Global Governance, Regionalisation and Regulation: The Role Of The EU (GARNET)

• Max Rasch
• Max Paiano
• Katja Mirwaldt
• Anthony Coates
• Emilia Palonen
• Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou
• Oistein Harsem
• Andrea Hurley

We wanted to find out whether or not the EU is an effective security actor; and whether security governance is a meaningful concept in analysing EU security policy-making.
JERP 5.3.2 set itself three specific aims: 

• To examine the problem of security governance in different regional contexts. 
• To provide some conceptual clarification of threat, the state, and the institutional framework for understanding those threats and the meaning of European security governance.
• To construct a replicable cross-national survey that allowed for variations in elite perceptions, and to craft institutional solutions facilitating global and regional security governance.

Over the course of the GARNET project further tasks emerged, extending the original aims of the JERP. These included:

• To investigate whether elite perceptions on security threats and the appropriate means to respond to those threats converge or diverge among ten countries in Europe, North America and Pacific Asia.
• To determine the extent to which security and defence burdens are shared equally among EU member states.
• To examine whether the national security cultures of ten countries, as well as that of the EU, have an impact on the way countries conduct their security and defence affairs, i.e., whether they prefer unilateral, bi-lateral or multilateral forms of engagement and the type of instruments they prefer to use (military versus non-military).
• To explore the existing and potential levels of energy security cooperation in Europe, especially between the EU and Russia.

While governance remains complex and under-theorised, it provides a helpful, heuristic device to study forms of interaction and to conceptualise the co-ordination, management and regulation of EU security governance in a meaningful way.

Our principal findings were the subject of conference papers, talks and publications.

Our workshops: 

JERP 5.3.2 Global and Regional Security Governance held five workshops with participation of partner institutions:

• The Hague in September 2004

• Trento in September 2005

• Mallorca in October 2006

• Boston in April 2008

• Bruges in October 2008

We conducted joint research in three empirical data collection surveys and contributed to joint GARNET conferences, e.g. in Rome in November 2009 and Brussels in March 2010.

Our book launch:

We held book launch events for National Security Cultures: Patterns of Global Governance:

• April 2010 at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris

• June 2010 at the London School of Economics.

The GARNET mobility programme allowed PhD students and early career researchers to spend a few months at a partner institution. In 2007 Essex sent Max Rasch to UNU-Cris in Bruges for 6 months, and Max Paiano to Universities of Giessen and Dortmund for 3 months. We also hosted Golam Robbani from UNI-Cris, Bruges for 3 months in 2008. 

Max Rasch participated in the Garnet PhD school, and Katja Mirwaldt participated in workshops and conferences organised by the partner institution University of Wroclaw.

The University of Essex produced a working paper for the GARNET project, and our efforts also resulted in a number of books and other publications.

The GARNET Working Paper No. 18/07. Global Threat Perception: Elite Survey results from Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States edited by Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, and published as an e-book Global Governance, Regionalisation and Regulation: The Role of the EU,  in 2007.

Research aims:

The extent of convergence or divergence in threat perceptions, institutional response and interaction patterns among ten mentioned countries.

Findings:

The attentive foreign policy elites in the ten countries mentioned share not dissimilar views of the gravest threats to global order and national security, but also share a similar set of preferences with respect to the instruments that best meet those threats. Perhaps more surprising is the consensus that the instruments of soft power’ possess greater utility than the instruments of ‘hard power’ and the recognition that non-state actors pose the greatest threat to national security regardless of geographical location.

Global Security Governance: Competing perceptions of security in the 21st century, edited by Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, and published in 2007 by Routledge. 

Research aims:

To contribute to the ongoing re-conceptualisation of security and definition of threat.

Findings:

The prospects for effective and institutionalised global security cooperation are poor. The continued reliance upon the traditional forms of statecraft by states such as China, Russia and the US, reflects a security agenda that is derived in large part from the competitive logic of anarchy and the power that drives the international system outside of the narrow ambit of Europe and the broader transatlantic area. 

National Security Cultures: Patterns of Global Governance, edited by Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, and published in 2010 by Routledge. 

Research aims:

To explore whether national security cultures have an impact on the way countries conduct their security and defence affairs.

Findings:

Variations in security cultures explain the patterns of behaviour of national elites in the formulation and execution of security policies across the governance spectrum. 

OR:

Findings:

National security cultures are an important foreign and security policy determinant and act either as facilitator or inhibitor of regional and security governance.

The GARNET project coordinator was the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick. To find out more the Centre please visit the University of Warwick website.

Contributors to the JERP 5.3.2 work package, led by the University of Essex, were nine European universities: University of Aarhus, University of Exeter, University of Trento, University of Florence, University of Giessen, University of Göteborg, Free University of Brussels, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, University of Southern Denmark.

In addition, we were supported by outside associate partners: 

• Professor Amy Verdun, University of Victoria, Canada
• Professor Osvaldo Croci, Memorial University, St Johns, Canada
• Professor Haruhiro Fukui, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Japan / UC Santa Barbara
• Dr Vladimir Ivanov, Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia, Nigata-City, Japan
• Professor James Sperling, University of Akron, USA
• Professor Song Xinning, Renmin University of China, Beijing
• Dr Elke Krahmann, University of Bristol

And participants in the workshops too numerous to mention!

