James Sperling

EU security governance

List of figures, tables and appendices Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1. Introduction: the EU and the governance of European security 2. Policies of prevention: pre-empting disorder along the periphery 3. Policies of assurance: peace-building in south eastern Europe 4. Policies of protection: meeting the challenge of internal security 5. Policies of compellance: projecting force into an uncertain world 6. Conclusion: securing Europe in the 21st century Bibliography Index

Sharing the Burden of Collective Security in the European Union

This article compares European Union ~EU! burden-sharing in secu- rity governance distinguishing between assurance, prevention, protection, and com- pellence policies+ We employ joint-product models and examine the variation in the level of publicness, the asymmetry of the distribution of costs and benefits, and aggre- gation technologies in each policy domain+ Joint-product models predict equal burden- sharing for protection and assurance because of their respective weakest-link and summation aggregation technologies with symmetric costs+ Prevention is also char- acterized by the technology of summation, but asymmetry of costs implies uneven burden-sharing+ Uneven burden-sharing is predicted for compellence because it has the largest asymmetry of costs and a best-shot aggregation technology+ Evaluating burden-sharing relative to a countrys ability to contribute, Kendalls tau tests exam- ine the rank-correlation between security burden and the capacity of EU member states+ These tests show that the smaller EU members disproportionately shoulder the costs of assurance and protection; wealthier EU members carry a somewhat dis- proportionate burden in the provision of prevention, and larger EU members in the provision of compellence+Analyzing contributions relative to expected benefits, asym- metric marginal costs can largely explain uneven burden-sharing+ The main conclu- sion is that the aggregated burden of collective security governance in the EU is shared quite evenly+

Security governance in Europe: a return to system

The security governance literature has developed in four waves: the first is dedicated to matters of definition; the second to conceptual debate; the third to matters of application in the European setting and the fourth to how well the concept works in extra-European regions and at the global level. For all this effort, security governance as a concept remains problematic: it still has some way to go before it obtains clear definitional precision, conceptual clarity and a secure standing as concept in Security Studies. We address some of the theoretical and methodological difficulties common to the literature and argue that security governance has become overly preoccupied with agency and has thereby neglected structure. It has, in other words, obtained an actor-centered focus and so tended to conflate security governance as an analytical category with the specific actions of security actors. It has thus moved forward little in its ability to determine how and why security actors behave in the aggregate and whether that behavior reflects wider systemic properties. We thus ask in a third section whether it is worth returning to systemic thinking on security governance especially in the European context where the concept has had its most sophisticated application.

Neither Hegemony nor Dominance: Reconsidering German Power in Post Cold-War Europe

German unification in 1989 raised the spectre of German hegemony in post-cold war Europe. In this article, I demonstrate that Germany lacks the structural power consistent with European hegemony or dominance; that there is little evidence supporting an appreciable gap between Germany’s structural power and foreign policy ambitions; and that apparent symptoms of German hegemony, particularly the process of institutional emulation in Central and Eastern Europe, reflect other international processes and incentives emanating from the state system itself. This reassessment and downgrading of Germany’s relative and absolute power resolve the paradox of German structural power and German reluctance identified by others. But this alternative narrative raises another more important question: why is Germany treated as a potential or even aspiring hegemon in Europe? The answer to that question is located in the interconnected legacies of Auschwitz and the occupation regime. This joint legacy constitutes an important part of the historical context within which we frame our assessments and judgements of German power; explains the frequently unwarranted exaggeration and suspicion of German power; and demonstrates how the past can function as a powerful prism though which we interpret the intentions, ambitions and capabilities of a state. The first unification of Germany in 1871 produced aWeltpolitik designed to challenge the privileged position of the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers outside the limited compass of Europe, a near hegemonial position in Mitteleuropa as the material basis for that challenge and a European diplomacy conducted in the idioms of preferential trade arrangements, war and territorial annexation. 1 The disastrous German bids for European hegemony in 1914 and 1939 were sorry but inevitable chapters in the evolution of the European state system. The ‘German Question’ ‐ whether Germany could be peacefully and successfully integrated into the European state system on terms acceptable both to Germany and her neighbours ‐ was temporarily put aside with the truncation and division

German foreign policy after unification: The end of cheque book diplomacy?

In this article, three interrelated arguments are made: first, the economic costs of unification have diminished German economic capacity and consequently its diplomatic flexibility; second, unification has reopened the debate within Germany over the desirability of European Monetary Union (EMU) and has led to the redefinition of the minimum conditions necessary for German participation in EMU; and third, unification has reinforced the tendency towards macro‐economic unilateralism in the Atlantic economy. In the conclusion, the three elements of the German economic strategy for post‐Yalta Europe are identified: translating German economic precepts into the framework conditions for the pan‐European economy; establishing Frankfurt as the financial hub of Europe; and protecting Germanys position as the commercial centre of Europe.

