Shaping institutional overlap: NATO’s responses to EU security and defence initiatives since 2014
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221079188 |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221079188
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(3) 423 –443
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481221079188
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Shaping institutional overlap:
NATO’s responses to EU
security and defence initiatives
since 2014
Leonard August Schuette
Abstract
This article analyses how and when institutional actors can shape overlap with other international
organisations. Growing overlap either poses the threat of marginalisation to the incumbent
organisation or offers opportunities for cooperation. Institutional actors should therefore be
expected to try shape the relations with the overlapping organisation to protect their own. The
article theorises that institutional actors can shape overlap if they possess sufficient institutional
capacity and face a favourable opportunity structure. Whether institutional actors embrace or
resist overlap, in turn, depends on their perception of the nature of the domain expansion of
the other international organisation. Relying on 20 interviews with senior officials, the article
probes the argument against the case of the growing overlap between the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and the European Union resulting from the latter’s recent security and defence
initiatives. Contrary to most expectations, it finds that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
actors played a consequential role in restructuring the relationship with the European Union.
Keywords
EU, European security, institutionalism, institutional overlap, international organisations, inter-
organisational relations, NATO
Introduction
Institutional overlap is an increasingly common phenomenon in global governance. The
growing complexity of transnational problems has led to the proliferation of new institu-
tions, the expansion of existing institutions’ domains, and increasing linkages between
the policy issues they address (Alter and Meunier, 2009; Alter and Raustiala, 2018;
Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Westerwinter 2021; Panke and Stapel, 2018). As a result, inter-
organisational interactions have increased significantly over the past decades with the
Department of Political Science, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Department of
Politics & International Relations, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Corresponding author:
Leonard August Schuette, Department of Political Science, University of Maastricht, Grote Gracht 80-82,
Maastricht 6200 MD, The Netherlands.
Email: l.schuette@maastrichtuniversity.nl
1079188BPI0010.1177/13691481221079188The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsSchuette
research-article2022
Original Article
424 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(3)
result that international organisations (IOs) frequently overlap in terms of mandate, mem-
bership, and geographic realm of operation. Notwithstanding its significant consequences
for inter-organisational relationships and thus the wider provision of global public goods,
our understanding of overlap, however, remains incomplete.
The bulk of the existing literature analyses institutional overlap through the perspec-
tives of the member states. These accounts explore the role of states in creating overlap as
well as the implication of overlap for state behaviour (Alter and Meunier, 2009; Clark,
2021; Gehring and Faude, 2014; Morse and Keohane, 2014; Pratt, 2018). In that reading,
the organisations themselves merely constitute functional sites in which states pursue
their interests. While member states inevitably play a crucial role in shaping institutional
overlap, such a narrow focus neglects other potentially important players: the institutional
actors such as executive heads and senior officials. Indeed, it is well established that insti-
tutional actors not only develop independent preferences (e.g. Barnett and Finnemore,
2004; Ege, 2020) but that they can exert influence in all three stages of the policy-making
process, that is, institutional design, policy formulation, and policy implementation (see
Bayerlein et al., 2020; Biermann and Siebenhüner, 2009; Eckhard and Ege, 2016; Hall
and Woods, 2018; Johnson, 2014). Beyond ordinary policy-making, scholars have
recently found that amid the wider crisis of multilateralism, institutional actors can stra-
tegically respond to existential challenges (Debre and Dijkstra, 2021; Dijkstra et al.,
2021; Gray, 2018; Schuette, 2021a, 2021b). Given that increased overlap may threaten
the continued existence of the incumbent IO or offer opportunities to bolster its position,
institutional actors should therefore be expected to also try to shape overlap to protect the
organisation (Margulis, 2021).
This article therefore sets out to fill this lacuna by theorising how and under what con-
ditions institutional actors shape the nature of overlap. Subsequently, it applies the model
to the case of how senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) actors shaped the
growing overlap with the EU since 2014, the annus horribilis for European security. The
confluence of the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine, the
emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and the incipience of the so-called
Refugee Crisis caused a seismic geopolitical shock to the European system. This chain of
events invigorated the EU’s hitherto dormant security and defence ambitions. The
European Union’s (EU) quest to develop into a ‘European Defence Union’ (Juncker,
2017) would not unfold in a vacuum, however, but carry significant consequences for the
European security architecture. Above all, the expansion of the EU into the realm of
defence and security could pose a serious challenge to NATO as the incumbent dominant
security organisation in Europe.
The article posits that institutional actors can shape overlap if they possess sufficient
institutional capacity and face a favourable opportunity structure. Whether institutional
actors embrace or resist overlap, in turn, depends on their perception of the nature of the
domain expansion of the other IO. To probe this argument empirically, the article relies
on 20 interviews with senior officials from NATO, the EU, and national delegations (see
Appendix 1). Contrary to most expectations, it finds that the Secretary General Stoltenberg
and other senior officials played a consequential role in restructuring the relationship with
the EU. While any account of the complex relationship between NATO and the EU is
necessarily multi-causal, the omission in the literature justifies the narrow focus on NATO
institutional actors to distil its importance as one factor among several in shaping the
relationship with the EU.
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