Internal functionality of the EU's external border management: An Analysis beyond effectiveness

The external border management policies and practices of the European Union are often criticized for being ineffective in meeting the official policy objectives and expectations. Yet, these policies and practices are constantly proliferating. This is where the central puzzle of this research arises: why are these policies disproportionately increasing despite a myriad of criticisms and their unproven success? Contrary to the widespread interest in explaining the effectiveness and external impact of the EU border management policies, this dissertation draws attention to the internal functionality of the EU's external policies to delve into this question. The EU external border management (EU EBM) field, covering three policy areas, namely, migration, asylum and border management, constitutes the major case of this research. Based on the rationale of the internal functionality approach proposed by Christopher Bickerton for an analysis of the EU foreign policy, this dissertation argues that the EU EBM field is extensively driven by the dominant actors' internal ambitions and preferences rather than their concern for effectiveness. In other words, the EU EBM field serves institutional interests of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, albeit in different degrees. In the data collection and analysis phases, this study extensively benefited from the insights of the Narrative Policy Framework, the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Structural (Sociological) Constructivism to account for the power of policy narratives in legitimization of certain policy designs, the resistance of the policy core beliefs to change, and the lack of strategic planning in policy-making process, respectively. A qualitative analysis of the policy narratives and belief systems of the EU institutions yielded two major findings: first, the EU EBM field serves as a venue for political competition among the EU institutions, and second, the emerging initiatives or policy designs in the field (e.g., legislative acts and Frontex) are largely epiphenomenal given that they are not necessarily direct responses to the challenges in the external environment, but products of inter-institutional turf wars. The findings of this study are promising in understanding the non-sovereign political order of the EU and the very reason for the EU's falling short of the external expectations for its effectiveness. Keywords: EU EBM, internal functionality, turf wars, epiphenomenal policy, effectiveness, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament.