Reaching for the threshold?: Assessing institutional maturity in EU foreign policy.

This paper revisits core pieces of literature on EU foreign policy studies to gauge how far the endogenous institutional quality of EU foreign policy structures has matured by assessing its growth over time. In revisiting two foundational studies, it discusses whether the EU's foreign policy capabilities are still so unequivocally below the state level. First, it will return to the "capabilities-expectations gap" [Hill, C., 1993. The capability-expectations gap, or conceptualizing Europe's international role. Journal of Common Market Studies, 31 (3), 305–328] to investigate the quality of the institutional structure in foreign policy and in how far the EU's institutions fulfil general functions of foreign policy today. Second, it will explore whether "Who Speaks for Europe?" is still a pertinent question [Allen, D., 1998. Who speaks for Europe? The search for an effective and coherent external policy. In: J. Peterson, and H. Sjursen, eds. A common foreign policy for Europe? Competing visions of the CFSP. 41–58]. The results of this assessment allow a conceptualisation of foreign policy capabilities evolving in long-term, slow processes, yet resulting in differences in institutional quality that may otherwise be overlooked. The paper contributes to the overall assessment of the EU's maturation in foreign policy by providing assessments on institutional growth and developing a scale of foreign policy capabilities to capture these slow incremental developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]