In their article, “Institutional choice and the limits of security governance: EU–India maritime cooperation in the Western Indian Ocean”, published in the European Journal of International Security in 2026, Philipp Gieg (postdoctoral researcher at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) and Abhishek Mishra (associate fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi) examine why sustained EU–India engagement in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) has not produced deeper cooperation in maritime security. They focus on the institutional forms through which the two actors cooperate and argue that differences in institutional preferences, sovereignty concerns, and calculations of cost and benefit help explain why their engagement has remained fragmented.

The article starts from a puzzle. India and the EU operate in the same maritime space, face many of the same security challenges, and regularly endorse multilateralism and a rules-based maritime order. Yet this has not led to much greater institutional integration. By “falling short”, the authors mean “the limited depth of institutional integration, coordination, and joint initiative-taking in multilateral maritime security formats”, rather than an absence of political dialogue. They argue that much of the existing literature misses this problem by reducing cooperation to a simple bilateral–multilateral distinction. Their approach instead looks at the different institutional forms available to states.

Gieg and Mishra use institutional choice theory to examine four types of arrangements: formal intergovernmental organisations (FIGOs), informal intergovernmental organisations (IIGOs), trans-governmental networks (TGNs), and ad hoc coalitions (AHCs). The distinction matters because each carries different costs and benefits in terms of flexibility, legitimacy, control, transaction costs, and sovereignty. As the authors put it, “institutional form is not merely a by-product but also constitutes a strategic choice that shapes cooperation outcomes”. They combine this framework with interviews with EU and Indian practitioners and analysis of policy documents, official statements, datasets, and other secondary material.

For the EU, formal institutions remain the preferred starting point. Its maritime security engagement in the WIO is closely tied to the UN, African regional organisations, the Indian Ocean Commission, and programmes such as the Maritime Security Programme (MASE) and Safe Seas Africa. These arrangements fit the EU’s emphasis on legal authority, legitimacy, and established rules. But the authors also find that formal organisations can be cumbersome. High transaction costs, limited flexibility, and reduced visibility have encouraged the EU to work through looser arrangements as well. Critical Maritime Routes Indian Ocean (CRIMARIO) and its Indian Ocean Regional Information Sharing (IORIS) platform are examples of this approach, as are Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE), the Contact Group on Illicit Maritime Activities in the WIO, and other informal mechanisms. The EU is therefore not abandoning formal multilateralism. It adds informal arrangements where they offer practical advantages.

India’s pattern is different. Although New Delhi continues to work through the UN and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), its engagement with African formal organisations in the WIO is relatively limited. It has instead played a much larger role in creating and participating in informal arrangements, including the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, the Colombo Security Conclave, and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative. The authors note that India has “(co-)initiated no fewer than seven IIGOs” and three trans-governmental networks. These formats give India greater scope to shape agendas and participation while keeping sovereignty costs low. Initiatives such as the Africa–India Key Maritime Engagement (AIKEYME) and Indian Ocean Ship SAGAR (IOS SAGAR) show the same preference for flexible, task-specific cooperation. The authors link this pattern to India’s efforts to project itself as a regional security provider while retaining strategic autonomy.

The comparison complicates the usual contrast between an EU preference for formal institutions and an Indian preference for informal ones. Both actors actually work across the formal–informal spectrum. The difference lies in how they use those arrangements. The EU tends to treat informality as a complement to a largely formal, legitimacy-oriented approach, while India relies more heavily on informal formats for flexibility, agenda-setting, and sovereignty preservation. This becomes especially clear in the limited effort to connect the EU-supported IORIS with India’s Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), despite their similar functions. According to the authors, concerns about “control, visibility, and data ownership” have restricted closer cooperation.

The authors describe the resulting pattern as “functional coexistence without institutional consolidation”. Informal institutions have multiplied, but they have not necessarily brought the EU and India closer together. Instead, the WIO has developed what the authors, quoting Christian Bueger, describe as a “patchwork of overlapping and sometimes competing projects”. They argue that this helps explain the limits of EU–India maritime cooperation even where the two sides have shared interests and regular interaction. Their conclusion is not that formal institutions are giving way to informal ones. Rather, both forms continue to coexist, while different institutional preferences can reproduce fragmentation. The authors suggest that future EU–India cooperation will depend partly on recognising these differences, especially as the two sides pursue the 2026 Security and Defence Partnership.