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Deschaux-Dutard, D. (2020). How do Crises Fuel European Defence Policy?: A Comparative Analysis of the Birth and Relaunch of European Defence using the Multiple Stream Framework.
Abstract
This article analyses how crises may open policy windows which, when properly seized by policy entrepreneurs, made European defence policy a priority on the EU’s agenda. The article compares two periods which can be considered as critical junctures for European defence: the periods of its birth in 1998–1999, and its relaunch in 2016–2019. The analysis is based on the Multiple Stream Framework ( msf ) and considers European defence as a public policy shaped by policy actors. More precisely, the main hypothesis is that in both contexts policy actors from France and Germany took advantage of focusing events – the Kosovo War in 1998–1999, and Brexit extended by the election of Trump introducing turmoil within the transatlantic partnership in 2016–2019 – to advocate a policy solution to answer security challenges faced by the EU. The article also assesses how British policy actors played decisive yet inverse roles in both contexts. The first part of the article explains how the msf is used and why it is a stimulating agenda to study European defence policy. The second part of the article analyses the policy entrepreneurs taking advantage of the policy windows opened in both cases, and how they coupled the three streams underlying European defence by exploiting the British variable. The last part of the article focuses on the means used by the policy entrepreneurs to make it a policy priority on the European policy agenda in both the late 1990s and 2016–2019.
The return of power politics and the potential emergence of a new bipolarity between the United States and China has led the European Union (EU) to question its approach to power and multilateralism over the last decade. If the EU has traditionally advocated for a multilateral world in which it could play the role of a “normative civilian” power, several crises have shaken this assumption and pushed toward a more assertive role for the EU in international relations, especially in international security. The annexation of Crimea in 2014, Brexit, and now the war in Ukraine have paved the way for an intense evolution of EU’s vision of multilateralism, with a shift symbolized by the financing of weapons delivery to Ukraine in February 2022. But can EU’s claim for strategic autonomy and a more robust strategic role in multilateralism last over time? What are EU’s assets in today's multilateralism? What are the main limits to EU’s assertive action in a contentious world? This chapter will tackle these topics by focusing on the security and defense area so as to explain where the EU comes from as a power and where it might go within the new era of challenged multilateralism the world has entered.
European strategic autonomy has become a common motto since the EU’s Global Security Strategy (2016). France and Germany have for several years been playing a leading role in promoting the concept even though they share quite different views on what such autonomy should aim for, especially in a context of multipolarity and power re-configurations. This article analyzes the role of French-German input in European strategic autonomy relying on two criteria: input legitimacy (procedures) and output legitimacy (efficiency). Based on three concrete examples (the MPCC, PESCO, and the European Strategic Compact), the article explores the French-German input in developing European autonomous military tools and capabilities and seeks to explain the legitimacy of this input based on factors such as the historical legacy of French-German military cooperation and the use of political symbolism. Then the article focuses on the question of the efficiency (output) of this bilateral input in European strategic autonomy. The main advantage of this approach is its explanatory power to capture the hiatus between the strong output legitimacy that Paris and Berlin bring into European strategic autonomy and its rather limited empirical output produced. This hiatus can be explained by strategic cultural divergences between Paris and Berlin.
L’objectif de cet article est de chercher à comprendre la relance du projet de défense européenne dans les années 2010 en mobilisant plusieurs approches théoriques. Alors que le nouvel intergouvernementalisme semble être a priori l’approche la mieux adaptée, en raison de l’importance accordée aux États dans un contexte de crise, l’analyse empirique en montre les limites. Le néo-fonctionnalisme et le néo-institutionnalisme permettent de comprendre pourquoi, dans un domaine que l’on pensait abandonné aux États membres et à la délibération intergouvernementale, les acteurs et mécanismes supranationaux parviennent à peser sur le processus d’intégration.
Cet article vise à démontrer comment le Brexit exerce un impact sur les discours de politique étrangère français et allemand en matière de défense européenne depuis 2016. En croisant l’institutionnalisme discursif et le concept d’entrepreneurs politiques tel qu’il est proposé par Kingdon dans sa théorie des courants multiples, l’article analyse la dimension discursive et symbolique du changement impulsé dans la PSDC à la suite du Brexit. L’article permet de mettre en lumière l’existence de deux types de discours déployés par les entrepreneurs gouvernementaux français et allemands : des discours de coordination visant à apporter du changement qualitatif à la défense européenne, et des discours communicationnels visant à légitimer les propositions ainsi que le retour d’un leadership franco-allemand en matière de PSDC après le Brexit. L’intérêt de cette approche est de saisir comment se déploient ces discours au niveau européen alors même que des divergences normatives de fond persistent entre les acteurs.
