Introduction: The Politics of European Security Policies

Abstract

This article sketches the theoretical framework that informs the analyses in the Special Issue. Two issues drive the inquiries. First, the bottom-up approach to EU security that tracks contingent security practices and their performers. Various EU actors engage in intense political struggles which bring out the contentious character of security policy and nuance the claim of its extraordinary and thus apolitical nature. Analytically, this shows that the meaning of EU security needs to be empirically investigated rather than solved by definitions which may have a limited heuristic value against the EU's multifaceted security field. Secondly, the analyses bring to bear the blurring of the divide between the external and internal security in EU policy, both in the sense of the consolidation of the EU project as such and regarding the EU's policy towards its neighbours. The externalisation of security concerns and the EU's state-building activities in its neighbourhood are examples thereof.

Key Words:

• Security politics
• security analysis
• EU security
• security practices
• externalisation of security

Introduction

Security continues to be a fundamental aspect of international politics. This hardly means, however, that the understanding and means of achieving security remain unchanged. The policy and scholarly debates join efforts in delineating threats and analytical notions that would capture these developments, with human security making its distinct mark (Kaldor, 1999; Chandler, 2008; Duffield, 2007). The now extensive literature on critical security studies has elaborated on major reshufflings within the concept of security and how to approach its analysis. 1

By presenting empirical insights from the realm of the EU's security policies and their politics, we seek to contribute to the ongoing discussions on the blurring divide between internal and external security (Bigo, 2000, 2001; Lutterbeck, 2005; Eriksson & Rhinard, 2009). Simultaneously we nudge the academic enquiry towards the consistently overlooked, dense and dynamic arrangements between actors involved in constituting particular security framings. Contrary to established arguments that security invariably calls for ‘extraordinary measures’ (Buzan et al., 1998), we demonstrate that security is about daily political interactions coloured by distinct institutional identities. Here policy design and implementation can hardly be conceived as outcomes of lucidly planned strategies. Instead, security policies emerge out of the politics of security performed at different levels.

While conclusions along similar lines have been formulated elsewhere (Doty, 1998; Bigo, 2002; Huysmans, 2006), we attend to political constellations that open up the ‘black box’ of the EU's policy making in the broadly conceived security realm. In doing so, we also challenge the notion of bureaucracy as concerned with technical questions and thus apolitical. Research dealing with administrative governance in the area of Common Foreign and Security Policy has illustrated that formally bureaucratic entities perform a range of functions that go beyond their nominal delineation (Duke & Vanhoonacker, 2006). We see the need to take this argument further along two dimensions. First, by demonstrating the thoroughly political, i.e. contentious character, of the EU's security framings, we revisit the administrative/political dichotomy. Secondly, through a number of empirical investigations we trace contingent processes that lead to particular policy choices, including the role of concrete actors, be it formal bodies or informal networks in various guises. In the ensuing sections we, first, outline the empirical questions at hand, secondly, sketch our framework of analysis and its constitutive concepts and, thirdly, summarise how our case studies elucidate the questions we address.

The Scope of EU Security Policy

With security becoming an important dimension of almost every policy, it is hardly feasible to embrace the whole universe of the EU security policies. Admittedly, a number of substantive issues remain outside the scope of this special issue, e.g. energy security, environmental security and, to some extent, security sector reform. We chose to focus on what we believe is a particularly intriguing political, institutional and legal relationship between broadly defined Justice and Home Affairs policies and Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Owing to its complexity, numerous cross-pillar actors involved and manifold interests concerned, the modes of this relationship provide ample material for delineating the politics of security policies. The divisions between different policies remain nevertheless fuzzy. Although we attempt to elucidate them analytically, we ‘take the official definition and the policy output as the basis for our understanding’ (Kratochwil, 1982, p. 2) and the departure point of the enquiry. We thus refrain from a priori categorizing. Along the lines of Karen Smith's argument, we think of this output as a ‘policy universe’ (2009, p. 3) encompassing a wide range of activities and reflecting phenomena of two kinds. On the one hand, it embodies the character of EU policy making in this field and the highly political nature of ‘doing’ security. On the other, it demonstrates the shifting understanding of what security involves, including the blurring divide between its internal and external facet.

