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In early 2012, NATO's then-Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, unveiled the Connected Forces Initiative (CFI), an effort designed to increase allied interoperability and readiness. Through three lines of effort – training and education, exercises, and better use of technology – the CFI is intended to help the alliance maintain the operational and tactical interoperability it developed in Afghanistan. At first glance, the CFI appears to represent an example of the claims of some neo-institutionalist scholars that there is a shift in the locus of governance from member states to NATO. However, this article takes a deeper look and concludes that in fact the locus of security governance is not shifting, at least not in this instance. Member states of the alliance retain several means of controlling and influencing NATO, thereby preventing it from developing a significant degree of autonomy, in contrast to the European Union or United Nations.

Noting that European Union (EU) institutions are increasingly engaged in civil protection in the member states, security governance is used as an analytical framework to assess the depth of EU engagement in delivering civil security. It is shown that a state-centric approach is no longer adequate to understand the provision of civil security across Europe. To varying degrees, the EU has acquired responsibilities to facilitate, coordinate, manage, and regulate civil security, whether before or after a civil crisis occurs. The analysis demonstrates that, whilst intergovernmental practices and inter-state cooperation remain salient features of civil security, the responsibilities undertaken by the EU institutions across the entire policy spectrum are more substantial than a strictly intergovernmental perspective would suggest.

Studies of supranational agency can hardly be overlooked in the literature on EU external relations and security governance. This was always an appealing field of investigation to EU integration sc...

Over the past decade, regional security organisations have become more active than before and also have received more academic attention than previously. This has included organisations that have n...

Critical infrastructure protection (CIP) constitutes a paradigmatic as well as challenging case for EU security governance, which has received limited academic attention to date. This article draws on a heuristic framework to survey the EU's capacities to ‘meta-govern’, that is, to stimulate and steer governance efforts across multiple sectoral and political divides, in this complex issue area. The main part of the paper assesses the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP), which comprises a variety of policy instruments and initiatives, on this basis. It is shown that the attempt of an authoritative regulation of European critical infrastructures has remained narrow and of questionable effectiveness. Scientific networks have developed more dynamically, while the participation of private companies and corresponding EU financial instruments are yet to show their potential. Finally, the EU's organizational capacity in CIP suffers from a lack of coordination structures in the Europe...

This article aims to explore the relationship between domestic economic and political conditions and the performance of 14 regional organizations over a range of security provisions. It argues that the willingness of member states to increase the range of security provisions of a regional organization is influenced by the combination of high levels of economic and political development and low levels of dispersion among the members of a regional organization. In order to evaluate this assumption, two aspects of regional organizations are explored. The first is to examine the development of security governance provisions of 14 regional organizations as well as the levels of empowerment or autonomy of those organizations. The second is to analyze how six economic and political variables influence the range of security provisions and the degree of empowerment of regional organizations. The final part of the article examines how regional organizations play a significant role in stimulating and reproducing regional governance orders.

States with limited statehood such as Somalia can cause transnational security challenges. The emergence of an insurgent group with links to Al Qaida and piracy emanating from its coast are cases in point. In this article, we tackle the question of whether the EU's comprehensive approach toward Somalia is working. To do this, we analyze its effectiveness, its legitimacy, and the influence of power by appraising three characteristics of the security governance concept in a critical manner. We conclude that the result is mixed. Even if the EU's comprehensive approach were perfect in a technical sense, it would still face restraints, because any solution has to come from Somali themselves. Not only should they be an integral part of it, they should become the real owners of the state-building process in the first place.

Version of record first published: 23 Apr 2012. This article focuses on the use of informal justice systems to support Community Based Policing with the aim to create legitimacy between state and society in post-conflict processes. It analyses the EU's involvement in reviving the customary justice system 'adat' in Aceh, Indonesia in order to discern how the concept of authority is mediated from an international organisation to local stakeholders via Security Sector Reform (SSR). The article operates with three conceptions of authority present in situations of security sector assistance: modern, postmodern and traditional. It explores the different faces of authority present in the case of Aceh, and unravels which and whose authority the EU propagates through its support to SSR. The article finds potentially contradictory processes at work, and highlights the need for more research on the use of informal justice systems within SSR.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATOs) changing role was debated in the face of the Strategic Concept adopted in late 2010. Two main roles can be identified in the debate; that of NATO as a defence organisation and a security organisation. The article analyses the implications of these roles for security governance and the Alliance's legitimacy – with emphasis on the novelties associated with the role of NATO as a security organisation. This development suggests an increasing need for security governance, something which is reflected in the debate. However, how for instance decision-making and implementation function in a more fragmented environment is unclear. If NATO develops its role as a security organisation new audiences are introduced that determine its appropriateness and the basis of the Alliance's input and output legitimacy changes.

