From Aznar to Zapatero: discontiniuty in the Spanish foreign policy

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Thesis Type: Postgraduate

Institution Of The Thesis: Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Department of International Relations, Turkey

Approval Date: 2009

Thesis Language: English

Student: Mehmet Fatih Ak

Supervisor: ÖZGEHAN ŞENYUVA

Abstract:

Spain, after successfully joining EC and NATO and consolidating itself as a respected member of the Western bloc, has been seeking to improve its status in the international political arena in the last two decades. However, during its quest to become a major European power like Germany, France and UK, Spain lost the momentum it caught in the early years of its EC membership, after Felipe Gonzalez left the Presidency of Government in 1996. The discord between the two major Parties, the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) on the broad lines of the Spanish foreign policy - that yielded to discontinuity - has been one of the reasons for this development. The main aim of this dissertation is to elaborate this discontinuity as a case study, in a middle range European power. For this purpose, the foreign policies followed by the Conservative PP Governments headed by Jóse María Aznar during 1996-2004 term is compared with the policies followed by the Socialist PSOE Governments headed by Jóse Luis Rodríguez Zapatero since 2004. Given that these policies are associated with the decisions, acts and speeches of the Party leaders, the level of analysis in this dissertation is the individual policy makers.