Introduction
Maritime security in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) has gained critical importance over the past two decades amid rising piracy and other transnational threats. As its sea lanes underpin global trade and energy flows, the WIO is not only of strategic significance for the region’s littoral states but has also drawn attention from actors such as the European Union (EU) and India. Yet the ways in which actors choose to pursue maritime security – whether through formal institutions created by treaties with clear mandates and procedures, or via informal mechanisms that prioritise flexibility – remain underexplored. This question is particularly salient in a maritime security environment characterised by overlapping threats, a dense institutional landscape, and the absence of a single, authoritative regional security organisation.
Existing research suggests that the EU and India approach multilateral cooperation from markedly different starting points. India has historically shown a preference for looser coalitions, shaped by its tradition of non-alignment and its contemporary counterparts of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment.Footnote 1 By contrast, the EU’s external action is often characterised by a long-standing emphasis on institutionalised multilateralism and a proclivity for treaty-based frameworks.Footnote 2 From the perspective of institutional choice theory, these contrasting foreign policy traditions generate relatively clear expectations. Actors are assumed to select institutional formats by balancing efficiency, legitimacy, sovereignty costs, and control.Footnote 3 Applied to maritime security, this literature would predict a persistent institutional divergence between the EU and India: the EU should gravitate towards formal intergovernmental organisations that provide legal authority and legitimacy, whereas India should favour informal and flexible arrangements that minimise sovereignty costs and preserve autonomy. While co-presence in a shared security environment and repeated interaction would typically generate incentives for at least partial coordination or functional alignmentFootnote 4 – even among actors with divergent preferences – sustained engagement in the same maritime security environment and deeper forms of multilateral cooperation between the two actors would nevertheless appear unlikely, particularly in a sensitive security domain.
Although empirical developments in the WIO are consistent with expectations of fragmentation, they also reveal a paradox. Both the EU and India have become deeply embedded in the same maritime security environment, frequently participate in the same multilateral settings, and repeatedly affirm shared commitments to effective multilateralism and a rules-based maritime order. Despite these recurring pressures for at least partial functional alignment, EU–India maritime security cooperation has long fallen short of its strategic potential. Here, ‘falling short’ refers to not an absence of political dialogue or rhetorical alignment but rather the limited depth of institutional integration, coordination, and joint initiative-taking in multilateral maritime security formats. Security policy has tended to be an afterthought in both the partnership itself and academic research on EU–India relations.Footnote 5 This coexistence of growing strategic engagement, sustained co-presence, shared objectives, and persistent fragmentation points to a theoretical puzzle: why has sustained co-presence in a dense and fragmented institutional landscape in the WIO not translated into more coherent or effective EU–India maritime security cooperation, despite conditions that would normally be expected to foster more sustained forms of coordination?
Addressing this puzzle requires moving beyond the conventional bilateral–multilateral binary that dominates much of the existing literature. While EU and Indian maritime security policies have received considerable scholarly attention, few studies explicitly examine the institutional formats in which both actors operate. Where institutional questions are addressed, analyses often remain confined to a distinction between bilateral and multilateral cooperation and do not engage with the burgeoning scholarship on variation among intergovernmental institutions.Footnote 6 As a result, important dynamics at and below the organisational level – such as informal intergovernmental organisations (IIGOs), trans-governmental networks (TGNs), and ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) – remain analytically underdeveloped.
Filling this gap, this paper brings a dedicated institutional perspective to the study of maritime security governance in the WIO and to research on EU and Indian security policy. In doing so, it responds to calls for ‘a more comprehensive understanding of the full range of international institutions used to address security problems’.Footnote 7 This perspective is particularly relevant given recent political developments. The Roadmap to 2025,Footnote 8 which placed security at the beginning of the joint work programme, and subsequent initiatives such as the launch of an Indo–EU strategic foreign policy dialogue pointed to a renewed emphasis on security cooperation. This trajectory has recently been reflected in the ‘Joint European Union–India Comprehensive Strategic Agenda’, endorsed at the EU–India Summit in New Delhi in January 2026. As the agenda pledges to implement an EU–India Security and Defence Partnership and to deepen engagement on maritime and regional security in the Indo-Pacific,Footnote 9 understanding how and why institutional choices shape cooperation outcomes in maritime security is both analytically and politically timely.
Against this background, the central research question of this paper is: to what extent and for what reasons do the institutional preferences of the EU and India in multilateral maritime security governance in the Western Indian Ocean converge or diverge, and how do these choices help explain the persistent fragmentation of EU–India cooperation? We argue that both the EU and India employ a mix of formal and informal institutions for maritime security in the WIO, albeit to different degrees, and that informal formats are as analytically and practically relevant as formal ones. Both actors make extensive use of institutional arrangements below the formal organisational level, acting in, with, and via IIGOs, TGNs, and AHCs. While in some cases both actors turn to informal pathways because they perceive the existing institutional architecture in the WIO as inadequate to address evolving maritime security challenges, their underlying motivations differ. In particular, sovereignty costs and power considerations play a more prominent role in shaping India’s institutional choices, whereas legitimacy and formalised coordination remain more central to the EU’s approach.
Methodologically, the paper combines an analytical framework grounded in institutional choice and informal governance scholarship with qualitative research methods. The framework classifies maritime security cooperation formats along a formal–informal continuum, which allows for a systematic assessment of how actors balance costs and benefits such as flexibility, transaction costs, control, and legitimacy. Empirically, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with EU and Indian practitioners and stakeholders, complemented by an analysis of strategy and policy documents, official statements, datasets, and secondary literature. Qualitative content analysis and data triangulation provide an in-depth understanding of the motivations and constraints underlying institutional choices.
We first sketch maritime security challenges in the WIO and outline the evolution of EU and Indian maritime security engagement in the region, in the process identifying key research gaps. The paper then introduces the analytical framework and methodology and analyses the institutional choices of the EU and India respectively, followed by a synoptic comparison of convergences and divergences. We conclude by summarising the paper’s contributions and discussing implications for maritime security governance in the WIO and for the future of the EU–India strategic partnership.
