CSDP: Approaching Transgovernmentalism?

Abstract

The nature of international cooperation has been at the heart of the debate in international relations (IR) theory since the creation of the field. The various loci of political authority and the role of the state, especially, have received much attention. Many IR theories have been built on the assumption that all actors within a state either implement the policy directives decided by the executive without much margin of autonomy, or, in the realm of foreign and security policy, that all national actors operate based on the same international constraints compelling them to pursue the same ‘national interest’ (Waltz 1979, Keohane 1984).1 Either way, based on these assumptions, the state has been understood as a unitary actor. The discussion around European security cooperation is no exception in that some authors argue that all European Union (EU) member states have an incentive to balance against the United States because it is the strongest power in the international system (Jones 2007, Posen 2006). Often, what goes hand-in-hand with the unitary state assumption is the fact that IR scholars take the ‘national interest’ exogenously. As such, exogenously given preferences have been the main focus in assessing the potential for cooperation, disagreement or conflict in international politics. Scholars studying international cooperation frequently make no distinction among the state, national governments, bureaucrats and domestic constituencies.KeywordsEuropean UnionSecurity PolicyNational CapitalPolicy FieldInternational RelationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.