History and Theory of European Integration

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History and Theory of European Integration

• Marina V. Larionova

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Lecture 4

• The Intergovernmentalist challenge to the core
  propositions of neofunctionalism
• Critiques and contemplations of neofunctionalism

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Readings for the lecture

• Hoffman S. Obstinate or Obsolete? The Fate of the
  Nation State and the Case of Western Europe
  (1966). The European Union. Readings on the
  Theory and Practice of European Integration,
  Nelsen B.F. and Alexander C G. Stubb (eds.),
  Palgrave, 1998
• Lindberg L.N. Political Integration Definitions
  and Hypotheses (1963). The European Union.
  Readings on the Theory and Practice of European
  Integration, Nelsen B.F. and Alexander C G.
  Stubb (eds.), Palgrave, 1998
• Rosamond Ben. (2000) Theories of European
  Integration. The European Union Series. Palgrave
  Chapter 4

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Competing or complementary approaches?

• Socio political and academic contexts
• Scientific progress
• Ontological and epistemological foundations
• Methodology
• Scope
• Purpose
• Perspective

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Functions of the Theory

• Explaining (why) and understanding (how)
• focus on reasons and causes
• Describing and analyzing
• focus on the definitions and concepts / create
  the vocabulary
• Criticizing and developing norms and principles

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Area

• Polity Political community and its institutions
• Examples, analyzing and explaining the community
  institutional structure trying to find
  constitutional alternatives
• Policy analyzing critically and reflecting on
  actual measures, policy styles
• Politics processes of policy making

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Neofunctionlism as the theory of integration

• Obstinate or Obsolete?
• The Fate of the Nation State and the Case of
  Western Europe
• (Stanley Hoffmann, 1966)

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Foundations of the theoretical debate between
functionalism and intergovernmentalism

• States are the basic units in the world politics
• Emphasis on the importance of the national
  interests
• Intergovernmentalist approach integration is a
  series of bargains between sovereign states
  pursuing their national interest

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Why has the new Jerusalem been postponed
Intergovernmental paradigm

• Enduring qualities of nationalism and statehood
  advanced arguments about state-centrism in the
  process of integration

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Factors of unification movement failure Argument

• Diversity of any international system determined
  by the natural plurality of domestic imperatives
• diversity of domestic determinants
• geo historical situations
• external aims among its units
• Fragmentation reproduces diversity
• Centrifugal tendencies versus convergency of
  interests

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Counterargument

• Why must it be a diversity of nations,
• not a diversity of regions federations, or
  federating blocks?
• Answer?
• Legitimacy of the self determination principle.
• Newness of many of the nation states and the
  nationalist upsurge accompanying the process.

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But

• Does the self determination principle by itself
  guarantee the nation state survival?
• Does it assure that the nation state must
  everywhere remain the basic form of social
  organization?

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Further arguments

• Two unique features of the present first truly
  global international system
• Axis of the local regional global
• attraction of the regional forces is offset by
  the pull of the other forces both local and
  global.
• The demise of the old methods of agglomeration in
  the new set of conditions governing and
  restricting the use of force
• the use of force along traditional lines for
  conquest and expansion becomes too dangerous in
  the nuclear age
• atrophy of war removes the most pressing
  incentive to unite
• the only method left for unification is the
  national self abdication.

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Factors of unification versus factors of nation
state prevailance

• Experiment failure
• analysis of the functional method
• limitations continued
• The Logic of Diversity versus the Logic of
  Integration

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• Two integration achievements proving the logic of
  diversity wrong?
• European Common Foreign and Security Policy
• Economic and Monetary union
• Justice and Home Affairs

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Crucial factors of the community method
successanalysis of the functional method
limitations continued

• Agreement on the Goals of Integration
• Agreement on the Method of Integration
• Agreement on the Outcomes of Integration

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the Goals of Integration
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the Method of integration
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Gamble on the results of integration

• Net benefits would bring progress towards
  community measured by
• Transfer of more power to the new common agency
• Prevalence of solutions upgrading the common
  interest
• Increasing the flow of communication
• Increasing compatibility of views on external
  issues

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Summing up Hoffmanns generalizations

• The state is still the major political actor
• The success of federalism would be a tribute to
  the durability of the nation state its failure
  so far testifies to the irrelevance of the model
• Europe can not be what some nations have been a
  people that create its state, there is as of now
  no European people and no general will of a
  European people
• Functionalism can integrate economics, but is too
  unstable for the task of political integration

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Summing up Hoffmanns generalizations

• A full political merger vindicates the federal
  model, as the new unit will be a state forging
  people by consent through abdication of the
  previous separate states
• There is no middle ground between cooperation of
  existing nations and the breaking in of a new one
  
• In the present situation the nation state is a
  new wine in an old bottle. There are many ways
  of going beyond the nation state and some modify
  the substance without altering the form or
  creating new forms

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Lessons Limits of the functional method
(intergovernmental view!)

