Networked politics and the supply of European defence integration

ABSTRACT

Defence integration is frequently in demand but hardly supplied. Sovereignty concerns and a desire for national control constrain integration of the core state power of arms production. The European Aeronautic, Defence and Space (EADS) company (today’s Airbus Group) stands out as an exception to this rule. How was this instance of defence integration supplied? We suggest a two-step network mechanism. First, the structure of national networks shapes the capacity for collective action. Centralised networks are better in forming a joint national position than fragmented networks. Second, networks also operate at the transnational level, shift domestic power balances, and enable agreements. Our process-tracing analysis demonstrates how Germany’s centralised network smoothly adopted a stance on a European firm under private control, whereas domestic negotiations stalled in France. However, a transnational alliance ultimately posed credible threats of exclusion and could overcome this deadlock. Therefore, EADS was both European and predominantly private.

KEYWORDS:

• Core state powers
• defence integration
• France
• Germany
• integration theory
• networks

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our three highly constructive reviewers and both editors. The manuscript also benefitted a lot from brilliant input and support by Catherine Hoeffler, comments by our great colleagues in Munich and the exceptional research assistance by Aurora Bergmaier and Zita Köhler-Baumann. The extensive empirical work was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (WE 3653/4-1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We exclusively focus on the privatisation and integration of DASA (Germany) and Aérospatiale-Matra (France). Spain’s CASA only joined the merger process, when a deal between Germany and France was eventually struck.

2 The Airbus Industrie Groupement d'Intérêt Économique (GIE) was a distribution consortium including French, German, and British companies collaborating on specific civilian platforms. Airbus Industrie GIE was incorporated as a daughter company into the newly founded EADS in 2000. EADS was renamed the Airbus Group in 2014.

3 The identification was based on our analysis of newspaper articles, official documents, and biographic material. We compiled for all 29 participants their educational and professional background. We signified a network link whenever two individuals worked for the same employer in the same year before or during the process. The colours in figure 3 represent the respective employer of two individuals sharing affiliation. The network was created with the Microsoft® Excel® add-in NodeXL.

4 Besides the five relevant companies – Aérospatiale, Matra, the Groupe Lagardère, Dassault and Thompson-CSF – these affiliations comprise the French Ministry of Defence (MoD), the French Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoE), the Ministry of Industry (MoI), the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Cour de Comptes (CC), the Direction Générale de l'armement (DGA) and the government (GOV).

5 In addition, our empirical reconstruction found that educational and professional backgrounds revealed systematic interconnections. Almost all the participants had been to one or more of the three elite universities in Paris: the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (13), the École Politechnique (11) and the ENA (14). Half of them had at least one fellow student in the same senior year.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number WE 3653/4-1].

Notes on contributors

Moritz Weiss

Moritz Weiss is a senior lecturer of International Relations and European Studies at the LMU Munich (Germany).

Felix Biermann

Felix Biermann is a senior lecturer of International Relations and Global Governance at the LMU Munich (Germany).