Maritime security in the Western Indian Ocean, the EU, and India
The WIO encompasses the eastern and southern African littoral, from Djibouti and Somalia to South Africa, together with the island states of Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, and Mauritius, as well as the French overseas territories of La Réunion and Mayotte. The maritime environment in the WIO is interconnected and multijurisdictional, and the challenges confronting littoral states are liminal. Consequently, a vast and complex array of overlapping regional and international institutions and actors has become involved in addressing maritime insecurities. The WIO as a maritime security space in the focus of external actors began to take shape in 2008, when United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions 1816 and 1838 called for naval deployments to combat piracy in the Horn of Africa. Subsequently, various operations were undertaken by international and regional institutions and navies that led to a decline in incidents of piracy in the Gulf of Aden. However, piracy in the WIO was never eradicated. A latent threat remained, as evidenced by the resurgence of Somali piracy since 2023.Footnote 10 While maritime security in the WIO initially focused on Somali piracy, geopolitical shifts have expanded attention to diverse non-traditional threats and issues,Footnote 11 economic interests, and sustainable governance. New transnational challenges in the WIO include conflict spillovers from Yemen, Mozambique, and Somalia, and the related increasing hybrid and grey-zone warfare.Footnote 12 These maritime extensions of conflicts are largely driven by non-state actors like the Houthi militia, who have attacked commercial vessels traversing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden using drones, armed skiffs, and anti-ship missiles – incidents that have increased insurance costs and prompted rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope. Their impact on global trade and energy supplies makes them the most urgent concern for international actors.
A dedicated EU maritime security policy towards the WIO is a comparatively new phenomenon. The Union had started deploying military missions in 2003, but the early Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was rather ‘land-centric’.Footnote 13 It by and large had neglected the maritime domain so that the first naval mission only launched in 2008.Footnote 14 Since then, European Union Naval Force (EUNAVFOR) Atalanta has been operating primarily to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia. This was soon complemented by the establishment of the EU Capacity-Building Mission (EUCAP) Nestor in 2012, which was later rebranded as EUCAP Somalia in 2016, a civilian mission assisting the country in strengthening its maritime security capacity. These missions, particularly Atalanta, marked the beginning of a comprehensive EU approach to maritime security in the region, combining naval operations with capacity-building efforts.Footnote 15 The most recent EU naval mission, EUNAVFOR Aspides. was launched in 2024 to protect vessels from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The strategic foundations of EU maritime security policy – both in general and regarding the WIO in particular – lagged behind the operational dimension.Footnote 16 The 2003 European Security Strategy, for instance, had ‘only briefly mentioned piracy as a potential threat to the EU’,Footnote 17 and both the 2003 strategy and the 2008 implementation reportFootnote 18 were vague in terms of maritime security.Footnote 19 It was only after the adoption of the EU Maritime Security Strategy (EUMSS)Footnote 20 in 2014 that a ‘maritime turn in the EU’s foreign and security policy’ – which also strongly reflected in the 2016 Global StrategyFootnote 21 – was diagnosed in the literature.Footnote 22 Interestingly, however, the EUMSS made no explicit mention of the Indian Ocean (IO), let alone the WIO. The release of the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific (EUIPS)Footnote 23 in 2021 was therefore filling a strategic–conceptual gap.Footnote 24 The EUIPS identifies the IO’s strategic chokepoints as ‘principal passage for Europe to and from Indo-Pacific markets’, concludes that ‘[s]tability and freedom of navigation in this area are therefore vital’, and pledges ‘to promote an open and rules-based regional security architecture’.Footnote 25 Regarding the WIO, the strategic concretisation was overdue because operational EU policy on the ground had in the meantime evolved even further beyond CSDP military and civilian missions. For instance, since 2013, the EU has initiated several programmes to enhance maritime domain awareness (MDA) and information sharing in the WIO. One of the earliest was the EU-funded Maritime Security Programme (MASE), launched in 2013 to help eastern and southern African coastal states address maritime insecurity through capacity-building, coordination, and the development of regional information-sharing mechanisms. It was recently succeeded by the Safe Seas Africa programme (SSA). In 2015, the EU introduced CRIMARIO (Critical Maritime Routes Indian Ocean), a project aimed at strengthening MDA through improved collection and real-time exchange of maritime information among regional partners.Footnote 26 The EUIPS, recently often together with the Revised EU Maritime Security Strategy,Footnote 27 has been interpreted as emphasising an expansion of EU maritime security engagement in the region.Footnote 28
India’s maritime engagement in the WIO predates UN Security Council Resolutions 1816 and 1838, with early deployments in the Mozambique Channel in 2003/4.Footnote 29 Much of India’s maritime security policy is guided by its maritime security strategy of 2015, which recognises the WIO as an ‘area of primary interest’.Footnote 30 At the operational level, four main avenues characterise India’s maritime engagement in the region.Footnote 31 First, India provides training for African maritime and military personnel at various Indian institutes. Secondly, since 2008 it has regularly conducted independent anti-piracy patrols, escorted merchant vessels, and maintained a naval presence in African waters. Third, India has expanded information sharing and MDA by linking the Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) with counterparts like the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre (RMIFC) in Madagascar and the Regional Coordination Operations Centre (RCOC) in Seychelles. Lastly, India has developed listening posts in Madagascar and on Agalega Island off Mauritius, with another proposed for Assumption Island off Seychelles. These Indian efforts have been complemented by regular goodwill port visits, white shipping agreements with all WIO littorals, and the development of coastal radar surveillance networks in Mauritius and Seychelles. India’s engagement in the WIO is also shaped by growing concerns about China’s expanding maritime footprint. Beijing’s deepening presence – particularly the opening of its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 – has heightened Indian wariness about strategic encirclement and the prospect of a more permanent Chinese military posture in the region.Footnote 32 India’s strategic outlook towards the WIO has also evolved. Back in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated India’s vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) during his visit to Mauritius.Footnote 33 The policy primarily focused on improving India’s relations with its immediate neighbours to address common maritime challenges. In 2025, India has advanced the vision of MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions), which reflects a strategic recalibration to extend its ambitions beyond its immediate neighbourhood. It represents a strategic expansion of SAGAR to encompass WIO littorals and the wider Indo-Pacific region. This progression is not mere rhetorical evolution. As India seeks to deepen its naval diplomacy, Africa has emerged as the new strategic frontier for its ‘broader ambitions as a credible and preferred security partner’.Footnote 34 MAHASAGAR thus signifies India’s recognition of the WIO as central to its strategic maritime calculus.
