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Journal of International Relations and Development
The State of the Art: Mapping the Theoretical Landscape of European Integration
By Anthony Forster
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Introduction
Theoretical debate concerning the integration process and the development of the European Union (EU) has rarely been as intense or interesting as it is today. In part, this is a reflection of the increased pace of developments in the EU. The trilogy of intergovernmental conferences leading to the Single European Act (SEA), Maastricht Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Amsterdam Treaty, have been important formal and very visible milestones in the transformation of the European Community (EC) into the EU. They have also been instrumental in stimulating academic and public interest in European integration. The breadth of issues which are now dealt with at the EU level—ranging from agricultural and commercial issues, through policing and terrorism to foreign and security policy and now a single currency—distinguish the EU from most other international organisations. The amount of decision-making which now takes place at the EU level has also significantly increased and by the middle of this decade had been estimated to be up sixty percent of what used to be handled at the national level (Richardson 1996:3). Add to this the enlargement of the Union from twelve to fifteen and the promise to expand further east and south, and it is not surprising that theoretical and empirical interest in the EU is so intense.
This article examines the extent to which theoretical approaches have kept pace with this upturn in events. It suggests that theory is striving with the difficulty of explaining the complexity and specific nature of the European integration process and policy-making within it. Notwithstanding the magnitude of this challenge, the intensity of the debate between competing theories has significantly advanced our understanding of the EU, through greater methodological rigour and the emergence of a theoretically rooted comparative politics approach to EU policy-making. However, this has often been at the cost of fragmenting analysis of the EU into the study of its institutional development and the study of EU policy-making.
The article is divided into three sections. The first section briefly traces the links between neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist debates and the renewed interest in theory building in the 1980s. This section suggests that these approaches have provided the touchstone of much of the theoretical thinking on European integration in the 1980s and set the foundations for more rigorous theoretical contributions. The second section examines the threefold challenge to the neo-functionalists and intergovernmentalist debate, and sets out some of the important issues, which the classical approaches have overlooked. The article concludes by arguing that the future theoretical research agenda faces a challenge to combine and reconnect theoretical explanations of European integration.
The Classical Debate: Neo-Functionalism v. Intergovernmentalism
While there have been a plethora of theoretical offerings, neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist approaches to the study of European integration have dominated theoretical debate about the EU for over forty years. The central concern of this group of mainly International Relations (IR) theorists, was the nature of the process of European integration (Friis 1997a:359). The difference between the two camps were many, but centred around three core differences: the first concerned the actors involved in the process—whether supranational actors such as the European Commission were central, or alternatively, whether governments were the dominant participants in the process. Second, there was a concern with the process of European integration. In particular, did integration take place as the result of intended or unintended consequences—did integration take place as a result of functional, cultivated and political spill-over, or did governments carefully control the delegation of authority and autonomy? (Tranholm-Mikkelson 1991:1; Hoffmann 1966:864). Third, there was a concern with the ultimate objective of European integration—whether it was to create a new political community beyond the nation-state (Haas 1958:16), or alternatively a necessary process to strengthen the nation-state (Hoffmann 1966:882). Behind these three differences lay the question of the extent to which the EU is a unique international organisation. For the majority of neo-functionalists, the EU is a sui generis phenomenon, the product of particular economic, geographic and socio-cultural factors but, for the intergovernmentalists, the EU is a regional grouping which could be explained by more general theories of interdependence.
Neo-Functionalist Revivalists
The intensity and quality of the neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist debate has left a rich legacy in all subsequent debates and been a touchstone for many scholars in the 1980s. A wide range of scholars has attempted to reformulate and renovate the classical theories of European integration in an attempt to better explain and understand the process of European integration. For some scholars their purpose has been to rediscover the value of neo-functionalism which in their view “had been unfairly confined to the dustbin of history” (Pryce 1989:2). From a theoretical perspective, Niemann (1998) has been the most explicit in his endeavour to resuscitate the whole corpus of neo-functional theory, while Tranholm-Mikkelson (1991) has attempted to reformulate and refine particular concepts.
