The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost: a Grounded Theory approach to the comparative study of decision-making in the NAC and PSC

Abstract

Studies of the relationship between the EU and NATO often focus on the limitations of cooperation, be it at the political or operational levels. However, little is known about the functioning of the political institutional linkages between the EU and NATO. This article therefore studies the main decision-making bodies of the two organisations at the political, ambassadorial level, namely the Political Security Committee (PSC) of the EU and the North Atlantic Council (NAC) in NATO, as well as their joint meetings. The article employs an inductive Grounded Theory approach, drawing on open-ended interviews with PSC and NAC ambassadors, which reveal direct insights from the objects of analysis. The findings emphasise the impact of both structural and more agency-related categories on decision-making in these three fora. The article thus addresses both the paucity of study on these bodies more broadly and the complete lacuna on joint PSC-NAC meetings specifically, warranting the inductive approach this article endorses.

Shaping institutional overlap: NATO’s responses to EU security and defence initiatives since 2014

“…NATO institutional actors set out to overcome the inherent constraints imposed by the Berlin Plus framework and the participation problem to forge greater practical cooperation. There was a widespread disillusionment on both sides of the town with the ineffectiveness of existing formats (see Græger, 2016; Smith et al, 2017). The agenda of formal meetings between NATO’s North Atlantic Council (NAC) and the EU’s Political and Security Committee (PSC) had been ritualistic and in their substance limited to operational cooperation only, and thus rarely produced tangible results (Interviews #6, 7, 9, 10).…”

A permanent headquarters under construction? The Military Planning and Conduct Capability as a proximate principal

“…This is remarkable, not the least because the principal-agent model is a dominant model in the civil-military relations literature (Auerswald and Saideman 2014;Feaver 1999). Also beyond the principal-agent literature have only few scholars studied the EU's permanent political and military structures responsible for political control and strategic direction of CSDP operations and missions, such as the Political and Security Committee (PSC), the EU Military Committee (EUMC) or the EU Military Staff (EUMS) (Mattelaer 2013;Smith, Tomic, and Gebhard 2017). Systematic analysis of the relationship between the PSC and the deployed mission command remains absent.…”

Keep Calm and Carry On (Differently): NATO and CSDP after Brexit

“…The ‘grounded theory’ framework pursued by Smith et al () to make sense of the understudied relationship, or lack of, between the North Atlantic Council and the Political Security Committee (PSC) provides an empirical extension of the practice approach. Smith et al (, p. 374) show that the PSC and the NAC take decisions for their own organisations; joint PSC‐NAC meetings occasionally take place and they can favour institutional cooperation via informal process. However, they observe that that there is no ‘actionable joint decision‐making’ governing PSC‐NAC meetings.…”

“…This does not mean mere rivalry between the EU and NATO – even if sometimes, like the experiences in Chad and Congo suggest, they seem to compete in some kind of ‘beauty contest’ (Varwick and Koops, , p. 125). On the contrary, informal cooperation has been taking place at various levels, ranging from officers on the ground to individuals in high‐rank positions (Gebhard and Smith, ; Graeger, ; Smith, ; Smith et al, ).…”