ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses various theoretical and conceptual strands to look at the European cross-border cooperation of intelligence and security actors. The chapter addresses the reality of international and hybrid intelligence cooperation by looking at it as intelligence assemblages, a concept that has also been used to study public-private security cooperation at the national and international level, and surveillance practices. The nodal governance of security is consisting of a plurality of decision centres in which no clear hierarchy between centres exists. The reflections on the unpredictability of change and the essential non-functionalist character of assemblages offer a link to a final concept useful for analysing international intelligence and security cooperation: the logic of practicality. The dominance in modern science of quantitative research, statistical causality, model building, generalization and abstract theorizing ensures that a turn towards practice not be without controversy.