Résumé La coopération militaire européenne, inscrite dans le cadre de la Politique de sécurité et de défense commune (PSDC), a connu ces dernières années une importante relance. Cet article se propose d'analyser le rôle majeur joué par la coopération bilatérale franco-allemande dans l'approfondissement de la coopération militaire au niveau européen, en s'appuyant sur un double critère de légitimité et d'efficacité. Après avoir exploré les ressorts historiques, opérationnels et symboliques de cette coopération, l'article interrogera la question de son efficacité au sein de la coopération militaire européenne et de la PSDC, en soulevant également ses limites récurrentes.
What are the consequences and implications of Brexit on the nature and character of Franco-German ‘embedded bilateralism’ in Europe, the relative influence of Berlin and Paris in EU policymaking, and the EU's future trajectory more generally? Brexit brings into sharper relief three basic future scenarios for the EU: (1) German hegemony; (2) the decline of the European project; and (3) a rejuvenated Franco-German tandem at the union's centre – what we call ‘back to the future’. Which of these scenarios prevails will depend on the interaction of Brexit with other developments, most notably (1) the overall strengthening of Germany's relative standing, and (2) France's ability to overcome its economic and societal stasis with serious reforms. Though each of the three scenarios is possible, this paper holds that ‘back to the future’ is the most likely and plausible. Brexit thus might even further accentuate the historically influential Franco-German relationship, not least in union-level policy domains, such as security and defense, in which Britain has hitherto played a significant role.
In June 2016, the European Union released an updated global security strategy, outlining some of the main threats and challenges it currently faces. While the document notes that “global power shifts and power diffusion” characterize world politics today, it devotes little attention to how these developments are likely to affect Europe’s ability to advance its aims and agenda around the world. This article takes up this question, reviewing how global power shifts and power diffusion will shape and influence Europe’s security environment, focusing on two key implications of this period of transition in world politics: the decline of the EU’s share of global economic output and military capabilities and the weakening of the cohesion and vitality of transatlantic relations. The article affirms that Europe still has time to design an effective strategy to the challenges it currently faces but also explains the risks and dangers inherent in a failure to do so.
None of the existing models for the future trade policy relationship between the UK and the EU come with a predetermined foreign and security policy relationship. This article assesses how the future EU-UK foreign and security policy relationship might be organised post-Brexit. It provides evaluation of the current EU-UK interrelationship in the fields of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and assesses the degree to which the UK is presently integrated into EU decision-making and implementation. It highlights that the UK needs to determine the degree to which it wants autonomy or even divergence from existing EU policies. The article concludes by rehearsing the costs and benefits of three possible future relationships between the UK and EU foreign, security and defence policy: integrated, associated or detached.
The aim of this paper was to understand in which direction policies change in periods of crisis. Do they lead to the hardening of norms or the introduction of softer rules governing public policies? Based on the study of policy change in two periods of economic governance—the 2003–2005 Stability and Growth Pact crisis, and the 2009–2013 economic governance crisis, this article explains why the policy change in the first case led to softer governance mechanisms, while during the second crisis, soft governance mechanisms were transformed into hard law. In applying the multiple streams framework to study these policy changes, we argue that the wider the window of opportunity and the more coherent the coalition of policy entrepreneurs, the higher the possibility for these actors to push in favour of legally constraining norms. Hence, it is not solely the power or capacity of one policy entrepreneur, in this case—the German government—that leads to hardening of soft law, but the coherence of the coalition the policy entrepreneur is able to build.
Use of metaphors is a staple feature of how we understand policy processes – none more so than the use of ‘policy stages’/'cycles’ and ‘multiple streams’. Yet even allowing for the necessary parsimony of metaphors, the former is often criticised for its lack of ‘real world’ engagement with agency, power, ideology, turbulence and complexity, while the latter focuses only on agenda-setting but at times has been utilised, with limited results, to understand later stages of the policy process. This article seeks to explore and advance the opportunities for combining both and applying them to the policy-formation and decision-making stages of policy making. In doing so it examines possible three, four and five stream models. It argues that a five stream confluence model provides the highest analytical value because it retains the simplicity of metaphors (combining elements of two of the most prominent models in policy studies) while also helping capture some of the more complex and subtle aspects of policy processes, including policy styles and nested systems of governance.
