Grasping the everyday and extraordinary in EU-NATO relations: the added value of practice approaches

Much scholarly work seeking to explain the EU-NATO relationship emphasises conflicting national or institutional interests, strategic individuals, and operational inefficiencies and overlaps. This article offers an alternative account of how both the everyday and the extraordinary in EU-NATO securit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean security (London, England) Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 340 - 358
Main Author Græger, Nina
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.07.2017
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Competition
Cooperation
EU-NATO relations
European security
Grasping
International cooperation
International organizations
IR theory
Learning
practice theory
security practices
Skills
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Summary:Much scholarly work seeking to explain the EU-NATO relationship emphasises conflicting national or institutional interests, strategic individuals, and operational inefficiencies and overlaps. This article offers an alternative account of how both the everyday and the extraordinary in EU-NATO security cooperation can be identified and analysed by applying practice theory. Despite the "Cyprus issue", which has left EU-NATO cooperation under Berlin Plus in political stalemate, regular interaction involving civilian and military EU and NATO staff at all levels and various sites has increased over the past decade. The article shows how a practice take is well suited to uncover the practical logic at work in these, predominantly informal EU-NATO encounters; how practices are established, enacted, and also abrupted. Furthermore, it discusses how shared "background conditions" - skills and experience - facilitate practices, learning, and community-building but also competition and rivalry.
ISSN:0966-2839
1746-1545
DOI:10.1080/09662839.2017.1355304