Embedded Politics, Growing Informalization? How NATO and the EU Transform Provision of External Security

Abstract

This article investigates changes in the ways NATO and EU states have pursued security since the end of the Cold War, and the repercussions for the state monopoly of external force. Both organizations have autonomous roles, security identities and norm-shaping abilities, making them more consequential than is often acknowledged. Using the analytical concept of internationalization – the increasing importance of political or administrative authorities beyond the nation-state – this article scrutinizes the institutionalization of new functions, mechanisms and operational roles within NATO and the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. The resulting process of internationalization can be labelled embedded security politics, a political order characterized by fragmented responsibilities in which underlying national preferences are altered by transgovernmental and transnational contacts and pressure to reach consensus, by thicker institutional structures of rules and common practices that constrain national decision-making, and by schemes that subject national capabilities for autonomous action to institutional and physical constraints. The desirable degree of internationalization is still contested among capitals. There are also unspecific signs of an informalization of decision-shaping or -making: governments use ad hoc networks outside the treaty-based international organizations, allowing more freedom with regard to the interpretation of institutional obligations. The article concludes that internationalization and informalization have more in common than is often admitted, with fundamental implications for the future of national action and security cooperation.

This article investigates the changes in the ways NATO and EU member states have pursued security since the end of the Cold War, and their repercussions on the state monopoly of external force. Since 1990, the international community has become involved in intra-state conflicts to an unprecedented degree. At the same time the very concept of security has broadened, creating new referent objects such as the environment or foreign individuals, and interventions by civilian and military means have become established practice.1 NATO has adapted its functions to this new environment, and the EU developed from scratch its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Members have decided to cooperate more closely and delegate responsibilities to bureaucracies of both international organizations (IOs).2 Although staff at NATO's headquarters enjoy far less institutional latitude than their CFSP counterparts, their responsibilities have also been upgraded notably since 1990. Both can be seen as more than just forums or tools for national actors. The latter now face self-imposed pressure to conform to collective agreements.3 In addition, there are signs of growing multinationalization (the integration of different national capabilities), asset pooling (the joint development, purchase or operation of military equipment), and role specialization (a task provision based on a division of labour), which also affect the pursuit of national security. These developments are somewhat orchestrated and enforced by international bureaucracies. In fact, NATO and the EU's CFSP have autonomous roles, security identities and norm-shaping abilities and are thus more consequential than is often acknowledged.

This article scrutinizes the institutionalization of these new functions as well as the mechanisms and operational roles for such changes. As I show, this means that Westphalian sovereignty, the absence of a role for external actors in domestic structures, has receded. I explore these new functions by using the concept of internationalization – the increasing importance of political or administrative authorities beyond the nation-state. The result of this process can be labeled embedded security politics, a political order characterized by fragmented responsibilities in which transgovernmental and transnational contacts and pressure to reach consensus alter underlying national preferences; by thicker institutional structures of rules and common practices that constrain national decision-making; and by schemes that subject national capabilities for autonomous action to institutional and physical constraints.

Embedded security politics has not remained unchallenged, however. In fact, this novel institutional order is still in flux and the desirable degree of internationalization yet contested among capitals. The extent to which the latter are prepared to allow an interlinking of their power apparatuses varies. There has been opposition to specific, often unforeseen, institutional developments, which some governments have sought to rescind or dilute. There are also signs, as yet unspecific, of an informalization of decision-shaping or making. Informalization depicts a process whereby governments attempt to regain authority by use of informal institutions, such as ad-hoc, issue-specific contact or working groups, which often allow them more freedom with regard to the interpretation of institutional obligations and commitments than arrangements within treaty-based IOs.

Although informalization can run counter to internationalization, I argue that these concepts must not inevitably be played off against each other. After all, informal institutions are institutions, embodying sets of rules, constraining activity, and shaping behaviour. Also, the transgovernmental, cross-border interactions of (sub-) national officials stressed by informalization scholars are clearly accounted for by the concept of internationalization, although their occurrence testifies to a rather modest form of this process.

Addressing these themes illuminates, firstly, the debate on the transformation of the state: whether and to what extent the classical Western states have changed over the past three decades in response to pressures like globalization or liberalization.4 The analysis is above all descriptive, however. Due to its novelty, it is central to conscientiously portray the emergence of embedded security politics, discuss its implications and identify its limits. From this empirical foundation a number of probabilistic causal arguments can then be induced, ultimately leading to a – not yet existent – middle-range theory.

The second aim is to contribute, from the bureaucratic politics perspective, to academic discourse by complementing overly state-centric paradigms. Particularly with regard to NATO this is a neglected angle in the current literature; the alliance as a bureaucratic organization remains vastly under-researched. Nonetheless, I take seriously the standpoints of those less convinced about NATO and the EU having autonomous roles. In this respect, the study can also be seen as a plea for academic bridge-building between different perspectives. Thirdly, and related to this, institutional developments within NATO and the EU's CFSP are rarely compared. For this reason the study also endeavours to establish some common analytical ground for the two still largely detached academic discourses. To be sure, NATO and the EU are largely competing models of security provision, with differing cultures, functions, instruments and underlying institutional logics.5 Yet there is a certain approximation of both models with increasing functional overlap which makes a more systematic comparison between the two organizations a promising venture.

The article begins by illustrating the monopoly of external force, elaborating the concept of internationalization and specifying indicators for measuring this process. The subsequent two sections assess the development of NATO and the EU's tasks, competences and resources since 1990, examining their roles in formulating and implementing security policies. NATO is examined first, reflecting the chronological order of institutional evolution. This is followed by inspection of the integration of military capabilities. A further section looks at incidents of national resistance to particular implications of internationalization. The final section investigates informal channels for decision-shaping or -making, which can run parallel to, or circumvent, the new and more densely institutionalized system of security politics.

The State Monopoly of External Force and the Concept of Internationalization

Historically, the genesis of modern statehood was closely linked to the materialization of a state monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, which in the long run involved a pacification of domestic society and the emergence of norms pertaining to the external use of force.6 The state governed relations among its citizens, as well as between them and itself, while citizens in turn refrained from the use of violence. In line with the Weberian ideal-typical notion, the acquisition of a monopoly of force by governments, including the concentration of armed forces for the purpose of waging war, became a constitutive principle of the modern nation-state.

Although this issue-area is less prone to changes than most others, I cast doubt on the widespread notion that states are the only significant actors in the pursuit of external security. This suspicion is stirred by findings in the literature on emerging fragmented and multilayered governance structures in this field.7 Some argue that processes of internationalization or even supranationalization of governance and decision-making structures are underway, or refer to the emergence of international legal norms that are invoked to justify interventions.8 There is evidence that international bureaucracies have generally gained more influence on world politics9 – even those of security organizations.10

Rather than seeking confirmation of transformative changes at the national level, this article focuses on two organizations (NATO and the EU's CFSP), using the concept of internationalization. This is understood as a process by which national procedures of planning, decision-making, or implementation of a policy area are linked with – or shift to – international organizations and enhance their significance.11 This perspective makes it possible to stress coordination networks, an inherent feature of IOs, to identify and assess new macro-institutional configurations in which states as well as international representatives and administrative capacities are involved. It is particularly in organizations where the multi-level character of politics can be grasped accordingly.

Indications of an internationalization of security politics are quantitative and qualitative changes in the tasks, competences and resources of both intergovernmental and supranational IO bodies as authoritative bureaucratic actors. If they have been given new or more tasks in planning, decision-making or implementation, and/or receive more material resources such as funds, staff or administrative capacities, I infer that their significance for the generation of security has increased, which in turn has repercussions for the Member States. Not all changes in or expansions of the functions and capacities of international organizations have the same consequences, however. When assessing the extent of internationalization, the ideal typical three phases of the policy cycle are analytically invoked – although empirically they frequently overlap. While the transfer of planning and/or implementation procedures to international authorities indicates a rather modest evolution, the migration to an IO of political decision-making structures carries more weight. It is also analytically worthwhile to distinguish between the intergovernmental and supranational elements of an IO. Arguably, an increase in the responsibilities of supranational bodies such as the UN Secretary General or the European Commission signals a more profound internationalization than merely the increasing of functions of intergovernmental bodies such as the Council of the EU or the UN Peacebuilding Commission, for the former can be assumed to be more remote from direct governmental control and thus have better opportunities to develop their own preferences and institutional autonomy to steer outcomes towards preferred policies.

