Unpacking the Politicisation of EU Trade: A fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of EU trade agreement negotiations

This research investigates the conditions that influence the politicisation of EU trade agreement negotiations. During the past decades, the formerly technocratic field of EU foreign trade has become a central venue for political contestation. This has led to a consensus that EU trade agreement negotiations are an example of a politicised policy area, where politicisation can be understood as an increase in salience, polarisation and actors involved. Despite agreement that politicisation has increased, existing literature shows that it varies in intensity, ranging from high contestation against an ultimately failed agreement with the USA, to low salience of negotiations with countries such as Armenia or New Zealand. This reasons for this differentiated politicisation present a puzzle which has not yet been unpacked. Therefore, this research analyses the variable causal role played by conditions that have been identified as possible drivers of the politicisation of trade agreement negotiations between 2009 and 2024. Due to the complexity inherent to the process of politicisation, as well as an assumed causal interrelation of different conditions, a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) was deemed the most suitable research approach to comparatively analyse 15 trade agreement negotiations. Four conditions emerged from the literature as driving forces for politicisation, namely: European Parliament (EP) involvement, a national ratification requirement, a comprehensive regulatory scope and relative economic power of the trading partner. The necessity and sufficiency of the conditions regarding their role in bringing about both a politicised as well as a non-politicised outcome were structurally analysed using fsQCA set-theoretic methods. The main empirical results show that, although there is no truly necessary condition that needs to be fulfilled, only a simultaneous presence of all four conditions provides a sufficient basis for politicisation to occur. Furthermore, the involvement of the EP and the economic bargaining power of the trading partner are identified as major contributors to politicisation. This leads to the conclusion that, in theory, only certain trade agreement negotiations fulfil these conditions and politicisation is therefore contingent on a constellation of structural conditions. This conclusion is limited in its generalisability due to the presence of important outliers. These point to an important role for the agency of national and supranational actors, which should be considered as a condition in itself in future research. By taking this into account, a more holistic understanding of the politicisation of EU trade can be gathered.