From Eurafrica to multilateralism : the Europeanization of France's Africa policy

• Main Author: Iverson, Andrew Wesley Pascal
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2011
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/31353

This paper explores the forces driving the far-reaching changes in French Africa policy over the past fifty years. Why has France's Africa policy changed? How has France's position within the EU affected these changes? Has French Africa policy "Europeanized"? After placing my approach in the context of the wider field of Europeanization research, this paper explores exceptionalism in French colonial policy and discusses its legacy in the EC's early Africa policy. I will demonstrate that in the first years of EC policy, France managed to impose its national agenda on the EC level. I then show that this changed by the mid-1970s as the EC gained a strengthened identity in the area of development policy. Based on analysis of changes in military policy, political discourse styles, and institutions, this paper will show that EC development policy has significantly shaped the context of France's current policy in Africa. === Arts, Faculty of === Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of === Graduate