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Using discursive institutionalism as an analytical framework, this article addresses how national actors build, coordinate and communicate discourses on EU defence policy (CSDP) at home. The empirical analysis is based on a comparative study of substantive and interactive discourses in France and Ireland, two contrasted cases. It demonstrates that France and Ireland frame and interpret elements of CSDP that best fit their needs, use them to promote their defence agenda in a legitimate and ‘European’ way and present CSDP as a natural continuation of their preferences. These defence agendas revolve around the preservation of France’s exceptionalism and Ireland’s neutrality. Discursive institutionalism, which methodologically sheds light on agents and institutional contexts, helps to understand the dynamics of constructive ambiguity, a discursive strategy often applied to CSDP and illustrated by these two cases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Raised public concern in the European Union (EU) about the legality of its timber imports has pushed the European Commission to raise its standards and legality demands for wood imports. Combining literature reviews, structured interviews and trade data analyses, this study assesses the potential influence from Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) (with its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) system and new legislation EU Timber Regulation (EUTR)), and third party verification schemes on the timber trade between tropical countries and Europe. These instruments have the potential to reduce the amount of illegally sourced timber being placed on the market, and they seem to have resulted in both increasing support of legality verification and certification uptake. However, there are signs of increased ambiguity in trade that could originate as a side effect of the transition towards a stricter regulation for tropical timber. Such ambiguity is explicitly taken into account here. Possible consequences from increased ambiguity are substitution of oak lumber for tropical hardwood lumber, and a diversion of exports of tropical timber to destinations with a less stringent regulatory framework than the EU. Evidence of these trade patterns in the literature reviews, interviews, and trade data analyses seems to confirm that ambiguity in international trade markets has actually increased since the introduction of these instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we explain an international agreement that appears to run counter to the declared objectives of one of the key players? This article examines the US–EU Open Skies agreement signed in 2007 and asks why Europeans accepted the agreement after having rejected a comparable version three years earlier. Theoretical approaches that explain time inconsistency in international negotiations tend to focus on reasons why states can be constrained to accept suboptimal solutions. In multi-level bargaining, principal–agent and bureaucratization theories focus on loss of control and constructivists suggest that governments can become trapped in rhetoric. This article shows that paradoxical agreements can be voluntary and explains them by showing the rationale behind multi-games that include ambiguity about the future. In particular, increasing the flexibility of the agreement allowed negotiators to escape present-day constituent pressures by remaining ambiguous and betting on shifting coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The present article discusses the relevance of studying EU political discourse in a linguistically based polyphonic perspective. The claim is that polyphony is a fruitful approach in the sense that it reveals different types of hidden interaction and thus uncovers implicit and unclear messages. Examples are taken from two speeches given by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, on Europe and European integration, speeches which can be characterised as ‘visionary speeches’. A selection of linguistic features indicating the presence of different voices in these speeches, which are formally monological, will be presented. The analysis will thus help to identify the nature of the postulated unclearness in political discourse and to make explicit the complex relationship between text and context. The theoretical framework used for analysing the speeches will be linguistic polyphony as developed in the ScaPoLine theory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]