JERP 5.3.2 obtained co-funding from the British Academy, the University Association for Contemporary Studies, and Suffolk University, Boston.

Journal articles:

European Energy Security Cooperation: between Amity and Enmity by Emil J. Kirchner and Can Berk, Journal of Common Market Studies, 48:4 (September 2010).

Research question/aim:

How growing concerns over energy security have affected the formation, maintenance and changes within the European Regional Security Complex as well as neighbouring Regional Security Complexes, based on the perspective provided by the Regional Security Complex Theory.

Findings:

Although member states continue to act nationally, factors such as the liberalisation of energy markets, the importance given to a common energy policy, efforts to introduce a super grid of power supplies across the EU, and the spin-off from environmental policy will promote the establishment of a common energy policy within the EU.

Sharing the Burden of Collective Security in the European Union. A Research Note by Han Dorussen, Emil J. Kirchner and James Sperling, International Organization, 63:4 (Fall 2009), pp. 789-810.

Research question/aim:

Findings:

Smaller EU member states are not free-riding in the provision of collective security policies, contrary to one of the central hypotheses in the public-choice literature, and demonstrate that in fact EU member states equitably share the costs attending the various dimensions of security governance.

The Challenge of European Security Governance by Emil J. Kirchner, Journal of Common Market Studies, 44: 5, (December 2006) pp. 945-966

Research question/aim:

To explore whether or not the EU is an effective security actor using a security governance framework.

Findings:

Security governance is seen as a helpful framework for studying the interactions between a diverse number of actors and for conceptualising EU security policy-making in a meaningful way.

Security Threats and Institutional Response: The European Context, by Emil J. Kirchner, Asia-Europe Journal, 3:2 (2005), pp. 179-197.

Research question/aim:

To explore the perceptions of security threats and institutional response in the European context, and to evaluate how the main security institutions (NATO, EU and OSCE) respond to different types of security threats.

Findings:

To be announced.

Books:

EU Security Governance by Emil J. Kirchner and James Sperling, Manchester University Press, 2007.

Research questions:

Has the EU’s growing role as a security actor been driven by a fundamental change in the security agenda?

Findings:

The post-Westphalian character of the European states has impelled the Europeans to surrender sovereign prerogatives to the EU in order to meet the challenges of a broadened security agenda. However, this post-Westphalianism coexists with persistent Westphalian identities, which have prevented the optimal transfer of sovereignties to the EU. Europe’s societies and citizens have not made the transition to a post-national identity that would complement post-Westphalianism, 

Book chapters:

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘EU Security Governance in a Wider Europe’ (2008) in P. Foradori, P. Rosa and R. Scartezzini, eds., Managing a Multilevel Foreign Policy: The EU in International Affairs, Lexington Books, pp. 23-42.

Emil J. Kirchner and Maximilian B. Rasch, ‘EU Threat Perceptions and Governance’, in V.Bello and B. Gebrewold, eds, A Global Security Triangle:  European, African and Asian Interactions, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010, pp.36-55.

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘The EU’s Role in Regional and Global Security Governance’, in C. Schuck, A. Vasilache and K. Westphal, eds, Nachdenken über Europa. Probleme und Perspektiven eines Ordnungsmodells, Baden Baden: Nomos-Verlag, 2009, pp. 277-292.

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘Regional and Global Security Governance’, in Marcos Aurelio Guedes de Oliveira, ed., Seguranca e Governance nas Americas, Nucleo de Estudos Americanos, 2009, pp. 19-40.

Conference papers and talks:

Emil J. Kirchner, 'EU Security Contributions in Multilateral Settings', ECPR General Conference, Potsdam, 10-12 September 2009.

Emil J. Kirchner, EU-China Relations', UACES Roundtable, Angers, France, 4 September 2009.

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘European Energy Security Cooperation: between Amity and Enmity, International Summer School, Trento, Italy, 31 August 2009.

Emil J. Kirchner, 'National Security Cultures', Cambridge University, 3 November 2010.

Emil J. Kirchner, 'National Security Cultures', workshop at the London School of Economics, 22 June 2010.

Emil J. Kirchner, 'National Security Cultures', workshop at the European Institute for Security Studies, Paris, 14 April 2010.

Emil J. Kirchner, 'Research on Regional and Global Governance, GARNET Roundtable, Brussels, 5 March 2010.

Emil J. Kirchner and Can Berk, ‘European Energy Security Cooperation: between Amity and Enmity, International Studies Association Conference, New Orleans, 17 February 2010.

Emil J. Kirchner, 'Research on Regional and Global Governance, GARNET Roundtable, Rome, 11 November 2009.

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘European Security Governance’, International Studies Association Convention, New York, 15 February 2009.

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘EU and NATO – two different cultures?, Conference on European security culture, European Institute for Security Studies, Vilnius, Lithuania, 29 May 2008.

Emil J. Kirchner, ‘Evidence from Study on Global Security Governance’, Fudan University, Shanghai, 27 September 2007.

Emil J. Kirchner, 'The Challenge of European Security Governance, International Studies Association Convention, Chicago, 28 February 2007.