Strategic Convergence the Prospects for Security Cooperation in Europe Post-Brexit. A Comparative Study of EU28

In March 2019, UK will formally leave the EU. With a new strategic environment (e.g. NATO uncertainty, China as rising power, post-Trump transatlantic drift) emerging, characterized by novel constellations of security threats (e.g. hybrid, cyber) the question emerges: What are the views for cooperation at European level after Brexit? The objective of this paper is to explore the prospects for transnational security cooperation in Europe through an analysis of key characteristics that assist or impede such structured cooperation – focusing in particular on security and defence strategies and military policies of the 28 EU member states. Drawing on theories of international regimes ( Keohane and Nye 1977); game theory (Axelrod 1981), and collaborative governance (Emerson et al. 2011), this paper proposes transnational/international security and defence regime theory to explore the patterns of defence cooperation among European member states post-Brexit. The paper applies a cross-sectional comparative design, using EU member states, including UK, as units of study. These cases are significantly different in all but one variable, i.e. EU membership, with different geopolitical context, institutional path-dependencies and political objectives in the EU. The paper includes a content analysis of policy documents, domestic white papers and reports capturing the values of the independent variable, i.e. states’ security and defence strategy and military policy. The softwares NVivo and Stata are used for the content analysis of the analysed documents. Based on the comparative analysis of the domestic defence strategies, predictions can be inferred related to the prospective security defence cooperation in Europe after Brexit.