The Political Economy of European Security, by Kaija Schilde, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, 288 pp., (hardback), ISBN 978 1 107 19843 2
by Iraklis Oikonomou
Book Review published in European Security, Volume 27, Issue 4, 2018, pp. 537-540
The emergence of a distinct EU security and defence
dimension is not just one more episode in European integration; it is a key
development for Brussels, affecting the very essence of the European project:
new institutions and mechanisms (e.g. European Defence Agency), new funding
arrangements (e.g. security & defence research), new policies (e.g.
military space, border security), and a new orientation for the EU as a whole,
geared towards the strengthening of the European arms industry. The
militarization of the EU is, to a great extent, the European integration of our
time.
Any book that sets to study the making of this
phenomenon, like Kaija Schilde’s The Political Economy of European Security, is a
welcome addition to existing literature. The theoretical foundations of the
study lie in transnational interest-group mobilization and the relative
governing capacity of institutions. Its argument is compelling: security and
defence policy integration in the EU is largely an outcome of the organized
activity of transnational interest groups, which built informal European policy
institutions that, in turn, accelerated the establishment of formal governing
capacity and institutions. Following the dissection of the relationship between
interest groups and institutions in Chapter 1, and the theorization of interest
group mobilization in connection with outcomes in the EU in Chapters 2 and 3, Schilde
then gives a politico-economic explanation of CSDP, in Chapter 4, emphasizing the
role of defence industry lobbying in the emergence of this policy. Chapter5 and
Chapter 6 thoroughly document the emergence and expansion of EU authority in
defence and border security, respectively, as a relative outcome of the
mobilization of interest groups – from the start of the process in the case of defence
policy, or somewhere along the way in the case of border security. Finally, Chapter
7 studies the blurring of EU security and defence policies brought about by the
desire of the industry to impose a market logic there.
Undoubtedly, this is an extremely topical book as the
process of the expansion of EU authority to embrace security and defence is in
the making and has far-reaching implications for the entire orientation of the
Union. This is also a very useful book because it unites the realm of political
economy with defence and security policy, highlighting the unity of strategic
and economic considerations in EU policy-making. It is about time that we got
rid of the model of a discipline that merely seeks to reproduce and legitimize
official discourse, presenting the emergence of CSDP as an ‘objective’ and
‘rational’ necessity, and looked instead at the socio-economic rationale of the
policy and the way it is embedded into industrial interests. Lastly, it is a
balanced book, with a convincing combination of theoretical and empirical
study, together with a sound blend of quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Still, the author’s argumentation could have been
helped by an engagement with existing critical literature on the socioeconomic
foundations of EU armaments policy, including Slijper (2005) and Hayes (2006)
work of EU military-industrial and EU security-industrial complexes
respectively. This is all the more essential as the theoretical connection between
interest groups and EU authority remains unclear; on p. 5, the author argues
that “There is … no direct causal link between interest groups and EU
authority” while two pages earlier we read that “The very presence of interest
groups changes the structure of EU governance”. The riddle remains ultimately
unresolved; if this linkage is not causal, what exactly is it? The feeling one
gets is that in her effort to avoid one-sided causal simplifications, the
author does not provide an adequately specific theorization of the private
interests / public authority nexus. Essentially, what Schilde’s work lacks is a
theory of power – engagement with certain contributions in Kurowska &
Breuer (eds.; 2012) could have been useful in this respect. For example, on p.
15 the author notes that informal institutions enhance the capacity of formal
institutions when there is a matching of the respective policy agendas (as if
there is a pre-existing public agenda which the private one fits into), but
Chapters 4 and 5 point to a wholly different reality – the elevation of a
private agenda to a public one via the intense political activation of arms
manufacturers, driven by developments (competition with US industry,
consolidation) in the industrial realm. This is also why the book could have
benefited from a closer look at existing literature that theorizes the policy
actorness of European arms manufacturers, including Mawdsley (2003), Barrinha
(2010), and a couple of contributions in Karampekios & Oikonomou (eds.;
2015).
Elsewhere, the author admits that from the start of
European integration till the end of the 1970s,the interest groups that engaged
with the EU were basically business interests, but the explanation “because the
EEC regulated industry” (p. 58) is just not convincing, as the EEC did several
other things next to regulation. Also, it is acknowledged that industry groups
“seem to enjoy a certain honeymoon phase in EU policymaking” (p. 58), pointing
to the role of the industry as something bigger than merely interest group
activity, but again the rest of the analysis dissolves the dominance of private
capitalist interests into this idea of interest groups together with NGOs etc.
The entire concept of ‘interest groups’ could be questioned if we take the
evidence put forward by the book to its very end. The only ‘interest group’
discussed here is the arms and security industry and, thus, one could argue
that the very notion of interest group is a veil that conceals the structural
dominance of private business in EU policy-making ,implying that there are
other social forces operating next to arms manufacturers – there aren’t. The
book could have benefited from class analysis and from the removal of the
concept of interest group from its pluralist context. This is all the more true
since the author notes that “(t)here is an overrepresentation of business
interests over social interests” (p. 83) and illustrates how the entire defence
agenda of the EU was set by the European defence industry at least a decade
prior to relevant EU initiatives at the end of the 1990s; in her own words,
“‘first they (interest groups) arrived, and then it(the EU) was built’” (p.
71). Instead, however, of producing a class-based understanding of the
connection between private and institutional power in the EU, the author opts
for a tautological understanding of the role of interest groups along the lines
of “the earlier interest groups mobilize in the life of an issue area, the more
likely they are to establish close, informal relationships with EU
bureaucracies” (p. 72), as if the establishment of relations of influence is a
technical matter of timing rather than a socio-political matter of power. Once
again, existing studies of the multiple ways in which the European arms
industry has utilized European integration to promote its own interests, such
as Manners (2006) and his conceptualization of a European “military-industrial
simplex”, could have been considered.
Overall, the book’s emphasis on defence-industrial
interests as a source of EU political authority is a fruitful reminder of the
need to re-orientate social scientific attention towards the political economy
of arms production and state-societal relations. Schilde tells us that the
setting of the EU policy agenda in the realm of security and defence is a
heavily politicized process, thoroughly informed by the interests of the
European arms industry. It is not the strategic considerations or big power
thinking or changes in the strategic environment or the nature of threats that
brought about the elevation of defence as a top priority of the European
project. Instead, the key according to Schielde lies in understanding the
impact of interest group activity – in this case, the organized political
actions of the European arms industry. The Political Economy of European Security is a
must-read for every student of European Security and International Politics,
and a key contribution to the debate on the origins and social purpose of EU
security, defence, and armaments policies.
Notes
Barrinha, A., 2010. ‘Moving towards a European Defence Industry? The Political Discourse on a Changing Reality and its Implications for the Future of the European Union’, GlobalSociety, 24 (4): 467-485.
Hayes, B., 2006. ‘Arming Big Brother: The EU’s Security Research Programme’, TNI Briefing Series No 2006/1, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
Karampekios, N. and Oikonomou, I. (eds.), 2015. The European Defence Agency: Arming Europe. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kurowska, X. and Breuer, F. (eds.), 2012. Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy: Theory in Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Manners, I., 2006. ‘Normative power Europe reconsidered: beyond the crossroads’, Journal of European Public Policy, 13 (2): 182-199.
Mawdsley, J., 2003. ‘TheEuropean Union and Defense Industrial Policy’, Paper 31, Bonn International Center for Conversion.
Slijper, F.,2005. ‘The emerging EU Military-Industrial Complex’, TNI Briefing Series No 2005/1, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