While the EUIPS and the EU’s maritime security policy as well as India’s IO engagement have received a lot of scholarly attention, few studies explicitly focus on the institutional dimension, that is: on the question in which formats the EU and India have been conducting their maritime security policy. The studies that do so to a certain extentFootnote 35 often employ a bilateral–multilateral dichotomy, but do not go deeper, for example by employing or developing a typology of multilateral institutions. In short: few contributions on EU or Indian maritime security policy have sufficiently acknowledged the burgeoning scholarship on variations in the range of intergovernmental formats.Footnote 36 On a broader scale, this gap can be identified in research on EU external action in general.Footnote 37 Additionally, scholarship on the European maritime security policy has in recent years shifted its attention more and more to the Indo-Pacific ‘mega-region’.Footnote 38 A similar bias has long characterised research on India’s foreign policy, which has tended to focus on either the broader mega-region or the Indian Ocean as a whole; as a result, there are comparatively few recent, detailed, and focused studies of Indian engagement in the WIO.Footnote 39 We argue that the WIO region deserves distinct attention. Zooming out to the Indo-Pacific risks losing sight of important context factors. For instance, in the WIO, the African littoral states and institutions such as the AU or the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) are important actors and (potential) cooperation partners. Their scope, however, does not extend into the mega-region. As a consequence, these actors tend to be ignored in larger-scale studies that instead focus their discussion on organisations like ASEAN.Footnote 40
Against this background, this paper makes four interrelated contributions to the literature. First, it explains why the growing density of formal and informal maritime security institutions in the WIO has not translated into more effective EU–India cooperation, thereby addressing a puzzle that existing institutional choice and maritime security scholarship has left largely unexplored. Second, it develops and applies a typology of institutional formats that allows for a systematic analysis of institutional choice beyond the conventional bilateral–multilateral binary. Third, by empirically scrutinising EU and Indian multilateral engagement in the WIO, the paper advances research on maritime security governance in a region that has been increasingly overshadowed by the Indo-Pacific mega-region, despite its distinct dynamics. Fourth, the findings shed new light on the persistent underperformance of the EU–India strategic partnership in maritime security, suggesting that institutional mismatch and divergent cost sensitivities, rather than a lack of political commitment, constitute key obstacles to deeper cooperation.
Analytical framework and methodology
This section establishes the analytical framework and methodology used to analyse the institutional choices underpinning EU and Indian multilateral maritime security engagement in the WIO, which we understand as collaborative efforts of at least three governments, governmental actors, or governmental organisations to safeguard maritime domains. The framework is designed not merely to map institutional formats but also to explain why the coexistence of formal and informal institutions has not resulted in greater institutional convergence or more effective EU–India cooperation.
At the core of the analysis lies institutional choice scholarship, which seeks to explain why actors select particular institutional formats over others when engaging in international cooperation. Broadly speaking, this literature argues that actors balance various costs and benefits when selecting the institutional form of cooperation, weighing factors such as expected gains, transaction costs, flexibility, membership, legitimacy, and sovereignty costs.Footnote 41 From this perspective, institutional form is not merely a by-product but also constitutes a strategic choice that shapes cooperation outcomes.
Applied to maritime security, institutional choice theory generates a set of key expectations. First, actors with a strong preference for legalisation and legitimacy such as the EU should gravitate towards formal intergovernmental organisations (FIGOs). Second, actors seeking to minimise sovereignty costs and preserve strategic autonomy such as India should favour more informal arrangements. Furthermore, while institutional choice scholarship highlights a range of cost–benefit considerations beyond efficiency alone, it would nevertheless suggest that sustained co-presence and shared security challenges can create incentives for greater coordination across institutional formats – particularly by lowering transaction costs and increasing operational interlinkages in shared maritime security tasks – or the development of hybrid solutions. The persistence of fragmented and weakly integrated institutional engagement in the WIO therefore calls for closer analytical scrutiny.
To capture this variation, the paper employs a typology of institutional formats that unfolds along a formal–informal continuum. This approach draws on institutional choice literature and acknowledges the coexistence of formal and informal formats.Footnote 42 It is also informed by maritime security scholarship, which highlights the proliferation of operationally focused cooperation formats below the organisational level, such as navy-to-navy cooperation, inter-agency coordination, operations at sea, MDA initiatives, and capacity-building programmes.Footnote 43 As many of these formats cannot be characterised as FIGOs or IIGOs, the following typology goes beyond organisational institutions and distinguishes four ideal–typical institutional formats:
(1) FIGOs are the most formal institutions and tend to have rigid membership criteria, clear rules, and enforcement mechanisms. Following the most prevalent definitions, they are created through a formal treaty, have three or more states as members, regular plenary meetings, and a permanent secretariat or headquarters.Footnote 44 FIGOs provide centralisation and independence.Footnote 45 Centralisation enhances efficiency by structuring cooperation, reducing transaction costs, and supporting negotiations and enforcement, while independence allows FIGOs to act as neutral arbiters and enforcers of international norms. Beyond cooperation, FIGOs can thus serve as ‘community representatives’.Footnote 46 By fulfilling these roles, they provide legitimacy to international actions and enable states to achieve goals they could not accomplish alone. FIGOs therefore appeal to actors who seek long-term credibility, legitimacy, and predictability.
