Vem försvarar EU-försvaret?

Sammanfattning: Why do states collaborate in military international cooperations? This paper attempts to illustrate the trends and give explanations to the EU member states' attitudes towards an EU military and defence union through a quantitative statistical analysis. The recent tendency of increased collaboration and expansion of the common security and defence policy of the Union has been a widely discussed topic and developed the consideration of a possible future for European military cooperation. Therefore, creating an incentive to illustrate the differences in the EU-states´ attitudes towards further cooperation. Through the lens of two of the main European Integration Theories; liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism, four hypotheses explaining the difference in the EU member states' attitudes towards collaboration in the areas of security, defence, and military cooperation are put forward. The analysis concludes that we can find a weak correlation between a larger GDP and a more positive attitude towards EU military and defence cooperation. Additionally, we find that NATO members are more likely than non-NATO member countries to be positive towards more cooperation, confirming the theoretical hypothesis. However, we find that our analysis and operationalization have multiple loopholes, therefore making it difficult to draw any strong conclusions between our results and the theoretical assumptions. The analysis is based on quantitative data, using statistical methods to test correlations between a dependable variable and four independent variables. For the dependent variable, a statistically based index for the states’ tendency to vote for and participate in security and military cooperation is constructed. Additionally, the hypotheses are operationalized to enable measuring through quantitative data, constructing the four independent variables. The independent variables are: National opinion of the common security and defence policy, GDP, percentage of GDP spent on national military and NATO-membership. By using a regression analysis, the relation between the variables is presented and analyzed through a theoretical lens, addressing the hypotheses. The analysis concludes that we can find a weak correlation between a larger GDP and a more positive attitude towards an EU military and defence cooperation. Additionally, we find that NATO members are more likely than non-NATO member countries to be positive towards more cooperation, confirming the theoretical hypothesis. However, we find that our analysis and operationalization has multiple loopholes, and therefore making it difficult to draw any strong conclusions between our result and the theoretical assumptions.