Leiden University Student Repository

Paunero Martorell, Alma (2025)

Fragmented Commitments: Mapping Feminist Principles in EU External Action

Master thesis | Public Administration (MSc)

This thesis addresses the European Union’s inconsistent integration of feminist principles in its foreign policy, chiefly during Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission presidencies. Employing a qualitative multimethod approach, integrating Critical Discourse Analysis and document-based outcome tracing, it uses a synthesis of Decoupling theory and Multilevel Governance to produce a cohesive explanatory framework. The analysis of 9 official documents directly related to the Union’s external action and its attempts to project feminist values abroad reveal pervasive policy-practice decoupling (PPD) and means-ends decoupling (MED), where rhetoric diverges from actual outcomes. MLG systemically enables this fragmentation, often leading to instrumentalised gendered discourse and missed targets. This puts into question the EU’s normative identity, requiring a shift from symbolic pledges to genuine structural transformation in order to safeguard its democratic credentials.

European Union foreign policy, feminism, decoupling, MLG

Author

Paunero Martorell, Alma

Faculty

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Specialisation

International and European Governance

Supervisors

Salazar Morales, D.A.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en