(2) IIGOs, by contrast, have greater flexibility and rely on non-binding agreements, norms, or consensus rather than detailed treaties and independent bureaucratic structures. Vabulas and Snidal define IIGOs as an ‘explicitly shared expectation – rather than a formalized agreement – about purpose’ with ‘explicitly associated state “members” who […] [p]articipate in regular meetings but have no independent secretariat or other significant institutionalization such as a headquarters and/or permanent staff’.Footnote 47 This corresponds with greater autonomy and fewer constraints for the members while still offering ‘many of the general governance benefits provided by treaty-based institutions’ – albeit ‘in attenuated form’.Footnote 48 Because of their flexible nature, IIGOs can yield ‘efficiency advantages’ and generally have lower transaction costs.Footnote 49 As IIGOs operate with less stringent legal commitments, they allow states to adapt more easily to changing circumstances without treaty renegotiation or ratification.Footnote 50 For Roger and Rowan, the establishment through a non-binding agreement – or in other words: their ‘legal nature’ – is the defining feature that distinguishes IIGOs from FIGOs.Footnote 51 As their costs, inter alia in terms of operating and sovereignty costs, are significantly lower than those of FIGOs, Abbott and Faude classify IIGOs as low-cost institutions.Footnote 52
(3) TGNs also fall in this category.Footnote 53 A TGN ‘is a pattern of regular and purposive relations among like government units working across borders’.Footnote 54 This entails no longer conceptualising the international system solely as a system of unitary states, but supplementing this perspective with ‘lenses of disaggregated rather than unitary states’.Footnote 55 Because of their informal nature based on voluntary agreements,Footnote 56 TGNs offer many of the benefits of IIGOs, such as flexibility and low operating and sovereignty costs, while still institutionalising relationships and establishing ‘relatively stable behavioral expectations’.Footnote 57 In our typology, however, we assign TGNs their own place because, as demonstrated above, maritime security scholarship has identified networks as an important format of maritime cooperation, and because TGNs offer distinct benefits. One of these benefits is already part of the classic definition of trans-governmental relations put forward by Keohane and Nye as ‘as sets of direct interactions among sub-units of different governments that are not controlled or closely guided by the policies of the cabinets or chief executives of those governments’.Footnote 58 This aspect of limited guidance is a necessity ‘in the face of greater complexity’ that renders micro-managing by top leaders ineffective if not impossible;Footnote 59 instead, TGNs assemble experts and ‘the actual officials responsible for a certain policy area’Footnote 60 and allow for flexible experimentation and innovation in specialised and highly technical issues.Footnote 61
(4) AHCs are arrangements in which at least three actors cooperate without relying on an established organisational structure. Unlike TGNs, the collaboration is only temporary and very task-specific.Footnote 62 Ad hoc cooperation still offers some of the benefits of IIGOs and TGNs such as low transaction, creation, and exit costs as well as increased flexibility, which can be crucial especially when addressing crises. Importantly, there are almost no sovereignty costs. However, this comes at a price: ad hoc cooperation does not foster institutional stability or continuity and lacks enforcement mechanisms and therefore predictability as it is dependent on political will. Furthermore, AHCs entail the risk of deinstitutionalising existing organisations by circumventing established decision-making processes and reallocating resources.Footnote 63
Reflecting broader definitional debates in the literature,Footnote 64 grey areas and overlaps exist between these four formats, particularly between IIGOs and TGNs.Footnote 65 We assigned an institution to the IIGO category if it features in one of the two datasets, or if it fitted the IIGO definition and involved officials with ministerial rank; we classified institutions with lower-level officials as TGNs. Crucially, the typology is not an end in itself but serves as an explanatory tool to assess how different institutional formats shape cooperation patterns, complementarities, and fragmentation.
Methodologically, the paper employs a qualitative research design that combines semi-structured interviews with document analysis. The interviews were conducted in 2025 with EU and Indian practitioners and stakeholders involved in maritime security policy in the WIO. Conducted under the Chatham House Rule and pseudonymised to protect confidentiality, the interviews provide insights into actors’ perceptions of institutional costs, benefits, constraints, and strategic motivations – factors that are central to institutional choice explanations.
The interview material is complemented by an analysis of strategy and policy documents, official statements, press releases, institutional datasets, and secondary literature. This mixed corpus allows for data triangulation and enhances the robustness of the findings. Qualitative content analysis is employed to identify references to institutional formats, rationales for institutional engagement, and evaluations of cooperation outcomes. Particular attention is paid to instances where actors explicitly justify institutional choices or express dissatisfaction with existing arrangements, as these moments are especially revealing for understanding the mechanisms driving fragmentation or convergence. By combining an analytically differentiated institutional typology with in-depth qualitative evidence, the research design enables a systematic comparison of EU and Indian institutional choices in the WIO. This approach makes it possible to assess not only which institutional formats are used but also why particular formats are preferred and how their interaction shapes maritime security governance and EU–India cooperation outcomes.
Analysis
This section analyses the institutional formats through which the EU and India pursue multilateral maritime security cooperation in the WIO and examines the underlying rationales guiding their respective choices. The analysis goes beyond cataloguing institutional participation and asks how different institutional formats reflect actors’ cost ‘benefit calculations and how their interaction contributes to either convergence or fragmentation in maritime security governance.
Table 1 summarises the results of the analysis regarding the institutional formats in which the EU and India engage. It lists multilateral institutions (1) for which maritime security constitutes at least one significant issue, (2) for which the WIO represents a relevant area in terms of either participating actors or operational scope, and (3) in which the EU or India participate as of 2025. Columns three and four indicate the respective participation. Where relevant, sub-institutions such as programmes, conventions, or formats are listed after a slash. Crucially, the macro structure of the table follows the typology introduced above and distinguishes between FIGOs, IIGOs, TGNs, and AHCs.
Multilateral maritime security formats in the WIO with Indian or EU participation.
Table 1 Long description
The table lists multilateral security formats in the Western Indian Ocean and indicates the EU and Indian involvement for each institution. It is organised into four categories: formal intergovernmental organisations, informal intergovernmental organisations, transgovernmental networks, and ad hoc coalitions
While the table reveals a dense and diverse institutional landscape, it also points to a central empirical pattern: both actors operate across the full formal–informal spectrum yet often do so in parallel rather than in a coordinated or complementary manner. The following subsections unpack this pattern by analysing the institutional choices of the EU and India separately before drawing a comparative assessment.
The institutional dimension of EU maritime security policy in the WIO
Article 21 of the EU Treaty explicitly states that the EU ‘shall promote multilateral solutions to common problems’ and ‘an international system based on stronger multilateral cooperation’. In the 2023 Revised EU Maritime Security Strategy, the EU stresses its objective to promote ‘respect for international rules’ and ‘maritime multilateralism’.Footnote 66 Similarly, the 2021 EUIPS pledges ‘to promote an open and rules-based regional security architecture’.Footnote 67 Both strategies explicitly refer to UNCLOS, to which the EU is a party, as the fundamental legal framework for governance at sea and ‘its main legal driver’.Footnote 68 From an institutional choice perspective, this orientation generates a strong expectation that the EU will prioritise formal institutional arrangements that offer legal authority, legitimacy, and predictability.
