European Security in NATO's Shadow
Party Ideologies and Institution Building

This book asks why European countries tried to build a security institution outside of NATO, emphasising the influence of political party ideologies.

Stephanie C. Hofmann (Author)

9781107521735, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 January 2015

278 pages, 9 b/w illus. 8 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'Most people in the United States ask why Europe does not do more to take responsibility for its own defence. Stephanie Hofmann asks why Europeans would bother … Hofmann's question is important because a more autonomous European security identity is a long-standing goal … Now that relations with Russia have deteriorated and the Middle East remains unsettled, it may be time for Europeans to start thinking about how to secure their collective interests with or without the active participation of the United States.' Eric Jones, Survival

NATO has been a successful forum for managing European security policy. Yet European governments have repeatedly tried to build a new security institution in NATO's shadow. In this innovative book, Stephanie C. Hofmann asks why governments attempted to create an additional institution despite no obvious functional necessity and why some attempts failed while others succeeded. European Security in NATO's Shadow considers security cooperation through the lens of party ideologies to shed new light on these questions. She observes that political parties are motivated to propose new institutions by their multidimensional ideologies. Moreover, the success of efforts to create such institutions depends on the degree of ideological congruence among parties in power. In particular, the relationship between the values of multilateralism, sovereignty and Europe informed the impetus and success rate of the attempts made during negotiations for the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice treaties to create a European security institution.

1. Introduction
2. Political party ideology and security cooperation
3. The success and failure of European security cooperation
4. The end of the Cold War and the Maastricht Treaty - the Common Foreign and Security Policy
5. Renegotiating Maastricht at Amsterdam - the failure to go beyond CFSP
6. Saint Malo, Cologne, and Nice - the creation of the robust ESDP
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International institutions [JPSN], International relations [JPS]