Power, Institutions and the CSDP: The Promise of Institutionalist Theory

Abstract

The Common Security and Defence Policy and its predecessor, the European Security and Defence Policy represent institutionalized attempts on the part of European Union member states to respond to the security challenges they confront. As such, it is perhaps self evident that theoretical approaches that assess the role of institutions in shaping social life should have something to say about their nature, role and impact. And indeed, a central claim of this article is that students of CSDP stand to benefit from the application of Institutionalist approaches to this policy area. It also, however, argues that the case of CSDP can shed interesting new light on the nature and workings of international institutions and hence contribute to necessary refinements of the Institutionalist literature.