Empirically, the analysis confirms that FIGOs constitute the backbone of EU maritime security engagement in the WIO. The UN and its specialised bodies provide a legal and normative umbrella under which EU engagement is legitimised. This is in line with the EU’s overall commitment to ‘the global rules-based order, with the United Nations at its core’, as expressed in the Strategic Compass for Security and DefenceFootnote 69 or in the Global Strategy.Footnote 70 This corresponds with the EU’s observer status in the IMO and cooperation with and financial support for the UNODC, which plays an important role in the WIO through GMCP and the UNODC-organised IOFMC.Footnote 71
Similarly, cooperation with African regional FIGOs allows the EU to channel financial and technical support through established regional structures. The AU and EU established a strategic partnership in 2007, in which security cooperation is a key dimension. As far as development cooperation is concerned, the EU’s main point of contact is the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS). In 2023, the Samoa Agreement became the relevant framework, in which maritime security is one of the strategic priorities and one of the key areas of cooperation in the Africa regional protocol.Footnote 72 The EU is channelling decisive financial support for WIO maritime security initiatives through African Regional Economic Communities (RECs) such as COMESA, EAC, IGAD, and SADC, as well as through the IOC (Indian Ocean Commission). For instance, the Regional Indicative Programme 2014–20 incorporated maritime security activities and financing under the European Development Fund, which aimed at implementing regional maritime security strategies as well as the AU’s 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIMS);Footnote 73 its successor, the Regional Multi-Annual Indicative Programme for Sub-Saharan Africa, is now part of the new NDICI Global Europe instrument.Footnote 74 The IOC plays a pivotal role in this regard: since 2013, it has been implementing the MASE programme, one of the earliest EU-funded capacity-building projects in the WIO, and is coordinating its successor programme SSA. The EU has held observer status with the IOC since 2017, which reflects efforts to formalise ties with this FIGO. Research has shown that full membership and even observer status significantly increase the quantity of interactions.Footnote 75 Indeed, in 2018, the RMIFC in Madagascar and the RCOC in Seychelles were established through MASE, providing the region and the regional organisations with EU-funded coordination and information-sharing infrastructure. Programmes such as MASE and SSA illustrate how regional FIGOs serve as institutional anchors for EU capacity-building efforts, reinforcing assumptions in institutional choice scholarship about the efficiency and legitimacy benefits of formal organisations.Footnote 76
In our interviews, several EU officials and advisors have stated that FIGOs are the preferred default partners, and that the EU is usually trying to formalise relations.Footnote 77 However, interview evidence and policy practice also reveal the limits of FIGO-centred engagement. While regional organisations provide legitimacy, they often entail high transaction costs, limited flexibility, and reduced visibility for the EU. Thus, while one EU official called MASE ‘our biggest achievement’,Footnote 78 another EU official criticised that MASE generated no visibility for the EU. In addition, the EU has been experiencing severe limitations in engaging the AU in maritime security because of cumbersome structures and processesFootnote 79 that in practice reduce the efficiency otherwise associated with FIGOs. It is striking that maritime security is almost non-existent in recent declarations in the framework of the AU–EU strategic partnership; neither the outcome document of the 2022 AU–EU summitFootnote 80 nor the EU’s 2020 Africa strategyFootnote 81 even mention the AIMS. Despite the ‘deep involvement’, the EU even seems ‘disappointed’ with the IOC and the lack of progress.Footnote 82 Interestingly, this sentiment seems to be reciprocal.Footnote 83 These findings illustrate that the benefits typically associated with FIGOs may be partially offset in practice, prompting actors to seek alternative institutional pathways.
It is against this backdrop that the EU’s increasing reliance on more informal formats becomes analytically significant. A case in point is the CRIMARIO programme for improved MDA launched in 2015 (CRIMARIO I) and expanded from 2020 onwards (CRIMARIO II). CRIMARIO was initiated after the EU identified a clear gap in information exchange and coordination in the WIO that no international organisation was tackling.Footnote 84 Consequently, the IORIS (Indian Ocean Regional Information Sharing) platform was launched and offered to WIO states. Like MASE, IORIS is an EU-funded tool, but it is not EU-run as it is implemented with the support of the French agency Expertise France. Unlike MASE and SSA, CRIMARIO and IORIS did not bring in a regional FIGO. In contrast, the EU in essence created a TGN. This network – which CRIMARIO calls the ‘IORIS community of users’ – now consists of ‘navies, maritime authorities and agencies’ from over fifty countries, many in the WIO, which is CRIMARIO’s original focus area.Footnote 85 CRIMARIO and IORIS can serve as a textbook example of a TGN: its dynamic user base showcases its flexibility, and its relatively low budget corresponds to low operating costs for the EU. It was explicitly conceived to work with navies, not ministries, ‘to avoid a political layer’.Footnote 86 At the same time, the EU was able to fulfil its objective to establish and to a certain degree institutionalise a network, as the introduction of an IORIS steering committee shows.Footnote 87 Leveraging the advantages of informality, the EU has been able to make a ‘concrete offer’ in a rather specialised and highly technical field.Footnote 88 It thereby created a well-received and – contrary to the FIGO-based MASE and SSA – ‘highly visible’ projectFootnote 89 affirming the EU’s commitment to a more secure WIO.Footnote 90
Further informal pathways have proliferated in recent years. In the wake of the EUIPS, the EU hosted a Ministerial Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific in February 2022. This format has since become a recurring event. The year 2024 already saw the third instalment of the slightly renamed EUIPMF with representatives from the EU, member states, Indo-Pacific countries, and regional organisations.Footnote 91 The summit conclusionsFootnote 92 list ‘concrete cooperation’ in ‘seven priority areas’ and read like a joint statement expressing a common understanding of the forum’s purpose, which suggests that the EUIPMF functions as an IIGO. Beyond that, the EU has very recently upgraded its relations with two of the region’s existing maritime security IIGOs. In 2024, the EU has become both a ‘dialogue partner’ of the IORA and a ‘friend’ of the DCoC,Footnote 93 which essentially amounts to an observer role in both organisations. From an EU perspective, the DCoC is one of the more dynamic and ambitious maritime security organisations in the WIO because of its more flexible nature.Footnote 94 Combined with the low entry costs of IIGOs, this may help explain the EU’s intensified cooperation. One of CRIMARIO’s goals is to enhance complementarity with the DCoC’s three information sharing centres in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen, and with IORA,Footnote 95 which suggests that the EU is trying to hedge against potential pitfalls of IIGO and TGN proliferation, particularly the duplication of efforts.
