Security Integration in Europe: How Knowledge-based Networks Are Transforming the European Union

1. Why Do Epistemic Communities Matter?

chapter 1 Why Do Epistemic Communities Matter? A rich debate within EU studies focuses speci‹cally on explaining integration and the nature of EU power. Scholars come at the question from many different angles, drawing on a variety of policy areas to craft nuanced arguments. But most agree that the social context of Europe has been an important variable in explaining nearly all aspects of integration since the EU’s inception.1 Social context is de‹ned as the processes of learning, persuasion , deliberation, and socialization that shape how actors assign meaning to things and form preferences.2 The process of ongoing enlargement of EU membership, for example, cannot simply be reduced to a calculation of the economic bene‹ts that come with accession; it also re›ects a history of social interaction shaped by the Cold War.3 Central and Eastern European countries have not only adopted EU rules to satisfy formal membership criteria (acquis communautaire) but have also willingly internalized existing EU norms and values.4 The same is true in the area of security policy.5 Actors’ preferences are usually de‹ned through lifelong processes of social interaction and ‹ltered through frames of reference, perception, and interpretation .6 Identity and interests change over time, making the social context of EU governance crucial to understanding how the EU is evolving and what it is becoming. Research into the history and processes of EU integration has led scholars who take a more intergovernmental perspective to conclude that the EU has indeed achieved the status of a “quiet superpower.”7 Andrew Moravcsik , who argues that integration is driven primarily by national economic incentives and interstate bargaining, nonetheless consistently reminds us that the EU is signi‹cantly ahead of China, India, and other “rising powers ” in terms of economic, civilian, normative, and to some extent military power.8 Indeed, he argues that Europe’s hard, soft, and civilian power is so 13 signi‹cant that it has become a superpower to rival the United States. To be clear, contention arises regarding what drives processes of integration, and not everyone is optimistic about the EU’s future. However, the research presented here supports the arguments that social interaction matters and that the EU has emerged as a quiet superpower on the world stage. The bipolarity of the international system results largely from the EU’s vibrant and multidimensional social context, in which the pursuit of national interest is only one part.9 In addition to contributing to this growing body of EU literature, I engage with broader international relations theories to develop an argument that might apply to other regions of the world. After all, similar though much more embryonic processes of regional integration are occurring in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. Moreover, globalization has created an environment rich with nonstate actors that often span the globe, in›uencing such areas as environmentalism, human rights, nuclear proliferation, drug traf‹cking, and so on. Within the academic ‹eld of international relations, several approaches contribute to a fuller understanding of integration, and transnationalism is chief among them. Transnationalism gained momentum in the literature in the 1970s. It added another dimension to the structural realist approach, which assumes that state behavior is exogenously given by the international system, and to rationalism, which assumes that all actors have ‹xed, pro‹t-maximizing preferences. Like much of the EU literature, transnationalism recognizes that nonstate actors affect world politics and have evolving preferences. Transnationalism ’s contribution has been particularly important because these actors are involved in norm formation—the creation of implicit or explicit rules about what is appropriate behavior—at the systemic level as well as at the intersection between the systemic and domestic levels. As Jeffrey Checkel points out, too many questions remain unanswered unless we consider social norms as explanatory variables.10 Social norms can have just as much impact as formal rules or laws and carry social sanction if violated. A variety of transnational actors seek to change state behavior, domestic preferences, and international norms. Transnational actors can be as broad as informal networks of people with shared ideas and identity or as narrow as speci‹c international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), human rights advocacy networks,11 transgovernmental networks of legislators ,12 and epistemic communities, among others. Much evidence suggests that in the context of Europe, transnational communities of communica14 security integration in europe tion are becoming increasingly robust.13...