European Defence Policy ─ Beyond the Nation State

This book explains the creation of the European Union's Security and Defence Policy--to this day the most ambitious project of peacetime military integration. Whether hailed as a vital step in the integration of Europe or berated as a wasteful threat to U.S. power, European citizens are increasingly interested in the common defense policy. Today, "European Defence" is more popular than the European Union itself, even in Great Britain.

Merand addresses the fundamental challenge posed by military integration to the way we think about the state in the 21st Century. Looking back over the past 50 years, he shows how statesmen, diplomats and soldiers have converged towards Brussels as a "natural" solution to their concerns but also as something worth fighting over. The actors most closely associated to the formation of nation-states are now shaping a transgovernmental security and defense arena. As a result, defense policy is being denationalized. Exploring the complex relations between the state, the military, and citizenship in today's Europe, Merand argues that European Defence is a symptom, but not a cause, of the transformation of the state.

This book is an original contribution to the theory of European integration. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Merand develops a political sociology of international relations which seeks to bridge institutionalism and constructivism. His careful study of practices, social representations and power structures sheds new light on security and defence cooperation, but also on European cooperation more generally.

Frederic Merand is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Montreal, where he teaches European politics and political sociology. He sits on the board of the European Community Studies Association-Canada. He was a fellow of the Institute of International Studies and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, both at the University of California. In 2004-05 he was a policy advisor with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The author of several articles on the European security and defence policy, transatlantic relations, and political economy, Merand currently works on a large research project on the social networks of security and defence actors in Europe, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.