The central aim of this article is to explore whether or not the EU is an effective security actor. To assess the strengths and weaknesses of the EU, three security functions (conflict prevention, peace-enforcement/peace-keeping and peace-building) and three core components of governance (co-ordination, management and regulation) are applied. Security governance is seen as a helpful framework for studying the interactions between a diverse number of actors and for conceptualizing EU security policy-making in a meaningful way. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Through an application of Regional Security Complex Theory and empirical examination, this article explores the pros and cons of regional and inter-regional energy co-operation. In spite of present unilateral and bilateral manoeuvres on the part of EU Member States to the contrary, a common energy security policy appears feasible over the next five to ten years. However, EU-Russian co-operation in the energy sector is not likely to improve considerably over this period, and EU attempts to counterbalance the dominant and growing position that Russia has occupied in the supply of gas to EU countries by seeking alternative energy supply from central Asia are likely to be thwarted by countervailing Russian measures. Copyright (c) 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This article compares European Union~EU! burden-sharing in security governance distinguishing between assurance, prevention, protection, and compellence policies+ We employ joint-product models and examine the variation in the level of publicness, the asymmetry of the distribution of costs and benefits, and aggregation technologies in each policy domain+ Joint-product models predict equal burdensharing for protection and assurance because of their respective weakest-link and summation aggregation technologies with symmetric costs+ Prevention is also characterized by the technology of summation, but asymmetry of costs implies uneven burden-sharing+ Uneven burden-sharing is predicted for compellence because it has the largest asymmetry of costs and a best-shot aggregation technology+ Evaluating burden-sharing relative to a country's ability to contribute, Kendall tau-tests examine the rank-correlation between security burden and the capacity of EU member states+ These tests show that the smaller EU members disproportionately shoulder the costs of assurance and protection; wealthier EU members carry a somewhat disproportionate burden in the provision of prevention, and larger EU members in the provision of compellence+ When analyzing contributions relative to expected benefits, asymmetric marginal costs can largely explain uneven burden-sharing+ The main conclusion is that the aggregated burden of collective security governance in the EU is shared quite evenly+The creation and maintenance of peace and security in Europe has been a persistent and fundamental ambition of the European project+ The European Union~EU! has only recently acquired a tangible security role+ The precise limitations and opportunities for the EU to emerge as a security actor after 1989 remain subject to extensive debate+ 1 This research note makes two contributions to the debate+ First, the multifaceted nature of security reveals considerable variation in the produc- tion of security goods; accordingly, the joint-product analysis 2 provides an appropriate framework to study EU security governance as a collective-action problem+ Second, we find the smaller EU member states are not free-riding in the provision of collective security policies, contrary to one of the central hypotheses in the public-choice literature, 3 and demonstrate that in fact EU member states equitably share the costs attending the various dimensions of security governance+ EU prerogatives have always relied on the delegation of member-state authority, but the delegation of authority in security matters is generally incomplete, uneven in application, and in many instances nonbinding+ Member-state contributions to EU security governance consequently vary, limit EU effectiveness as a security actor, and beg an important question: do the member states share equitably the burden of security governance? Joint-product models hold that burdensharing depends on the method whereby differentiated security tasks are produced that is, their aggregation technology or how individ...

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The paper has two main aims. First it seeks to explore whether security cooperation between the EU and China is taking place, and if so, whether it is evenly spread across a number of security dimensions. Second it intends to investigate the underlying motives or drivers that either facilitate or inhibit EU-China security cooperation. Further, it will explain why the EU rather than EU member states is chosen as the unit of analysis, explore the development of EU-China security relations, and illustrate how historical legacies, identity aspects and differences over key issues, such as sovereignty and territorial integrity, affect EU-China security relations. In addition, it will deal with the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the study on EU-China security relations, paying particular emphasis to the concepts of diffusion and convergence. Whether or not EU-China security cooperation converges in one of the ten chosen security dimensions will be assessed by the degree of policy conformity the EU and China are able (or unable) to obtain with regard to threat perceptions and policy response thereto. Attention will be devoted to diffusion factors which can affect changes in the perception of threats and response thereof. Among these factors are changes in (geo-political) structure, interests and norms. A further objective of the paper will be to explore whether policy convergence on threat perceptions and response thereto might be a precondition for joint action, or whether practical cooperation can take place without prior policy convergence between the EU and China. The paper will round off with a short section introducing the security dimensions that are being examined in the more detailed study on which this paper is based.