Loyalty in a Differentiated Union:

Abstract

At a time when multilateralism is facing a lot of pressure from major powers, the EU is expected to live up to its multilateralist DNA. Even though cohesion is considered to be an important condition for the EU’s effectiveness in its external action, the EU Member States are increasingly engaged in differentiation, understood as any modality of integration or cooperation that allows states (members and non-members) and sub-state entities to work together in non-homogeneous, flexible ways. Departing from constructivist theory, these practices create heterogeneous patterns of social interaction between the EU Member States, with the potential to affect the EU Member States’ loyalty to the EU. Through semi-structured interviews and a descriptive quantitative analysis, this thesis explores how differentiation affects the Nordic EU Member States’ loyalty to the EU in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The findings suggest that differentiation fosters maximal loyalty among the Nordic EU Member States to the EU’s intergovernmental structure, but not to the supranational one, in FAO. This thesis bridges the emerging research fields of differentiation and loyalty in the EU’s external action, highlighting the usefulness of constructivism to these fields.