they have no choice but to talk to each other in order to govern, and to do so on the basis of consensus. 

Such a change should not be dismissed as merely the politics of convenience.  And while the more doom-laden predictions may yet come true that the new government is bound to collapse before its 5 years are up, with the Liberal Democrats cast into the outer darkness and two-party politics returning with a vengeance, such outcomes are not inevitable, particularly if a referendum on the Alternative Vote is successful.  Like it or not – and it may indeed be anathema to many of David Cameron’s MPs as well as to significant sections of the British media – May 6^th may be the day that British politics became a little more ‘European’.

The French President’s comments following Michel Barnier’s appointment to the crucial Single Market role were met by indignation and anger in the UK media: “Sarkozy whips up sympathy for the City” (Daily Express); “We are in charge now, Sarkozy tells the City” (The Times); and “Le grand stitch-up” (Daily Mail) provide just a few examples.  Meanwhile, on Radio Four’s ‘Today Programme’ yesterday David Buik, a respected and regular commentator on the City, fulminated at the possibility of French-inspired attempts to reduce its ability to be a global financial centre (thereby scuppering the chances of a swift economic recovery) through heavy-handed EU-level regulation. 

It is a familiar, if faintly depressing, pattern: the mischievous French prod while the perennially over-sensitive British react.  However, what has been largely ignored in the UK media is that Sarkozy’s comments were intended for a domestic audience that may have been critical of his “inability” to secure one of the two new, high-profile top jobs for France.  His suggestion instead that “real” power in the EU actually lies within its economic portfolios thus reveals once more the long-standing pathologies that exist on either side of the Channel, with Anglo-French rivalry this time played out through opposing economic models.

More importantly, however, this affair underlines the dearth of understanding of how EU decision-making functions, how policy is made and how individual Member States seek to influence outcomes.  The notion that because the Commissioner responsible for the Single Market is French, long-standing policies of liberalisation and openness will suddenly be rolled-back in favour of a dirigiste model of market intervention makes no more sense than assuming that because the EU’s Foreign Policy chief is British we will see a sudden upsurge in the EU’s levels of overseas military intervention.  This is demonstrated not least by the literature on how Member States organise their inputs through policy co-ordination at national and EU-levels (see for example Kassim et al, 2000, 2001), and by how policy, once agreed and legislated upon, is then implemented through the so-called “comitology” system (e.g. Dogan 1997; Dehousse, 2003). 

What this research highlights is the highly iterative nature of policy-making, where actors engage with one another regularly and intensively over extended time periods, and where “zero-sum” strategies tend to be less successful.  It also emphasises the importance of constructing broad-based coalitions involving a variety of Member States to achieve desired outcomes.  Finally, it suggests that while resources and organisation alone cannot guarantee the successful pursuit of policy goals, they can play a significant part.  In this regard, the UK and France are among the best-organised and best-resourced Member States.  They recognise the need to be present and heard in as many of the venues where real influence can be exercised – particularly the many different working groups that produce the all-important “first drafts” that frequently determine the nature and direction of any new proposal.  Moreover, once legislation has been passed, how it is then implemented offers another important opportunity for Member States either to promote measures they support, or slow those they do not.    

The picture that emerges, therefore, is one that is much more nebulous and complex than might be believed from the public pronouncements of national politicians.  While the allocation of Commission portfolios is a serious matter for Member States, it is only one piece of the jigsaw.  Moreover, while Messrs Sarkozy, Brown and the other EU heads of government would doubtless be delighted to think that a phone call to “their” Commissioner would ensure the pursuit of particular national objectives, this is not how the game is played.  Consensus-building and compromise remain the key ingredients of EU policy-making, even if French politicians occasionally resort to their long-perfected art of pushing British buttons.

While it is hard to argue with any of these, none of them is a new issue per se - and the fact that they remain unresolved cannot and should not be taken to mean that the EU is either unravelling, or that its foreign and defence policy have been the abject failures he is suggesting.

The problem confronting scholars and laymen alike when trying to judge the effectiveness of the EU is the terms of reference available to us.  The nation-state remains the key unit within the international system, so it is natural to take a state-centric perspective when determining whether an EU policy has succeeded or failed.  This raises at least two important issues, however.  The first is the danger of using such starkly binary language as “success” or “failure” – success or failure over what time frame and context, and compared to what?  The second is that whatever Eurosceptics might wish us to believe, the EU is not a super-state.  It has neither the institutional structures nor bureaucracy necessary for the generally centralised, unitary policy- and decision-making that define the modern nation-state.  Most importantly, it is dependent on Member States to enact and implement policies agreed within the arena it provides. 