Institutional autonomy is defined here as the ability of an international bureaucracy, such as a secretariat, to behave in ways that are not explicitly intended by Member States.12 In the following, autonomy, leeway, latitude, et cetera are understood in this sense. Yet it is difficult to discern distinct objectives of an international bureaucracy. Generally, these administrations perform specific functions, and their officials act as role players: they identify at least to some degree with ‘their’ IO, entrenched as they are in institutional environments with specific cultures (usually with an integrative mission). They are protective of their status quo and do their best to expand their organizational resources if opportunities arise to do so. They may develop considerable policy autonomy by exploiting information asymmetries to the disadvantage of Member State governments. Taking into account insights from the sociological and cognitive literatures, they also have the potential to define the substance of often highly ambiguous objectives, doctrines or paradigms such as ‘refugee’ or ‘development’ (let alone ‘security’), which mean different things to different people. International administrations are provided with the opportunity to give content to such indistinct concepts in agreement with their own preferences or visions, and in so doing even pursue policy goals.13 They thus are sometimes capable to act as architects of meaning and identities.14 The following sections illustrate the activities NATO and the EU have embarked on in security since 1990, particularly interventions.

Internationalization Through NATO

Though in existence since 1949, NATO only became engaged in severe combat operations with considerable death tolls after the end of the Cold War. It was not until then that the organization evolved from an ‘Alliance in Being’ to an ‘Alliance in Doing’.15 While some prematurely delivered funeral speeches for NATO, forecasting its demise in the wake of the disappearance of the Soviet threat it was created to address, the pact has adapted fairly well to the new security environment.16 First missions were dispatched in the Balkans in 1995, and their pace and complexity have increased since. The Alliance meanwhile performs substantial multifaceted operations, covering the full spectrum of crisis management operations – from combat and peacekeeping to police training and humanitarian assistance. ISAF in Afghanistan represents by far the largest NATO mission, with 130,000 troops as of spring 2011, and is involved in intensive combat operations. NATO has advocated and implemented a Comprehensive Approach to Operations to deliver an integrated effort in crisis management, particularly peacebuilding. This includes cooperating with actors such as other IOs or Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), although this is predominantly in the field,17 whereas at Headquarters (HQ) at Boulevard Leopold NGOs play a negligible role.18 NATO and its members therefore have apparently to rely on other actors at the field level in order to provide comprehensive security.

While the NATO Treaty of 1949 remained unchanged after the Cold War, a number of novel common Strategic Concepts have since been adopted, the latest of which was approved in November 2010.19 Strategic Concepts specify the current challenges and denote the strategies applied in response to them. While there is ample disagreement on a number of issues within the West,20 the concepts have a uniting function and have been made public since 1991. In order to relieve the full members' burden against the background of declining defence budgets and distant, more sophisticated and thus more expensive missions, NATO allies also decided to instigate a number of outreach programs with non-members within different structures, such as the Partnership for Peace (PfP), the Mediterranean Dialogue, and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. This involves the shaping (though not making) of decisions by partners, which means choices are made differently now than they were in the bipolar era.21 Troop-contributing nations particularly demand the right to have a say in NATO matters and to be appropriately represented in the command structure. Currently almost 50 nations are contributing to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, and it is increasingly difficult to make distinctions between members and partners.

In an extensively enlarged Alliance there are thus additional veto players, and the more heterogeneous preferences of individual members can be less easily accommodated than within the smaller Cold War North Atlantic Council (NAC) – problems of collective choice that are further aggravated in the light of a more complex security environment with objectives and strategies that are a great deal less straightforward than in the bipolar, threat-oriented world. Individual Member States have consequently suffered a relative loss of influence within the Alliance. The role of NATO's Headquarters in turn – above all, that of the Secretary General (SG) – was enhanced after 1990 in order to establish cohesion and facilitate rapid consensus-building and decision-making.22

It appears that NATO was able to adapt relatively well to the new environment due to its broad and largely portable Cold War assets, which were flexibly tailored to a number of new activities after 1990.23 The 9/11 attacks – as well as enlargement – spurred NATO into action, and in 2002 the then-US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, urged that ‘[i]f NATO does not have a force that is quick and agile… then it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century’.24 The result of this plea was the NATO Response Force (NRF), comprising joint multinational, technologically advanced, high-readiness troops made up of land, air, sea and special forces, which was declared combat-ready in 2006. Although the NRF does not represent a standing army, its standby mechanism principally enhances the political pressure for deployment if a crisis arises, and it generally integrates and standardizes national contributions. However, there are divisive debates over the issues of NATO's finances (funding under budgetary constraints or the question of fairer burden sharing),25 efficient decision-making against the background of an enlarged Alliance, and the difficulty of defining the limits of NATO's out-of-area engagement. There is also a general lack of political cohesion over issues such as Iraq or how to deal with a more adversarial Russian Federation.

To be sure, NATO's four executive heads generally exhibit little institutional autonomy. The International Staff (IS), the International Military Staff (IMS), and the Allied Commands for Operations (ACO) and for Transformation (ACT) were designed as – and still are primarily – supporting bodies, constrained and dominated by Member States. IS employees usually served no longer than 10 years at NATO Headquarters, which obviated it turning into a career service akin to that of the EC, with an institutional memory, a particular ésprit de corps, or scope for decision-making.26 Since 1990, the number of IS employees and its annual budget have remained nearly constant.27 The IMS is under especially tight Member State control, since its seconded staff is rotated between the Boulevard Leopold and national capitals even more often than its civilian counterpart. Also, both ACs are organized hierarchically, with a small amount of autonomy regarding the implementation or preparation of doctrines.

Although the process of internationalization is much less advanced in NATO than in the EU, closer scrutiny of its institutional development reveals a number of indications that it is taking a similar direction. At the level of the Alliance's Headquarters' bureaucracy, bodies have been newly found or were conceded a number of additional responsibilities since the end of the Cold War, and there have been modest but visible increases in administrative significance. Attempts by some SGs to reorganize NATO's bureaucratic structure in Brussels were initially met with fierce Member State opposition, but against the background of an enlarged Alliance and the external shock of 9/11, in 2002 SG Lord Robertson succeeded in getting governments to agree on HQ reform. As a result, the number of committees was cut from 467 to around 300 and decision-making was decentralized to lower levels, giving the IS a greater say. Also, IS staff may now receive ongoing employment contracts after three years, and may also change divisions within the IS.28 These developments will possibly upgrade the IS vis-à-vis national delegations, which were hitherto critical in the employment procedure, with the loyalties of secondees often split between their national capitals and NATO.29

Likewise, the SG's role after the Cold War has generally been enhanced, chiefly due to the enlarged, more political alliance which increased requirements for the SG to consult and promote consensus. But this applies also to tactical decision-making, such as in aviation warfare. During the Allied Force mission in Kosovo in spring 1999, for instance, the NAC authorized SG Javier Solana to implement the air campaign and even let him decide on his own which targets to select for the third phase, ‘with no explicit, but rather tacit approval’.30 And recent French complaints about tactics in NATO's Libya mission suggest that the powerful are by no means in full control of what the Alliance does. Two Senior Civilian Representatives (for Afghanistan and for the Caucasus/Central Asia) have been installed so far, strengthening the international apparatus. As part of the reform process, the SG also established the HQ Policy Board, which embraces the latter and his Assistant Secretary Generals and convenes weekly. They debate political matters and coordinate political guidelines before discussing them with national representatives.31

In September 2010 a new Division for Emerging Security Challenges was created in NATO's IS, to focus on problems that the current Strategic Concept now more explicitly covers (above all, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyber attacks and disruptions of transport routes). Also, the Operations Division in the IS, which prepares a biannual Periodic Mission Review for each NATO operation, has more recently drawn up texts with an advisory character. Previously its drafts described the situation in the field, leaving conclusions more open to interpretation.32 The unit therefore has more potential to influence the policy-making cycle than was previously the case.

NATO's bureaucracy has increased its scope, new bodies have been created, and altogether the pact – as an organization – now enjoys more autonomy than it did before the Cold War. The more functional orientation of the Alliance, its stronger focus on political aspects, and the multilayered dimensions of new missions have led to a modest but perceptible internationalization of Member State policies, first and foremost within the planning and implementation stages of the policy cycle.

Internationalization Through the European Union

When the EU came into existence in 1993, the former European Political Cooperation (EPC) was upgraded and renamed Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It includes tangible security elements, which were institutionalized from the late 1990s onwards – largely spurred by the frustrating lack of effective European action in the face of the Balkan tragedies. Also, conflict prevention became an established item on the EU's agenda, which includes a number of cross-cutting issue-areas, from hard military security to trade. The first EU missions were launched in 2003, and since then more than 20 operations have been implemented or are still underway, including military missions in Bosnia and Congo and a mission to support security sector reform in Guinea-Bissau.33 Missions more often than not draw on and combine both civil and military capabilities. Recently, the EU launched a naval anti-piracy mission (Operation Atalanta), which clearly serves EU members' interests and fulfils broader EU geopolitical objectives.34 To guide the EU's ambitions and strategically define its role and tasks, a Security Strategy (EUSS) was adopted in 2003, supporting the formulation of the EU's wider external policy objectives. The paper was complemented and further developed by a 2008 document on the state of implementation of the EUSS, and some propose the adoption of a more wide-ranging EU white paper. The Lisbon Treaty amendments of December 2009 re-labelled the CFSP's security component as the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).35

The institutionalization of that capacity within the EU framework, largely self-sufficient from NATO's, materialized against the background of the obsolete legacies of the Cold War, with the US withdrawing many of its assets from Western Europe, and a fundamentally changed external environment. The St Malo declaration between the UK and France in December 1998 reflects a striking U-turn in London's foreign policy doctrine, which was previously opposed to any European forces autonomous from NATO.36 The bilateral document paved the way for an EU security and defence component in order to respond to regional and international crises and to promote the EU's interests.37 The Helsinki summit in 1999 decided to create rapidly deployable military forces of up to 60,000 troops, ready for deployment within 30 days and capable of intervening in crises arising around Europe or further away for up to one year. Like NATO's Response Force, the troops do not constitute a standing army, but a catalogue of national contributions. Though clearly overambitious in their objectives, EU governments managed to arrange a decisive number of multinational troops, including the Battlegroups (again kicked off by a British–French initiative in 2003), as part of the Headline Goal 2010. These are battalions of 1,500 well-equipped soldiers, including support, deployable within ten days.

