Repositorio Académico

The paper addresses the issue of national leadership in the politics of European defence, in order to determine the relative value of different factors in the exercise of leadership, and the reasons why some countries are more willing than others to contribute to the development of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy. The article starts by discussing the main contributions of the (neo)realist and constructivist approaches to European leadership on defence. It then highlights the process of development of EU defence policy and its setbacks. Leadership factors that characterize this development process are identified and employed to construct a fsQCA analysis, which assesses the leadership shown by different European countries. This analysis examines the necessary and the sufficient conditions characteristic both of leading countries and of those countries that do not show such leadership. © 2017, Centro Estudios Politicos Constitucionales. All rights reserved.