Competing or complementing? An empirical pilot study of Swedish MEPs’ and MPs’ perceptions of Nordic and European security collaborations

Abstract

Previous research has shown that a possible tension can be viewed to exist between the two parallel Nordic and European security structures which have come into place on the European arena since the end of the Cold War. On all political levels though, the notion of competing regional security structures is firmly opposed. A general agreement exits that Nordic security cooperation in all ways is a complement to European. However, as previous research has indicated, this notion needed to be problematized, and therefore this thesis aims to examine the possible tension using and comparing the perceptions of Swedish MEPs and MPs. This research can be viewed as an empirical pilot study using a comparative dimension to assess perceptions on Nordic and European security collaborations. Twenty Swedish parliamentarians from the European Parliament and the Nordic Council were interviewed for this research. The concept of actorness and its components: recognition, authority, autonomy and cohesion constituted the theoretical framework which was used to assess perceptions of the two regional security entities as actors. High perception of actorness for both would indicate that they are competing. Main findings of this research are that the MPs perceive both Nordic and European security collaborations to possess relatively high levels of security actorness. The MPs’ views therefore indicate a possible competition between the two parallel security structures. While the MEPs perceive European security cooperation to have high security actorness and Nordic security cooperation to have low security actorness. Implying that it is the MEPs’ view that the two regional entities are not competing