At the administrative level of the CFSP/CSDP, a number of new bodies were created, thus enlarging the foreign and security-related sections of the Council Secretariat (CS), which spurred the internationalization process – with partial independence from capitals and with emerging preferences of its own. Lempp demonstrates at length that the CS, initially designed as an intergovernmental counterpart vis-à-vis the Commission, has generally become more entrenched by supranational guiding principles and mechanisms.38 Quite a few permanent military and political bodies were established to conduct operations, some of them of a hybrid intergovernmental/supranational character. The Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit within the CS monitors and assesses emerging crises and threats. It therefore provides members with crucial information, and, because of its mandate to identify areas on which the CFSP could focus in the future, it has some scope for agenda-setting. The Political and Security Committee (PSC), the highest-ranking intergovernmental advisory body of the CFSP, can be considered the de facto board for political decision-making as it exercises political control and strategic direction of crisis management operations. Made up of national representatives, the PSC keeps an eye on the international situation, revises the definition of policies, and monitors the implementation of the Council's decisions. Among others, the drafting of the EUSS had been coordinated by the PSC. In contrast, real debates in Council meetings – where formal decisions are made – with almost 30 busy ministers are becoming rare.39 The PSC, quite the reverse, can be considered a ‘workhorse’ for the CSDP's decision-making and control functions, as well as a ‘multiplier of social influence’, and hence adds to internationalization.40

PSC representatives as well as other national diplomats become drawn into EU activities, a process that involves a partial shift of awareness or even split loyalty.41 Officials of the national Permanent Representations to the EU do enjoy partial autonomy from their governments.42 Like other national actors working and interacting in Brussels' strongly institutionalized environment, they contribute to transcending the nation-state, but domestic factors – in a sense of pre-socialization – seem to facilitate the adoption of supranational role conceptions as well.43 There is also some cross-border interaction among sub-national actors within the CSDP, although Mérand and his colleagues advise us not to overestimate this transgovernmental activity.44 And as within NATO, individual members have suffered a relative loss of influence due to the large increase in the number of veto players.

To be able to plan and conduct operations, a number of military institutions have been set up and operate from the CS. For the PSC they have become indispensable resources for information and implementation, which testifies to the cross-cutting character of capacities in the production of security after 1990. The EU Military Committee (MC), staffed with national military personnel but also with Commission observers, advises the PSC. It also directs the work of the EU Military Staff (MS), a permanent integrated institution providing military expertise and support to the CSDP, including the planning of EU-led military operations. The MS implements decisions as directed by the MC and thus performs important functions for the provision of security. Although no troops are subordinated to it, the MS (together with Member State authorities) earmarks national and multinational forces and develops suitable strategies, though national governments' approval of troop deployment is still requisite. In order to meet its obligations, the MS has been provided with a number of vital resources, such as a logistics division, a civil-military cell, and an intelligence unit, which Member States are expected to feed with data from their national services. Therefore, national and international resources at the Union level are closely linked. In spring 2010 the Weimar Triangle (Germany, France and Poland) proposed – with yet no decision taken – the establishment of a permanent civil-military EU Headquarters for CSDP missions, which would put a stop to the current practice of fragmented national/EU implementation resources, thereby implying a broad transfer of competences from the national to the EU level.45

When the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force in 1999, the permanent post of High Representative for the CFSP (HR) was created to direct the above-mentioned units within the CS with their hybrid intergovernmentalist/supranationalist logics. The incumbent is required to assist the EU presidency and speak for it in that issue-area. He helps to formulate, prepare and implement policy decisions agreed upon by the Council of Ministers, and may also conduct political dialogue with third parties on behalf of the Union. Since his appointment, Javier Solana, the first HR, has increasingly been required by the Council to carry out difficult negotiations with third parties, for instance on the Iranian nuclear question.46 While the predecessors of the HR, the Council's Secretaries General, were hardly visible, Solana received a political mandate and developed a strong agenda, thus complementing national external policies. By way of informal agenda-setting he has certain opportunities to instigate developments in the area of crisis management.47 The CS successfully lobbied for the creation of the Rafah border-monitoring mission in the Palestine territories48 and steered the debate on a mission in Chad and the Central African Republic towards the adoption of a military rather than a civilian mission, despite the serious reservations of some Member States.49 Although part of the intergovernmental Council structure, with an allegedly supportive function, the HR and his political cabinet do not fit easily into the logic of that structure, nor into the supranational dimension of decision-making within the EU. They have some leeway in influencing collective outcomes. Howorth has used the oxymoron of ‘supranational intergovernmentalism’ to illustrate these evolving practices between the two institutional orders.50

Decisive factors facilitating CS latitude in the policy cycle are the above mentioned resources. The diplomatic, foreign and security-related sections within the CS (particularly within the Directorate-General E), have developed into a semi-autonomous entity, which some scholars have even dubbed a supranational actor.51 The quantity, expertise and competences of these bodies have grown larger. For instance, between 1995 and 2005 the number of staff within the Directorate-General E increased from 124 to 216.52 The sum of Special and Personal Representatives under the authority of the HR ballooned from two in 1996 to 17 in 2010,53 and between 2004 and 2006 alone their budget rose from 3.5 to more than 11 million euros.54 Klein has revealed that with regard to CSDP missions in Macedonia and Bosnia, the CS (but also the Commission) was able to exert influence on the formulation and implementation of European crisis management and to pursue its own preferences.55 Due to his ambiguous mandate, the role of the Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina vis-à-vis the force commander had been incrementally strengthened over the years.56 Representatives generally play a vital role in the context of political initiatives by the CS, PSC and working groups.57

It is against this background of internationalization that Lewis refers to an ‘independent, supranational influence’ of the HR's office.58 The EU – much more than NATO – also relies on (or co-opts?) specialized NGO information and know-how in the issue-area of security, particularly the Commission in its contribution towards the EU's civilian crisis management, peacebuilding, and post-conflict management.59 In general, however, the latter has itself acquired considerable expertise in the last years, and Rieker concludes that only few other actors have a similar amount of knowledge in these areas.60

The Lisbon treaty amendments of 2009 furnished the HR with further competences, including the chairmanship of the novel Foreign Affairs Council of foreign ministers and the right to ‘refer to the Council any question relating to the [CFSP] [and] submit to it initiatives or proposals as appropriate’, either alone or in tandem with the Commission.61 He is now also Vice-President of the Commission, with a well-resourced External Relations portfolio. What's more, he has now at his disposal the diplomatic European External Action Service (EEAS), which is supposed to ensure greater consistency and efficiency in the EU's external action and increase his political and economic leverage.62 It has been formed by merging the external relations-related departments of the CS and the Commission, and is located in the Triangle building close to Brussels' Schuman roundabout.63 Foreign Ministers and the Commission reached consensus in April 2010 on a proposal for the basic principles, structure and working methods of the service. According to that scheme, the Commission still enjoys considerable latitude within the EEAS, although its delegations are now subordinated to the service as a whole. The EEAS is ultimately set to include 6–8,000 staff from the CS, the Commission and the Diplomatic Services of Member States, which testifies to an interlocking of responsibilities and different institutional logics.64

While there is considerable debate about the EEAS' institutional design and working practices, the current institutional system of the CSDP – a multilayered, cross-pillarized structure connecting the first and second pillars of the EU treaty – is not likely to be fundamentally changed, due to pressures stemming from functional indivisibilities and increasing emancipation of international bureaucracies with emerging preferences of their own.65 The CSDP has materialized as a transgovernmental field which over time took a life of its own, with internalized norms and rules becoming increasingly self-sustaining and hence difficult to change by intentional design.66

In a nutshell, the Union has introduced and further expanded the range of security issues it deals with. There are now a number of actors, institutions and instruments in Brussels involved in the policy area, meaning that national security has been entrenched in structures beyond the state. They affect the policy cycle in all of its phases, imply adaptation and changes of national policies, and for this reason alter the way external security is provided for.