The EU’s military engagement is also embedded in multilateral frameworks. Besides the CSDP missions EUNAVFOR Atalanta and EUNAVFOR Aspides, European Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASoH) is another European-led maritime mission operating nearby in the northern IO. However, EMASoH is not an EU mission but rather an AHC of eight EU member states and Norway. While the ‘EU-internal’ aspects of AHCs and ramifications for EU–CSDP missions have drawn scholarly attention,Footnote 96 we are interested in the ‘external’ multilateral aspects of EU military engagement in the WIO. Atalanta is not a standalone mission in a vacuum but is rather part of a larger multinational effort. Alongside the EU mission, the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) and several independent naval task groups are operating. To share information, enable dialogue, and coordinate the missions, the SHADE forum was launched in 2008 with the EU as a participant. It can be described as ‘an informal technical coordination mechanism’Footnote 97 and the hub of a ‘centralized [counter-piracy] network without a formal military hierarchy directing operations’.Footnote 98 As such, SHADE is a textbook example of a TGN and does not impose the sovereignty costs associated with placing naval operations under a higher authority. In addition, SHADE flexibly integrates representatives of the shipping industry, an advantage of the informal architecture that was explicitly highlighted by an EU official.Footnote 99 In addition to SHADE, the EU is a member of the CGIMA, another informal institution that assembles all regional actors. Formed in 2022 as the successor to the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS), it aims to foster coordination and dialogue across all maritime security issues in the WIO.
The EU’s engagement in AHCs further illustrates a pragmatic adaptation of its institutional preferences rather than a wholesale shift away from formal multilateralism. The EU has participated in the US-led Cutlass Express Multinational Maritime Exercises in the WIO.Footnote 100 This repeated, but not continuous, participation demonstrates the benefits of AHCs in addressing maritime security challenges with flexibility and low sovereignty costs. At the same time, it testifies to the drawbacks, particularly the lack of institutionalisation, which limits long-term and sustainable effectiveness. Atalanta is organising or participating in many more exercises, for example with states from the WIO like Seychelles and Djibouti, or independent naval deployers like Japan, South Korea, and India. However, they are overwhelmingly conducted bilaterally and therefore outside the scope of this study. In this context, however, the EU has recently added an interesting new tool to its maritime security toolbox:Footnote 101 the concept of EU Coordinated Maritime Presences (CMPs) was launched in 2021 in the Gulf of Guinea and extended to the north-western IO in 2022,Footnote 102 which is now considered an EU ‘maritime area of interest’.Footnote 103 CMPs aim at facilitating coordinated information collection and sharing by naval forces of EU member states.Footnote 104 Crucially, CMPs are not CSDP missions but coordination tools for regions to which member states have deployed their navies.Footnote 105 In essence, CMPs amount to bringing independent AHCs among member states under an EU umbrella without making them an CSDP instrument. The tool thus appears to function as an EU hedge against deinstitutionalisation.Footnote 106 CMPs try to combine the best of two worlds: a coordinating role for the EU while preserving the benefits of AHCs,Footnote 107 such as low creation costs, flexibility, and the ability to sidestep political and bureaucratic hurdles in CSDP decision-making.Footnote 108 What makes CMPs relevant in the context of this study is their potential external dimension. In CSDP missions, third countries can contribute assets and troops – but they remain ‘second-class stakeholders’ without a formal say in the drafting of operations.Footnote 109 CMPs make integrating third countries less difficult and more attractive for potential partners such as the United Kingdom or India.Footnote 110 Thus, CMPs have the potential to become European-led AHCs with third countries under an EU umbrella. While CMPs in the Gulf of Guinea have been positively evaluated,Footnote 111 the WIO has not seen many implementation activities since it was declared a maritime area of interest. This may reflect that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched just days after the Council decision, has dominated European security policy ever since.Footnote 112 Another reason, however, may be that CMPs are contentious among EU officials, with two interviewees expressing scepticism or outright opposition to the tool.Footnote 113
Overall, the EU case shows that while formal institutions remain the preferred default,Footnote 114 the Union increasingly complements them with informal formats when faced with high costs, operational constraints, or perceived inefficiencies. This diversification, however, also contributes to an increasingly complex and layered institutional landscape.
The institutional dimension of India’s maritime security policy in the WIO
India’s maritime security engagement in the WIO is likewise anchored in a commitment to multilateralism,Footnote 115 particularly through the UN and UNCLOS. India placed maritime security at the heart of its agenda for its UNSC presidency in August 2021, during which Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened the first UNSC open debate on the issue. The Presidential Statement underscored the significance of UNCLOS,Footnote 116 reflecting India’s long-standing role as a proponentFootnote 117 and upholder of the convention.Footnote 118 India also maintains an active relationship with the UNODC and is an IMO member state.
From an institutional choice perspective, however, India’s engagement with regional FIGOs is markedly more limited than that of the EU. While India has expressed normative support for African-led maritime security frameworks – such as the AU’s 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime StrategyFootnote 119 – its cooperation with regional FIGOs and RECs in the WIO remains institutionally thin as New Delhi has not created operational or financial instruments in support of these organisations’ maritime security activities. A former Indian official expressed hope that the next IAFS would deliver more substantive cooperation.Footnote 120 But the repeated postponements of this high-level gathering – with no summit held since 2015 – suggest that India–AU relations are constrained by complex coordination processes and the frustrations they generate. This is reflected in India’s broader engagement with African WIO nations where New Delhi has achieved most success bilaterallyFootnote 121 – or via informal multilateral formats.
Indeed, our research shows that India relies far less on regional FIGOsFootnote 122 than on informal pathways and has played a central part in informal multilateral engagement and institution-building in the IO and the WIO. This includes India’s role as a founding member of the erstwhile CGPCS (now CGIMA) and an active member of SHADE. In November 2023, India became a full member of the CMF, attesting to the Indian navy’s increased presence in the WIO. The Indian navy has increasingly attempted to position itself as a regional security provider with the principal objective of effectively patrolling the regional commons as ‘a source of positive deterrence and greater regional goods’,Footnote 123 a self-assured ambition mainly pursued bilaterally or through informal multilateral arrangements, where sovereignty costs are low.
