Bandwagoning, Not Balancing: Why Europe Confounds Realism

Abstract

Although realist perspectives seem challenged to explain European choices and preferences, realism retains great utility with its stress on states and states' concern for their national interests. Traditional realist analysis of European security policy err, rather, by focusing on balancing and related concepts such as soft balancing and balancing for autonomy. These accounts are theoretically and empirically flawed. Whilst balancing perspectives shed some light on European security policy predispositions, bandwagoning better explains trans-Atlantic contemporary security cooperation and increases the explanatory power of realist theories. The case for European bandwagoning is illustrated here by the empirical experience of prominent European Union military initiatives and the French defence reforms in the post-Cold War period. The tendency to bandwagon shows that European attempts to increase capabilities are strengthening rather than weakening transatlantic ties. Contrary to dominant realist views, through bandwagoning NATO benefits from European security and defence policy, becoming more durable and stronger than traditional realism expects.

Accidental rivals? EU fiscal rules, NATO, and transatlantic burden-sharing

“…Disaggregation helps measure the extent to which a country is actually pursuing shared objectives. It helps distinguish between bandwagoning (Sweeney & Fritz, 2004;Cladi & Locatelli, 2012) and balancing -hard (Posen, 2006) or soft (Pape, 2005). Disaggregating avoids conflating spending on collective defense and 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 Figure 5 demonstrates the significant variation in the composition of 2014 defense budgets across the transatlantic community.…”

Why Europe Confounds IR Theory

“…5 However, although they refer frequently to sentiments such as intentions, preferences, concerns, or motives, these are sentiments that are taken as given and as relatively unproblematic. Indeed, the nature of agency remains troublingly underspecified as the question of how agents arrived at their particular sentiment is completely ignored.…”

EU Defence Policy: Between Functionalism, National Interests, and Transatlantic Realities

“…18 Supranational studies assert that EU institutions spearhead defence integration, while proponents of the intergovernmental perspective credit the expanding role of collective decision-making in defence policy to the initiative and stewardship of member state (hence, "new" intergovernmentalism). 19 Based on new intergovernmentalism, 20 it has been generally confirmed that security and defence policy advancements, including in the context of Russia's war, testify to the fact that "intergovernmental consensus and deliberation [have] effectively sidelined supranational institutions." 21 Furthermore, issues pertaining to defence policy strategy and defence industrial interests have taken on a more prominent role in deliberations among member states, 22 thus indicating a relatively greater degree of cooperation at the political level.…”