Multinationalization, Pooling and Role Specialization

Since 1990 there have been clear signs of growing multinationalization, asset pooling, and role specialization of forces among NATO and EU Member States – developments which have also affected the pursuit of national security.67 Multinationality denotes frequent interactions among elements of different national military units so as to facilitate integrated command and control. Pooling implies that capabilities are either shared, organized on a collective basis, or acquired by one security IO for the benefit of all members. Role specialization schemes may be introduced after redundancies among members' capabilities have been significantly reduced so that subsequently individual members within an alliance, bluntly put, each provide a certain capacity for all other members.68

Multinationalization, the pooling of assets, and role specialization enhance the legitimacy of the alliance vis-à-vis the international community and domestic audiences, and they demonstrate a high degree of solidarity. But they also result in greater efficiencies and thus help reduce defence expenditures. Pooling is often arranged by weaker states which are thus able to boost their otherwise modest influence, whereas second-rank powers – not to mention the US – are often wary of discarding their strategic autonomy.69 But even they promote integration of their military forces, often to a substantial extent, particularly against the background of budgetary constraints and harsh defence cuts.70 The recent Franco-British agreement to share a number of aircraft carriers and warhead testing facilities is one of the more striking examples of military integration amongst the more powerful states, including a nation that only recently returned to NATO's integrated military structure, which it once left due to president Charles de Gaulle's aspiration to national grandeur and military-industrial autarky.71 France and the UK are even discussing a deterrence scheme which involves sharing submarine patrols equipped with nuclear weapons.72

These moves are remarkable indeed because pooling assets or setting up multinational units generally weaken the degree of control members are able to exert over their forces, and role specialization likewise ‘runs up against the logic of sustaining national defence autonomy’ as it creates multiple veto points.73 All forms of military integration depicted here require reciprocal relations with a high degree of transparency, communication and trust among participants, and tend to reduce national strategic autonomy. The growing linkage between units and capabilities of national forces will make it more difficult for individual governments to act unilaterally if politico-strategic perceptions diverge and objectives clash with other alliance members' national interests, so the latter may refuse to commit their interlocked, maybe critical components. On the other hand, the schemes depicted in this section are more likely to cause ‘entrapment’, which occurs when a member is ‘being dragged into a conflict over an ally's interests that one does not share, or shares only partially’.74

It is against this background that military integration gives rise to structural constraints for the Member States' monopolies of force as they (further) restrict the national availability of capabilities and hence the potential to conduct missions unilaterally. Allied states no doubt retain their right to release forces and – at least in theory – to pull them out any time after deployment. What's more, there is indeed significant variation with regard to their willingness to embed national military resources and capacities into superordinate arrangements in the first place. The US, for instance, keeps an estimated 90 per cent of its military capabilities outside integrated structures75 and does not fully participate in the NRF, and second-rank powers such as the UK or France still have the military and political clout to run missions on their own. But as has been indicated above, even they now encounter more difficulties in carrying out far-off, increasingly complex and therefore costly operations – particularly over long time horizons. As a result, they get into the authority-restricting mechanisms described here. While NATO and the EU are nowhere near establishing ‘their’ own armies with supranational authoritative power of disposal over military resources, the processes discussed in this section can be considered as indications of internationalization as they contribute to the reorganization of the provision of national external defence and security.

With regard to NATO, there is clear evidence for a growing multinationalization of forces and assets after the Cold War.76 To be sure, multinational military units within NATO are by no means new, but have been an essential concept since the late 1950s. However, during the Cold War multinationalization was comparatively modest and restricted to staff levels and only a few Corps. In 1990, the Alliance's Heads of State and Government pledged to ‘rely increasingly on multinational corps made up of national units’ in the future.77 As a consequence, additional multinational units were established. Nowadays all NATO Corps are multinational, and integration can also be witnessed at the level of operational headquarters.78 The Prague summit of 2002 once again issued a reminder about ‘multinational efforts, role specialisation and reprioritisation [of defense spending]’ to improve capabilities.79 Accordingly, a Rapid Reaction Task Force (RRF) – the central component for peace enforcement and peacekeeping missions – was set up, with troops assigned to multinational units.

As a consequence of multinationalization, pooling and role specialization, defence planning has become more institutionalized since the Cold War in order to increase NATO's interoperability and to discourage nonconforming action. Initially in 1990–1992, some national security officials advised that NATO's integrated force planning mechanism should be abolished.80 Ultimately, however, the mechanism was revitalized and modified, with staff – particularly those from NATO's Headquarters and military command – persuading governments to implement a novel planning scheme with newly founded risk scenarios and the availability of capabilities as a point of reference replacing old threat analyses.81 This institutional adaptation was necessary for the Alliance to be able to respond to the challenges of the post-Cold War environment as the new, long-term and more complex missions require diverse information and support.82 Although until the mid-1990s the new planning mechanisms were frequently ignored by capitals, they eventually became accepted practice.83 To induce further impulses, the Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI) of 1999 attempted to speed up force planning reform. As a result, previous mechanisms, with their vertical hierarchies, have been changed.84 After it became apparent that the follow-up process of the DCI was only modest in its achievements (particularly because the definition of its targets was yet too vague), the binding character of commitments was increased by introducing more densely institutionalized schemes – a clear indicator of further internationalization.

Multinationalization, pooling and role specialization can also be witnessed within the EU. The Amsterdam Treaty, which came into force in May 1999, introduced a security component within the framework of the already established CFSP. While that component does not embrace a full-scale defence planning scheme like NATO's, it has nevertheless set a number of military and defence-related objectives and targets which are discussed, implemented, monitored and enforced to some degree by newly founded mechanisms. Objectives include, for instance, the already mentioned force goal of 60,000 troops that the Helsinki European Council set in 1999. As has been said, these forces do not constitute a standing army but a catalogue of contributions. A further Headline Goal centres on the establishment of the above-mentioned Battlegroups. At their meeting in Brussels in December 2010, EU defence ministers adopted a specific conclusion on military capabilities and urged their governments to cooperate more closely in this area. They ‘particularly stressed the need to develop pooling and sharing options, … and to explore role specialisation’.85

Also in the realm of military and defence, national officials now regularly cooperate in institutionalized settings in Brussels' EU environment to reflect on ‘the EU's’ interests and CSDP missions, which involves a partial shift of awareness and better regard for other nations' preferences. Since February 2002 EU defence ministers have convened regularly in Europe's capital to discuss the development of military capabilities and missions. Howorth has dubbed these meetings ‘significant security-policy shapers’.86 In addition, the EU has established a European Defence Agency (EDA) for the development of defence capabilities, research, acquisition and armaments, which the institute coordinates and supports. Chaired by the HR, the EDA discusses Member State contributions with individual governments on the basis of standardized data, supervises compliance and thus further internationalizes defence and security planning.87 The corresponding provisions in Article 42/3 of the EU Lisbon Treaty stipulate that ‘Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities. The [EDA] shall… participate in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy’.

In sum, although NATO and EU members retain their ultimate military authority to deploy and withdraw their capabilities, we can observe a reconfiguration of their monopolies of force with a growing integration of capabilities and national security and defence planning. The US – as the only remaining military superpower – left aside, and with the exception of a few smaller unilateral interventions by France and the UK in Africa, all military interventions by NATO and EU members since the Cold War have operated in multinational formations, mostly within the framework of a security IO. A ‘transnational military network’ is emerging particularly within the EU, with widely shared practices, cross-border cooperation, and often multinational and hence interlocked capabilities88 giving rise to a system of military and political authorities in which Member States' autonomous capacity for action is increasingly subject to political, institutional and physical constraints.

Backlash and Institutional Regression

By creating new institutions, assigning both IOs further competences, providing them with additional resources, and pushing forward the integration of capabilities, Member States have consciously relinquished some of their external authority. But the extent to which NATO and EU members are generally prepared to renounce authority varies.89 Particularly against the background of a sharp increase in both IOs' memberships since 1990, it is barely surprising that the heterogeneity within both collectives intensifies. Leaving aside politico-strategic objectives, perceptions also differ over the general question of whether the value of the functions of internationalization (improved policy outcomes and substantial savings) outweighs their costs (above all, national limitations for unilateral action and slower decision-making). The autonomy-restricting, consensus-based mechanisms within the implementation of the Allied Force operation in Kosovo led the United States to complain about this ‘war by committee’.90 Hence, the disputes over both IOs' specific designs are reflective of the governance problem in international relations – ‘the politics of contested institutions’.91 Opposition can be seen as resulting from the intensified Member State heterogeneity or changed preferences over the institutional design, or as a response to unintended side effects of initial decisions leading to developments in unforeseen directions.92 Implicitly, Member State opposition can also be viewed as an indicator for the existence of more powerful, possibly runaway international bureaucracies: why should governments mobilize large-scale resistance if international bureaucracies do not matter?

