How Member States Matter for the EU-NATO Interorganisational Relationship: A Typology

Cooperation in foreign, security and defence affairs has become an increasingly crucial topic with the growing number of crises and conflicts that the Euro-Atlantic community faces. Since their origins, the EU and NATO have gone through different phases of interactions, and recent events in their security environment on the Eastern and Southern borders have demanded greater collaboration. Their interactions and cooperation have experienced multiple challenges internally as well as externally. This dissertation analyses the EU-NATO interorganisational relationship and takes a special focus on the role of member states. States pursue different goals and objectives, and thus takes a different position in international organisations as well as in interorganisational relationships. This research investigates the interactions between organisations in overlapping policy areas, and more specifically in the field of security and defence, by establishing the theoretical framework of interorganisational interaction. It argues that both member states and international organisations play decisive roles in shaping the preferences, designs and institutional settings of interorganisational relations, and seek to pursue their own interests through multiple channels and forums. Based on the findings and insights from the theoretical framework two typologies are developed: a typology of interorganisational interaction and a typology of member states' positions in interorganisational interaction. The typology of interorganisational interaction is based on a set of indicators that include the network density of international organisations, functional overlap, the level of formalisation, frequency, intensity, and membership overlap. The typology of member states consists of advocates, blockers, balancers and neutrals of interorganisational interaction. Both typologies help to explain and understand the diverging behaviours, strategies and positions of member states. The theoretical framework with the typology of member states in interorganisational relations is applied to the analysis of the role of member states in the relationship between the EU and NATO. The empirical part analyses each type by considering and categorising all member states to illustrate their different contributions, interactions and approaches to shaping EU-NATO cooperation. This research takes a mixed methods approach by collecting data through the conduct of interviews with representatives from the EU, NATO and selected member states, the analysis of key national security and defence documents from member states, and the use of descriptive statistics which compile member states' contributions to EU-led and NATO-led military operations as well as their cooperation on the institutional and operational levels. With the development of the theoretical framework including the indicators of interorganisational interaction and the typology of member states, and the findings from the empirical analysis, this inquiry enhances the scholarship of interorganisational relations. It adds a new angle by analysing the perspective of member states and further contributes to the empirical examination of the EU-NATO relationship in security and defence affairs.