The scope of EU security policy making is large and expanding. The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) has not only become one of the most important Treaty objectives but it has also proven an exceptionally dynamic and expansionist area of the EU integration. It encompasses a broad field of policies that used to fall within the exclusive purview of member states’ governments and which gradually became ‘communitarised’ resulting in the abolition of functionally artificial division lines (Pawlak, 2009) between Justice and Home Affairs pillars. Given the international character of many challenges – both new and longstanding – the EU's ambition to engage in this sphere globally (European Council, 1999, 2000; Council of the European Union, 2000, 2004) and the development of its external dimension (Council of the European Union, 2005) appear logical. More puzzling though is the EU's tendency to exercise much of such involvement through Justice and Home Affairs instruments, in parallel or on occasion in preference to those provided under its CFSP.

Arguably, the increasing interest in the subject owes much to the pursuits of young research communities, 2 resulting in burgeoning academic literature (Smith, 2009, p. 2). The role of such networks in fostering some research avenues while waiving others, equally deserving scholarly attention, cannot be denied. As members of these communities we strive not to artificially embellish the significance of this area. Yet we nevertheless consider that our research reflects an intriguing policy output in the realm of the EU's security policies broadly conceived. It is accordingly of importance to investigate what underpins this policy outcome and what institutional and political implications it involves. More analysis is also needed on how projects with the same labels3 are conceptualised and implemented differently depending on the executing actor. Likewise, the subject of how particular ventures are staged and endorsed deserves particular attention if we seek to understand the CFSP/AFSJ overlap and the latter's growing pre-eminence over some realms. These questions steer the analytical focus towards the politics of European security policies and thus towards the outcome of the myriad interactions amongst actors involved in making and implementing European security, across both institutions, member states and their coalitions.

The broad range of issues covered in this Special Issue allows for a greater scope in the ‘level-of-analysis’ in that it identifies a variety of institutional and national dynamics within the EU's security policies. Empirically, the following issues appear particularly pertinent.

First, we attend to the diversity of actors and their constellations that impinge on the shape of the EU's security policies. This comprises, for instance, the role of the European Commission (EC) as a fully fletched yet little acknowledged security actor in shaping, inter alia, the relationship between the external dimension of the AFSJ and CFSP. What constitutes and characterises the overlap and contention between these policy areas? What actors, if any, take the role of institutional/policy entrepreneurs in this respect and which agents dominate the process that thereby unfolds? Consequently, what institutional practices does such interaction give rise to and what institutional identities can we discern as the product of these processes, including specific framings promoted or endorsed by the actors themselves? Understanding these should give us an insight into whose conceptions prevail and in what contexts, which consequently translates onto the shape of security policy at large.

Secondly, we address the question of what drives the expansion of the external dimension of the AFSJ. While the ESDP has boosted the EU's foreign policy at unprecedented speed, the activity of the EU in other areas of CFSP is checked in its development. What we observe instead is the increasing use of the EU's Justice and Home Affairs policies and first pillar instruments for the achievement of second pillar objectives. Crucially, many if not most of the politically highly profiled ESDP projects feature issues traditionally regarded as ‘low politics’, such as the rule of law and broader questions of ‘good governance’. If such an emphasis is placed on these areas and tangible forces mobilised to have corresponding ESDP missions in place, why do we need the external AFSJ that tackles these issues as well? The conventional response, and one in line with many institutional propositions, would be that ESDP operations streamline political capital for reform on which the external AFSJ can build comprehensive strategies of systemic transformation. The reality of the matter often belies this clear-cut and, indeed, idealised explanation.

Thirdly, we therefore enquire in what instances the preference is given to forging relations with third countries in the framework of AFSJ rather than CFSP. Is this a contingent political solution? Some tentative explanations have already been offered. To an extent, such arrangements arise from inter-institutional rivalry and various features of the EU's decision-making process, including shifting coalitions of old and new member states. Institutional turf battles and incoherence provoked by the member states’ diverging agendas are usually put in the spotlight in this regard, but, as we argue, a more nuanced examination is due. A different take on this issue points to the nature of these policies and the conviction that some issues should not be approached within diplomatic agendas as they are better served in a politically low profile environment. Is it paradoxically more ‘diplomatic’, or indeed convenient for all parties to tackle new threats under the AFSJ umbrella in the light of CFSP conspicuously high political profile? Or, is it more the case that the expertise, in particular the experience generated by the European Commission, is in fact on the AFSJ side, and this constituency is therefore better equipped to handle concerns often amounting to state-building? Are thus solutions provided via AFSJ more pragmatic, while CFSP and, in particular, ESDP are geared towards ‘making headlines’ as they are more of a ‘political show’? Do these technical solutions fit in the contemporary trend of the ‘technification’ of international assistance marked by the erasure of local politics in favour of the mechanical transplanting of ‘best practices’ (Chandler, 2006; Hehir and Robinson, 2007)? Is there subsequently a distinct division of labour emerging between these two policies?

