What Strategies Can Do for Strategic Partnerships: Lessons from the EU’s Strategy on India

In a changing world order, the role of strategic partnerships in international relations takes on an increased significance. Several actors, including the EU and India, use strategic partnerships as a way for managing bilateral relations. For the EU, partnership strategies are internally negotiated and reflect shared strategic visions and policy preferences among the member states and institutions. However, so far very little attention has been paid in the literature on EU strategy-making to the role, function, and impact of partnership strategies. In particular, the question of what characteristics make a strategy a tool for increased engagement between strategic partners has to date been neglected. Based on unique interviews with experts about the EU’s Strategy on India (EUIS), this paper suggests that when underpinning the relations to a likeminded partner, a strategy can be a core element for engagement if it manifests both cohesion with the EU’s wider understanding of its global role and convergence with the partner’s preferences. We contend that the added value to the partnership of formulating strategy is the increased levels of predictability of strategic action and we call for further studies of the EU’s partnership strategies in light of changing conditions for agency in world affairs.