A growing number of scholars argue that the development of the common security and defence policy (CSDP) should be analysed as the institutionalization of a system of security governance. Although governance approaches carry the promise of a sophisticated, empirically grounded picture of CSDP, they have been criticized for their lack of attention to power. This is because governance approaches focus on institutional rules and ideas rather than the social structure that underpins them. To refine the notion of security governance, this article analyses co-operation patterns through social network analysis. Confirming the governance image, it maps out a complex constellation of CSDP actors that features cross-border and cross-level ties between different national and EU policy actors. It is also found, however, that CSDP is dominated by a handful of traditional state actors -in particular, Brusselsbased national ambassadors -who retain strategic positions vis-à-vis weaker supranational and non-state actors. These actors are not giving up on state power, but reconstituting it at the supranational level.

This article identifies previously ignored determinants of public support for the European Union's security and defence ambitions. In contrast to public opinion vis‐à‐vis the EU in general, the literature on attitudes towards a putative European army or the existing Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) suggests that the explanatory power of sociodemographic and economic variables is weak, and focuses instead on national identity as the main determinant of one's support. This article explores the possible impact of strategic culture, and argues that preferences vis‐à‐vis the EU's security and defence ambitions are formed in part through pre‐existing social representations of security. To test this proposition, ‘national’ strategic cultures are disaggregated and a typology is produced that contains four strategic postures: pacifism, traditionalism, humanitarianism and globalism. Applying regression analysis on individual‐level Eurobarometer survey data, it is found that strategic postures help explain both the general level of support for CSDP and support for specific Petersberg tasks.

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