GPPi fellow co-edits book on theoretical approaches to European Common Security and Defence Policy

GPPi fellow Fabian Breuer, together with Xymena Kurowska from the Central European University in Budapest, have edited a new book titled Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy: Theory in Action. The book was published in November 2011 by Palgrave Macmillan.

The volume presents an assessment of the theoretical debates on the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and brings together theoretical explanations from diverse schools of thought and empirical research. Pluralistic in its approach, the book emphasizes conceptual diversity in better explaining CSDP and attempts to fill a gap in the academic discussion of CSDP, a policy area that in many ways does not fit into mainstream theories of international relations or European integration. The book reflects on different definitions of CSDP, examines how different contributions to CSDP studies relate to mainstream EU integration studies, and points to further avenues for a theoretically informed research agenda regarding CSDP.

The chapters cover many of the theoretical debates in the field, including mainstream (neorealism, liberal institutionalism and strategic studies, sociological institutionalism), less mainstream (consistent constructivism and structural constructivism) and critical approaches, inspired by neomarxism, Foucauldian thinking and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.