EU and US Institutions, Interests, and Identities

My research questions sui generis assumptions about the US and EU and demonstrates political outcomes as driven by standard organizational rather than exceptional processes. My book explains EU security policy with comparative politics; my other articles describe EU policies as driven by economic interests and external threat as much as ideas or values. My work on the US characterizes US defense decision making as subject to constraints and tradeoffs, due to relative domestic interest group configurations. Papers in progress are listed below.

“The Borders of the EU: Understanding the political development of EU migration and security institutions” with Sara Wallace Goodman, in progress.

evaluates the political development and policy failures of EU migration and security institutions.

“Us vs Them: The negative frame of European belonging in the context of migration and security” in progress.

experimental survey for understanding variation in European public support for EU defense and border security policies, as well as European identification, under different framing treatments of non-EU ‘others’, such as migrants, refugees, and other perceived international threats.

“Organizing Prevention: European Approaches to Security and Integration” with Andrew Aguilar (Science Po)

EU security discourse affirms the importance of “preventing” serious crime, international conflict, and terrorist incidents as EU policy. Conventional interpretations cited such rhetoric as a more humane response to terrorism, foreign policy, and population management than the US after 9/11. We propose a different view, that prevention is an administrative and organizational tradition—with colonial origins— for European states that has ultimately influenced EU discourse. French and British efforts to “prevent” crime, particularly in minority populations, have their origins in the colonial period. What–if any–are the linkages between European colonial apparatuses and the modern administrative state? How can they explain rhetorical consistency and key differences in national policy? This paper develops an organizational and institutional approach to explain the continuity found in French, British, and ultimately EU security policy regarding prevention. The approach will focus on the legacy of state organizations involved in colonial administration and later evolved to contemporary structures found in the Interior, Justice, and Foreign Affairs Ministries. We reaffirm the importance of national differences found in their degree of centralization and initial, but reaffirm organizational similarities to account for the continuity found in prevention rhetoric.