• Sidelining the centrality of the state actors and
  persistence of supranationalist sentiments
• Denying prevalence of traditional
  intergovernmental bargaining methods
• Underestimation of the conflicts over values
  decisions deadlocks
• Ignoring intervening variables in the spill over
  process
• Overestimation of the role of the institutional
  machinery
• Its authority is limited, conditional,
  dependable, reversible
• Its stake controlled by the states
• Denying the low high politics problem
• Failure to acknowledge the importance of external
  factors and global environment
• concentration on the spill over as a dynamic
  internal to the community

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Marxists contemplation of neofunctionalism

• Ernst Mandel (1967) International Capitalism and
  Supra-nationality, in R. Miliband and J.
  Saville (eds), The Socialist register 1967
  (London Merlin)
• Supranationalism a powerful economic and
  political ideology as well as an institutional
  configuration designed to meet the needs of
  capitalism.
• EC the product and the vehicle of capital
  concentration.

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Stuart Holland

• Stuart Holland (1980) UnCommon Market Capital,
  Class and Power in the European community
  (London Macmillan)
• EC The growth of capital interpenetration
  would represent material infrastructure for the
  emergence of supranational state power organs in
  the Common Market and reorganization of state
  power at the supranational level
• Centrality of class polarization
• Relating the role of the elites of a given class
  structure
• Alliance of sections of state and key strata of
  capital

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Peter Cocks

• Peter Cocks (1980) Towards a Marxist Theory of
  European Integration, International Organization
  34 (1)
• Integration considered in the course of
  capitalist development as a process of state
  building where the growth of political
  institutions represents an attempt to impose
  capitalist state functions commensurate with the
  level of development of capitalist relations of
  production.
• Integration facilitates the growth of the
  productive forces.

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Neo functionalists reflections on the first act
of integration studies

• Madison colloquium (1969)
• L.N. Lindberg and S.A. Scheingold (eds), (1971)
  Regional Integration Theory and Research
  (Cambridge, MA Harvard University press)

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Objectives

• Development of a more sophisticated theory and
  methodology
• Acceleration of comparative regional integration
  analysis

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Haass contemplation of neofunctionalist
pretheory as obsolescent

• Limited capacity for the theory transferability
  as its analysis is deeply rooted in the social
  change and decision making processes in the
  pluralistic industrialized societies
• Limitations for generalization on transregional
  basis because of the
• radically distinct dependent variables
• speculative character of the terminal conditions
  of the end state of the integration process,
  hence
• Attempt to theorize on common terminal condition
  would be scientifically mistaken
• Attempt to develop a Multiple dependent variables
  model

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The challenge of conceptualizing the EC as a
complex political system in the global world
order

• Persisting challenge of definition
• Donald Puchala (1972) Of Blind Men, Elephants
  and International Integration, Journal of Common
  Market Studies 10.
• different schools of researchers have exalted
  different parts of the integration elephant.
  They have claimed either that their parts were in
  fact the whole beasts, or that their parts were
  the most important ones, the others being of
  marginal interest.
• No model describes the integration phenomenon
  with complete accuracy because all models present
  images of what integration should be or could be
  rather than here and now.

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Concordance system Explaining Community as a
Network

• A complex entity where nation states remain the
  primary actors, bur where arenas of political
  action are operated at several levels and levels
  of influence vary from one issue area to another
• A forum for positive sum interaction
• Distinctive attitudinal environment of prevailing
  pragmatism
• Bargaining aimed at construction of convergent
  goals
• Actors attention to international
  interdependence
• Mutual sensitivity and responsiveness

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• Lindberg, L.N. and Scheingold, S.A. (1970)
  Europes Would be Polity
• Patterns of Change in the European Community
  (Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall).

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Explaining Community as a Polity

• Objectives (how? Versus traditional
  neofunctionalist why?)
• Explain the change within the EC system / explain
  the system transformation or equilibrium
• Methodology (David Easton systems theory (1965) A
  systems analysis of Political Life)
• Transforming a static system model into a model
  of system change
• Regarding Community as a political system in the
  making
• Differentiating between Community and its
  Environment

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Elements of the model

• Outcomes decisions enhancing or decreasing the
  functional scope and institutional capacity of
  the system a function of
• Five clusters of variables
• External variables inputs
• demands
• systemic supports
• leadership resources, national and supranational
• Features of the system
• Functional scope
• Institutional capacities
• Supranational decisions / decision making
  structures
• Decision rules and norms

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Explaining the reasons for community developments
(Why and how?)