Within NATO, there are a number of examples of Member State campaigns against the alleged negative consequences of internationalization, although the Alliance's comparatively loose institutionalization permits its members more freedom of choice and is hence less likely to evoke opposition towards perceived constraints or ultra vires action of international bureaucracies than the EU. Yet even that more modest shift towards more IO independence has sometimes met with criticism among national delegations, inter alia against the Headquarters' new staffing policy.93 Given a more autonomous IS due to the 2002 reform, some governments were apparently concerned that their authority might diminish, that they could lose control over personnel selection, and that the sense of national loyalties amongst new incumbents could (further) ease. Several national delegations therefore made an effort to put a stop to the expected loss of control by reversing the new staffing policy. It appears that then-SG de Hoop Scheffer positively responded to this criticism and slowed down the practice of issuing indefinite employment contracts.94

In mid-March 2005 NATO ambassadors agreed to commence a study of reform of NATO's HQ, particularly with a view to speeding up the consultation procedure, and de Hoop Scheffer appointed a sounding board of experts led by the present director of the SG's Private Office, Jesper Vahr. The group's far-reaching recommendations were met with strong resistance by some governments, while others deemed them not far-reaching enough.95 As such, they could not be endorsed, and the SG therefore sought to implement several of the proposals on his own, for which he did not need ministerial approval.96 In addition to the struggle over HQ reform, Member States' hesitation to contribute forces to the agreed rapid deployment schemes, with their generally more binding character (particularly the NRF), can be interpreted as an ex post watering-down of autonomy-constraining consequences of the internationalization process.

Within the EU, there arose even more resistance towards particular institutional developments in the wake of internationalization – barely surprising, as the process, with its supranational authority structures, is more far-reaching. At intergovernmental conferences, national preferences regarding the CFSP's institutional design were generally at great variance,97 and there are sometimes serious turf battles between the Commission and the CS.98 Against the background of cross-pillarization and the increasing autonomy of the Commission, some advocated putting a curb on the latter. For instance, a number of Member States, especially the United Kingdom, were opposed to having Commission representatives as observers in the Military Committee.99

Although the Commission takes a back seat when it comes to deciding or implementing military missions, as CFSP/CSDP remain legally unconnected to the European Community pillar, civilian components of operations – in which the Commission has broad community competence – are becoming coordinated and closely tied with military elements, opening up opportunities for an improved supranational impact.100 This has on occasion led to serious disputes between the two bureaucracies. For instance, after the Council decided to support a Small Weapons Programme for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Commission perceived this to be an ultra vires move, arguing it constituted a development matter and hence fell into its portfolio. The latter thus took the Council to the European Court of Justice,101 which in May 2008 decided in favour of the supranational actor.

Generally, there was some fear of ‘supranational contamination’ from the Council perspective.102 The above-mentioned cross-pillarization – owing to functional indivisibilities – gives rise to shared, often overlapping competences with an influential Commission. At their informal Hampton Court meeting in 2005, the EU Heads of State and Government called for measures to bring these fuzzy civilian crisis management structures, with potentially slacking agents, under more effective supervision. HR Solana responded to this call by suggesting a new body as a ‘watch-keeping facility… to communicate with our missions on the ground’, to be directed by a Civilian Operations Commander.103 These proposals were eventually adopted by the Council, which also issued guidelines in mid-2007, emphasizing the need for the PSC to ‘exercise the political control and strategic direction of the civilian ESDP operations’.104 The document defines command and control – the buzzwords in the debate – as ‘the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated official over assigned human resources’.105 The watch-keeping facility, eventually labeled Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC), was established in August 2007 within the CS through a Council Joint Action. With around 60 staff of CS employees and national secondees (but none from the Commission), the CPCC has the mandate to plan and implement civilian CSDP missions under the strategic guidance of the PSC. It is hence seen as a civilian counterpart to the MS, with clustered competences under the roof of the CS, and for this reason closer to Member State control, although it tightly collaborates with the Commission. The CS's Special Representatives, previously at the top of the civilian hierarchy in the field and therefore giving local political guidance to EC delegations, were subsequently taken out of the chain of command and have therefore lost some power.106

EU governments also seem to have underestimated the role of the newly founded PSC advisory body, which – together with the Council – exerts political control and strategic direction of the CSDP. While the PSC consists of Member State representatives only, it still constitutes an internationalized collective, with individuals possibly developing preferences divergent from their governments'.107 The latter at least partially anticipated this potential for the PSC to deviate from their intentions, and the resulting loss of control. Larger states in particular were thus inclined to send low-ranking diplomats, who were assumed to be easier to keep in check, to the body. The PSC convenes mostly in the formation of EU ambassadors, which are usually less easy to regulate by their governments, but occasionally in the structure of lower-ranking Political Directors from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs. The ‘predecessor’ of the PSC, the Political Committee, convened in the form of Political Directors only, and could thus be controlled comparatively well. Having become aware of greater PSC autonomy, EU Member States began to have second thoughts: they ‘became nervous of their own temerity and began trying to keep the new body under their own firm control’.108

Similar concerns apply regarding the European External Action Service. Among others, EU members were (like those within NATO) initially opposed to it turning into a career service akin to that of the EC Commission, with the accompanying danger of shifting loyalties. Yet, after controversial negotiations with the EU Parliament and the Commission, members eventually had to concur on a scheme according to which Member States' civil servants working on secondment for the new bureaucracy could prolong their employment contracts after four years – without previous consent from their governments.109 In a similar vein, the decision of EU Heads of State and Government in November 2009 to nominate a politically unassertive figure, Baroness Catherine Ashton, for the post of HR for the CFSP can be seen as evidence of governments' fear of overly independent international bureaucratic elites in the issue-area of security. Also, as with NATO's NRF, the Battlegroups concept as a generally more binding standby deployment scheme has not so far been fully used, therefore suggesting that EU members sometimes fall short of living up to their own institutional commitments.

Informalization of Decision-Making – Return to Power Politics?

Not only do governments occasionally seek to disregard, water down, or revoke previously agreed upon institutional commitments, as has been demonstrated above; sometimes they also create additional informal channels to bypass or complement these structures. Are there signs of a growing informalization of decision-shaping or -making in the provision of security, enabling states to enjoy a larger degree of freedom with regard to the interpretation of institutional obligations and commitments?110 If so, is this informalization likely to dilute or even undermine the new formal international structures now embedding national security politics as illustrated in sections two to five?

More or less explicitly building on Keohane and Nye's early work on transgovernmental relations, scholars of functional regime theory, the administrative sciences and international law make the case that a networking or informalization of world politics is underway, which is generally seen as a consequence of growing functional interdependence.111 According to Slaughter, these networks became apparent first and foremost – though not exclusively – as horizontal, cross-border links between the subnational officials, such as diplomats, national courts or national administrative bodies, of increasingly multifaceted states, in order to share function-specific information and coordinate policies. To a lesser degree, these actors cooperate within or alongside formal treaty-based IOs, as well as with transnational civil society actors.112 In her at times perplexing blend of diagnosis and prescription, Slaughter makes a plea for such ‘transnational governmental networks’ as a means of promoting a new world order with greater legitimacy and accountability than supranational actors of formal IOs or civil society representatives, who are criticized for being detached from national electorates and hence posing severe legitimacy problems. The rationale of state actors' establishment of informal schemes is by and large seen in the literature as an attempt to bypass formal institutions based on conventional treaties, with their alleged inflexibility and sluggishness in adapting to new functions, particularly in times of rapid change.113

Authors point to informal networks taking on new functions, as in the case of the Group of Eight forum of major world economies (G8), in which decisions are often pre-structured so that the powerful dish up faits accomplis which the less influential are supposed to nod through.114 Fowler, for instance, has demonstrated that the G8 goes far beyond economics and debates questions of international security, with agreements subsequently featured on the agendas of formal institutions such as the UN as decision guidelines.115 In fact, the number of G8 working groups has ballooned since 9/11, suggesting that the issue-area of anti-terrorism, in particular, is increasingly dealt with within this informal network.116Around the UN, informal issue-specific settings such as groups of friends or contact groups have evolved into forums for the minilateral management of security problems, and they are often seen as a means to achieve goals that would be unattainable in more formalized settings.117

With regard to NATO, Haftendorn argues that for decades a few powerful states were most decisive in shaping institutional repertoires,118 and integration scholars such as Gegout have discovered forums within the EU's CFSP where a minority of the wealthiest five unofficially communicate and negotiate verbal agreements before the Council adopts binding decisions.119 The introduction of opt-out clauses within the CSDP, allowing a few to act as a vanguard, but also the increasing diversification of partnerships and troop contributors particularly within the Alliance context are seen as evidence of a mounting flexibility in security politics. Realists suggest that as institutions, formal IOs are irrelevant or only peripheral, and hence security IOs are often perceived as toolboxes from which governments pick and choose as and when required. Particularly after 9/11, the EU – and even more so, NATO – is seen as destined to become an increasingly flexible coalition framework serving only a secondary role after key members have made the crucial decisions,120 and these are also Realist interpretations of the CSDP.121 Do these views go together with the internationalization argument proposed here, and with the frequent claims of bureaucratization of world politics, suggesting that formal IOs have now more authority and more power over other actors?122

Informalization scholars yield important clues about the nature of ad hoc groupings and about how unofficial networks are structured and work, and transgovernmentalists send an important reminder that the state must be seen as a disaggregated entity rather than a unitary actor. Although their arguments are occasionally exaggerated or flawed and somewhat oppose what follows from the previous sections, in many respects their conclusions are compatible with internationalization – an increasing importance of political or administrative authorities beyond the nation-state. To begin with, few internationalization scholars or proponents of global governance would blatantly deny the continuing importance of state power and the relevance of informal directorates such as the Franco-German EU engine, the Franco-British endeavour to jumpstart European defence and security, or the Anglo-American special relationship, with its off-the-record gatherings. States, frequently organized in such core groups, do indeed effectively shape the substance of decision-making, which is why they have been given consideration in this analysis. Verbal agreements among governments and informal networks have always been core features of world politics and the European integration process and are likely to remain so.123 It is far from obvious, however, whether the informal structures observed since the Cold War have significantly increased, are qualitatively different, or whether the institutional order that has emerged within and along both IOs discussed here can be seen as chiefly confined to links among subnational officials. Do informal structures have the potential to weaken the consequences of internationalization, and do the former – on balance – outpace the latter?

