The study of European Union foreign policy has become a developed field of inquiry over the last decade. It is an area in which there is now considerable contestation regarding the most appropriate analytical frameworks through which to capture the attempts by the 27 member states to forge a collective foreign policy for the EU. In the volumes by Seth G. Jones and Akan Malici we have two very different approaches to the analysis of whether European states have forged a common foreign and security policy (CFSP) through the EU. Jones seeks explanation for the drive to a CFSP and a European security and defense policy (ESDP) in a response to the structural changes to the international system with the end of the Cold War. Malici seeks understanding through the analysis of the political leadership of European countries. Each author also sets himself a different research puzzle: For Jones, it is explaining a process of convergence of security cooperation by European states; for Malici, the focus is on the French, British, and German political leadership and whether the mental models of these key decision makers have converged or diverged as indicated by responses to key foreign policy challenges.

Malici's study is the more original of the two in that the mapping of the mental universe of foreign policy leadership in Europe has been a relatively neglected area of study. The argument is that successes and failures of European foreign and security policy are to be understood by examining the cognitions and preferences of the leaders of these countries. Malici's analysis takes this form because the CFSP is viewed as resting on “more or less voluntary national decisions and contributions” (p. 5 [emphasis in original]). His central hypothesis is that if there is a shared compatibility across national mental models, it would then result in the greater attainability of collective goals through the CFSP. This is primarily because the CFSP itself is to be understood as an intergovernmental international institution—to be conceptualized, for Malici, as a “shared mental model.”

The Search for a Common European Foreign and Security Policy is as much a work of comparative foreign policy analysis as a study of the CFSP. This duality does represent something of a weakness because Malici does not demonstrate a forensic knowledge of the key actors, processes, and institutions of the EU's foreign policymaking machinery. Rather, there is much greater attention to the method that underpins the volume (which is the use of the verbs in context system) and the mapping of the mental models of the French president, British prime minister, and German chancellor and their respective foreign ministers.

The empirical work in Malici's book consists of three chapters, each focused on a “security episode”: the Kosovo War (1998–99); the Afghanistan War (2001–2), and the Iraq War (2003). For each case study, the same question is asked: Did the mental models of the key decision makers converge or diverge across countries in each of these episodes? Malici's case studies conclude that the leaders across the “big three” European countries did not share mental models on the Kosovo War: that there was convergence between France and Germany on the Iraq War, but with both these countries diverging from the UK; and that on Afghanistan, there was a shared mental model but with only a small deviation on the part of the German leadership. These findings do not differ greatly from conventional views of these countries' positions, which do not rely upon mental mapping for explanation. What each case study demonstrates very clearly is that mental models do not remain static but, rather, are subject to modification across time and events.

Most students of the CFSP/ESDP will be puzzled both by Malici's choice of cases and the actors that are the focus of his mental mapping. None of the three cases (with the exception of Kosovo and to a less extent Afghanistan, and for both only outside the time period examined in the volume) is an episode in which there is a particularly developed corpus of EU policy under the CFSP/ESDP. The choice of cases thus seems a precarious basis upon which to test the degree of shared cognition by European leaders, especially since none constitutes what most commentators would view as a foreign policy “success” for the EU. In the same way, the book does not allow for the counterpossibility that there could be successful European security episodes even with the existence of cognitive divergence among European leaders.

The actors examined by Malici for the purposes of mental mapping might also not appear to be the most appropriate for examining the degree of convergence/divergence over time. Rather, the members of the Political and Security Committee (PSC) and its working groups who are responsible for the day-to-day deliberation on the CFSP/ESDP would be better subjects of inquiry if the intention is to elucidate the nuances of the shared mental model across EU member states.

In The Rise of European Security Cooperation, Jones sets himself a different task—to develop a theory to explain what he sees as a significant increase in European security cooperation since the end of the Cold War. For Jones, this increase in cooperation has largely occurred because of the demise of the bipolar Cold War, which altered the structure of the international and regional systems within which European security operates. He rejects competing explanations: that an increase in cooperation is driven by European domestic politics, by a commonly shared set of interests by European states, or by a developing collective identity. He unequivocally asserts that structural factors inhibited European security cooperation during the Cold War and that structural change in the post–Cold War has generated a new approach. “At home,” Europeans have reacted to a new structure by increasing security cooperation to preserve peace in their neighborhood. At the same time, European states have increasingly cooperated to increase their ability to project power beyond Europe and to reduce their reliance upon the United States.

Jones finds substantial empirical evidence to support his thesis in four areas (each examined in its own chapter): security institutions, economic sanctions, weapons production, and military forces. These four are chosen because they represent a cross-section of the tools that states possess in the security domain.

Jones's notion of security institutions is rather ill-defined, and he thus conflates the European Defense Community, the Fouchet Plan, European Political Cooperation, and the creation of the CFSP pillar within the Maastricht Treaty. A more serious problem with his structural account is that it does not convincingly explain structural change. The discussion of the development of the ESDP from the late 1990s is particularly unsatisfactory. The British about-face on European defense (primarily due to Tony Blair's response to events in Kosovo and British nonparticipation in the process of monetary union) was the key driver of the birth of the ESDP. Yet an emphasis on this policy decision would seem to underscore the importance of agency rather than structure. And since Jones is wedded to a structural perspective, he largely ignores such developments.

A similar problem can be discerned in the discussion of arms production. Jones's analysis here is focused on the volume of collaboration, rather than on its complexity or value. He asserts that the increasing proportion of European arms production since the end of the Cold War has been stimulated by the demise of the bipolar structure. However, the data can also be read to suggest a different motivation for such activity, which is that European defense companies have responded to shrinking markets at home and competition from U.S. companies by seeking the consolidation and merger of similarly afflicted companies.

Jones and Malici have presented two very different studies of the development of foreign, security and defense policy by the member states of the European Union. Jones's volume has the edge in terms of the clarity with which its central thesis is maintained. And it conveys a strong sense of mastery over the topic of the CFSP/ESDP. Malici's book is a more challenging read, and has more of the feel of a piece of foreign policy analysis than a theoretical examination of the EU's CFSP (as opposed to the foreign policies of its member states). Yet in spite of their epistemological, methodological, and stylistic differences, both books contribute to the understanding of European foreign policy, and scholars working in this area will profit from reading them.