with Dr. Stephanie Hofmann
Visiting Scholar, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Associate Professor of Political Science, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies
Deputy Director, Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding, Geneva, Switzerland

Moderated by Séverine Autesserre
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Barnard College
Member, SIWPS

Using NATO-CSDP relations in the field of crisis management as a case study, this article explains the implications of institutional overlap on multilateral security policy. Bringing together realist and institutional insights in order to understand to what result overlapping institutions interact, it shows that it is necessary to study institutional positions in conjunction with state preferences. Institutional overlap has deep consequences for organizational performance. In instances of heterogeneous preferences and heterogeneous institutional positions, I argue that states have different strategies at their disposal that combine to mechanisms of institutional empowerment and institutional safeguarding. Formal institutional paths can be foreclosed to inter-institutional security cooperation of planning and conducting crisis management operations. As a result we observe sub-optimal institutional outcomes In form of blocked cooperation, long delays in sending troops, wasted resources as well as the absence of security agreements and (political and military) strategic dialogue. Civilians’ and soldiers’ lives are put at risk in conflict areas.

Stephanie C. Hofmann is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding. Prior to arriving to the Graduate Institute, she has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (Italy) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Germany). She has worked and published on issues such as European security, international organizations (especially EU and NATO), international norms and networks. Her current research focuses on regime complexes and burden sharing between international organizations.

For more information please contact Geoffrey Kirkwood gk2360@columbia.edu