In contrast to other issue-areas such as economics or the environment, informality and transgovernmental networks in security politics are still largely under-researched. Those investigating informal processes are typically confronted with complex activities often proceeding behind closed doors, which are hence much harder to discern than changes in formal structures (mostly set out in writing). It is particularly difficult for informalization scholars to attribute charges to individual phases of the security policy cycle. Scholars of informalization, particularly if inspired by Realism or strong intergovernmentalist assumptions of state-centrism, are liable to be biased (as, conversely, are sometimes scholars of internationalization or bureaucratic politics) in that they tend to close their eyes to the logical possibility that their general assertion – decision-making in security politics has become more flexible in favour of state actors – could be proven false or defective by other observations. The increasing significance of supranational or hybrid actors with their supporting bodies and agencies is often downplayed or entirely bracketed. This disregard not only distorts the overall picture of transformation of security politics, it also obfuscates the fact that IO representatives themselves frequently belong to informal structures and thus often form part of transnational networks giving rise to internationalization.124

Generally, however, informalization arguments must not inevitably be played off against the embedded-politics line of reasoning made here, as attributes of the former can often also be found in the latter. A sharp bifurcation between the two is therefore inappropriate. After all, informal institutions are exactly that: institutions, embodying sets of rules, constraining activity, and shaping behaviour; and they can thus be seen as stabilizing structures for communication and interaction. As thin as they may sometimes be, in the end they condition bargaining by the existing institutional setting, help socialize existing practices and preferences and thus transcend unilateralism. Moreover, informal institutions are often built on formal frameworks or they advance formal institutions.125 The transgovernmental, cross-border interactions of (sub)national officials are clearly accounted for by the analytical concept of internationalization, although their occurrence testifies only to a modest form of this process. It thus becomes apparent that students of both ‘camps’ have more in common than is often admitted.

In order to disprove core assumptions connected to internationalization with competing claims put forward by those informalization scholars implying that a renationalization of the pursuit of security is underway, one would have to demonstrate that loose, largely unrestricting, barely regulated governmental networks outside formal treaty-based IOs increasingly dominate decision-making in security politics, and they circumvent, leverage off, and on balance outpace the formal, more institutionalized structures described in the previous sections. An increase in ad hoc-ism and informal government structures in themselves must not yet be seen as conflicting with the internationalization argument, while it might be that there is a parallel trend, amounting to both a rise in informal institutions and an upgrading of formal treaty-based IOs. As Eilstrup-Sangiovanni points out, informal transgovernmental forums have complemented, rather than replaced, formal treaties in security cooperation.126

Conclusion

This paper argues that a transformation of the national security politics of NATO and EU members can be witnessed, and it has sought evidence for this change at the levels of NATO and the EU's CFSP. The analysis has demonstrated that both IOs have maintained or extended their roles, with growing organizational mandates, at remarkable rates, and increased levels of participation in the shaping and making of Western security policies can be shown in the case of both IOs. The integration of national capabilities, a move towards greater role-specialization, and the enduring, more strongly institutionalized practice of force generation have led to an interlinking of power structures – albeit with variation.

These developments have not led to a transfer of state sovereignty involving states' loss of the right to adopt binding decisions, however. Both NATO and the EU remain polities with states as their component entities which enjoy international legal sovereignty, and as providers of external security they are by no means obsolescent institutions. But state identities are being renegotiated. What has vanished is the comparatively great latitude with which governments made such decisions in the decades before the end of the Cold War. Westphalian sovereignty – the absence of a role for external actors in domestic structures – has therefore receded. The new political order depicted here, embedded security politics, is characterized by fragmented responsibilities in which transgovernmental and transnational contacts and pressure to reach consensus alter underlying national preferences, by thicker institutional structures of rules and common practices that constrain national decision-making, and by schemes that subject national capabilities for autonomous action to institutional and physical constraints. The processes described here divert awareness in new directions and (further) facilitate the development of multiple loyalties amongst those working in Brussels.

Yet the degree of internationalization differs between the two IOs – as well as between individual governments with regard to military integration. In spite of everything, NATO imposes fewer limitations on Member States compared to the EU's CFSP, with its supranational, hybrid actors with vital institutional autonomy in all phases of the policy cycle, and with its broader definition of security that promotes the linkage of and spillover among different, but connected issue-areas. It remains to be discussed how the degree of formality impinges upon both IOs' effectiveness. Seen from a glum perspective, are more institutionalized structures generally less conducive for collective decision-making, as the ill-fated Response Force and Battlegroups or the reluctance to instigate an EU military mission in Libya may suggest?

Since 1990 there has been a demand for more independent, better furnished multilateral security organizations. Even in cases where ad hoc coalitions have been deployed initially (such as ISAF in Afghanistan or the recently launched Libya mission), national forces have subsequently been subordinated under NATO's integrated structure. A first hunch about the causes of internationalization suggests that the effective provision of external security now requires denser, more institutionalized forms of collaboration and regulation in both IOs. States by themselves are apparently ill-equipped to respond to the new challenges due to their complexity and the increasing costs of the missions. Even so, governments retain the ultimate responsibility to employ external force, and states remain key shapers of political processes. A research agenda that more systematically took into account the prospect of the simultaneous existence of significant internationalization and informality would therefore be welcome.

Scholars working on informalization have to acknowledge the transnational attributes of Western security politics, that state preferences are sometimes subject to modification through processes of interaction, and that international bureaucracies do enjoy some leverage even in the realm of security. But informalization scholars send an important reminder to those bound to internationalization and global governance that the denationalization of political authority remains fragmentary, that the degree of internationalization is still contested, and that informality and state power continue to be important features of world politics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Several people contributed constructive feedback to earlier drafts of this article, including Christopher Daase, Klaus Dingwerth, Aaron Karp, Peter Mayer, Andrea Schneiker, Dieter Senghaas, Frank Stengel, the participants of the InIIS/BIGSSS colloquium at the University of Bremen and the two anonymous reviewers for Contemporary Security Policy. I am also grateful to Paula van Aaken, Sarah Lagershausen, Remke Lohmann and Vicki May for their editorial support.

Notes

Barry Buzan, ‘Rethinking Security After the Cold War’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp. 61–71; Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

International security organizations are understood here as corporate entities primarily made up of states, able to take action vis-à-vis their environment in the issue-area of external security. They have agentic qualities as they are composed of governing bodies as well as a secretariat which performs a number of executive functions delegated by members. But they also enjoy certain degrees of discretion, particularly when it comes to interpreting given contractual arrangements, which naturally are rarely complete.

Cf. Bastian Giegerich, European Security and Strategic Culture: National Responses to the EU's Security and Defence Policy (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2006) or Eva Gross, The Europeanization of National Foreign Policy: Continuity and Change in European Crisis Management (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Cf. Achim Hurrelmann et al. (eds), Transforming the Golden-Age Nation State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Hanna Ojanen, ‘The EU and NATO: Two Competing Models For a Common Defence Policy’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Winter 2006), pp. 57–76.

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Elke Krahmann, ‘Conceptualizing Security Governance’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 5–26; Mark Webber et al., ‘The Governance of European Security’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 3–26.

Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Bernhard Zangl and Michael Zürn, Frieden und Krieg: Sicherheit in der nationalen und postnationalen Konstellation (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003).

Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules For the World: International Organizations in Global Politics (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2004); Klaus Dingwerth, Dieter Kerwer and Andreas Nölke, Die Organisierte Welt (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009).

Cf. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention. Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).

