The Politics of European Security Policies

The book is a timely investigation into the European security policy dynamic from the perspective of actors engaged in the contentious policy process. Instead of looking at security actors in isolation from one another, the book enquires into the practice of the policy process and maps out the constellations of formal and informal actors sponsoring concrete ideas on what European security should be about. The understandings of security shift and advocating a particular reading of security involves entering the political contest with actors advancing different conceptions. The contributors analyse these different modalities, overlapping scenes and shifting meanings that bring about EU security policies. Our case studies illustrate how these processes unfold both at the intra-EU level, where different institutions supply and endorse their security framings, and vis-à-vis the EU and its neighbours.

The purpose of the book is to uncover, by pluralistic means, the rules of the game that structure the field of the EU’s security making. That way, rather than impose a rigid theoretical model, the editors structure the inquiry around three concepts: security, politics, and policy.

This book was published as a special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society.

Xymena Kurowska is an Assistant Professor at the Central European University in Budapest in the department of International Relations and European Studies. Her research concentrates on interdisciplinary approaches to EU’s security policy, international statebuilding and security theory. She is further interested in interpretive policy analysis and ethnographic methods in IR.

Patryk Pawlak is a Research Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris where he deals with transatlantic relations and the EU internal security. His research focuses in particular on the interaction between internal and external dimensions of security in such areas as border management as well as information and intelligence sharing.