Follow the Money: The Political Economy of EU Border Security Institutions

EU border security has not been a particularly successful or effective area of EU political cooperation or integration. In early 2015, the EU called for further increases in border security spending. However, we find that the diagnosis of the crisis as one of a lack of resources—with the prescription to increase FRONTEX authority—profoundly puzzling from an institutional perspective. Border security spending has been increasing exponentially over the last decade, even during counter-cyclical fiscal downturns and even when migration pressures lessened from 2008-2010. In our research, we have found a potential additional explanatory framework for suboptimal EU institutional outcomes in border security. We evaluate EU border security spending and conduct a plausibility probe on the degree to which it is becoming a distributional policy area with parochial interests. Using theoretical frameworks from individual (revolving door), organizational, market, and political-geographic theories of parochialism, we find evidence that EU border security spending represents a significant proportion of industry and bureaucratic budgets, reflecting the growing structural possibility of distributional relationships and relative dependence. We also find evidence linking political representation to the recipients of border security spending. The existence of redistributive and market logics in border security has immediate and severe humanitarian and governance implications for EU border security policy, particularly over search and rescue needs in the Mediterranean.