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Bricolage: A Sociological Approach to the Making of CSDP

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Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics ((PSEUP))

Abstract

In this chapter, I analyse the institutional emergence of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) between 1998 and 2003 as a specific kind of social practice. I argue that the formative years of ESDP, as the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was then known, cannot be assumed, like most rationalist approaches do, to have been driven by an optimal or preordained outcome. ESDP was not simply the result of a shift in the balance of power or a new way to enact old strategies. Rather, the institutional design of ESDP consisted in a series of haphazard, creative and combinatorial operations carried out by a small group of policymakers who built on existing symbolic and institutional templates. Following Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, I use the term ‘bricolage’ to describe this kind of practice.1

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Authors
  1. Frédéric Mérand
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Central European University, Hungary

    Xymena Kurowska (Assistant Professor) (Assistant Professor)

  2. European University Institute, Italy

    Fabian Breuer (Assistant to the President) (Assistant to the President)

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© 2012 Frédéric Mérand

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Mérand, F. (2012). Bricolage: A Sociological Approach to the Making of CSDP. In: Kurowska, X., Breuer, F. (eds) Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230355729_7

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