Update May 5, 2020
Learning objectives:
Review the major theories about European Integration
Looking backward and looking forward, the future of the European Integration
Reading material:
Theories of European Integration
Since the start of the integration process in Europe in the early 1950s a number of theories of integration have been applied to study the process. Explanations --- and predictions --- require concepts to organize our knowledge. Theories provide us with such concepts and notions of their relations. Good theory not only helps us understand the world we live in, but also to have certain ideas about likely futures. The future is obviously uncertain; yet we need to think about it. Scientific inquiry is about developing better and better theories that will improve our explanations and predictions. Thinking about the past and the future is a question of using theories to see the fit between the predictions that follow from the theory and the reality we observe. Beyond trying to explain and predict it can be argued that scientific inquiry cannot escape the question of desirable futures. We can therefore add prescription to explanation and prediction as a part of scientific inquiry. Yet, many political scientists prefer to limit their inquiry to explanation or understanding. Prediction is difficult and prescription requires you to deal with values. Many prefer to leave the latter to politicians. In reality the separation is not so easy.
1. Introducing the Mosaic of Integration Theory
European integration has the particularity that the theory about it appeared before its own appearance. In fact, federalism as an idea of European integration appeared already during the Second World War and European integration itself started in 1951. Of course, federalism was more a philosophical and normative trend than a real theory explaining the existing integration. But this shows that since its very beginning European integration was thought and conceptualised. New theories emerged with the development of the continental cooperation itself.
First theories were more focused on the phenomenon of integration itself than on forms of integration. They tried to analyse and to explain the fact that a supranational level of decision-making appeared and the evolution of this. They didn’t pay much attention to the processes of policy-making. This includes mainly intergovernmentalism and neo-functionalism. Therefore, these theories are called integration theories.
However, with the increasing development of integration, the EU became responsible of more and more policy areas. It is why new theories, focused more on policy-making per se（本质上）, emerged in the last decades. These theories can complete themselves in some extent, but sometimes, they are totally antagonistic（对抗的）. It is not possible to affirm the validity of all of them as they claim sometimes totally opposite things.
So, which ones of these theories are more accurate? Can’t we say that they describe different phenomena and that no one gives a full picture of what the EU is? We will try to limit ourselves to the main existing theories. Federalism will be excluded, as it is more a normative than a descriptive theory. We will first analyse integration theory with neo-functionalism followed by intergovernmentalism. We will then see theories describing decision-making per se: neo-institutionalism, multi-level governance and social constructivism.
2. Neo-functionalism
Neo-functionalism is the first analysed theory because it emerged before intergovernmentalism. It can be said that it is an extension of federalism to some extent. It is based on the Federalist Monnet’s idea of step by step policy. This idea is called “spillover” in the neo-functionalist framework. Haas was the first to conceptualise it in “The Uniting of Europe”. He explains that cooperation in one policy area will create pressures to extend it to other ones. He quotes the example of coal and steel (the European Community’s cooperation concerned first these sectors) saying that the existence of an authority of common institutions on these sectors creates pressure to extend it to taxation, wages, and exchange rates. He says that all these policy areas are related and that if we want to have a coherent common policy on coal and steel, we should also have some common rules about taxation, wages and exchange rates.
This specific kind of spillover is called “functional spillover”. However, Haas also identifies political spillover. In this kind of mechanism, extension of the authority of the European Community is not a logical result of an already existing cooperation, but a consequence of political will of the member states. This includes “package-deals”. States don’t necessarily agree with all the points of these deals, but they accept it because they see benefits in other points of these deals and because they support each other.
According to neo-functionalists, the European Commission can be seen as a political entrepreneur, which tries to push states to accept further integration. The European Court of Justice and the European Parliament are its allies. States often try to keep sovereignty, but they don’t resist to the pressures.
