ABSTRACT
This contribution analyses the EU’s fight against international terrorism from the perspective of public goods theory. The first part develops an improved conceptualisation of collective action problems in this issue area, and presents a typology of related security goods according to different aggregation technologies (weaker links, summation, better shots). The second part embeds this theoretical framework in the European context, and presents an empirical survey of the EU’s anti-terrorism efforts. It is argued that the EU has been comparatively effective in responding to ‘weaker’ link vulnerabilities, even if implementation records are uneven and boundaries of security cooperation remain unclear. In contrast, the EU could not effectively aggregate resources and act jointly in the international fight against terrorism. Due to the non-excludable nature of benefits (as in the case of foreign policy) or partial rivalry of consumption (as in the case of sensitive information), concerns with free-riding and crowding remain significant obstacles to collective action. Finally, the EU increasingly supports better shot efforts to develop new instruments and technologies to combat terrorism, but may be left behind by mini-lateral initiatives of its most capable member states.