Fourthly, our overarching aim is to relate to how the security policy dynamic reflects what the EU project is about. Questions about EU security policy as formulated so far may have left too much unexplored. By imposing abstract but convenient political science schema, we might fail to grasp the politics of the EU's many security arenas and, accordingly, understand the rules that shape this area. To what extent are the choices made of a strategic nature? Do they represent neatly thought-out political projects, or are there few traces of calculative action? Do these developments show the vibrant and changeable character of integration, or do they merely illustrate its chaotic side?

We seek to contribute to the studies of EU security policy making by applying an approach based on the three organising concepts, i.e. politics, policy and security, and possible constellations between these three in the realm of the EU's security policy. Although we do encounter the term politics evoked in the literature on the subject (Pilegaard, 2004; Gänzle & Sens, 2007), we set out our conception of politics as more expansive. Concerning security, we agree that if we aim to grasp what security is, we are ill-advised to commence by applying conceptual definitions (Wæver, 1995); we should instead come up with the contextual understanding that underpins and governs the field. As regards the EU's security policies, this brings to the fore in particular the merging between the external and internal security divide and the highly political setting of forging security policies. Here the importance of the (institutional) actors, who to varying extents author this process, and their figurations, come into sharp relief.

Two further theoretical points inform our analysis. First is the premise that the notions the actors have about their actions matter and they cannot be left exogenous to the descriptions and explanations of actions, nor can they be solved by assumption (Kratochwil, 2008). Agency matters in social life and agents are not simple ‘throughputs’ of some structures working behind their backs (Kratochwil, 2008). We seek to deliver on this premise by mapping out the interactions via which these notions come to light. Secondly, and more substantively connected with our subject, we illustrate how ‘doing’ security is not necessarily a matter of evoking ‘extraordinary measures’ that take security beyond the realm of normal politics (Wæver, 1997; Buzan et al., 1998), hence making it inherently apolitical. In our rendering, security is instead a product of politics understood less in procedural terms and more as a contextual ideational contest.

Engaging with Politics and Security Policies

This Special Issue aims to engage in a problematisation of the realm of the EU's security policies, instead of remaining complacent with the descriptive and a-theoretical depiction that focuses on the inefficiency of the pillar structure. In particular, we seek to go beyond the approach that takes the policy world as it finds it, ‘with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action’, and so sees as its general aim ‘to make those relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble’ (Cox, 1986, pp. 128–129).

Accordingly, the contributors analyse different modalities, overlapping scenes and shifting meanings that bring about EU security policies. We proceed neither by a conceptual analysis of our concepts, which would entail imposing abstract schemas on the realm under study, nor do we aim at aggregative accumulation of empirical data obtained from this field. We are wary of both presupposition and indiscriminate empirical generalisation. Our purpose instead is an endeavour to uncover the rules of the game that structure the field of the EU's security making, an objective which makes our focus predominantly empirical. To this end, we must attend to the relevant actors that enact these rules in their daily dealings.

‘Security! What Do You Mean? 4

Conventionally, security is defined as freedom from threat and identified with the security of the state (Walt, 1991); it was threatened by the military power of other states and defended by the military power of the state itself (Multimer, 1999, p. 77). The standard was the approach predicated on the postulate that in the anarchic international structure states continue the quest for power and security to which competition and conflict are inherent (Waltz, 1979). Here security is conceived in structural terms as external to the state, the latter being the only conceivable referent object.

