European Security in NATO's Shadow

Stephanie C. Hofmann is Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where she also holds the post of Deputy Director of the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding. Her research interests focus on the broader environment of international institutions, international security and the domestic-international politics nexus.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Political party ideology and security cooperation; 3. The success and failure of European security cooperation; 4. The end of the Cold War and the Maastricht Treaty - the Common Foreign and Security Policy; 5. Renegotiating Maastricht at Amsterdam - the failure to go beyond CFSP; 6. Saint Malo, Cologne, and Nice - the creation of the robust ESDP; 7. Conclusion.

'Using European security initiatives as a test case, Stephanie C. Hofmann shows that the convergence of party ideologies across countries creates opportunities for international cooperation. Sharply argued, carefully researched and well written, this book makes the exciting argument that party ideologies matter in international relations. Hofmann also shows that it is impossible to understand European security initiatives such as CFSP and ESDP without taking into account the presence of an alternative, namely NATO, which makes the creation of a new European institution costly and perhaps superfluous unless one factors ideological preferences in.' Frédéric Mérand, University of Montréal