Practising EU Security Governance in the Transatlantic Context: A Fragmentation of Power or Networked Hegemony?

Abstract

Security governance is commonly understood as an answer to the new and constantly changing security environment after the Cold War. In the context of the European Union (EU), the governance approach is believed to understand better the evolving institutional characters, networks, and processes of the EU’s actions in global politics. By employing a neo-Gramscian framework we challenge the 'orthodox view' in the EU governance literature that networks are flexible and hierarchy-immune responses to increasingly global policy challenges. We argue that networks in and of themselves reproduce existing power structures, and discuss the presence and replication of hegemony through these networks by examining the EU’s governance system post the Lisbon Treaty.

Keywords

• European security governance
• Gramsci
• transatlantic relations
• CFSP
• critical theory