Course Plan
• What is the European Union?
• What is supranationalism?
• How does integration take place?
• What is deepening and widening?
History of the European Union
●
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
(1951)
- union for coal and steel
●
European Economic Community (EEC)
(1957)
- established Customs Union by the Treaty of Rome
●
European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom)
(1957)
- cooperation in nuclear energy by the Treaty of Rome
●
European Community (EC)
(1967)
- ECSC+EEC+Euratom merged together by the Merger Treaty
●
European Union (EU)
- established by the Maastricht Treaty
(1993)
Levels of European integration
• 1. enlargement (January 1974): Denmark, Great Britain, Ireland
• 2. enlargement (January 1981): Greece
• 3. enlargement (January 1986): Portugal, Spain (Iberian
enlargement)
• 4. enlargement (January 1995): Austria, Finland, Sweden (Nordic
enlargement)
• 5. enlargement (May 2004): Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary,
Poland, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Malta (Eastern
enlargement)
• 6. enlargement (January 2007): Bulgaria, Romania
WIDENING=ENLARGEMENT
• Main Requirements
-a functioning democracy
-a market economy which is able to compete
-adoption of the EU Acquis Communautaire
(Copenhagen Criteria)
DEEPENING=INSTITUTIONALIZATION
• Supranationalism
- Creation of the institutions
- making the EU law (treaties)
- Decision-making mechanisms (the
procedures)
THEORIES OF EUROPEAN
INTEGRATION
• Classical Theories:
- Functionalism
- Neo-functionalism
• Contemporary Theories:
- Classical intergovernmentalism
- Liberal intergovernmentalism
Functionalism
• Functionalism :
• a theory of international relations that arose
during the inter-War period (1919-1939)
principally from the strong concern about the role
of the State as a form of social organisation.
Functionalism
• proposed to build a form of authority based in
functions and needs, which linked authority
with needs, scientific knowledge, expertise
and technology, i,e, it provided a
supraterritorial concept of authority.
David Mitrany
• (1888 – 1975), a Romanian born, naturalized British
scholar
• A Working Peace System (1943)
• Father of “classic functionalism”
• represents a theory of interstate cooperation.
• The necessity of common solutions to
comprehensive problems within international
relations is one of the arguments used to explain
cooperation of state actors.
Neofunctionalism
• a reaction against functionalism which was
the name given to the first theoretical attempt
to understand European Integration.
• economics and politics can be kept separate
and thus integration can be transfered to the
areas of low politics
Ernst Haas
• The Uniting of Europe (1958)
• studied the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC).
• neo-functionalism remains the most
comprehensive and sophisticated attempt to
provide a general theory of European
Integration.
Ernst Haas
• political integration is ‘the process whereby
actors in several distinct national settings are
persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations,
and political activities toward a new center,
whose institutions possess or demand
jurisdiction over preexisting national states
Haas
• saw the EEC as spillover from the ECSC.
• ‘the expansive logic of sector of integration’.
• Functional spillover : Since many different
sectors of a modern industrial economy are
higly interdependent, changes in one sector
can be easily spilled over to other sectors.
Haas, 1958
• Liberalization of trade within the Customs
Union would lead to humanization of general
economic policies and eventually spillover
into political areas and lead to creation of
some kind of political community.
• the concept of ‘spillover’ to explain the
motivation of states to cooperate with their
neighbours.
Main important assumption
• the neo-functionalists’ central prediction was
that
“European economic integration would
be self-sustaining i.e. İndependent of the
political problems or national interests.”
Leon Lindberg
• The process of ‘spillover’ refers to situations
when a initial decision by governments to
place a certain sector, such as coal and steel,
under the authority of central institutions
created pressures to extend the authority of
the institutions into neighbouring areas of
policy, such as currency ,exchange rates,
taxation, and wages.
For Neofunctionalists
• European Commission - the most important
non-state international actor: the Commission
was believed to be in a unique position too
manipulate both domestic and international
pressures on national governments to
advance the process of European Integration.
• Commission represented supranationalism
• Political spillover is the ‘the incremental
shifting of expectations, the changing of
values, and the coalescing at the
supranational level of national interest groups
and political parties in response to sectoral
integration.’
• Yet not automatically cumulative integrative
process.
Main Critics of Neo-Functionalism
• Classical intergovernmentalism (Stanley
Hoffman)
• Liberal intergovernmentalism (Andrew
Moravscik)
Intergovernmentalism
• 1960s: the turn of the tide with the “Emptychair crisis”
Stanley Hoffman: “national situations and role
perceptions are still too diverse”.
• Logic of diversity sets limits to logic of
integration
• Members still hang on to sovereignty
Liberal Intergovernmentalism
Andrew Moravscik:
• Intergovernmental institutionalism BUT adds
national preference formation grounded in
liberal theories of international
interdependence.
Liberal Intergov’talism
•
3 essential elements:
1. Assumption of rational state behaviour
2. A liberal theory of national preference
formation
3. An intergovernmentalist analysis of
interstate negotiation
National preference formation
•
Fundamental influences on foreign policy:
1. Identity of important societal groups
2. Nature of their interests
3. Their relative influence on societal groups
Difference between classical and
liberal intergovernmentalism
According to Moravscik,
• the state is not a black box.
• State-society relations are important
(governments respond to shifting pressures
from domestic social groups)
• İnterstate bargaining is important
Moravscik
• Neo-functionalism
- Domestic technocratic
consensus
- Opportunities and
common interest
- Active role of
supranational officials
in shaping bargaining
outcomes
• Liberal
Intergovernmentalism
- Domestic coalitional
struggles
- Role of relative power
- Passive institutions and
autonomy of national
leaders.