At present, traditional indifference to the actual nature of security itself has given way to a more introspective shift within the discipline. The way of approaching security analysis has changed as well. Besides ‘broadening’ and ‘widening’ of security analysis, there have been efforts to conceive of security as a governmentality and a way of weaving a particular social order (Huysmans, 1998). Since the late 1980s, there has accordingly been:

[a] sustained challenge to the orthodox view that the theory and practice of security in world politics should be synonymous with the trinity of statism (the idea that the sovereign state is and should be the highest focus of loyalty and decision-making), strategy (the manipulation of military power and force) and stability (the promotion of ‘order’ in the ‘anarchical society’). (Booth, 2004, p. 5)

We draw on the latter attempts and set up our threefold point of reference where security is a historically variable condition (Krause & Williams, 1997), it is a claim on politics (Booth, 2004) and, as such, it is performative of identity (Campbell, 1998). The understandings of security shift and advocating a particular reading of security involves entering the political contest with actors advancing different conceptions. The process entails designating traits and values that characterise one particular political actor/community against other actors/communities. Our case studies illustrate how these processes unfold both at the intra-EU level, where different institutions supply and endorse their security framings, and vis-à-vis the EU and its neighbours. Here certain threat definitions develop into identity-building blocks with foreign policy becoming a ‘specific sort of boundary-producing political performance’ (Ashley, cited in Campbell, 1998, p. 69). Security practices that thereby emerge constitute the (self-)perception of the EU in world politics. The 2003 European Security Strategy is evocative in this context:

Neighbours who are engaged in violent conflict, weak states where organised crime flourishes, dysfunctional societies … all pose problems for Europe … Our task is to promote a ring of well governed countries to the East of the EU and on the borders of the Mediterranean … We need to extend the benefits of economic and political cooperation to our neighbours in the East while tackling political problems there. (Solana, 2003, p. 8)

This process of self-fashioning is permeated by security imaginaries and practices that hardly square with the traditional approach. We seek to offer instead an analytical framework and empirical work that investigate the particular politics of security policies and examine their ‘blurred edges’ in a contextual manner. We thus shift away from analytical propositions that seek to establish the ‘correct’ usage of the concept of security (Baldwin, 1997). The latter involve the supposition that because our concepts are vague and ambiguous, a preparatory step to proper research should include a definition of a given concept in order to pursue a puzzle. In this reading, language should be a transparent media and real research should be empirical with the help of clear-cut concepts rather than be about language issue. One of Baldwin's explicit assumptions further is that security is a ‘thing’, a policy objective distinguishable from others, which should be defined as clearly as possible through context-independent features. A clear specification of the concept facilitates comparing the value of security with that of other goals and allows public debate on the subject (Baldwin, 1997, p. 24). Conversely, we follow an alternative research option, which sees ‘security policy’ as a phenomenon, ‘as it actually happens’, without necessarily assuming that it follows from the logic in which a collectivity in a rational manner pursues collective aims (Wæver, 1995, p. 231). Methodologically, we therefore rely on the Wittgensteinian notion that situates the meaning of the concept in its use (Wittgenstein, 1958). Despite numerous contradictions inherent in the usage of any concept, one can point to established regularities and constellations wherein a particular concept operates and thereby to its meaning.

Politics behind Policy Making

The politics behind policy making, with the latter understood as a political project, i.e. as a socially mediated quest to instil particular understandings of what EU security is about, receives little scholarly attention. Narrowly interpreted, politics refers to an explicit, conscious formulation of decisions in a context of choice. Here politics is about deciding practices in a situation where one is at a loss, and about dealing with contingencies for which there are no clear points of reference or patterns of behaviour (Wæver, 1995). This is a time-honoured way of thinking about politics, for as March and Olsen (1989, p. 47) observe, ‘a conception of politics as decision making and resource allocation is at least as old as Plato and Aristotle’. Conversely, however, one might conceive of politics more broadly as strategies constituting the social world (Wæver, 1995). According to this reading, and as March and Olsen (1989, p. 47) keenly warn as well, not all politics can be reduced to competition over material resources; indeed, much of it concerns the struggle over collective identity claims. In a similar vein, Stone (2002, p. 11) sees the ‘struggle over ideas’ as the essence of policy making whereby

ideas are a medium of exchange and a mode of influence even more powerful than money and votes and guns. Shared meanings motivate people to action and meld individual striving into collective action. Ideas are at the centre of all political conflict. Policy-making, in turn, is a constant struggle over criteria for classification, the boundaries of categories, and the definition of ideals that guide the way people behave.

