The Regulatory Security State in Europe

Abstract

This panel on the “regulatory security state” (RSS) in Europe transfers analytical concepts and insights from European public policy research on regulatory governance to the study of security policy-making in the European Union (EU) and its member states. While widely acknowledged for various public policy domains, the crucial role that expertise and regulation have come to play in European security has not received sufficient attention to date. In many European polities and sub-sectors of security, governors on the national and supranational level rely on rules rather than autonomous capacities. Moreover, they legitimate their claim to govern with superior expertise and performance rather than political entitlement and democratic procedures. Taken together, the expansion of rules – as predominant policy instrument – and epistemic authority – as key foundation of recognized claims to govern – constitute the emergence of the RSS in Europe. Yet, the rise of rules-based instruments and expertise is neither a teleological nor a uniform trend. Europe’s multi-level security politics is essentially contested, and both the instruments and the legitimating foundations of the security state are transforming in an uneven manner. This panel, which features a selection of prospective contributions to a 2023 special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, first maps the uneven and contested rise of the “regulatory security state” (RSS) in Europe; second, it analyzes the drivers and constraints of reforming security states in Europe; and third, it investigates the implications of the RSS for security policy-making in Europe and beyond. The panel advances the research programme on the regulatory state by taking it to new empirical terrain and by explicating the tantamount role of both expertise and rules in our (re-)conceptualization.

Title	Details
The (False) Promise of Solutionism. Epistemic Authority and the Delegation of Core State Powers in Digital Governance	View Paper Details
The EU Commission and the European multilevel security state in the defence industrial sector: between market regulation and ownership	View Paper Details
The rise of the regulatory security state in Europe?	View Paper Details
Delegation without legitimation? An experimental study of the European Medicines Agency’s epistemic authority	View Paper Details