European internal security as a public good

Abstract

This introduction argues for a new research agenda on European internal security cooperation from the perspective of public goods. We set out our case in three parts. First, we identify new empirical puzzles and demonstrate significant explanatory gaps in the existing internal security literature which public goods theory could help address. Second, we outline the building blocks of a public goods approach and provide an overview of its application, both existing and potentially, in various areas of regional security and European integration. Third, we present three complementary ways of using public goods theory to analyse internal security in the European Union, with the aim of spurring new research questions while accepting some limitations of this theoretical approach.

Keywords:

• EU security
• internal security
• justice and home affairs
• transnational threats
• public goods
• collective action

Acknowledgements

Raphael Bossong gratefully acknowledges financial support by the research project ‘A New Agenda for European Security Economics’, funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme. Mark Rhinard would like to thank the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency for research support that contributed to the completion of this article.

Notes

1. Transnational spillovers either occur in relation to a specific crisis or shock, or develop on the basis of fundamental political changes. A familiar argument holds that the creation of the Single Market led to the adoption of the Schengen regime, which in turn demanded further cross-jurisdictional cooperation between police, security and judicial authorities.

2. The following basic matrix can be amplified by including ‘intermediate’ scores on the two categories. For instance, some goods may have medium exclusion costs and no rivalry, which may render a mixture of public and private provision possible. This may be labeled as ‘joint’ (public private) or ‘impure’ (public with some private incentives) goods. Conversely, toll goods with partial rivalry could often better be described as club goods, whereby there is a clearly declining benefit if too many members join (e.g. an overcrowded swimming pool).Lastly, rivalry of consumption can also be inversed, i.e. the good is increasing rather than diminishing in benefit with additional consumers/users. Respective examples of a good with negative rivalry and exclusive or non-exclusive characteristics would be a spoken language or a computer operating system.

3. Multiplying the four standard cases of public goods (see Table 1) by at least four production technologies already results in 16 cases, which then could be further amplified by including mixed goods (partial excludability, partial rivalry, joint public-private benefits – again to be multiplied by four production technologies). For extended typologies, see Sandler (2004, p. 81), Holzinger (2008, p. 19) or Kaul et al. (2003, p. 83). Moreover, each case could then be modulated with at least six contextual variables that can vary independently of each other. Such a systematic variance across cases motivates part of the expanding research literature that applies public goods hypotheses in laboratory settings and experimental games (Batina and Ihori 2005).

4. The assumptions of endogenous preferences is even more problematic if different kinds of actors (e.g. public private) are brought together in less institutionalised patterns of governance. In any case, exogenous preferences do not have to be equated with ‘fixed equilibrium’ cooperation (Heritier 2007, Thompson 2010).

5. It should go without saying that any such model or prescription needs to be continuously tested against new empirical research, and that we do not expect universally valid laws of cooperation.