There are, as she further argues, ‘multiple understandings of what appears to be a single concept’. These understandings can be manipulated as a part of political strategy and ‘revealing the hidden arguments embedded in each concept illuminates, and may help resolve, the surface conflicts’ (Stone, 2002, p. 11). The analysis should thus pay close attention to the process through which ideas are constructed, emerge and flow.

Following these lines of reasoning, we consider politics as being about contentious claims about what is good and true and the building of alliances around these claims in the quest to impose a particular definition of a situation. This quest consolidates the institutional identities involved and marks them out as keen to endorse their designation of the situation. Policy in this context is a discursive battlefield with power relations and strategic interaction constituting the framework for action. This mapping does not denote that we conceive of politics strictly as mere instrumental contests over power, with policy making being reduced to conflict and negotiations among competing interests. The policy work is seen as a continuing process, concerned with the maintenance of relationships as well as the production of documents. The process features a wide range of participants, with diverse agendas and values, who are thrown together in various ways to produce ambiguous and provisional outcome. In this situation, and regardless of intrinsic political struggle, the emphasis often is on generating cohesion around courses of action, and strengthening the capacity for future collaboration. It is predominantly about meaning, generating understanding of what are appropriate concerns, why they are appropriate and what actions are appropriate responses. Put differently, policy making is concerned with the formation and maintenance of certain interpretations of the policy at different levels.

Against this background, strategic action should not be construed as a calculated instrumental act that addresses problems and identifies goals but should instead be problematised as political agency operating within mediating webs of interaction. Ervin Goffman captures this process in his depiction of performers engaged in manipulative presentations of self and in framing, while at the same time being constrained by the script and the consistency requirements of their roles. Actors are involved in a struggle over the definition of the situation but the outcome is a result of a negotiation process that is mediated by both the constraints and the empowerment of the prevailing discourse. They resort to the meanings discourse provides to push forward their projects but they are themselves constrained through discourse, and thereby not free in their functioning (Schimmelfennig, 2002, p. 424). The policy process is best approached here as being about problem-finding: defining the world in such a way that known (or advocated) practices of governing are an appropriate response. ‘Naming and framing’ (Rein & Schon, 1994) is a central element in the constitution of the policy. This means that the identification and specification of policy concerns involve the interplay of different sets of understandings. As Majone (1989) argues, it is less like laboratory science and more like a legal argument: a process of finding good reasons for doing things in situations where neither the nature of the problem nor the appropriate response is clear and unambiguous. With the participants struggling to get their language accepted rather than that of others, this process remains inherently contested (Gill & Colebatch, 2006). It can hardly be conceived as a playground of fully formed utility-maximisers with clear objectives and neatly delineated identities. Rather, as Hanna Arendt (1958, p. 184) concludes, this constitution of the (institutional) identity is co-existent with, rather than prior to political action. There is no fixed identity prior to politics, the identity is an achievement, the product of action in the presence of others, i.e. in the public realm. Within this process, power is never with one actor but it resides in the constellation in-between the actors, in the figuration itself (Arendt, 2005; Wæver, 1997, p. 3). These constellations need to be mapped out empirically.

Politics of Security Policies

The outlined triad of security–politics–policy has distinct analytical implications for our approach. To reiterate, we conceive of security as a concept whose usage we need to study empirically as its meaning changes across time and social space. We contest the portrayal of security as a self-referential concept that erases politics from the process of its constitution. We similarly challenge the argument that securitisation elevates security above politics. Rather, we see the emergence of particular security understandings as a deeply political process, albeit a process where the political is often subsequently subjugated. As strategies constituting the social world (Wæver, 1995), politics involves inherently contentious claim-making and seeking support around these interpretations in the quest to impose a particular definition of a situation. An organising principle for contributions to this volume, it illustrates the complexity of the EU's security policies and the need to approach them empirically. In particular, it allows for delineating different fields of European security policies that simultaneously overlap and cross-fertilise each other as much as they enter an institutional contest and thwart one another's efforts.