The multiple streams framework draws insight from interactions between agency and institutions to explore the impact of context, time and meaning on policy change and to assess the institutional and issue complexities permeating the European Union (EU) policy process. The authors specify the assumptions and structure of the framework and review studies that have adapted it to reflect more fully EU decision-making processes. The nature of policy entrepreneurship and policy windows are assessed to identify areas of improvement. Finally, the authors sketch out a research agenda that refines the logic of political manipulation which permeates the lens and the institutional complexity which frames the EU policy process.
The multiple streams model, developed by Kingdon in the United States (US), is being adapted increasingly to study European Union (EU) policy-making. This, however, is revealing a theoretical underdevelopment in some of its central components. The present paper considers several concerns. It seeks to develop the idea of policy entrepreneurship as a context-specific activity that gives substance to the claim that 'ideas have their time'; it interprets the key notion of ambiguity, in the EU context, to mean institutional ambiguity; and it allows for spillovers between policy areas to be endogenous as well as exogenous. This affects the nature of the policy windows wherein policy entrepreneurship occurs. The adapted multiple streams model is used to analyse the 2005 EU sugar policy reform. Institutional ambiguity and endogenous spillovers are shown to create the conditions that enabled active policy entrepreneurship to lead, ultimately, to reform of this most resilient of policies.
There is a systematic deflation in governmental rhetoric of the developments that call attention to the unequal distribution of goods and services and a systematic inflation of the forms of threat that legitimize and expand authority. The latter are defined as crises, the former as problems. As crises recur and problems persist, so does a governmental dramaturgy of coping. (Edelman, 1977: 49)
This article proposes a more power‐critical approach to the analysis of crisis management and, in this respect, explores the possible contribution of research on political and organizational symbolism. Viewed in terms of symbolic action, attention is drawn to the opportunity spaces that crises entail for policy makers and other crisis actors. To exploit these, it is important for decision elites to influence collective definitions of the situation in such a way as to highlight preferred courses of action and to selectively obscure alternative interpretations. Three types of symbolic ‘crisis handling devices’ (framing, ritualization and masking) are presented and illustrated. In conclusion, the need for a broader perspective on the nature of the politics of crisis management is emphasised.
Crisis management (prevention, preparedness, response, and reconstruction) is a tough task for political and bureaucratic leaders. This article documents the persistent tensions between the expectations and realities of crisis leadership. It explores the popular notion that crises provide key opportunities for reform. The very occurrence of a crisis is then thought to expose the status quo as problematic, making it easier to gain momentum for alternative policies and institutions. We argue that the opportunities for reform in the wake of crisis are smaller than often thought. The prime reason is that the requisites of crisis leadership are at odds with the requirements of effective reform.
When societies are confronted with major, disruptive emergencies, the fate of politicians and public policies hangs in the balance. Both government actors and their critics will try to escape blame for their occurrence, consolidate/strengthen their political capital, and advance/defend the policies they stand for. Crises thus generate framing contests to interpret events, their causes, and the responsibilities and lessons involved in ways that suit their political purposes and visions of future policy directions. This article dissects these processes and articulates foundations for a theory of crisis exploitation. Drawing on 15 cases of crisis-induced framing contests, we identify potentially crucial factors that may explain both the political (effects on incumbent office-holders/institutions) and policy (effects on programs) impacts of crises.
Over the course of his long and controversial career, Joschka Fischer evolved from an archetypal 1960s radical—a firebrand street activist—into a shrewd political insider, operating at the heights of German politics. In the 1980s he was one of the first elected Greens and went on to become Germany’s foreign minister from 1998 to 2005. His famous challenge to Donald Rumsfeld’s case for invading Iraq—“Excuse me, I am not convinced”—won him worldwide recognition, and the Bush administration’s contempt. Here is both a lively biography of Joschka Fischer and a gripping history ’from below’of postwar Germany. Paul Hockenos begins in the ruins of postwar Germany and guides us through the flashpoints of the late sixties and seventies, from the student protests and the terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof group to the evolution of Europe’s premier Green party, and brings us up to the present in the united Germany. He shows how the grassroots movements that became the German Greens challenged and changed the republic’s status quo, making postwar Germany more democratic, liberal and worldly along the way. Despite the ideological twists and turns of Fischer and his peers, the lessons of the Holocaust and the Nazi terror remained their constant coordinates. Hockenos traces that political journey, providing readers with unique insight into the impact that these movements and the Greens have had on Germany. Informed by hundreds of interviews with key figures and fellow travelers, Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic presents readers with one of the most intriguing personalities on the European scene, and paints a rich picture of the rebellious generation of 1968 that became the political elite of modern Germany.
