Embedded Politics, Growing Informalization? How NATO and the EU Transform Provision of External Security

Abstract

This article investigates changes in the ways NATO and EU states have pursued security since the end of the Cold War, and the repercussions for the state monopoly of external force. Both organizations have autonomous roles, security identities and norm-shaping abilities, making them more consequential than is often acknowledged. Using the analytical concept of internationalization – the increasing importance of political or administrative authorities beyond the nation-state – this article scrutinizes the institutionalization of new functions, mechanisms and operational roles within NATO and the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. The resulting process of internationalization can be labelled embedded security politics, a political order characterized by fragmented responsibilities in which underlying national preferences are altered by transgovernmental and transnational contacts and pressure to reach consensus, by thicker institutional structures of rules and common practices that constrain national decision-making, and by schemes that subject national capabilities for autonomous action to institutional and physical constraints. The desirable degree of internationalization is still contested among capitals. There are also unspecific signs of an informalization of decision-shaping or -making: governments use ad hoc networks outside the treaty-based international organizations, allowing more freedom with regard to the interpretation of institutional obligations. The article concludes that internationalization and informalization have more in common than is often admitted, with fundamental implications for the future of national action and security cooperation.