Explaining institutional Europeanisation in security and defence: the German administration under Schröder and Merkel

Abstract

Participating in EU crisis management operations has affected institutional actors on various levels. As the main deliverers of civilian and military resources to EU operations, national ministries and agencies have been particularly confronted with the need for administrative adaptation. A big member state like Germany is expected to make substantial contributions, but it also faces a rigid administration. This article uses a combined hypothesis of historical institutionalism and organisational learning to explain administrative Europeanisation in German government institutions involved in civilian and military crisis management deployments. The empirical data on the German administrative trajectories under Schröder and Merkel show an explanatory link between political learning and overcoming institutional path dependency.

Keywords:

• Europeanisation
• ESDP
• Germany
• administrative adaptation
• historical institutionalism
• organizational and political learning

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) for funding my field trip to Berlin, and to the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) for welcoming me as a Guest Researcher in 2009.

Notes

1. As the empirical data for this article were collected prior to the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty (when ESDP was renamed Common Security and Defence Policy), reference is made to ESDP rather than CSDP.

2. The bulk of empirical data for this case study were gathered in 2009, by means of semi-structured interviews with relevant government officials.

3. This research is largely based on fieldwork conducted in 2009.

4. For example, in August 2011 Germany had only seven police officers in UN missions, opposed to 133 in EU missions, http://www.zif-berlin.org/

5. As the need for approval from the Bundestag slows down the decision-making process before deployment, this has been internationally criticised (Jacobs 2012).

6. The 2004 Action Plan for Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Peace building, and was a strategy paper from the Red-Green Government to deal with Civilian Crisis Management (CCM). It prescribed the establishment of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee to domestically coordinate CCM, and the Government Advisory Board to provide for a link between the Government and civil society (Jacobs 2011).

7. The years preceding his appointment by Merkel, Heusgen was Javier Solana's Chief of Staff in the General Secretariat of the Council, and Director of the Policy Unit. He has never hidden his support for a strong European foreign policy, including with regard to security and defence aspects (Deutsche Welle 2005).

8. Respectively ‘politics of responsibility’ and ‘politics of power’.

9. Even the Bundestag – at first primarily interested in military deployments – has since Fischer increasingly discussed civilian deployments (Jacobs 2012).

10. In the 2004 Government declaration, Struck stated that German ‘security is also defended at the Hindukusch’.

11. In some cases promised contributions were delayed (e.g. Afghanistan).

12. For a more elaborate discussion on the causal link between the observed institutional reforms and ESDP (see Jacobs 2012).