To that end, therefore, it should be seen as a highly-organised forum within which co-operation has been increasingly institutionalised to provide the most efficient processes for the 27 Member States to work together on areas of mutual interest.  It is by no means perfect: it suffers from the same inefficiencies, information asymmetries and bureaucratic politics that afflict any modern administration, and which are made infinitely more complicated by its broad and diverse membership.  These have certainly impacted on its efforts to formulate coherent and effective policy, whether relating to the environment, the banking crisis, or foreign and defence policy.  However, they do not make its policies in these areas a “failure”.  They simply highlight that policy-making in an entity that is neither unitary nor centralised is inevitably going to be messy and imperfect. 

Grant’s thesis is that the EU is becoming increasingly irrelevant in a multipolar world which has more in common with the 19^th Century era of Great Powers than the hoped for a multilateral international system which provided the coda for the 20^th.  While this would doubtless fit with the realist viewpoints of the Waltzs and Kagans of this world, it does the Union an injustice, ignoring its unique impact on international relations.  Its economic power is well-documented, its influence in setting-up the multilateral trading regime overseen by the WTO undeniable.  Major powers such as the USA, China and India court it for access to its markets and are willing to implement its standards and regulations in such areas as consumer and environmental protection to do so.  Moreover, all its bilateral trade agreements now incorporate strong elements of conditionality, with clauses relating to human rights and democratic standards.  

Given that trade and economics underpin so much foreign policy, the EU’s ability to wield “soft” influence has been remarkably successful, ensuring that it cannot be ignored.  Yes, it is a multilateral organisation interacting with powers that enjoy a freedom of unilateral movement it does not, but its ability to draw them into multilateral frameworks is highly significant.  Meanwhile, its successes give the lie to the notion that multilateral organisations cannot be more than the sum of their membership, a perennial problem for the UN.

In contrast, the EU’s defence and security identity remains far less developed, reflecting the reality that integration in the spheres of foreign and defence policy has always been highly contested, with President de Gaulle providing the most high-profile, but by no means only, example of Member States’ unwillingness to concede too much autonomy in these areas.  The overblown rhetoric used by the framers of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) did not help, with Christopher Hill famously highlighting a “Capabilities-Expectations Gap” between what was promised in the CFSP as compared with the EU’s actual capabilities to deliver. 

There has, though, been significant integration and co-operation in this area.  CFSP was designed to provide a more institutionalised framework for the informal, ad hoc co-operation that had previously taken place under the banner of EPC (European Political Co-operation), itself a remarkable advance in inter-state co-operation at the time.  Moreover, it was as much a response to the conditions of the day internally – not least binding a newly-unified Germany into the EU’s multilateral setting – as a framework for the Member States’ collective interactions with the wider world.  In this sense it has been highly successful, particularly in establishing a “consultation reflex” between Member States before they make decisions or statements on foreign policy. 

Crises such as Kosovo and the split over the Iraq War clearly highlight weaknesses, but these are inherent in any system that formalises interdependence and equality between a large number of states.  Indeed, such splits are noteworthy because they are rare, not because they are the norm.  Again, this is not to suggest that the EU’s foreign policy-making processes and structures are either perfect or best-suited to the demands of modern-day crisis management.  Clearly they are not.  But it is worth pausing to consider what might have occurred in their absence.

As stated at the start, Charles Grant has correctly identified areas where the EU – and specifically its Member States – must improve and intensify their efforts.  However, co-operation in the fields of defence and security is always going to take place on an evolutionary, incremental basis.  There is never going to be a big-bang moment when Member States suddenly agree a unified, all-encompassing EU “foreign policy”.  Moreover, there needs to be more realism about where we expect the EU to have an impact and be represented.  In its immediate neighbourhood and in relations with Russia?  Of course.  In the 6-party talks on North Korea?  It is hard to make a case for this given that even India is not involved. 

With all this in mind, rather than defining the EU’s foreign and defence policies in black and white terms, it would be both fairer and more useful to judge them on the basis of the journey they have made thus far, as well as the path ahead.  Thus, it is perhaps more appropriate to grade them C+ – can and must do better.