Interstitial Organizations and Segmented Integration in EU Governance

The current paper analyzes emergence, operation and effects of interstitial organizations (INTOs) set up in the European Union to address rapidly proliferating hybrid security challenges. In their operation, INTOs tap into resources of various institutional fields and recombine rules, practices and procedures from these to form new organizational forms containing new structures, new practices and kinds of relations with organizations in the environment. To illustrate this phenomenon, the current paper focuses empirically on EU bodies such as the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Border and Coast Guard (EBCG), and national cyber defense units (CDUs) in countries like Estonia, Latvia and the UK. Structurally and in terms of their status and functions, these organizations take on characteristics partially resembling features of governments in sovereign states and partially acquiring structural and procedural features different from these. The case selection covers EU-level bodies as well as bodies in EU member states offering an examination of the process of formation of INTOs on multiple levels in EU governance. The paper makes a triple contribution by a) elaborating on the novel theoretical concept of interstitial organizations; b) providing insights on what is hypothetically a new pattern in the development of the EU’s governance order and c) discussing ways how the formation of INTOs may support various forms of segmented integration in the EU.