Highlighting the challenges and prospects of European security cooperation, this volume examines the impact of Brexit on strategic aspects of security, peace, defence and foreign policy for both the European Union and the UK. It applies theoretical and methodological approaches from international relations and security studies to analyse the causal mechanisms of security cooperation, and covers topics including innovative security technologies, defence procurement, EU-NATO relations, new capabilities frameworks (such as PESCO, EDF and EII), the role of French-German military cooperation, and the implications of Brexit for European deterrence or the Northern Ireland peace process. The findings contribute to a better understanding and management of anticipated challenges and sources of instability in post-Brexit Europe.
Spohr’s contribution in particular is noteworthy, as he combines the MSF with historical institutionalism, thus introducing path-dependency into the MSF. In this way, Spohr addresses the ‘lack of historical causality’ (Mucciaroni 2013: 322) that some critics of the MSF have emphasised.
"In a discussion in which emotions and ideology all too often trump reason, Simon Duke brings much-needed clarity. All decision-makers should read this book"
—Sven Biscop, Director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations, Brussels, and Ghent University, Belgium.
This Palgrave Policy Essential considers the security and defence consequences of Brexit for the UK and the European Union. It considers the place of security and defence in the debates leading up to the Brexit referendum as well as in its follow-up. Importantly, the book also traces recent developments in the EU towards what may become a European Defence Union and, in light of this, considers how realistic the UK’s aspirations for a unique relationship with the Union are. The book includes a critical analysis of the consequences of Brexit for crisis management, internal security and defence industries in the UK and EU. It concludes with an examination of the options and legal tools available to both parties as they frame their post-Brexit security and defence relations.
Simon Duke is Professor at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Maastricht, Netherlands and a Senior Research Fellow at Maastricht University. Prior to EIPA he held positions at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Mershon Center (Ohio State University), Pennsylvania State University, both USA, and the Central European University, Hungary. He was also a NATO Fellow. He is the author of several monographs on European and transatlantic foreign and security issues and has published on similar themes in numerous academic journals. He is also co-Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration.
The 'D' in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has always been taken for granted with relatively little thought until recently about what it actually means. 'Defence', often mentioned alongside security, has an enigmatic quality which has rendered the 'D' in CSDP essentially silent. The article posits two inter-related questions. First, in what ways has defence appeared in the European integration narrative, especially more recently? Second, how seriously should advocacy of a common defence for the EU be taken and what are the opportunities and challenges associated with the notion? It will be argued that defence per se is part of the EU's new level of ambition but the generic use of the term is being rapidly reshaped by geopolitical concerns and possible longer-term changes in transatlantic relations that may lead to a common defence, which is less likely to be a rehashed European Defence Community (EDC) than something based upon variable geometry and permanent structured cooperation.
This article examines how the defence component of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has been revisited over the last few years. It argues that while the CSDP has grown predominantly as a security – rather than defence – policy, the latest developments that include the creation of a military headquarter, the launching of a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the new role for the European Commission in defence funding, attest to an evolution towards a more central EU defence policy. In the meantime, the article points to some structural impediments to the materialisation of European defence. The momentum says little about the form and finality of military operations that EU states will have to conduct so as to give a meaning to defence in a European context. Moreover, persisting divergences in the EU member states’ respective strategic cultures and institutional preferences – notably vis-à-vis NATO – are likely to continue to constrain European defence self-assertion.
There have been two critical moments in Europe’s tortuous attempts to generate a viable, collective, relatively autonomous, trans-national defence project: the first decade after World War II, and the early decades of the 21st century. In both cases, the main features of the project were similar and in both cases there was an implicit or even explicit symbiosis between European integration and defence integration. In both cases, the same underlying weaknesses in the project stymied progress. These involved disagreements between France and the United Kingdom over the nature of the project itself; American ambivalence; differences among the European member states over how to handle relations with Russia; and unresolved tensions between the European entity and its member states. In the earlier case, these challenges proved fatal to the project. In the later case, they risk nudging it towards irrelevance.
