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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.

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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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This article explores the paradox of constructive ambiguity. Based on a focused, longitudinal comparison of the European Union's energy and defense policies, we analyze the role played by strategies of ambiguity in European integration. Ambiguity is found to be an attractive strategy for political entrepreneurs when member state preferences are heterogeneous and the EU's legal basis is weak. It is likely to be effective, however, only if it is embedded in an institutional opportunity structure -, that is, a formal-legal context -that entrepreneurs can fold into their strategic repertoire of ideas. While ambiguity can be strategic in circumstances where clarity would create strong opposition, it is not sufficient to entrench a European policy if it does not rest on an institutional basis. This suggests that European political entrepreneurs should be wary of relying on coalition building by ambiguity only. Keywords: European Union, energy policy, defense policy, ideas, Stanley HoffmannThis is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Jegen, Maya, and Frédéric Mérand. 2013 DOI: 10.1080DOI: 10. /01402382.2013. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for This article assesses the role of "constructive ambiguity" in promoting European integration. 1 Henry Kissinger famously defined constructive ambiguity as "the deliberate use of ambiguous language in a sensitive issue in order to advance some political purpose" (Berridge and James 2003). In an early formulation of the argument we explore in this article, Stanley Hoffmann (1995[1966]: 131) wrote: "There has always been most progress when the Europeans were able to preserve a penumbra of ambiguity around their enterprise, so as to keep each one hoping that the final shape would be closest to his own ideal, and to permit broad coalitions to support the next moves." Constructive ambiguity has become a received wisdom among Europeanists, a bit like Henry Kissinger's phone number, Jacques Delors's unidentified political object, Donald Puchala's elephant, or the bicycle that cannot stop. Yet it has not been subject to systematic empirical scrutiny. . « Constructive Ambiguity: Comparing the EU's Energy and Defence Policies ». West European Politics 37(1): 182-203, which has been published in final form 2While the role of ambiguity remains understudied in EU politics, it is enjoying some currency in related fields such as anthropology, public policy, and international relations. For Murray Edelman (2001: 80), " [a]mbiguity (…) is especially conspicuous in political language because by definition politics concerns conflicts of interests." Indeed, ambiguity is often seen as a means to conceal or to postpone conflict. Using the example of the "social responsibility" label in the mutual fund industry, Linda Markowitz and her colleagues (2012) argue that strategic actors frame financial products ambiguously to reduce negative reactions in the market. Looking at "agencification" in public administ...

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Why are international institutions designed in one way and not another? Using the European security and defence policy (ESDP) as a case study, this article suggests that the social representations dominating the national and organizational world of institution-makers are key to our understanding the shape and content of an emerging institution of international security cooperation. A focus on social representations, which are the product of institutional practices, helps to break the interest/idea dichotomy that underpins most theories of preference formation when they try to explain institutional designs. This article shows that foreign and defence policy-makers from France, Germany and the United Kingdom have shaped ESDP by projecting their respective social representations, notably with regard to the role of the state, the nature of security challenges and the purpose of their organization.