Beyond that, New Delhi has (co-)initiated no fewer than seven IIGOs (CSC, IADD, IADMC, IAFS, IBSA, IORA, IPOI) and three TGNs (GMC, IFC-IOR, IONS). For instance, India was one of the founding members of IORA in 1997. Furthermore, IONS was initiated by the Indian navy in 2009 and brings together naval representatives from IOR littoral states. Its main aim is to enhance capacity-building, regional maritime security, and interoperability. Interestingly, the creation of IONS as a ‘functional enabler’Footnote 124 in the area of maritime security was driven by a perceived capability gap in IORA.Footnote 125 Its design as a TGN allows IONS to act as an operational facilitator of navy-to-navy cooperation.Footnote 126
Our research provides further evidence that low creation costs as well as power and sovereignty considerations influenced India’s informal engagement and institution-building in the WIO. As initiator and/or most powerful actor in CSC, IADD, and IADMC, whose main priority is enhancing maritime security cooperation among IO littorals, India can shape institutional design, control participation, and steer cooperation more in line with its preferences than in FIGOs, which constrain power more forcefully, for instance through equitable procedures and voting rights for weaker actors.Footnote 127 IPOI can be analysed similarly: India proposed the non-binding framework in 2019 to foster collaboration for a free, open, and rules-based region. Towards this objective, seven pillars have been defined, each to be led by one or two states, with others joining as interested.Footnote 128 For its part, India has taken the co-lead for maritime security, which prompted one interviewee to describe IPOI as having significant potential for India’s multilateral security policy.Footnote 129
The IFC-IOR, headquartered in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi, serves as a specialised and highly technical TGN with flexible and adaptable participation, which helps to close the capability gap in the region also identified by the EU; however, our research has revealed that India as the initiator and host is extremely reluctant to develop relations with other TGNs, namely IORIS,Footnote 130 suggesting that power considerations played a large role in the creation and operation of the IFC-IOR, which is ‘fully controlled by India’.Footnote 131 Power considerations also were a driving factor behind the India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum – albeit in a reversed configuration: IBSA is a clear case of rising powers creating a new IIGO ‘to adapt or circumvent existing FIGOs whose rules disadvantage them (relative to their new power status)’.Footnote 132
At the same time, India’s extensive engagement in AHCs highlights the appeal of flexible, task-specific cooperation formats in advancing India’s role as a regional security provider. In addition to participating in CUTLASS EXPRESS, India has initiated the biennial MILAN exercises, which several WIO littoral states have attended.Footnote 133 In contrast to MILAN’s broader Indo-Pacific scope, the IMT-TRILAT exercise is confined entirely to the WIO, involving only Mozambique, Tanzania, and India. It has so far held two editions in 2022 and 2024,Footnote 134 underscoring its episodic, non-institutionalised character. Very recently, the 2025 strategic framework of MAHASAGAR brought about two new initiatives. The first edition of AIKEYME, planned as a biennial naval wargame to increase interoperability with African navies and maritime agencies, took place off Dar es-Salaam in 2025 with all African WIO littorals participating.Footnote 135 This was the first such multinational maritime exercise involving India and African nations designed to synergise combined operations. Under the second initiative, IOS SAGAR, an Indian patrol vessel, completed a month-long deployment in the south-western IO with an international crew from nine African countries. All these formats constitute classic AHCs: informal, issue-specific, and operationally focused naval formats that are not embedded in any FIGO or IIGO structure but allow the participating governments to cooperate flexibly. At minimal sovereignty cost, they provide opportunities to exchange best practices, undertake coordinated patrols, and enhance interoperability and mutual understanding. According to one former Indian official, the recent expansion of such activities illustrates that India has begun to develop a more nuanced understanding of the maritime security needs of African WIO littorals.Footnote 136
Taken together, the Indian case illustrates how sovereignty sensitivity and power considerations tilt institutional choice towards informality. While this strategy facilitates rapid engagement and leadership projection, it also contributes to a proliferation of parallel institutions that are weakly integrated with those favoured by external partners such as the EU.
Convergences and divergences
This comparative analysis allows us to return to the central research question: to what extent and for what reasons do EU and Indian institutional preferences in the WIO converge or diverge, and how do these choices help explain the persistent fragmentation of EU–India cooperation? At a general level, the analysis reveals a first-order convergence: both the EU and India operate across the full formal–informal institutional spectrum. Contrary to expectations derived from stylised accounts of EU legalism and Indian informality, neither actor relies overwhelmingly on a single institutional mode. Instead, both engage simultaneously in FIGOs, IIGOs, TGNs, and AHCs. This underscores that informal institutions are not peripheral but instead constitute a core component of contemporary maritime security governance.
Already at the level of FIGOs, however, important divergences persist. The EU’s maritime security engagement remains firmly anchored in formal organisations, particularly the UN and its specialised bodies, as well as African regional organisations. These institutions provide legal authority, legitimacy, and established coordination structures, which align with the EU’s broader commitment to a rules-based international order. India, by contrast, while normatively supportive, maintains comparatively thin operational engagement with regional African FIGOs in the maritime domain. Cooperation with the AU and RECs remains limited, with India lacking dedicated operational or financial instruments. This asymmetry reflects divergent evaluations of the costs and benefits associated with formal regional organisations and confirms key expectations of institutional choice scholarship.
Beyond formal organisations, a more nuanced pattern of partial convergence combined with parallelism emerges. Both actors actively participate in a range of IIGOs and TGNs, including CGIMA and SHADE, which serve as coordination hubs in the WIO’s maritime security architecture. These formats illustrate shared recognition of the efficiency and flexibility benefits associated with informality, particularly in operational and technical domains. This shared reliance on informality might suggest a basis for institutional convergence. However, the analysis reveals that such convergence remains limited in practice, and joint participation does not automatically translate into deeper institutional integration or coordinated institution-building. Indeed, one of the most striking empirical findings concerns the limited overlap between EU-initiated and India-initiated informal institutions. As Table 1 demonstrates, IPOI is the only India-initiated IIGO that the EU has joined, while India’s participation in EU-initiated formats is largely confined to the EUIPMF. For instance, despite initial hopes,Footnote 137 all efforts to bring IORIS and IFC-IOR closer together have so far been in vain, notwithstanding their functional similarity. Interview evidence suggests that concerns over control, visibility, and data ownership have played a decisive role in limiting cooperation.Footnote 138 This pattern highlights how power considerations and institutional control can inhibit convergence even where functional complementarities are evident. Other dynamics in institution-building further accentuate these divergences. Both actors have engaged in creating new informal institutions, but the scale and logic of such efforts differ significantly. The EU’s initiatives tend to be framed as additions to an existing institutional landscape and as designed to enhance coordination among a broad set of actors. India’s record of institution-building in the WIO is both more extensive and more initiator-driven and allows New Delhi to shape agendas and participation and align cooperation with its strategic priorities. From an institutional choice perspective, these formats minimise sovereignty costs and maximise agenda-setting power. But they also contribute to the proliferation of parallel institutions with limited interlinkages. The divergence is also pronounced when examining AHCs. India participates in a larger number of multilateral AHCs in the WIO, reflecting a preference for flexible, task-specific cooperation formats that support its image as a regional security provider. The EU engages more selectively in multilateral AHCs in the WIO and often privileges bilateral exercises or EU-internal coordination mechanisms. The concept of CMPs is an – albeit contested – attempt to reconcile these approaches by combining flexibility with a degree of institutionalisation under an EU umbrella; it is, however, primarily an EU-internal hedge against fragmentation rather than a vehicle for sustained cooperation with third countries.