John Kingdon’s multiple-streams framework has been widely used since the publication of his book Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies in 1984. The popularity of this agenda-setting framework in comparative policy analysis is especially interesting because the book focused exclusively on the United States. It is not clear, however, that a framework developed exclusively on the basis of the examination of a single, somewhat idiosyncratic national case should be able to generate insights useful in comparative research. This article discusses the nature of the multiple-streams framework and its impact on comparative policy analysis, before outlining its contribution to key debates in the field.
Foreign and security policy were not areas in which Prime Minister Cameron was seeking to renegotiate the relationship between the UK and the European Union (EU), but security may be a key issue in the EU referendum. The untangling of Britain's foreign and security policy from the EU following a Brexit vote would be relatively uncomplicated. The EU's arrangements for collective foreign and security policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), are conducted on an intergovernmental basis which allows the UK to preserve independence in its diplomacy while allowing for the coordination of policy where interests are held in common with other member states. The UK retains substantial diplomatic and military capabilities which would allow it to continue to pursue a separate national foreign, security and defence policy in the case of either a 'Leave' or 'Remain' outcome.
Since 9/11, policy scholars have made significant inroads with tremendous insights into U.S. homeland security policy, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and disaster relief. But as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raged on, the public policy field largely ceded questions of traditional defense policy to international relations and security scholars. This was a mistake. The time has come for policy scholars to rediscover defense policy and rejoin America's national security conversation. With defense spending in decline, the All-Volunteer Force in transition, and emerging threats on the rise, research on defense budgeting and management, military social policy, and cyber bureaucracy are all ripe for scholarly examination. This research note reviews the latest work in the field, reinvigorates national security research agendas for the twenty-first century, and explores several ideas for the way ahead in defense policy scholarship.
Two years of progress in foreign-policy leadership have left unanswered a crucial question: what is German power for?
The post-Cold War era has witnessed a dramatic transformation in the German political consensus about the legitimacy of the use of force. However, in comparison with its EU and NATO partners, Germany has been reticent to transform its military to meet the challenges of the contemporary security environment. Until 2003 territorial defence rather than crisis-management remained the armed forces' core role and the Bundeswehr continues to retain conscription. The book argues that 'strategic culture' provides only a partial explanation of German military reform. It demonstrates how domestic material factors were of crucial importance in shaping the pace and outcome of reform, despite the impact of 'international structure' and adaptational pressures from the EU and NATO. The domestic politics of base closures, ramifications for social policy, financial restrictions consequent upon German unification and commitment to EMU's Stability and Growth Pact were critical in determining the outcome of reform. The study also draws out the important role of policy leaders in the political management of reform as entrepreneurs, brokers or veto players, shifting the focus in German leadership studies away from a preoccupation with the Chancellor to the role of ministerial and administrative leadership within the core executive. Finally, the book contributes to our understanding of the Europeanization of the German political system, arguing that policy leaders played a key role in 'uploading' and 'downloading' processes to and from the EU and that Defence Ministers used 'Atlanticization' and 'Europeanization' in the interests of their domestic political agendas.
France and Germany have played a pivotal role in the history and politics of European integration. Yet, paradoxically, a study that systematically investigates the interrelated reality of Franco-German bilateralism and multilateral European integration has been conspicuously lacking. Formulating an approach the authors call "embedded bilateralism", this book offers exactly that. It scrutinizes in empirical and historical detail the bilateral Franco-German order and France and Germany's joint role in shaping Europe over the past half century. The book addresses two key questions regarding France and Germany in Europe from the Elysee Treaty to the twenty-first century: Why have France and Germany continued to hang together in an especially tight relationship for over five decades amidst frequently dramatic domestic change, lasting differences, and fundamental international transformation? And why has the joint Franco-German impact on shaping Europe's polity and European policies, while fundamental, proved so uneven across political domains and time? In answer to the first question, Shaping Europe argues that the actions and practices of the Franco-German order-its regularized bilateral intergovernmentalism, symbolic acts and practices, and parapublic underpinnings-together have rendered this bilateral connection historically resilient and politically adaptable. Regarding the second question, the book holds that different combinations of a limited number of factors located at the bilateral, domestic, regional European, and international levels explain central aspects of variation. Together, these factors condition and modulate France and Germany's joint impact on Europe. In pursuing its research questions, theoretical work, historical reconstructions, and empirical analyses, Shaping Europe fruitfully combines the study of European integration, EU politics and policymaking, Franco-German affairs, and French and German politics with general theorizing and conceptual grounding in international relations and political science.
