Published in Global Society, as part of a Special Issue on “Theorising the European Union as an International Security Provider: Actors, Processes, Outcomes and Impact”, this article is the special issue’s introduction, co-authored with Annemarie Peen Rodt and Richard G. Whitman.

We draw some of the diverse strands of scholarship on the EU together to develop a more comprehensive approach to the analysis of the EU’s increasingly complex role as an international security provider. This then serves as the foundation for developing a mid-range theory of the EU as an international security provider, which can account for both outcomes of the EU internal policy-making processes and their effectiveness in providing security.