However, most scholars accept the widely held view that neo-functionalism has little predictive value and remains hampered by the fact that even its founding authors recognised it as a pre-theory which was also subordinate to the general study of interdependence (Haas 1976). The majority of scholars working within this tradition have therefore been less ambitious in their objectives, borrowing key neo-functionalist concepts in their work, but acknowledging that the overall theoretical approach suffers from important weaknesses. Sandholtz and Zysman (1989:95; Sandholtz 1993) have emphasised the utility of spill-over in explaining the SEA, research and technology and the creation of a single currency. Likewise, Pierson (1996:158) has argued that spill-over also has relevance for important developments in social policy. However, these scholars have not accepted the whole corpus of neo-functionalist theory, differing particularly over the idea that loyalties, activities and expectations, will transfer from the nation-state to a supranational institution (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1998:6). They have however accepted that integration is the process by which the EU gradually replaces the nation-states and the development of supranational governance.
Supranationalist
A particular group of scholars focuses on the role of non-governmental supranational actors especially the policy entrepreneurship of the European Commission. For Ross (1995) this role was driven by an activist political culture within this institution. Majone (1993) suggested this occurs because supranational institutions facilitate a common integrative approach through persuasion and discourse. Sandholtz (1992) went further than this in arguing that a policy entrepreneurship role is a necessity for integration to take place, while Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch (1996) suggested the inherently technical nature of EU business facilitates closed decision-making, with an enhanced role for central non-governmental institutions. Recent analysis has moved away from the Commission to focus on the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and Burley and Mattli (1993) have advanced the argument that the ECJ—rather than the European Commission—better encapsulates key neo-functionalist arguments. Another group of scholars focuses on the role of ideas in shaping the integration process. Some scholars advance the argument that epistemic communities—experts who define problems and identify solutions—are the key actors in promoting integrative solutions (Haas 1992). Others suggest advocacy coalitions of scientific experts try and convince politicians and officials of their arguments (Sabatier 1993:27). At an empirical level, there has also been a wide range of contributions tackling the problem from a bottom-up perspective, arguing that the key supranationalist concepts such as spill-over, and bargaining techniques such as issue-linkage, side-payments and log-rolling are undervalued in the literature, though their interest has stopped short of generating theory, defining concepts and offering testable hypotheses (H. Wallace 1985; 1990; Budden 1994; Forster 1999).
Intergovernmental Revivalists
Some scholars embarked on a theoretical endeavour to overhaul and reinvigorate intergovernmentalist approaches, to better account for empirical reality and to meet the challenge of the re-emergence of various aspects of neo-functionalism. At one and the same time this task was both easier and more ambitious. This neo-intergovernmentalist school lacked the coherence and similarity of ideological beliefs of the neo-functionalists and they shared no common methodology. The school was loosely based on premises concerning the centrality of nation-states in the international system, the dominant role governments played in the bargaining process and the importance of national interests in explaining and understanding European integration (Hoffmann 1966). Friis (1997a:361) argues the problem of the early intergovernmentalists was threefold: a difficulty in understanding the policy preferences of governments without a clearly specified idea of the national interest; no conceptualisation of how the process of integration affects the nation-state; and no understanding of why governments pursue integration, rather than simply reacting to it. For some, notably Hoffmann, a leading exponent of intergovernmentalism and scourge of neo-functionalism, it was easier to overcome these weaknesses by advocating the need for a synthesis of both neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist approaches. To this end, Hoffmann argued that both theories had something to offer at different moments of the integration process (Keohane and Hoffmann 1990; 1991; O’Neill 1996). For Keohane and Hoffmann, a form of intergovernmental theory best explained intergovernmentalist bargains, while a correct reading of neo-functionalism better explained spill-over which took place between bargains, though for Keohane and Hoffmann in the final analysis “... the expansion of Community tasks depends ultimately on the bargains between major governments” (Keohane and Hoffmann 1990:277).
