What Am I? That is the Question. Norm Contestation, Reinforcement and Coexistence and the Creation of CFSP

Stephanie Claudia Hoffman

No 1, Les Cahiers européens de Sciences Po from Centre d'études européennes (CEE) at Sciences Po, Paris

Abstract: The West European states have created a new security institution - the European Union’s (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) - with the end of the Cold War despite the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) existence and successful performance. They thereby decided to create an additional formal international institution to the one they are members of already – even though the membership, tasks and functions overlap significantly and despite the likelihood that the costs of creating a new institution are higher than adapting an already existing one (Wallander, 1999: 27 and 2000: 706). This is especially surprising since in the past the European effort to create an active defense and security institution, the West European Union (WEU), was unsuccessful (Cornish, 1996; Gordon, 1997; Schake/Bloch-Laine/Grant, 1999). Furthermore, when states invest in two very similar institutions where the membership overlap is not complete, there is the possibility that the institutions will develop not in parallel – maybe even not complementary. The question this paper addresses is the following: How do two institutions with very similar tasks and functions interact with each other? As both institutions were not created simultaneously the question translates to: Why was CFSP/ESDP established even though NATO already dealt with the issues that fall under CFSP/ESDP’s mandate? I argue that institution-building in the context of institutional coexistence and interdependence, that is, the process of institutionalizing European security policy, is captured by the interaction pattern of two variables: the ideologies of domestic parties in power and/or old institutionalized international norms within European states.

Keywords: CFSP/ESDP; CFSP/ESDP; CFSP/ESDP; CFSP/ESDP; CFSP/ESDP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-11-03
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