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• Department of Political and Social Sciences

What explains the positioning of EU member states on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? In this paper, we use semi-supervised and supervised scaling methods to derive state positions on this conflict, and then use liberal theories of foreign policy-making to explain such positions. Our findings indicate that trade ties with the region and the size of the Muslim population explain the salience of the issue; but only the trade with the Arab countries in the MENA region explains the positioning. Our findings contribute to the study of EU foreign policy, but also to the methodological debate about how to measure state positions in international politics.

Michal Onderco is a Full Professor of International Relations in the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and currently a visiting scholar at the EUI's Robert Schuman Centre.

Simone Tholens is an Associate Professor of International relations of the Department of Politics and International Affairs at John Cabot University and a Part-time professor at the EUI's Robert Schuman Centre.

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