This book traces the evolution of the EU's fight against terrorism from the late 1970s until the end of the first decade after 9/11. This historical analysis covers both EU-internal and international counterterrorism policies and features an in-depth account of the EU's reaction to the terrorist incidents in New York, Madrid and London. In the first few weeks after these incidents, the EU mobilised a complex but also incoherent set of policy measures, which significantly influenced the course of European security over the years. From a theoretical perspective, this volume argues that context-specific factors dominated over functionalist considerations in the EU's fight against terrorism. Building on frameworks from public policy analysis, the author demonstrates that EU institutions played a critical role as policy entrepreneurs, while the many security measures were chosen on the basis of timing rather than significance. Such short-term political dynamics also explain the implementation deficits and persistent imbalances in the EU's counterterrorism policy; limitations which still hinder its fight against international terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of EU policy, counter-terrorism, European security, public administration, foreign policy, and IR in general.
The Helsinki European Council conclusions of December 1999 aimed at strengthening the Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP). The EU Member States decided that the EU should be able to assume its responsibilities for the full range of conflict prevention and crisis management tasks required to deal with crises such as the Balkan crisis. They are currently looking at the degree of the autonomous capacity of the EU to take decisions, and where NATO as a whole is not engaged, to conduct EU-led military operations in response to international crises. This paper argues that France and the United Kingdom reached a more than “Lowest Common Denominator” (LCD) agreements when they negotiated the creation of the CESDP: they changed their initial positions, and the UK changed its preference. These EU Member States were mainly motivated by the way the United States dealt with the Balkans’ crises. They were then constrained in their action by the US and the EU’s institutions. Realism, the conventional theory which is expected to explain high politics decision-making processes does not seem appropriate here to explain the change in the British and French position: the security community concept and historical institutionalism might be more useful here. This paper is divided into two main parts. The first one analyses the creation and substance of the CESDP, while the second one focuses on the evolution of the French and British change in position and looks at the possible explanations for this.
How are we to explain U.S. foreign policy—particularly policy making on national security—during the transformative years of the G. W. Bush administration? Who were the actors and what were the factors that produced what were some of the most controversial policies? This article argues that security choices and decisions have been the results of the work and methods of “policy entrepreneurs.” It looks first at theoretical approaches to entrepreneurs and their influence over the formulation of national security policy, and secondly at who those entrepreneurs were and how they achieved their goal of transforming U.S. security policy. Two decisions are discussed: the invasion of Iraq and the legal redefinition of torture by the G. W. Bush administration.
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Amending rational institutionalist accounts of EU policy, I use the multiple streams perspective and examples from several policy sectors to explore the impact of two elements of policy choice: policy windows and the dynamics of coupling. I argue that policy outputs are neither exclusively rational nor solely a function of institutional design; rather they depend heavily on a complex interaction between problems, solutions, and politics during fleeting open windows of opportunity. Policy windows pose limitations to rational policy-making by framing the context within which choice is made, while the notion of coupling stresses the impact of entrepreneurial politics and strategies in EU policy-making. The analysis illuminates the limitations of rationality in explaining policy choice, the role of political power in the absence of institutional hierarchies, and the impact of ideas, institutions, and entrepreneurs in the EU policy process.
This study builds an interactive, quantitative model to explain U.S. foreign aid allocations. We develop an explanation based on Kingdon's multiple streams model to argue that aid decisions are the result of trade ties, socialist orientation, human needs, and the political ideologies of the administration and the senate interacting with adjustments to baseline funding. We find that there are significant conditional relationships between economic and security-related assistance and our external and domestic variables with external variables generally being more important. The findings have implications for the study of public policy, the future of the foreign aid program, and theoretical attempts to develop more generalizable explanations of policy that encompass foreign and domestic issues.