The Origins and Organisation of the Issue

The idea to put together this volume took off the ground in the framework of the ‘European Foreign and Security Studies Programme’ founded by the Compagnia di San Paolo (Turin), the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Stockholm), and the Volkswagen Stiftung (Hanover). We were intrigued that so many young scholars devote extended time and energy to enquire into the intricacies of the EU's security policy making. This coincided with our own research interests and projects that investigate the politics of the EU's different security fields. This issue brings together a number of scholars engaged with the subject area and, while we come from a variety of theoretical backgrounds and pursue sundry research avenues in an increasingly diverse fashion, we share the commitment to theoretically informed yet empirically thorough research. As editors, we sketched the conceptual framework of our project based on the three concepts of security, politics and policy and the role of various security actors in forging these notions. A wide depiction as it is, our contributors pick it up in their analyses of the EU's security policy fields and offer their explanations of the developments within it.

Ursula C. Schroeder opens the first part of the issue which is concerned with horizontal questions in the EU security policies. She investigates how the divide between the internal and external security becomes blurred in the process of EU security policy making. Comparing the emergence of both internal and external security strategies pursued by different actors, she identifies a ‘strategic void’ at the heart of the European security project and argues that the process has been capability-driven and not strategy-led, resulting in a ‘capability–strategy’ mismatch.

Vincenzo Randazzo illustrates how allegedly ‘objective factors’ in the legal domain of the EU's security policies become instruments in institutional contests with tangible policy outcomes. Within the framework of legal disputes, the actors seek to accommodate the notions of security depending on the interests at stake which defies the understanding of the inter-pillar arena as politics-free.

This phenomenon is picked up by Xymena Kurowska who takes a closer look at the framing of ESDP by Solana milieu and its interaction with the European Commission in the realm of civilian crisis management. She maps out the ways in which policy entrepreneurship has been executed in this field and shows how security policy outcomes are shaped by institutional politics.

Against conventional depictions, Meng-Hsuan Chou demonstrates how the formation of the external dimension of European asylum and migration cooperation has been in the making since the early 1970s and did not originate as the security problematique. While a distinct security discourse emanated from these developments, it has been re-embedded into the legislative agenda by the political actors – EU interior ministers – who dominate the decision-making process for asylum and migration measures.

Patryk Pawlak opens the second part of the issue devoted to the EU's security policies with regard to third countries. In his article, he explores the development of the EU border security policies through the prism of the EU–US homeland security cooperation in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. This article shows how the European approach to the use of personal data for security purposes emerges from interactions between the geographical and functional networks, which he refers to as network politics. The investigation leads Pawlak to the conclusion that European security debate is developing beyond the control of any single actor.

Gregory Mounier looks closely into the evolution of Europol as an internal security actor whose turf became externalised under particular conditions. He traces the politics of the agency itself and its use by other actors who seek to hijack Europol to serve their agendas, and argues that the agency's engagement in security sector reform in third countries amounts to no less than state-building activities.

Katrin Kinzelbach and Julia Kozma take a normative perspective to explore the linkage between CFSP and the AFSJ from a human rights perspective. They investigate three distinctive cases to argue that the two are chiefly related through their joint and intertwined impact on the perceived legitimacy of the EU's normative demands on third countries.

Marie V. Gibert deals with the peculiarities of the security–development nexus via the externalisation of the EU's security agenda to Africa. By exploring the case of Gwinea-Bissau, she illustrates the shift away in the EU's policy towards the continent – that from Africa's development to Europe's security threat.

Notes

¹ A detailed review of the literature on broadening/deepening/widening of the concept of security as an analytical category falls outside the purview of our enquiry as we investigate the constellation of politics, security and security policies. Relevant reviews of the subject can be found in, inter alia, Smith (2005).

² See e.g. Wolff et al. (2009).

³ Projects in the realm of civilian crisis management and broadly conceived ‘good governance’ which can be potentially implemented by both European Commission and through European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) instruments give rise to institutional struggles over projects' ownership. The circumstance of launching the ESDP EUJUST Themis mission to Georgia in 2004 and the set-up of the EC-managed EUBAM to Ukraine/Moldova in 2005 furnish interesting illustrations of this. See Kurowska (2008) and Kurowska & Tallis (2009).

⁴ Borrowed from Huysmans (1998).