Taken together, these findings reveal a pattern of functional coexistence without institutional consolidation. While both the EU and India recognise the utility of informal institutions and increasingly rely on them, they do so in ways that reflect distinct cost sensitivities and strategic priorities. For the EU, informality serves primarily as a pragmatic complement to a fundamentally formal and legitimacy-oriented approach. For India, informality constitutes the preferred mode of engagement, enabling leadership projection, strategic autonomy, and control over institutional design. These divergent logics help explain why shared interests, co-presence, and even limited overlapping participation have not produced stronger convergence in institutional preferences or more effective EU–India cooperation.
Conclusion
This paper examined to what extent and for what reasons the institutional preferences of the EU and India in multilateral maritime security governance in the WIO converge or diverge, and how these choices shape cooperation outcomes. Drawing on institutional choice theory and scholarship on informal governance, the analysis has shown that while both actors operate across a broad spectrum of formal and informal institutional formats, their respective preferences and patterns of engagement diverge in systematic ways. These divergences help explain why sustained institutional convergence and deeper EU–India cooperation have remained limited. In making this argument, the paper responds to calls for ‘a more comprehensive understanding of the full range of international institutions used to address security problems’Footnote 139 and supports findings that security is the most prevalent issue area for IIGOs.Footnote 140
At a more granular level, both the EU and India make extensive use of institutional arrangements below the formal organisational level, acting in, with, and via IIGOs, TGNs, and AHCs. These informal formats are not secondary or residual but rather constitute core elements of both actors’ maritime security policies in the WIO. Importantly, however, the findings also demonstrate that their proliferation has not fostered institutional convergence. Instead, the EU and India often engage in parallel institutional pathways that reflect differing evaluations of institutional costs and benefits. From an institutional choice perspective, this divergence is not accidental but stems from contrasting priorities: for the EU, informality complements a fundamentally rules-based and legitimacy-oriented approach, whereas for ‘sovereignty hawk’ India,Footnote 141 sovereignty sensitivity and power considerations make initiator-driven informal formats particularly attractive.
By tracing these dynamics empirically, the paper contributes to broader debates on informal governance and maritime security. It supports observations that the governance landscape in the WIO ‘is characterized by a patchwork of overlapping and sometimes competing projects’.Footnote 142 It also corroborates claims about a broader ‘decline of traditional multilateralism’ driven by ‘too much focus on regional and informal solutions’Footnote 143 and points to a broader shift towards flexible diplomatic formats, characterised by functional coexistence rather than institutional consolidation. However, instead of interpreting this development as a linear shift away from formal institutions, the findings highlight the coexistence and interconnectedness of formal and informal arrangements. This suggests that informality can stabilise cooperation at a minimal level while simultaneously constraining deeper integration, particularly in security domains marked by high sovereignty costs and asymmetric power relations.
The analysis also sheds light on the persistent underperformance of the EU–India strategic partnership in maritime security. The limited overlap in jointly initiated or jointly embedded institutional formats suggests that cooperation challenges stem less from an absence of political will than from mismatched institutional preferences and cost sensitivities. While joint statements repeatedly affirm the shared ‘determination to promote effective multilateralism and a rules-based multilateral order’,Footnote 144 the findings indicate that both partners attach different meanings and expectations to these commitments.Footnote 145 A more nuanced appreciation of each other’s institutional logics may therefore be a prerequisite for more effective cooperation.
Looking ahead, these insights carry practical relevance. President Ursula von der Leyen’s February 2025 visit to New Delhi with the full College of Commissioners and the European Commission’s communication ‘on a New Strategic EU–India Agenda’ of September 2025 signalled a renewed effort to reinvigorate the partnership, with a strong emphasis on security cooperation.Footnote 146 This renewed momentum has since been consolidated at the 2026 EU–India summit, where both sides concluded a Security and Defence PartnershipFootnote 147 alongside finalising negotiations on a free trade agreement. At the same time, India continues to ‘calibrate its Indian Ocean strategy’, as reflected in the evolution from SAGAR to MAHASAGAR and recent parliamentary assessments.Footnote 148 While these developments indicate a strengthening of the strategic partnership, our findings suggest that translating such high-level commitments and ambitions into more operationally meaningful cooperation will depend on how far they accommodate differing institutional preferences. The agreed-upon ‘regular consultations on multilateral affairs’,Footnote 149 which establish a dedicated mechanism that could facilitate coordination in multilateral settings, are likely to be more successful if they acknowledge these differences rather than assuming that increased institutional density or political commitment alone will produce convergence.
More broadly, the paper highlights the importance of analysing institutional choice as a central explanatory factor in maritime security governance. By demonstrating how rational institutional choices can produce fragmentation even in the presence of shared interests and dense interaction, the study contributes to a more differentiated understanding of cooperation dynamics in the WIO and beyond. In an international environment marked by increasing pressure on multilateralism and growing geopolitical uncertainty, appreciating these dynamics may be crucial for sustaining effective and inclusive security governance – both in the WIO and beyond.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful feedback.
Funding statement
No funding was received for this article.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
Ethical standards
This study was conducted in accordance with ethical research guidelines, and approval was obtained from the relevant ethics committee at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg: Ethics Committee of the Institutes for Education, Special Education, Political Science and Sociology of the Faculty of Human Sciences of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (EK_JMU_HF_PSPS_2025_02).
Philipp Gieg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Science and Sociology and the India Competence Centre, University of Würzburg, Germany, and a member of the Merian – Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies (ICAS:MP), New Delhi, India. His research focuses on India’s foreign policy, Africa’s international relations, and norm contestation in global governance. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Würzburg.
Abhishek Mishra is an associate fellow with the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi, India. His research focuses on India and China’s engagement in Africa, including a specific focus on maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region. He completed his PhD in African Studies at the University of Delhi, with a thesis on ‘India’s Maritime Cooperation with African Countries in Western Indian Ocean Region’. He has previously participated in the United States Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program and the Paris Defence Young Leaders programme. Before joining MP-IDSA, Abhishek was working on African issues at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
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