Neo-intergovernmentalists
Other scholars in the intergovernmental school refused to accept the fuzzy thinking behind this argument, pointing to fundamental questions concerning where and when neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist theory should be employed, and more importantly highlighted the contradictory foundations upon which each theory was built. Breaking with Hoffmann, a number of other scholars took a more militant line, unwilling to overlook the fundamental differences between the two approaches. In an influential historically informed approach to European integration, Milward and his research team (1993:437) addressed some of the weaknesses of classical intergovernmentalism. Milward based his arguments on the central neo-realist claim that governments undertook integration to serve their own economic interests. In this context, European institution building in the 1950s offered “a European rescue of the nation-state” as governments struggled to construct expensive welfare state systems and at the same time satisfy the rising expectations of their citizens. McKay updated this argument to suggest that the Maastricht European bargain could be understood in similar terms. Governments ceded control of key state functions because they believed the benefits outweighed the costs. In the case of TEU, “the striking of the federal bargain involved the sacrifice of control over monetary policy in exchange for a guarantee of price stability” (McKay 1996:172). Other intergovernmentalists highlighted the limited convergence of national interests, thus providing a theoretical explanation of differential integration. This developed Hoffmann’s earlier idea that the “logic of diversity” would set limits to the “logic of integration” offered by the neo-functionalists (Hoffmann 1966:882). In a slightly different vein, Scharpf (1988) argued that the nature of the EU would lead to a “joint-decision trap” which would provide a ceiling on the integration process, while Taylor (1996) suggested that further integration did not threaten the nation-state since the conditions of sovereignty were continually changing in the modern world.
Liberal Intergovernmentalism
While Milward provided a partial advance on classical intergovernmentalism, true to his historical method he did not generate testable hypotheses with predictive aspirations, but instead preferred to generalise on the basis of observations of the historical record of the 1950s. By contrast, Moravcsik (1991; 1993:473; 1998:2) set out to completely modernise intergovernmentalism, by offering a theoretical approach which confronted these weaknesses and which specified why, where and how European integration takes place. For Moravcsik, the EC has been transformed through a series of intergovernmental bargains that have developed the EU’s institutions and set the agenda for the intervening periods of consolidation.
The confidence with which Moravcsik set out his theoretical approach, the ambitious nature of his claims to offer a parsimonious predictive theory and the clarity of his analytical approach, differentiate him from other scholars in the intergovernmental school. He explicitly trumpeted his break with previous ‘conventional’ explanations of European integration in three ways. First, Moravcsik sought to discredit existing approaches, especially neo-functionalism and the intergovernmental institutionalist explanations and argued from a methodological perspective that general theories of international political economy might be applied to the process. Second, he suggested that existing theories need a better conceptualisation of the sources of government preferences—especially the domestic sources of preference formation. Finally, he argued that unicausal theories were inadequate in explaining the European integration process (Moravcsik 1993:480).
In addressing these various concerns, Moravcsik (1993) set out a liberal intergovernmental (LI) approach. LI’s answer to why integration takes place is that, in an increasingly interdependent world, governments can only respond to internal demands or external economic and political challenges by co-ordinating their policies. LI posits that integration will only take place when the preferences of governments converge, and domestic support can be built to support closer integration. At the core of the answer to the question of where integration takes place, is a threefold classification concerning trade liberalisation, public goods provision and non-economic collective goods (ibid.). Different issue-areas produce variations in the distributional costs and benefits for societal groups—and opportunities for governments to circumvent domestic opposition. In addressing how integration takes place, LI conceptualises the integration process in terms of stages: first, national preference formation takes place, followed by bargaining over outcomes and subsequently decisions to delegate and pool sovereignty (Moravcsik 1998:9). In this state-centric approach, Moravcsik draws on the metaphor of a two-level game in which individual states interact with domestic groups aggregating interests expressed in lower level games, and the governments defend these interests in intergovernmental negotiations (Putnam 1988).