Economic security and the problem of cooperation in post-Cold War Europe

The end of the Cold War and the transformation of the Yalta security system generated a debate about the survivability of the postwar institutions of security, particularly NATO. This debate is too narrow in its focus. We argue that security has two mutual constitutive elements, the political-military and the economic. The interdependence of these two elements of the future security architecture raises a set of interrelated questions addressed in this article: What are the economic elements of security? How have the changes in the European state system affected the prospects for the institutionalization of security cooperation, broadly defined? Does a stable security architecture require the parallel construction of the economic and military institutions of security?

Capabilities traps and gaps: symptom or cause of a troubled transatlantic relationship?

The identification of critical capabilities shortfalls has elicited substantially different ‘to do’ lists in NATO, the European Union, and national defence ministry policies and initiatives. Moreover, these capabilities shortfalls have proven to be moving targets, particularly since American military primacy allows the United States to define the terms of the capabilities debate. The emerging transformation of American armed forces has aggravated the pre-existing ‘capabilities gaps’. An important question arises: do these gaps represent the continuation of free-riding within the alliance or reflect a more fundamental divergence between the strategic cultures and practice of statecraft in the United States and in Europe? NATOs future may depend upon whether the capabilities gaps that exist are structural or time-dependent, upon whether those gaps represent different understandings of security in the post-Cold War world, and upon whether the capabilities debate reflects a set of capability gaps that need to be redressed or a set of capability traps to which the Europeans have fallen prey.

Will form lead to function? Institutional enlargement and the creation of a European security and defence identity

The end of the Cold War and the subsequent nullification of the Yalta agreement initiated institutional change in the European security space. The emerging form and content of the post-Yalta European security order is increasingly codetermined by the interaction of national interests and international institutional constraints, chief of which are located in NATO and the European Union (EU). The prominence of NATO and the EU in the new European security order raises troubling questions about the end point of the European security order. It also puts into question the ability of the Western powers to shape a security order that performs the necessary task of assimilating Russia into the system without sacrificing the integrity of either institution or damaging member state interests. The confluence of the joint enlargements of NATO and the EU into central Europe, combined with the European effort to fashion a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), provides some insight into the problems facing the major Western powers in fashioning both a mutually acceptable and an adequate institutional response to the problem of European security.

Is Germany a ‘good European’? German compliance with EU Law

It is often asserted that Germany has assimilated the norms and identity of European integration. In this essay, we test this proposition. After reviewing the literature on German EU policy, we argue that a good place to test whether Germany has become a ‘good European’ is in compliance with EU law. An unbiased test of the ‘good European’ hypothesis requires that we examine a body of patterned behavior that is highly constrained or constituted by a set of recognized and accepted norms, both procedural and substantive. We argue that the mutually constitutive nature of norms, identity, and interests finds expression in the highly developed EU legal system. The evolution and legitimacy of EU law meet the criteria for identity formation (and interest construction) for its member states as specified in the literature. An examination of over 1,600 infringement cases (where the Commission sues a member for failing to comply with EU law) between 1962 and 1999 finds that the Germans are average in violation of EU law – no better than the British, Belgians, French, Irish, or Portuguese, and significantly worse than the Danes, Dutch, and Luxembourgers. Thus, we conclude that these data do not support an assertion that Germany is any more ‘European’ than most other members.

EU police and judicial cooperation before the Treaty of Lisbon: strengthening of the weakest link?

Abstract Three key questions arise from the encroachment of the European Union (EU) on national prerogatives in the administration of justice: What factors contribute to the weakest link collective action problem attending police and judicial cooperation within the EU? What were the substantive and institutional goals of the EU in this policy domain? What accounts for the rising level of police and judicial cooperation despite the persistence of barriers to cooperation and incentives to defect? This article first establishes the fundamental incentives and obstacles to cooperation in matters of transnational security threats in post-Westphalian Europe. It then proceeds to explore the evolution of police and judicial cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs between 1999 and 2009, to assess national contributions to police and judicial cooperation, and to consider the potential impact that the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, Stockholm Programme and European Investigation Order. A final question is considered in the conclusion: Did the level and extent of police and judicial cooperation that emerged between 1999 and 2009 give rise to a community of practice that in turn fostered a nascent community of identity resilient enough to mitigate the weakest link technology of public goods production endemic to this policy domain?