The article analyses the processes and outcomes of military reforms during the two Schröder governments (1998–2005). These reforms are the litmus test for Germany's willingness and ability to play an important role in crisis-management tasks as part of NATO, CESDP and the UN. The study argues that, despite its strengths, the concept of strategic culture provides only a partial explanation of military reform in Germany. The article illustrates the strongly self-referential nature of Bundeswehr reform, despite adaptational pressures from the EU and NATO and the role of ‘international structure’. The domestic politics of base closures, ramifications for social policy, economic and financial restrictions consequent upon German unification and commitment to EMU's Stability and Growth Pact were critical in determining the outcomes of the reform processes undertaken by Defence Ministers Rudolf Scharping and Peter Struck. The study also draws out the important role of policy leaders in the political manipulation of reform as entrepreneurs, brokers or veto-players and in controlling the extent of adaptational pressure from NATO and the EU. In doing so, the article shifts the focus of leadership studies in Germany away from the Chancellor to an examination of the role of ministerial and administrative leadership within the core executive.
Observers of the European Community have criticized “intergovernmentalist” accounts for exaggerating the extent of member-state control over European integration. This article grounds these criticisms in a historical institutionalist analysis, stressing the need to study European integration as a process that unfolds over time. Losses of control result not only from the autonomous actions of supranational organizations, but from member-state preoccupation with short-term concerns, the ubiquity of unintended consequences, and the instability of member-state policy preferences. Once gaps in control emerge, change-resistant decision rules and sunk costs associated with societal adaptations make it difficult for member states to reassert their authority. Brief examination of the evolution of EC social policy suggests the limitations of treating the EC as an instrument facilitating collective action among sovereign states. Rather, integration should be viewed as a path-dependent process producing a fragmented but discernible multitiered European polity.
By 2008, what is commonly known as the EU's 'capability-expecta- tions gap' has narrowed considerably. While the EU has made notable improvements in terms of its resource availability, as well as the instruments at its disposal, a gap between what the EU member-states are expected to do in the world and what they are actually able to agree upon persists. This article argues that the primary reason why the European Union is unable to deliver the foreign and security policies expected is a lack of decisionmaking procedures capable of overcoming dissent. Repeated attempts to surmount the drawbacks of consensus policymaking have only marginally improved the consistency and effectiveness of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). These efforts are assessed by applying consensus as a 'conceptual lens' through which to select and assess information. The real-world impact of the lack of cohesiveness, the capacity to make assertive collective decisions and stick to them, is illustrated by Europe's handling of the crisis in the Sudanese province of Darfur in the period 2003-08. The main finding of the article is that as long as the consensus-expectations gap exists, the EU is likely to remain a partial and inconsistent foreign policy actor.
This essay extends John Kingdon's work on predecision policy processes in US domestic policy to the foreign policy domain. While Kingdon's insights have significantly improved our understanding of predecision processes, further development is necessary for extension across both domestic and foreign policy domains. Kingdon's incremental evolutionary metaphor for alternative specification has to be revamped to include both gradualist and nonincremental policy types. Scholars must also make more explicit, elaborate, and thorough use of Cohen, March and Olsen's ‘garbage can’ model of decision making. To these ends, we offer a typology of policy alternatives that incorporates alternative metaphors premised on recent developments in evolutionary theory. The essay concludes by suggesting a research agenda amenable to pursuit in both national and cross-national contexts.
This article explores the domestic formulation of UK European defence policy 1997–2000 through the intergovernmental meetings at Pörtschach and Saint Malo which set in train the development and codification of a common European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 2000, through a Liberal Intergovernmentalist (LI) framework. This research leads to five conclusions: first, that the Saint Malo initiative was a tactical shift of government policies rather than core preferences; second, that the prime minister centralised European defence policy-making within the core executive; third, that the prime minister was crucial to the development of the initiative; fourth, that the presentation of the initiative was made on lowest common denominator grounds; and, lastly, that the ‘successive limited comparisons’ framework provides an effective corrective to LI's domestic policy formulation hypotheses.
As national governments slowly—very slowly—become aware that an institutionalized crisis management capacity is critically important, new forms of crisis appear on the horizon: cyberterrorism, genetic engineering and health scares, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, infrastructural collapses, and changing weather patterns, to name but a few. At issue is whether our governments are prepared to deal with modern crises in close cooperation with international partners. Moreover, can the wide variety of academic research traditions be brought together to assist policymakers and politicians in increasing their crisis management capacity?