Neo-functionalism assumes that there is elite socialization. People working for the supranational polity show “European” loyalty. They are for more and more cooperation and try to convince national elites to accept a loss of sovereignty on the benefit of European integration. Another assumption of this theory states that there are strong supranational interest groups. These groups have different problems and preferences, but they perceive European cooperation as a means to achieve it. They quote here the example of UNICE, the European union of employers, which emerged in 1959, just after the creation of the Community.
Generally, neo-functionalism is seen as the theory which better explained the 1958-63 period, but has lost its relevance with the empty chair crisis. This crisis showed that European integration is not a uniform process which consists on always more and more cooperation. Haas himself confessed that neo-functionalism assumptions were wrong and that there are not only spillovers but also spillbacks. He acknowledges that “what once appeared to be a distinctive supranational style now looks more like a huge regional bureaucratic appendage to an intergovernmental conference in permanent session” . Moreover, neo-functionalism doesn’t give enough weight to states (their importance could be particularly seen in the 70s, as the COREPER had a huge importance in decision-making). Neo-functionalism is also seen as too elitist and overdeterministic.
3. Intergovernmentalism
The empty chair crisis was a turning point in European integration theory. Not only it was synonym of decline of neo-functionalism, but it also led to the emergence of intergovernmentalism. Stanley Hoffman used the opportunity which appeared with this crisis to build a new European integration theory based on the realist international relations theory. Its main point is that integration depends mainly on bargaining. States negotiate with each other and the result of bargaining depends on the power of the states. This determines the policy outcomes. Moravcsik explains that historic agreements (mainly treaties) are not driven by a supranational entrepreneur like the Commission but by the powerful states such as Germany and France. He acknowledges a gradual process of preferences convergence, but he says that European integration is not at the origin of that, he denies the idea of elites socialization. National preferences formation is shaped by domestic and not European pressures. He recognizes that there are other actors than states, but they don’t play an important role.
Integovernmentalist arguments are not very convincing. First, Moravcsik is too selective on the evidence he analyses. “Historic” agreements are not representative of the whole European integration and decision-making process. Moreover, these agreements are very often the result of an already de facto existing situation and of the pressures of numerous public and private European-wide actors. Second, intergovernmentalism is based on formal stage and as we will see later informal rules are also very important. Third, it sees international politics as a rational process in which preferences of states and the result of a bargaining can be calculated. This assumption is wrong because states don’t have a flexible position and listen to others’ arguments. Fourth, intergovernmentalists underestimate totally the importance of supranational institutions.
The EU integration is complex, constantly changing and can be viewed from different angles. Therefore, the idea of building a “grand theory” explaining all the European integration processes within a same framework which was the aim of intergovernmetalism and neofunctionalism is unrealistic. Intergovernmentalist assumptions seem to be totally wrong. Neo-functionalism was disapproved by reality between the mid 60s and the mid 80s, but it reemerged under a renewed, softer form in the 90s in the works of Mikkelsen thanks to the creation of the single market and the EMU.
4. Neo-Institutional Theory
Policy-making per se theories should better explain how to analyse the decision-making process because their very raison d’etre is to do that, which is not the case for the integration theories. However, we will see that they also have many lacks.
The neo-institutional theory tries to use a reasoning characterized by more subtlety. It focuses on the importance of rules, including also informal rules. Neo-institutionalists argue that institutions matter, but that they influence only incentives and not the preferences and identities themselves. They try to find a balance between national and supranational forces. They claim that there are distinct cultures among these institutions.
The rational choice neo-institutionalist theory says that human beings behave rationally. Institutions don’t change the preference function, but have an influence on the way, in which actors try to achieve their goals. In the contrary to other institutionalisms, rational choice theory focuses on formal rules. It wants to build an EU policy-making explanation in a systematic way. Rational choice theory has been very criticised. It is said that it has unrealistic assumptions and that it is not related with the complex interactions which occurs in realty. Moreover, it is supposed to be more rigorous, but there is no evidence confirming that.
