Europeanization in Portugal: Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira, David Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/12594
• topic: European Union; Europeanization; Nuclear non-proliferation; Desarmamento -- Disarmament; Política europeia de defesa -- European defence policy; Desarmamento nuclear -- Nuclear disarmament; Estratégias militares; União europeia; Portugal

Europeanization is an increasingly popular research area within the field of European integration, particularly for studying the impact of European processes and institutions on EU Member and non-Member States. In the last decade, the concept of Europeanization has been commonly used in the study of national foreign policies, despite their distinctive intergovernmental nature, but there is still limited knowledge regarding the dynamics of the process. In this work, we use the aforementioned concept as an analytical approach to determine the nature of the Europeanization process in the fields of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, using Portugal as a study case. Much of the literature concerning the EU and its role as a non-proliferation actor engages only minimally with theory, consisting mostly of policy-oriented empirical research, and the concept of Europeanization has not yet been applied in that framework. Additionally, Portugal is still one of the least researched countries in Europeanization literature, a reason believed to be anchored on its small size and semi-peripheral location. As such, this work intends to close a gap, not only in terms of research on Europeanization processes in Portugal, but also regarding theoretically-based studies in the field of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. This research suggests that although nuclear matters are not a first-order priority for Portugal, EU membership has had a small impact in the country’s discourse, legislation, and actions in those fields, and has led to an improvement of its export control services.