• Haas, E. B. (1976) Turbulent Fields and the
  Study of Regional integration, International
  organization 30 (2)
• Community as a copying strategy in the
  turbulent setting of great social complexity
  (why?)
• Community as a result of a series of
  relationships between objectives, knowledge,
  learning, strategies, bargaining styles and
  institutions interacting in the face of radical
  uncertainty (how?)

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From the notion of turbulence to the concept of
externalization

• External contexts as an integration process
  determinant
• Externalization a situation where regional
  policy making is more and more constrained by the
  extra and inter-regional calculations of the
  actors.
• .. The independent role of these conditions
  should decline as integration proceeds until
  joint negotiations vis-à-vis outsiders has become
  such an integral part of the decisional process
  that the international system accords the new
  unit a full participant status.

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From the concept of externalization to the idea
of interdependence

• The concept of interdependence
• emergence of new actors
• diffuse and interconnected global order
  characterized by multiple actors among which the
  states are important but not alone
• challenge to the realist emphasis on power, force
  and national interest
• interdependence condition in the global world
  order which might produce regional integrative
  response
• condition under which governments and other
  economic actors may have to contemplate some form
  of collaboration without defining its outcome

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• The concept of interdependence a route out
  of n1 conundrum?

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Neo-NeofunctionalismDéjà vu, all over again?

• Philippe C. Schmitter (2003) Neo-
  Neofunctionalism in Antje Wiener and Thomas Diez
  (eds), European Integration Theory.Oxford
  university press.
• The two dimensional matrix of contending theories
  of regional integration
• Ontological dimension
• assumption of reproductive or transformative
  nature of the process
• Epistemological dimension
• evidence based on dramatic political events or
  upon prosaic socio-economic cultural exchanges
• Neo functionalism transformative and rooted in
  observation of gradual, normal, unobtrusive
  exchanges across a wide range of actors

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Multi-Level Governance (MLG)

• an arrangement for making binding decisions that
  engages a multiplicity of politically independent
  but otherwise interdependent actors private and
  public at different level of territorial
  aggregation in more or less continuous
  negotiation/deliberation/implementation, and that
  does not assign exclusive policy competence or
  assert a stable hierarchy of political authority
  to any of these levels.

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Poli-centric Governance (PCG)

• an arrangement for making binding decisions over
  a multiplicity of actors that delegates authority
  over functional tasks to a set of dispersed and
  relatively autonomous agencies that are not
  controlled by a single collective institution.

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More than thirty years laterCritical
afterthoughts

• A self-transforming neo-functionalist model
• The neo-functionalist model constitutes an open
  system of explanation in the sense that
  antecedent conditions are not perfect or even
  exclusive predictors of subsequent one. Error
  values some exogenous, others - random values
  of endogenous variable are present throughout
  the model although according to the hypothesis of
  increasing mutual determination they should
  decline with successful positive resolutions of
  decisional crises.
• The decision cycle notion and changing
  member-states strategies
• Initiating cycle
• Priming cycle
• Transformative cycle

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Transformative cycle

• Increase in the reform mongering role of the
  regional institutions
• Regional institutions attempts at
  externalization
• Domestic Status Effect
• Fragmentation of national actors and emergence of
  a new superimposed wider identity
• Formation of stable transnational coalitions
• Increased activism by Eurocrats / reaction on the
  part of the government decision-makers to the
  erosion of their monopolistic control over
  certain policy areas
• New strategy accommodating the interests of a
  broad transnational coalition as the result of
  the package deals and a new status as a global
  player

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Transformative cycle

• Elite values more focused on regional symbols and
  loyalties, while the national ones do not wither
  away
• Extra regional dependence becomes partly
  endogenous and is no longer determined
  excessively by exogenous factors
• Regional system of political parties emerges
• Democratization of the process
• The end-state A multi-level and Poly-centric
  system of governance / consortio or
  condominio

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To conclude

• understanding and explanation in this field of
  enquiry are best served not by a dominance of a
  single accepted grand model or paradigm, but by
  the simultaneous presence of antithetic and
  conflictive ones which while they may converge
  in certain aspects diverge in so many others.
  If this sort of dialectic of incompleteness,
  unevenness, and partial frustration propels
  integration processes forward, why can not it do
  the same for the scholarship that accompanies
  them.

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• Thank you!