AbstractsPolitical Science

This project investigates the EU as a provider of security outside the EU. As an example, we chose to analyse, why the EU decided to intervene militarily in the Central African Republic. Our analysis is grounded in a securitization framework and therefore focusses on how the conflict in the Central African Republic has been constructed as a problem within an EU context. To operationalise the analysis we utilised Kingdon’s “Three Stream Model”, which provided a more comprehensive understanding of why the EU decided to intervene militarily in the Central African Republic. Our main findings were: 1) several securitizing actors managed to move the conflict in the CAR from being a condition to being a problem with speech acts constructing the conflict as a security problem within the context of the EU. 2) The institutional framework of the CSDP and the CFSP created a platform where the decision to intervene militarily in the Central African Republic was technically feasible. 3) The positive attitudes in civil society regarding military interventions with reference to humanitarian concerns established a context where the EU’s decision to intervene militarily was made possible. Consequently, the three streams formed a policy window where the adoption of the decision to intervene militarily in the Central African Republic was made possible in the end.