Policy Integration Across Multiple Dimensions: the European Response to Hybrid Warfare

Abstract

The article analyzes the European Union’s response to hybrid warfare and argues that a proper interpretation of the policies adopted offers cautious support for a rational choice intuitionalist approach. It begins with the presentation of the main theories of European decision-making, among which rational choice and constructivist institutionalism and it derives a hypothesis which it tests in the third part of the article. Several policy documents are analyzed in order to provide the empirical material for the analysis. The article concludes that EU institutions prefer to undertake supra-national action in technical fields which are less politically controversial and where supra-nationalization is more easily accepted.