"This is an immensely ambitious book. Rejecting as inadequate and unconvincing realist, liberal-intergovernmentalist and constructivist approaches to ESDP, Weiss embraces political economy to argue that European states embarked on cooperation as a conscious exercise in reducing current and future transaction costs in the provision of collective security. Exhaustively researched and densely informed with social science theory, the book will be fiercely debated by scholars of both international relations and European integration." - Jolyon Howorth, Visiting Professor of Political Science at Yale, USA and Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics ad personam and Emeritus Professor of European Studies at the University of Bath, UK "One of the few theory-guided studies on EU defense cooperation and a major contribution to the literature essential reading for students of European and international defense cooperation." - Markus Jachtenfuchs, Professor of European and Global Governance, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany "In this innovative study, Moritz Weiss applies the tools of transaction cost economics to the analysis of the changing security preferences of the most powerful European states in the decade following the end of the Cold War. The approach not only provides a compelling explanation for the overall emergence and design of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) but also the particular form of military cooperation that ensued." - James Davis, Professor of International Relations and Director of the Institute for Political Science, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland "Combining theoretical rigor with empirical depth Transaction Costs and Security Institutions is a must for anyone interested in the complex history of the European Defence and Security Policy (ESDP)." - Bernhard Zangl, Professor of Global Governance and Public Policy, Ludwig-Maximilans-University (LMU) Munich and Speaker of the Munich Center on Governance, Communication, Public Policy and Law (MCG), Germany