The College’s Permanent Secretariat extends its warmest congratulations to Dr. Daniel Neumann for successfully complete a doctoral degree at King’s College. His thesis, which addresses a subject close to our hearts, explores the conditions under which EU Member States support the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN) in the field of foreign policy.
This thesis asks under what conditions member states provide intelligence support to EU foreign policy making, that is, to the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN). INTCEN provides EU policy makers with strategic intelligence synthesised from member state contributions. The EU treaties stipulate that national security remains the sole responsibility of the member states (art. 4.2 TEU). This is widely interpreted to apply to intelligence, rendering any support to INTCEN voluntary. EU institutions have repeatedly encouraged member states to contribute. However, scepticism persists about the actual level of cooperation.
Dr. Daniel Neumann’s work investigates when member states provide support to INTCEN. It is situated in the academic literature about intelligence cooperation. It challenges the widely criticised but dominant neorealist approach and inductively develops an alternative model to explain intelligence support by drawing on insights from the European studies, the public administration, and the sociological literatures. The empirical research is based on the thematic analysis of 25 elite interviews triangulated with additional sources identified through desk research.
The thesis argues that as an analytic heuristic the provision of intelligence support to INTCEN can be understood as a top-down three-step process. First, at the political level, intelligence support is motivated by seeking to influence EU policymaking with intelligence by shaping the underlying situational understanding. Second, at the organisational level, quasi-autonomous intelligence services prioritise and allocate resources to the task of providing intelligence support based on their organisational identity, intelligence capacity, and bureaucratic capacity. Third, at the working level, intelligence analysts seconded to Brussels implement the intelligence support. By utilising their leeway and through ensuing social dynamics, these practitioners further impact the intelligence support of their services.
It then concludes that member states intelligence support is therefore shaped at all levels of government and determined by policy interests of policymakers, bureaucratic characteristics of intelligence services, as well as social dynamics of working-level practitioners. In developing the model, this thesis contributes to the academic literature on intelligence cooperation by advancing discussions on theorising multilateral intelligence cooperation in applying underutilised approaches. It further provides empirical insights into an underexplored intelligence cooperation forming part of EU foreign policy making.