Squaring the Circle? Leadership and Legitimacy in European Security and Defence Cooperation
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Research Note
Squaring the Circle? Leadership and Legitimacy in European Security and Defence Cooperation Bastian Giegericha and Eva Grossb a International Institute for Strategic Studies, 13–15 Arundel Street, London WC2R 3DX, UK. E-mail: [email protected] b Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London W2A 2AA, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
This research note addresses the trade-offs between legitimacy and effectiveness in the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The contemporary security environment creates a dual deficiency where neither individual states nor the European Union (EU) can provide effective and legitimate solutions. Leadership is necessary but has to be balanced with the norms of consensus and equality, deeply engrained in EU foreign policy making. The increasing scope and ambition for ESDP in an enlarged EU with 25 members exacerbate this fundamental contradiction. We present a number of internal and external adaptation pressures that lead to this situation and link them to wider conceptual debates about security governance. Noting that the existing academic literature has not paid sufficient and systematic attention to the associated dilemmas, we then outline a comprehensive agenda for research that includes both empirical and conceptual matters worth exploring. International Politics (2006) 43, 500–509. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800170 Keywords: EU; security; European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP); foreign policy; security governance; legitimacy; multilateralism
Introduction As the European Union (EU) grapples with a fundamental political crisis that peaked with the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in the Dutch and French referenda of 2005, the problems of getting an ever larger political entity to act and transform at the same time have become more apparent. As a remedy, French interior minister, president of the conservative French party Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy has thought aloud about a core of the six biggest EU members which would collectively propose major initiatives to the remaining states in the Union (Financial Times, 2005). Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schu¨ssel used the commencement of his country’s EU presidency in the first semester of 2006 to issue a stark warning against such a move (Financial Times, 2006). European leaders – no matter on which side of the debate – have strong feelings about
Bastian Giegerich and Eva Gross European Security and Defence Cooperation
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questions of flexible integration. It is high time that the academic debate explores major issues related to this matter in the context of the enlarged EU. The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in particular brings out the tensions inherent in these conflicting positions in stark contrasts and, serves as the starting point for our deliberations. In the realm of security and defence national governments can no longer provide effective solutions on their own – a dilemma that has bee
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