Historical institutionalism studies long term effects of institutions. Its assumption is that states didn’t foresee the impact of the institutions and that they will lose control over that. It is a totally opposite assumption to this formulated by intergovernmentalism, which claims that states remain the main actors. According to historical institutionalists member states governments have constrained their own behaviour through supranational institutions. Evidence confirms this thesis: member states very often protest against European Commission and European Court of Justice decisions. Sometimes, it is a very strong opposition and member states would obviously not give such power to supranational institutions in the conflicting area if they would know that they would be sanctioned because of that.
5. The Multi-level Governance Approach
The multi-level governance approach makes the assumption that there is a loss of control of member states. There is an interdependence of the governments operating at different territorial levels. Previously, states were dominant actors, but with recent changes such as globalisation new actors emerged. In the European Union, as well in the public as in the private sector, three levels can be distinguished: the regional one, the national one, and the continental one. Informal “public communities” to which both public and private actors belong emerged in the recent decades. Different networks appeared. The interdependence and the openness of all these networks determine the content of policies and the influence of different actors. No distinction between EU policy areas and national ones can be made. Nowadays, the EU and national states have shared authority in almost all the fields and are influenced by the regional level.
Generally, the multi-level governance theory makes a few fair points. It represents an interesting attempt to define the complexity of the EU. However, it is more an organizing metaphor than a real theory. It stresses correctly that there are several decision centres, but it is unclear about how they work precisely and how to identify them.
6. Constructivism
The constructivists’ main assumption is that human beings don’t exist independently from their environment. Actor preferences are endogenous（内生的）to institutions. They have socially built (“constructed”, hence “constructivism”) roles and institutional rules. According to this approach, European Union institutions influence as well the actors’ behaviour as their preferences and identities. Integration is seen as a process in this theory. As we have seen, intergovernmentalists study bargaining. Constructivists, on the contrary, analyse the process leading from bargaining to a polity. The main research topic of this theory is “the origin and reconstruction of identities, the impact of rules and norms, the role of language and political discourse.” They make an attempt of sequencing EU decision-making in order to explain a particular step.
Moravcsik criticizes constructivism because it fails to construct distinct falsifiable hypotheses. The constructivists reply that this is not necessary because European Studies are not a science. We rather agree with this idea that European integration can not be conceptualised as a science. You will never have a general rule that will be confirmed each time. This is precisely what Moravcsik tries to do within the framework of intergovernmentalism and it is why he is wrong. However, empirical evidence shows that EU-level socialization plays a very limited role and this weakens strongly the constructivist argumentation.
7. Conclusion
In 1972, Puchala compared scholars dealing with EU policy making to blind men trying to describe an elephant touching it. Each of them spoke about a very different animal. Different schools of thought in European integration also describe a very different entity, because they are focused on different aspects of cooperation and criticize each other as if they would not see other aspects. Intergovernmentalism is focused on “historic” decisions and bargaining. Neo-functionalism mainly deals with the spillover effect and sees it as a continuum. Rational choice neo-institutionalism is interested in changing relative power of institutions. Historical neo-institutionalism looks at the long term effects of institutions. The multiple-level governance speaks about the multitude of decision centres. Social constructivism is an analysis of socially constructed roles and institutional rules.
Moreover, all the theories are not totally convincing. Intergovernmentalism is attached to international relations realist theory and doesn’t want to acknowledge the importance of non-state actors. Rational choice theory is too theoretic and is not proved in practice. Neo-functionalism shows partly the reality and explains well the progression of European integration, but it didn’t foresee crises such as the rejection of the Fouchet plans or the failed referenda about European Constitution in France and the Netherlands. The multi-level governance explains well the new reality, but it doesn’t explain completely EU policy-making and is not precise enough. Historical neo-institutionalism is a good explanation of long term changes, but it doesn’t speak at all about everyday’s policy-making. Therefore, we can’t really speak about one theory which best explains EU policy-making. And this is maybe not bad news, because it shows that the EU is a living body which changes all the time and adapts to the present world.