A number of leading scholars have in the recent period highlighted the apparently increasing problems in relations between the European Union and Russia, not least in their shared neighbourhood – U...

This article analyzes the role that fields of discourses have played in constructing migration as a security problem, with a specific focus on the development of the Eastern dimension. It does so by looking at three relations: sub-region/region; speech acts/securitization; and professionals/insecuritization. Speeches and documents testify to the security narrative and consequent security governance associated to the enlargement process and to relations with neighboring countries to the East. Moreover, an analysis of the rationale behind governmentality practices regarding migration accounts for the wide usage of technological and risk assessment tools, adding up to the security construction of migration. The overall security governance that has arisen through and out of these processes allows an evaluation of a securitized approach to migration and the impact this has on European Union objectives on that sub-region, such as stability and human rights protection.

This article seeks to contribute to the underdeveloped discussion about the way we theorise and conceptualise externally induced peace and security operations in regional conflict, with a particular focus on the EU's role. The framework draws on three theoretical components emphasised in this special issue: the construction of conflict, security governance and the impact of EU security practices. The EU's construction of the conflict is tightly linked to decisions about the mode of security governance and here we need to pay more attention to the often-neglected relationship between the external intervening party and the parties in conflict that are subject to the intervention. Furthermore, the impact of peace operations are usually analysed in terms of implementation and coordination failures, and in our view it is necessary to step back and address the construction of the criteria by which interventions are assessed – in particular, the way intervening actors construct and define ‘success and f...

The European Union's (EU) counter-terrorism strategy has been particularly dynamic, developing as a result of ‘crises’ and subsequent post-crisis narrations. The events of 11 September 2001, and the Madrid and London bombings have proved to provide moments of punctuation from which policy evolution and institutionalisation has followed. As a result of such crises, the EU has increasingly regarded terrorism as a direct challenge to the Union's role as a security actor and sought to institutionalise a diverse range of security governance technologies across its multiple pillars. Such an approach is noticeable for its qualitative difference compared to EU strategy pursued throughout the end of the twentieth century, and demonstrates an increased willingness for the EU to assert its role in the world. Yet, what is highly noticeable from the EU strategy and the proliferation of security governance technologies is the manner in which the EU has securitised ‘terrorism’ in the pursuit of internal, extern...

This article explores the changing nature of security governance in Northern Europe since the end of the Cold War. Prior to enlargement in 2004 European Union (EU) involvement in the region was limited and cautious, with security governance driven predominantly by regional actors. At the same time, the connection between ‘security’ and projects of ‘regional cooperation’ was complex and largely interdependent. Since 2004 the EU has become more engaged in the region, most recently through its new Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region via which the north is conceptualised as a possible test case for broader conceptions of regional governance in Europe. The article argues that such developments raise significant questions, not only for the future and nature of regional security conceptions in the north, but also in respect of how the EU conceptualises itself in relation to security more generally.

In the decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall the governance of European security has undergone a profound transformation. The beginning of this decade witnessed the end of the Cold War and, in parallel, the establishment of relatively inclusive mechanisms for addressing security‐related issues. While these mechanisms have largely endured (and, indeed, have been complemented by other types of interaction) they have not prevented the emergence of forms of exclusion on the continent. This is a condition of particular significance to Russia. Compared with its Soviet predecessor, it now enjoys far less influence in European security. Its exclusion, however, is only relative. Russia has retained a meaningful role and ‐ recent controversies over NATO enlargement and Kosovo notwithstanding ‐ the bases of its accommodation with the West still remain in place.