Informal Coalitions in EU's Security and Defence Policy

A main component, and driver, of informalisation of global governance are informal coalitions of states. They can be broadly grouped into groupings which operate within existing formal international organisations and those employed outside the regulated system (Rinke and Schneckener 2012). Compared to the media scrutiny towards the latter (e.g. BRICS), informal coalitions within international organisations generally receive considerably less attention, exactly because they generally function within and under the cover of a formal system (Stone 2013). A range of case studies nonetheless point to their existence across a wide range of issue area, diversity in membership size as well as different degrees of geographic coverage and life span (e.g. Narlikar and Odell 2006, Allan and Dauvergne 2013, Betzold et al. 2011). I argue that while informal coalitions within international organisations may not have codified structures and mandates, social interactions may nonetheless generate stable expectations among the members. Often, informal norms are less the result of intentional design but the consequence of a particular shared experience of past interactions. Comparable to formal procedures, this helps the participants to coordinate their actions, even to the extent of imposing sanctions. Against this background, I define an informal coalition as a group of actors that regularly consult on and decide for collective action based on uncodified yet shared expectations in order to influence organisational processes and outcomes (Dupont 1994). Interestingly, it seems that informality has progressively encroached upon international security politics over the last two decades (Daase 2009). Although informal politics within the European Union have recently attracted more academic attention (Christiansen and Neuhold 2013), little do we know about informal coalitions within EU’s security and defence policy. Through instruments of network research, my paper seeks to demonstrate how states forge informal coalitions to influence this decision-making arena.