We see frequent evidence of how crises outstrip the coping capacity of national governments. The modern crisis does not recognize or respect national borders; it thrives on fragmentation and variety. Its complexity defies governmental efforts to understand its causes, pathways, and potential remedies. The modern crisis does not confine itself to a particular policy area (say health or energy); it jumps from one field to the other, unearthing issues and recombining them into unforeseen megathreats. The modern crisis is not boxed in by set dates that mark a clear beginning and ending; it is an embedded vulnerability that emerges, fades, mutates, and strikes again (see ‘t Hart and Boin 2001). The currency of the modern crisis is not solely, or even primarily, expressed in the number of dead and wounded; it also attacks the legitimacy of the state, undermining its crisis management capacity.
The modern crisis is, thus, a clear challenge to national governments (‘t Hart, Heyse, and Boin 2001; Rosenthal, Boin, and Comfort 2001). Yet, their capacity to deal with crises—modern or classic—has been undermined by a prolonged phase of environmental flux. The combination of extended ambitions and economic hardship has driven Western governments toward radical reform programs that have not necessarily improved the effectiveness of government interventions. The …
For many observers, the Iraq crisis spelled the end for EU ambitions in the defence sphere. The profound public and bitter divisions that emerged were seen as illustrative of the insuperable problems confronting ESDP. This article argues, however, that the reverse is in fact the case. Far from sounding the death knell for ESDP, the crisis has had a cathartic effect in compelling the member states to face up to and resolve the major ambiguities that had always threatened to undermine EU defence policies. Consequently, these member states have, in the months following the war, laid the basis not only for a more modest but also for a more effective ESDP.
Cet article cherche a determiner a quels types d'evenements historiques s'applique l'analyse de path dependence. Selon l'A., il s'agit de sequences historiques au sein desquelles des evenements contingents mettent en mouvement des modeles institutionnels ou des chaines d'evenements ayant des proprietes deterministes. L'identification de la path dependence implique a la fois de relier un resultat a une serie d'evenements et de montrer en quoi ces evenements sont eux-memes des occurences contingentes ne pouvant etre expliquees par des conditions historiques prealables. Ces sequences historiques sont generalement de deux types : les sequences a auto-renforcement et les sequences reactives
The means by which people protestâthat is, their repertoires of contentionâvary radically from one political regime to the next. Highly capable undemocratic regimes such as China's show no visible signs of popular social movements, yet produce many citizen protests against arbitrary, predatory government. Less effective and undemocratic governments like the Sudanâs, meanwhile, often experience regional insurgencies and even civil wars. In Regimes and Repertoires, Charles Tilly offers a fascinating and wide-ranging case-by-case study of various types of government and the equally various styles of protests they foster. Using examples drawn from many areasâG8 summit and anti-globalization protests, Hindu activism in 1980s India, nineteenth-century English Chartists organizing on behalf of workers' rights, the revolutions of 1848, and civil wars in Angola, Chechnya, and KosovoâTilly masterfully shows that such episodes of contentious politics unfold like loosely scripted theater. Along the way, Tilly also brings forth powerful tools to sort out the reasons why certain political regimes vary and change, how the people living under them make claims on their government, and what connections can be drawn between regime change and the character of contentious politics.
The EU's ineffectual actions during the Balkan wars of the 1990s have led to loud calls for this political and economic giant to develop an effective military arm - an integrated force capable of dealing with conflict in Europe's backyard and projecting military power globally. This work provides a comprehensive analysis of this "European defence project" - its origins, purpose, and goals. It asks whether a powerful European army should replace US military involvement in Europe and discusses how the respective roles of the various EU countries, especially France, Germany, and Britain, should be defined. It also explores the institutional, military, industrial, and especially political practicalities of defense integration.
Cette thèse de science politiqueporte sur la construction, la pratique et les usages de la Politique européenne de sécurité et de défense (PESD) depuis les années 1990. L’enjeu est d’étudier cette politique en privilégiant un angle d’approche franco-allemand au départ, et en mettant en œuvre une démarche comparative entre les deux pays, afin de saisir les pratiques, les représentations mais également les points d’achoppement de cette politique de défense d’un type inédit. Nous avons choisi de...
Searching for a Franco-German consensus on the future of Europe: Survey results for Bundestag
- Sebastian Blesse
Blesse, Sebastian, et al. (2016), Searching for a Franco-German consensus on the future
of Europe: Survey results for Bundestag, Assemblée Nationale and Sénat. No. 5/2016.
ZEW policy brief.