European Defence Agency: A Flashpoint of Institutional Logics

Abstract

The European Defence Agency (EDA) works in a policy area traditionally characterised by high diversity among actors regarding basic notions of what level of integration and which principles of interaction in the defence sector are appropriate for the EU, which countries should participate in defence cooperation, and what coordination mechanisms and instruments should be used. In all these dimensions, the EDA has been a flashpoint of institutional logics representing different visions of how various aspects of defence integration in the EU should be organised. There are tensions between the logic of supranational regulation and the logic of intergovernmental networking; between the logic of defence sovereignty and the logic of pooled defence resources; between the Europeanist and the Euro-Atlanticist logic; and finally between the logics of liberalisation and Europeanisation of the defence market. Studying the ways in which the collisions of institutional logics are being accommodated by the EDA can contribute to greater understanding of the emerging political order of European defence.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Scancor 20th Anniversary Conference at Stanford University in November 2008. Special thanks to Jostein Askim, Morten Egeberg, Johan P. Olsen, Johannes Pollak, Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann, Paul Roness, Peter Slominski, Jarle Trondal and two anonymous reviewers in WEP for useful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. In 2004, the EU had only four heavy transport planes, all of which the UK was leasing from the US, which by far did not correspond to the existing operational needs of the EU and its member states in various crisis areas around the globe (Keohane 2004: 2). It was estimated that the Union is capable of deploying only about 100,000 out of the 2 million armed forces personnel available to the EU-27 governments (Keohane and Valasek 2008: 3).

2. Council Joint Action 2004/551/CFSP of 12 July 2004 on the establishment of the European Defence Agency, O.J. 2004, L 245/17.

3. Institutional logic can be defined as ‘the socially constructed, historical pattern of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organise time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality’ (Thornton and Ocasio 1999: 804). They provide legitimacy to power arrangements within a particular segment of political life (March and Olsen 1989; Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Friedland and Alford 1991), organise attention, indicate what problems are to be prioritised, and what solutions are appropriate (Simon 1957; March and Simon 1958; March and Olsen 1976; Ocasio 1997). In this sense, institutional logics are carriers of particular visions of political order. In any political order there are various institutional logics providing different notions of who are legitimate participants, what level of integration should be aspired to, and what coordination mechanisms should be applied (Eisenstadt 1964; Olsen 2009). Understanding tensions and conflicts between institutional logics is of key importance in assessing the conditions under which they shape the actions of organisations bearing them (Friedland and Alford 1991). Predominance of a particular institutional logic has effects on internal distribution of power and status of actors within organisations (Thornton and Ocasio 1999). Besides affecting internal structures and power arrangements, a shift in institutional logics can lead to shifts in objects of reference steering organisational adaptation and new kinds of organisational fields can be created (Fligstein 1990; see also DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Scott et al. 2000). These insights are helpful in efforts to conceptualise the role of new EU agencies such as the EDA.

4. The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) is a prime example of such dominance of decision-making by expertise (Gehring and Krapohl 2007). Some even see the EMEA as a blueprint for an emerging mode of agencification envisioned in the Commission White Paper on European Governance (see European Commission 2001).

5. Head of the European Defence Agency's Report to the Council, 14 May 2007.

6. Head of the EDA Report to the Council, 14 May 2005.

7. The rise of transgovernmentalism in the second pillar is also driven through adaptation to shared EU-wide policy timetables and time sequencing (see for instance Ekengren 2002; Goetz and Meyer Sahling 2009).

8. In 2008, EU member states had 16 separate armoured vehicle programmes running virtually without any form of cooperation and coordination (Keohane and Valasek 2008: 38).

9. See http://www.nato.int/issues/prague_capabilities_commitment/index.html.

10. As Trybus (2006: 675–676) reports, there was a 12% reduction in the EU member states' defence spending from US$181 billion in 1985 to US$140 billion in 1999. This was also followed by a decrease of the workforce employed in European defence industries from 1.6 million in 1984 to approximately 800,000 in 2000.

11. Article 296(1)(b) EC allows a member state ‘to take such measures as it considers necessary for the protection of the essential interests of its security which are connected with the production or trade in arms, munitions and war material’ (cf. Trybus 2006: 673).

Some highly innovative Europeans niche technologies are likely to penetrate the US market, including the Swedish UHF mobile communications systems and the British Anti-improvised Explosive Devices technology (Flournoy and Smith 2005: 76). But, in general, military produce from the EU firms constitutes a limited portion (only about 5%) of the overall equipment purchases by the US military. This is related to the ‘Buy American Act’ protecting the US defence industrial sector (Jones and Larrabee 2005) which creates a rather asymmetric situation in light of the fact that about 50% of military equipment purchases by EU member states come from US companies (Keohane and Valasek 2008: 38).