German election preview: four things to look out for as Germany goes to the polls

Most observers expect Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU to win Sunday's federal election in Germany, but the outcome of the vote will still have a major impact on the composition of the next government and the future direction of both Germany and the European Union. We asked four of our contributors for the key stories to watch as the results come in

Shared control: origins and consequences of integrated military capabilities: a dissertation on the integrated defence cooperation initiatives of the Netherlands and Germany and their impact on the core state powers of government

The governments of the Netherlands and Germany are paving the way for a new form of defence cooperation in Europe, the integration of parts of their armed forces. Both governments pursue such integrations efforts with multiple partners to address acute capability shortfalls and the degree of integration of these bilateral and multilateral efforts creates serious dependencies between the participating governments. The impact on Dutch and German core state powers goes far beyond the control of the cooperating forces and touches, for example, on the budgetary authorities of their parliaments or the broader foreign policy of each government. Despite these dependencies, the trend to further deepen existing cooperations and initiate new partnerships via G2G agreements continues. In this dissertation, I examine these integrated defence cooperation efforts of German and Dutch armed forces through the lens of International Relations theory and ask why these two governments have agreed to share their sovereign powers. Some have argued that states pursue defence cooperation to strengthen their unilateral military power in the face of a threat or that the socialisation of elite decision-makers in international organisations preceded government decisions to cooperate. However, my field research shows that the decision to share core state powers is the result of a calculated decision-making process that generates distinct political, economic, and military operational benefits for each government. The benefits are particularly pronounced as regards their contribution to the absolute military capabilities of the EU and NATO and hence the absolute multilateral security of their members. I argue that the decision to share core state powers is theoretically best understood and described in terms of a liberal intergovernmentalist framework rather than as a product of elite socialisation or neorealist threat balancing