Institutionalizing Homeland Security Cooperation in Europe: Counter-terrorism and Critical Infrastructure Protection Compared.

The European Union (EU) has become increasingly involved in protecting the security and safety of European citizens. The latest additions to this new policy space are counter-terrorism policies and critical infrastructure protection. A central role for the EU in guarding against global terrorism and infrastructural breakdowns may seem evident. In reality, the precise nature of such a role remains unclear. Enthusiastic rhetoric is not always matched by firm action, and the political commitment of national leaders to supranational policies is often vague. One way to gauge the prospects of a "capability/expectations" gap, and to make a fine-grained assessment of the nature of European cooperation, is to compare the institutionalization of these two sectors. An institutionalization approach allows us to uncover the degree to which new structures, rules, and norms are becoming embedded - and thus influencing cooperative behavior in the EU. We build a generic framework for measuring, and categorizing, institutionalization within sectors. We then apply the framework to the two policy sectors, finding that counter-terrorism is best categorized as an "ascending" sector whereas critical infrastructure protection is a "nascent" one. Neither sector can be categorized as a "mature" area of cooperation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]