Political Oversight of European Union Military Forces

Military operations are inherently prone to controversy as they are a matter of war and peace. This raises questions about the extent to which they are subject to political oversight. While national and international control over the deployment of military forces is well-studied, little is known about oversight, which is control once troops are deployed.
Given calls to step up the contribution of the European Union (EU) to collective security, it is essential to better understand who exercises oversight of military operations that operate under an EU flag, and to what degree. This project investigates political oversight of military operations within the framework of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It studies oversight by both the relevant EU executive institutions and member state governments, guided by two research questions: [1] How do the EU and its member states maintain political oversight of military CSDP operations? [2] How can variations in the stringency of political oversight of military CSDP operations by the EU and its member states be explained?
By developing a Political Oversight Index, this project pushes analysis beyond the single case approach that has so far dominated the CSDP literature. Using Principal-Agent theorisation, variation in oversight will be explained by combining Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and process-tracing methodology. This project is the first to systematically assess political oversight of CSDP operations.