Christopher Reynolds
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Project
Constructing Security: An Institutionalist Analysis of the ESDP
An institutionalist analysis of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), examining the impact of existing institutional structures and inter-institutional interaction upon the emergence and institutional form of an EU-level security and defence policy. The research project sought to conduct a “new institutionalist” analysis of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and started from the assumption that only by considering the ESDP within the much broader institutional environment in which it was established and has developed could we begin to approach the fundamental questions of: - How and why the ESDP emerged; - Why the ESDP structures came to take the institutional form that they did; - How different institutions in this policy field impact upon the development of others. In so doing, the project aimed to situate itself both within a well-established theoretical research agenda in the form of Historical Institutionalism, as well as an emerging research agenda on institutional interaction. The project’s results illustrated the utility of approaching the study of the ESDP from such perspectives and demonstrated, inter alia, how the ESDP’s emergence can be understood as the outcome of a broader institutional process occurring over time and among different – though interdependent – institutions; how we can both show and explain the high degree of isomorphism between the ESDP institutions and those of NATO, as well as understand the differences between them, with reference to Historical Institutonalist factors such as “path dependency”; and how we must now systematically understand the ESDP and NATO as being fundamentally linked to and affected by the politics of the other as a consequence of the high degree of institutional, functional, and geographic overlap between them. In so doing, the project was able to make an original contribution to both the study and understanding of the ESDP, as well as to the study of political institutions and institutional interaction more generally.
Expertise
Publications
2007
- Reynolds, Christopher: Military Capability Development in the ESDP: Towards Effective Governance?, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28, No. 2, August 2007.
- Ana E. Juncos / Reynolds, Christopher: The Political and Security Committee: Governing in the Shadow, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol 12, No 2,
- Reynolds, Christopher: Governing Security in the European Union: Institutions as Dynamics and Obstacles, in D. de Bievre and C. Neuhold (eds), Dynamics and Obstacles of European Governance, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar
- Reynolds, Christopher / Hofmann, Stephanie: EU-NATO Relations: Time to Thaw the ‘Frozen Conflict’, SWP Comments 2007/C 12, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin
- Reynolds, Christopher / Hofmann, Stephanie: Die EU-NATO-Beziehungen: Zeit für «Tauwetter», SWP Aktuell 2007 / A37, Juli 2007, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin
2006
- Reynolds, Christopher: All Together Now? The Governance of Military Capability Reform in the European Union, Bruges Political Research Papers, No. 1/ October 2006
2005
- Reynolds, Christopher: Understanding the ESDP: Perspectives and Insights from Historical Institutionalism and Theories of Learning, Working Paper no. 64, European Foreign Policy Observatory, Barcelona.