Stealth intervention: the EU and post-soviet conflicts

This dissertation addresses EU policy toward the conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakn in the post-Cold War period. It examines the dynamics of EU interventions in conflicts, asking: Why and under what conditions does the EU decide to get involved in conflict resolution? In a conflict-prone world and competing security priorities, what determines EU involvement in particular conflicts? Do supranational institutions, such as the European Commission and the EU Council Secretariat, matter in initiating, shaping and implementing EU policies in conflict resolution? To answer these questions, I use institutionalist and intergovernmentalist theories to assess their relative explanatory power in accounting for the patterns of EU interventions in conflict. I find that these approaches are broady complementary: institutionalism explains EU interventions in the low-politics areas of conflict resolution, while intergovernmentalism explains EU behaviour in the high-politics areas of intervention.