ABSTRACT
Europeanization is a multileveled and multi-paced political phenomenon. The contrast between the negotiation of the ESDP, which was conducted exclusively between governments, and the Europeanization of the arms trade, which is talking place almost exclusively outside the control of governments, is marked. The institutional actors involved in Europeanization are national governments and their departments, the central institutions of the European Union, and sectional interest groups such as manufacturers, universities, think-tanks, the armed forces and lobbyists. Liberal intergovernmentalist approaches to Europeanization argue that that domestic policy is created through the rational aggregation, by government, of domestic interest group preferences. Liberal intergovernmentalist approaches provide a useful way to analyse Europeanization it is important to explore the domestic and European dimensions within Europeanization, which actors and institutions are involved and the behaviours they adopt. An important function of ESDP is that it serves as a way of avoiding having to create new agreements between governments for each new piece of defence policy collaboration.
