I am organizing a panel on ‘The institutional dimension of the EU’s external relations’ at the ECPR General Conference in Bordeaux (4-7 September 2013). Here is the abstract that sets out the main aims of the panel :

This panel examines the relation between and within the main institutions of the EU in the context of the EU’s external relations. It aims to provide answers to two main questions. First, how do the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European Council and the Court of Justice interact when the EU participates in international negotiations? Second, how do the internal functioning of the institutions and the internal constellation of preferences impact on the roles, bargaining power and effectiveness of the EU at the international level?

The panel welcomes contributions that analyse the institutional determinants of the EU as international actor/negotiator, principal-agent analyses of the EU’s external policy-making, evaluations of the origins and consequences of the differences in the EU’s external representation arrangements across different policy areas, and comparative analyses of the institutional dimension of various external action policy domains of the EU. The panel especially welcomes papers that address the role of the ‘new’ institutions in the EU’s external relations (EP, European Council), that study the influence of the external context on the inter- and intra-institutional relations in the EU, or that present theoretically-informed analyses of new empirical data.

For more information on the General Conference, please visit the ECPR’s webpage (you find more information – as well as a link to submit your applications – under the section ‘Assessing the Responsiveness of European Union Institutions’). Deadline for application is the 1st of February 2013.