Sharing the Burden of Collective Security in the European Union. Research Note

This article compares European Union (EU) burden-sharing in security governance distinguishing between assurance, prevention, protection, and compellence 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 aggregation 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 characterized 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 country?s ability to contribute, Kendall tau-tests examine 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 disproportionate burden in the provision of prevention, and larger EU members in the provision of compellence. When analyzing contributions relative to expected benefits, asymmetric marginal costs can largely explain uneven burden-sharing. The main conclusion is that the aggregated burden of collective security governance in the EU is shared quite evenly

New horizons in EU–Japan security cooperation

Alongside the EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) between the EU and Japan entered into force in 2019. Whereas the EPA enshrines the existing interconnectedness between the Japanese and European economies, the SPA remains more aspirational. With an emphasis on shared norms and values and recognising an increasingly hostile external environment, the EU and Japan are seeking to deepen and broaden their security cooperation. For the period 1990–2017, EU–Japan security cooperation is mapped for a broad range of security domains. During this period, cooperation has increased notably in domains such as economic security, cyber-security and civil protection. In other areas, such as military, regional, energy and human security as well as terrorism, the scope of cooperation lags behind. Looking forward, the SPA not only reflects a renewed interest and level of ambition in the EU and Japan but also provides them with a platform to extend security cooperation to address their global and regional challenges

Convergence towards a European strategic culture? A constructivist framework for explaining changing norms.

The article contributes to the debate about the emergence of a European strategic culture to underpin a European Security and Defence Policy. Noting both conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the literature, the article disaggregates the concept of strategic culture and focuses on four types of norms concerning the means and ends for the use of force. The study argues that national strategic cultures are less resistant to change than commonly thought and that they have been subject to three types of learning pressures since 1989: changing threat perceptions, institutional socialization, and mediatized crisis learning. The combined effect of these mechanisms would be a process of convergence with regard to strategic norms prevalent in current EU countries. If the outlined hypotheses can be substantiated by further research the implications for ESDP are positive, especially if the EU acts cautiously in those cases which involve norms that are not yet sufficiently shared across countries

The European Union as a Model for Regional Integration: The Muslim World and Beyond. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 6 No. 1 January 2006

[From the introduction]. Yet while such grandiose attempts as the United Arab Republic, the United Arab States and the Arab Union have failed, there have been several efforts, whether regional or sub-regional, which look promising. These include the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), the Arab Cooperation Council, and the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, there have also been joint attempts by Arab, at least by the large oil suppliers, to have a collective effect, or more precisely a crippling economic impact, on the countries of the EU. This was noticeable with regard to the formation of OPEC, in which Arab oil-producing countries played a significant role. But this might be seen more as a “co-ordination” rather than as an integration effort. Why have the more grandiose Arab integration attempts not succeeded and the more modest efforts succeeded? What lessons can be drawn from European integration or in what way is EU integration instructive for policy and institutional developments in the Arab region?1 In trying to find answers to these questions, an attempt will be made first to consider the concept of regionalism in the European and Arab setting. After this, the conditions deemed essential for the success of regional integration will be considered

European Security Trends. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 3 No. 6, September 2003

It is not the task of this paper to speculate on whether the EU will become more important than NATO in European security governance. Rather the paper seeks to examine: (1) which of the two is deemed most relevant in dealing with certain specific types of threats, and whether a division of labour among the leading security institutions is emerging accordingly; and (2) whether coordination, especially on issues of military engagement, is becoming easier rather than more difficult among the lead security organisations. Underlying these aims is the assumption that for European security governance to be effective it needs a sharing and coordinating mechanism. As the market cannot be left simply to the “unseen hand” of demand and supply, and needs, frameworks and regulations provided either by states or international organisations for a proper functioning, a similar argument can be made for security governance

"The Changing Definition of Security"

The end of the cold war security order and its sudden transformation in 1989 has altered the structure of the European state system, intensified the interrelationship between military security and economic security and possibly inverted their relative importance, and raised new possibilities for cooperation in military and economic affairs. These changes also raise questions about the institutional choices available to reconfigure the European security space and the consequences of the choices already made. In this paper, we examine the causes and consequences of the reconfiguration of the institutions of European security that constitute, in turn, the building blocks of the new European security architecture

Theoretical debates on regional security governance

It is the aim of this paper is to explore the role pivotal states play as security providers and what impact they have in particular on regional security governance. The choice to base the analysis at the regional level is due to the relative stability some regions have been able to achieve and the way regional (in)stability can be seen as a sub-set of global governance. The paper will make use of the concept of security governance. Given the growing interaction between national and regional actors in the decision making of regional security governance, a state-centric approach is insufficient as a framework of analysis. Security governance covers threats that have to do with potential or actual violence: terrorism, war and counter insurgency, ethnic cleansing, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, massive human rights violence, and organised crime, as well as issues that have to do with natural disasters: famines, pandemics, cyber warfare, and even financial crises

"The EC Council Presidency at work."

[From the Introduction]. ...some Presidencies seem to do better than others under adverse conditions. For example, a comparison of Presidencies between 1986 and 1989 shows that some have been more successful than others either with regard to a range of policy objectives or in helping to solve acute problems. This raises a number of questions about the Presidency and the office holder; the extent to which the Presidency carries power irrespective of the office holder or the extent to which influence of the Presidency depends on the power position of the office holder. (3) For example, is size, experience, commitment and political clout of the office holder a decisive factor in influencing the course of events? Were the more successful Presidencies confronted with less pressing problems, more conducive circumstances (economic, political and institutional climate), or were they endowed with more organisational resources, experience and brokerage skills