Sebastian Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik jenseits des Nationalstaats. Die Internationalisierung von Präventions- und Interventionsmaßnahmen in NATO und EU (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009), p. 42. See also Sebastian Mayer and Silke Weinlich, ‘Internationalization of Intervention? UN and EU Security Politics and the Modern State’, in Achim Hurrelmann et al. (eds), Transforming the Golden-Age Nation State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 43–6. Europeanization can be understood as a sub-type of internationalization.

Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World (note 9), p. 10.

For the distinction between preferences over strategies and preferences over outcomes, see Jeffry A. Frieden, ‘Actors and Preferences in International Relations’, in David A. Lake and Robert Powell (eds), Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 42–5.

Johan P. Olsen, ‘European Challenges to the Nation-State’, in Bernard Steunenberg and Frans van Vught (eds), Political Institutions and Public Policy: Perspectives on European Decision-Making (The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 157–88.

Karl-Heinz Kamp, ‘The NATO Summit in Bucharest: The Alliance at a Crossroads’, Research Paper 33, Research Division NATO Defence College, Rome, 2007, p. 4.

Cf. John Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War’, International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5–56.

Peter V. Jakobsen, ‘NATO's Comprehensive Approach to Crisis Response Operations: A Work in Slow Progress’, DIIS Report 15, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, 2008; Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11).

Peter Mayer, ‘Civil Society Participation in International Security Organizations: The Cases of NATO and OSCE’, in Jens Steffek, Claudia Kissling, and Patrizia Nanz (eds), Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 119–25.

‘Active Engagement, Modern Defence’, Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, adopted by Heads of State and Government in Lisbon, 19 November 2010. Available at http://www.nato.int/lisbon2010/strategic-concept-2010-eng.pdf (accessed 1 April 2011).

Jeffrey J. Anderson, John Ikenberry, and Thomas Risse, The End of the West? Crisis and Change in the Atlantic Order (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2008).

Charles Krupnick (ed), Almost NATO: Partners and Players in Central and Eastern European Security (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003).

Ryan C. Hendrickson, Diplomacy and War at NATO: The Secretary General and Military Action After the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).

Celeste A. Wallander, ‘Institutional Assets and Adaptability: NATO After the Cold War’, International Organization, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Fall 2000), pp. 705–35.

‘NATO Warms to Rapid Reaction Force’, BBC News, 25 September 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2277578.stm (accessed 8 July 2011).

Jens Ringsmose, ‘NATO Burden-Sharing Redux. Continuity and Change after the Cold War’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 319–38.

Hans Mouritzen, The International Civil Service. A Study of Bureaucracy. International Organizations (Aldershot: Darthmouth, 1990), p. 45.

Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11), p. 73; Johannes Varwick, Die NATO. Vom Verteidigungsbündnis zur Weltpolizei (München: Beck, 2008), p. 54.

John Kriendler, NATO HQ Reform: Once More with Feeling (Innsbruck: George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, 2006).

Christian Tuschhoff, ‘Alliance Cohesion and Peaceful Change in NATO’, in Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane, and Celeste A. Wallander (eds), Imperfect Unions. Security Institutions Over Time and Space (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 148–50.

Hendrickson, Diplomacy and War at NATO (note 22), pp. 104–7.

John Kriendler, ‘Transformating NATO HQ: The Latest Hurrah’, Conflict Studies Research Centre Special Series 06/30, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Watchfield, 2006, p. 6.

Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11), p. 78.

Council of the European Union, ‘EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)', (Brussels, Council of the EU, 2010), http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showpage.aspx?id=268&lang=EN

Basil Germond and Michael E. Smith, ‘Re-Thinking European Security Interests and the ESDP: Explaining the EU's Anti-Piracy Operation’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Winter 2009), pp. 573–93.

Formerly: European Security and Defence Policy.

Margarita Mathiopoulos and Istvan Gyarmati, ‘Saint Malo and Beyond: Toward European Defence’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1999), pp. 65–72.

Franco-British Summit Joint Declaration on European Defence, Saint-Malo, 4 December 1998, http://www.atlanticcommunity.org/Saint-Malo%20Declaration%20Text.html (accessed 21 december 2010).

Jakob Lempp, Die Evolution des Rats der Europäischen Union: Institutionenevolution zwischen Intergouvernementalismus und Supranationalisimus (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009).

Stephan Keukeleire, ‘EU Core Groups: Specialisation and Division of Labour in EU Foreign Policy’, Working Document, Center for European Policy Studies, Brussels, 2006, p. 5.

Christoph Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 116, 36.

Wolfgang Wessels and Elfriede Regelsberger, ‘The Evolution of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. A Case of an Imperfect Ratchet Fusion’, in Amy Verdun and Osvaldo Croci (eds), The European Union in the Wake of Eastern Enlargement. Institutional and Policy-Making Challenges (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 91–116.

Lempp, Die Evolution des Rats der Europäischen Union (note 38), pp. 411–25.

Jan Beyers, ‘Multiple Embeddedness and Socialization in Europe: The Case of Council Officials’, International Organization, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 899–936.

Frédéric Mérand, Stéphanie C. Hofmann, and Bastien Irondelle, ‘Governance and State Power: A Network Analysis of European Security’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 121–47.

Claudia Major, ‘Ein Zivil-Militärisches Hauptquartier für die EU. Die Initiative des Weimarer Dreiecks Belebt die Laufende Debatte’, SWP-Aktuell, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin, Vol. 74 (Fall 2010).

Andrew Cottey, The European Union and Conflict Prevention. The Role of the High Representative and the Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit. Report (London: Saferworld, 1998); Franco Algieri, Die Gemeinsame Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik der EU (Wien: Facultas Verlag, 2008), pp. 61–71.

Keukeleire, EU Core Groups (note 39).

Sophie Vanhoonacker and Hylke Dijkstra, ‘Beyond Note-Taking: CFSP Challenges for the Council Secretariat’, CFSP Forum, Vol. 5, No. 6 (Fall 2007), pp. 1–5.

Nadja Klein, European Agents Out of Control? Delegation and Agency in the Civil-Military Crisis Management of the European Union 1999–2008 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), p. 89.

Jolyon Howorth, Security and Defence Policy in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 36, 84.

Thomas Christiansen, ‘The Role of Supranational Actors in EU Treaty Reform’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 2002), p. 35.

Fiona Hayes-Renshaw and Helen Wallace, The Council of Ministers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 108. This is not including the staff of the Private Office of the HR.

Council of the European Union, http://www.consilium.europa.eu (accessed 13 October 2010).

Giovanni Grevi, ‘Pioneering Foreign Policy: The EU Special Representatives’, Chaillot Paper 106, European Union Institute for Security Studies, Paris, October 2007, p. 21.

Klein, European Agents out of Control? (note 49), p. 89.

Ibid.

Grevi, Pioneering Foreign Policy (note 55), p. 33.

Jeffrey Lewis, ‘Informal Integration and the Supranational Construction of the Council’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 10, No. 6 (Winter 2003), pp. 1005.

European Peacebuilding Liaison Office, ‘Partners in Conflict Prevention & Crisis Management: EU and NGO Cooperation’, Conference Report, Gütersloh, August 2007, http://www.eplo.org/documents/Report_RoCSII_engl.pdf (accessed 1 April 2011).

Pernille Rieker, ‘The EU as a Security Actor: The Development of Political and Administrative Capabilities’, NUPI Working Papers 725, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo, 2007, p. 41.

‘Consolidated Version of the Treaty of the European Union’, Official Journal of the European Union, C 115/17, 2009, Article 30.

Brian Crowe, The European External Action Service: Roadmap for Success (London: Chatham House, 2008).

For the EEAS homepage see http://eeas.europa.eu/. The formation of the service started in August 2010 and it has been operational – at low levels – since December 2010.

‘Ashton presents new architecture for EU diplomatic service’, Euractiv.com, 23 April 2010, http://www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/ashton-presents-new-architecture-eu-diplomatic-service-news-473058 (accessed 13 October 2010).

Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11), pp. 121–70.

Frédéric Mérand, European Defence Policy: Beyond the Nation State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Cf. Sven Gareis and Paul Klein, Handbuch Militär und Sozialwissenschaft (Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2004), part V.

There are no commonly agreed upon definitions of the three terms, so meanings often overlap.

Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11), pp. 203–42. Johann Frank and Sammi Sandawi, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der EU-Streitkräfteintegration aus Sicht Österreichs (Wien: Büro für Sicherheitspolitik des Bundesministeriums für Landesverteidigung, 2006).

Alexandra Jonas and Nicolai von Ondarza, Chancen und Hindernisse für die europäische Streitkräfteintegration. Grundlegende Aspekte deutscher, französischer und britischer Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik im Vergleich (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010).

‘UK, France to Pool Defence Assets, Share Costs’, CNSNews.com, 2 November 2010, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/uk-france-pool-defense-assets-share-cost (accessed 1 April 2011).

Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘France Offers to Join Forces With UK's Nuclear Submarine Fleet’, The Guardian, 19 March 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/19/france-britain-shared-nuclear-deterrent (Accessed 1 April 2011).

Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, EU Security Governance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 204.

Glenn Snyder, ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics’, World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Summer 1984), p. 467.

