Norm Advocacy Coalitions and Military Operations: The Changing Character of EU Military Operations

States have different strategic cultures when it comes to legitimating the use of military force and its position in the foreign policy toolbox. Yet, increasingly military operations are conducted in multilateral forums. The European Union is one of the most notable examples of this. While some claim that the differences in national strategic cultures remain influential, others argue that a process of learning and convergence can be observed.

This paper contributes to this debate by taking a norm advocacy coalition approach. This approach allows us to confront competing expectations regarding the persistence of national strategic cultures versus approaches that expect policy change to result from processes of learning and institutionalization. The paper does so by a case study of the changing character of EU military operations.

What we see is that EU military operations have shifted towards 1) stronger emphasis on utility-based considerations, 2) higher on policy-embeddedness within the EU’s overall foreign policy involvement. On the basis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and politicians, this paper seeks to determine whether these shifts have been the effect of effective power politics of several norm advocacy coalitions or whether they are best understood as processes of learning and institutionalization.