A More Martial Europe? Permissive Consensus or Robust Support for CSDP

Abstract

Introduction: This paper reflects a research agenda to clarify the individual, social, and national correlates for support of a collective European foreign, defense, and security policy. Extant research (Schoen 2008, Foucault et. al. 2009, Peters 2011) has found important predictors of support in national identities, utilitarian versus ideational correlates, and dimensions of strategic culture. Our research indicates that individuals who support a more robust European presence in the world understand very well what they mean by this support: they are well-educated, high-information citizens who do not necessarily shun the robust use of force under certain conditions, including protecting their societies from asymmetric threats such as terrorism and failed states. If so, individuals might favor more robust European defense, but with variation on the specifics: they might favor collective defense institutions or interventions based on their assessment of specific conflicts, cost/benefit calculations, or even constructed aspects of European prestige or competition vis a vis the US. These correlates of support demonstrate that the conventional wisdom that Europeans are turning inward, away from global affairs, favor only multilateral foreign policy solutions, and abhor the use of force in security and defense is empirically unsubstantiated