Varwick, Die NATO (note 27), pp. 159–60.

Since NATO's and the EU's memberships largely overlap, there is only one ‘single set of forces’ of individual allies affiliated with both IOs: available military capabilities may be committed to either of the two, or for other IOs such as the UN. Therefore, indications of multinationalization within NATO and the EU cannot always be neatly separated.

Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance, issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council (‘The London Declaration’), London, 6 July 1990, Art. 14.

Thomas-Durell Young, ‘Post-Cold War NATO Force Structure Planning and the Vexatious Issue of Multinational Land Forces’, in Gustav Schmidt (ed.), A History of NATO. The First Fifty Years (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 197–219.

Prague Summit Declaration, issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Prague, 21 November 2002, Section C.

Martin A. Smith, NATO in the First Decade After the Cold War (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 88. The military planning staff within the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons/Belgium consists of around 2,000 military officers and is dubbed by Mérand ‘the world's most important multinational military planning staff’. Mérand, European Defence Policy (note 66), p. 56.

Robert B. McCalla, ‘NATO's Persistence after the Cold War’, International Organization, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Summer 1996), p. 449; Sten Rynning, NATO Renewed: The Power and Purpose of Transatlantic Cooperation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 102–03.

Robert Hunter, The European Security and Defense Policy. NATO's Companion – or Competitor? (Santa Monica: RAND, 2002), p. 48.

Rynning, NATO Renewed (note 81), p. 55.

Ibid., pp. 102–3.

Council of the European Union, ‘Council Conclusions on Military Capability Development’, 3055th Foreign Affairs (Defence) Council Meeting, Brussels, 9 December 2010, p. 1, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/esdp/118348.pdf (accessed 1 April 2011).

Howorth, Security and Defence Policy (note 50), p. 76.

Jozef Bátora, ‘European Defence Agency: A Flashpoint of Institutional Logics’, West European Politics, Vol. 32, No. 6 (November 2009), pp. 1075–98.

Anthony King, The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces: From the Rhine to Afghanistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Robert O. Keohane, ‘Ironies of Sovereignty: The European Union and the United States’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 743–65.

Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).

Peter Alexis Gourevitch, ‘The Governance Problem in International Relations’, in David A. Lake and Robert Powell (eds), Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 137.

Christopher Daase and Cornelius Friesendorf (eds), Rethinking Security Governance: The Problem of Unintended Consequences (London: Routledge, 2010).

Jonathan Marcus, ‘A New NATO?’, BBC News, 12 June 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2985540.stm (accessed 1 April 2011).

Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11), pp. 79–82.

Kamp, ‘The NATO Summit in Bucharest’ (note 15), p. 6.

Kriendler, ‘Transforming NATO HQ’ (note 31), p. 3.

Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, ‘Explaining Government Preferences for Institutional Change in EU Foreign and Security Policy’, International Organization, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 137–74.

Hylke Dijkstra, ‘Commission Versus Council Secretariat: An Analysis of Bureaucratic Rivalry in European Foreign Policy’, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 431–50.

Klein, European Agents out of Control? (note 49), p. 72.

Arjen Boin, Magnus Ekengren, and Mark Rhinard, ‘The Commission and Crisis Management’, in David Spence (ed.), The European Commission (London: Harper, 1990), p. 409; Simon Duke, 'Areas of Grey: Tensions in EU External Relations Competences', EIPASCOPE, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006), pp. 21–7; David Spence, 'The Commission's External Service', in David Spence (ed.), The European Commission (London: Harper, 2006), pp. 396–425.

Richard Youngs, ‘Fusing Security and Development: Just Another Euro-Platitude?’, FRIDE Working Paper No. 43, Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior, Madrid, 2007, p. 7.

Emma Stewart, The EU's Conflict Prevention Policy: A Unique Contribution to a Global Problem? (Bradford: University of Bradford, 2003), p. 24.

Javier Solana, ‘From Cologne to Berlin and Beyond – Operations, Institutions and Capabilities’, Address at the ESDP Conference, Berlin, 29 January 2007, p. 4. Available at http://www.eu2007.de/en/News/download_docs/Januar/0130Solana.pdf [Accessed 1 April 2011].

Guidelines for Command and Control Structure for EU Civilian Operations in Crisis Management, adopted by the Council on 17 June 2007 – partial declassification. Available at http://soc.kuleuven.be/iieb/eufp/files/Guidelines%20for%20Command%20and%20Control%20Structure%20for%20EU%20Civilian.pdf [Accessed 1 April 2011].

‘Guidelines for Command and Control’ (note 104), pp. 2–3.

Klein, European Agents out of Control? (note 49).

Howorth, Security and Defence Policy (note 50), p. 73.

Ibid.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 October 2010, p. 8.

Christopher Daase, ‘Die Informalisierung Internationaler Politik - Beobachtungen zum Stand der Internationalen Organisation’, in Dingwerth, Kerwer, and Nölke (eds), Die Organisierte Welt (note 9), p. 290.

Cf. Miles Kahler (ed.), Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Bernd Marin and Renate Mayntz (eds), Policy Networks. Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Considerations (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1991).

Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

See also Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal, ‘Hard and Soft Law in International Governance’, International Organization, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 434–50.

After the recent formation of the bigger G20 network, the G8 still endures.

Robert Fowler, ‘The Intricacies of Summit Preparation and Consensus Building’, in John Kirton, Michele Fratianni, and Paola Savona (eds), The G8, the United Nations and Conflict Prevention (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 39–42. See also Risto Penttila, The Role of the G8 in International Peace and Security (London: Routledge, 2003).

Daase, Informalisierung Internationaler Politik (note 110), pp. 294, 301.

Jochen Prantl, The UN Security Council and Informal Groups of States: Complementing or Competing for Governance? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Helga Haftendorn, ‘“Quad”: Dynamics of Institutional Change’, in Celeste A. Wallander, Helga Haftendorn, and Robert O. Keohane (eds), Imperfect Unions. Security Institutions Over Time and Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 162–94.

Catherine Gegout, ‘The Quint: Acknowledging the Existence of a Big Four-US Directoire at the Heart of the European Union's Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2, (Summer 2002), pp. 331–44.

Cf. Helga Haftendorn, ‘From an Alliance of Commitment to an Alliance of Choice. The Adaptation of NATO in a Time of Uncertainty’, in Stefan Gänzle and Allen G. Sens (eds), The Changing Politics of European Security. Europe Alone? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 161–79; Rajan Menon, The End of Alliances (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Rynning, NATO Renewed (note 81); Joanne Wright, ‘Trusting Flexible Friends: The Dangers of Flexibility in NATO and the West European Union/European Union’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 111–29.

Authors of a more (neo-)realist leaning interpret the emergence of CSDP as a function of systemic changes in the structural distribution of power, namely as a balancing attempt towards the US – cf. Robert Art, ‘Europe Hedges Its Security Bets’, in T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michael Fortmann (eds), Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Dirk Peters, Constrained Balancing: The EU's Security Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Barry Posen, ‘European Union Security and Defense Policy: Response to Unipolarity’, Security Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring 2006), pp. 149–186 – or as a result of a now multipolar Europe due to the extensive US withdrawal – Adrian Hyde-Price, ‘Normative Power Europe: A Realist Critique’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 2006), pp. 217–34; Seth G. Jones, ‘The European Union and the Security Dilemma’, Security Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer 2003), pp. 114–56).

Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World (note 9), p. 165.

For the former see Paul Keal, Unspoken Rules and Superpower Dominance (New York: St. Martins Press, 1983); Charles Lipson, ‘Why Are Some International Agreements Informal?’, International Organization, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter 1991), pp. 495–538. For the latter see Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser, and Brigitte Leucht, Netzwerke im Europäischen Mehrebenensystem. Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (Wien: Böhlau, 2009).

For instance, the UN Secretary General chairs several ‘Groups of Friends’ consisting of a number of state representatives on conflict regions such as Abkhazia or Myanmar. In NATO, the informal gathering of ‘coffee’ (to convene for discussion and consensus-building particularly in situations of urgency) includes not only national Ambassadors, but also the Secretary-General and experts from both the IS and IMS. See Mayer, Europäische Sicherheitspolitik (note 11), p. 106. And the EU is an official member of the G8, represented at summits by the Commission President, who has attended all sessions since 1981.

The PHARE programme, for instance, one of the European Community's pre-accession instruments which was formerly in the hands of the G7, was in 1989 transferred to the EC. See Arne Niemann, ‘The PHARE Programme and the Concept of Spillover: Neofunctionalism in the Making’, Journal of European Public Policy Vol. 5, No. 3 (Summer 1998), pp. 428–46.

Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, ‘Varieties of Cooperation: Government Networks in International Security’, in Miles Kahler (ed.), Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 210. See also Michael Zürn, ‘Institutionalisierte Ungleichheit in der Weltpolitik. Jenseits der Alternative “Global Governance” versus “American Empire”', Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Winter 2007), pp. 680–704.