On the basis of this conceptualisation, Moravscik offers an explanation and testable hypotheses concerning the purposive choice of governments and why they act as they do (rational calculation of governments constrained by the economic interests of producer and consumer groups), the nature of interaction between them (bargaining through relative power) and the consequences of decisions to delegate and pool sovereignty (limited delegation of power to secure credible collective action). Moravcsik drinks from the well of intergovernmentalism when he argues an understanding of the developments of the EU can be reduced to five intergovernmental bargains where the major “choices for Europe” were made (Moravcsik 1998:9).
Notwithstanding the innovative qualities of LI, it has been the subject of sustained criticism. First, exclusive focus on intergovernmental conference (IGC) negotiations has made LI overly stratified. There are three strands to this general criticism, which broadly comes from a new institutionalist critique. First, to understand how, when and where integration takes place, a broader analysis of the multi-dimensional nature of European integration needs to be undertaken. In this view, integration cannot be relegated to history-making episodes, but must also include routine ‘every-day’ policy-making as well (Bulmer 1994; Anderson 1995; Wincott 1995; Moravcsik 1995). Second, even on LI’s own terms, it offers a very incomplete picture of European integration. Not only does the integration process and the institutional structure in which governments operate change the norms and habits of co-operation of participants, but governments are also subject to path dependency (Risse-Kappen 1994). Earlier policy decisions constrain the choices available to governments and limit future policy options. For some, these factors provide at least part of the explanation of behaviour in intergovernmental bargaining and the evolution of policy (Bulmer 1994; Middlemas 1995:697). Third, participation in the process of European integration brings with it unintended consequences. The delegation of authority is never as fully controlled as LI implies, since the dynamics of the process can lead in unexpected directions. For example, through the rulings of the ECJ and creative use of European Parliament procedures, initial decisions often ran in directions unforeseen by governments (Earnshaw and Judge 1997:560; Hubschmid and Moser 1997:240; Westlake 1998:444).
In the light of hypothesis testing, LI has not fully lived up to expectations. The theoretical approach is complex and not easily operationalised, often requiring unknowable or non-existent information to explain and predict the actions of governments (Anderson 1995:449, 459). Even when this limitation has been overcome, empirical research casts doubt on the confidence with which LI can claim to offer explanatory as well as predictive value. Testing of LI against intergovernmental negotiations has suggested three core weaknesses of the LI approach: the notion of preference formation; the assumption that governments are rational, purposive and instrumental actors; and the LI conception of bargaining (Budden 1994; Friis 1997b; Forster 1998a).
LI was initially constructed to explain the SEA and it betrays its empirical origins by its inability to explain intergovernmental bargaining concerning non-economic issues of institutions and political co-operation prevalent in the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaty negotiations. On these issues, LI does not explain outcomes adequately, and in order to provide a full explanation of national preferences for or against integration, a more detailed and complex theory of preference formation is required (Forster 1998a). Anderson further argues that the acceptance of opt-outs at Maastricht suggests that the threat of exclusion—a key aspect of LI bargaining—is not as potent as Moravcsik suggests, and that the multi-track nature of the EU has “outpaced the model’s predictive capabilities” (Anderson 1995:449).
Second, though marking significant advances on previous theoretical offerings, by including a domestic politics dimension, LI fails to open up the ‘black box of the state’ convincingly. Its core assumptions are undermined by a failure to disaggregate the concept of the state, and more particularly the concept of ‘the government’, in inter-governmental negotiations. As a consequence of this, LIs understanding of how governments pick and choose between various policy options is weakened by the fact that it is premised on the belief that government preferences are essentially the articulation of the economic interests. According to LI, it is only when such economic interests are not at stake that governments have freedom to manoeuvre in negotiations (Forster 1998a). Moreover, McKay has argued that the TEU and especially the decision to create a single currency is a fundamentally different bargain, “conceptually quite different from earlier initiatives over the EMS [European Monetary System] and the SEA” (McKay 1996:74). To McKay “ [...] what governments did at Maastricht was to create a federal state which did effectively dismantle one of the key functions of the nation-state” (ibid.).
Third, there have been a number of challenges to LI’s conception of intergovernmental bargaining especially the use of side-payments, issue and forward linkage, log-rolling and, ultimately, LI’s notion of lowest-common-denominator bargaining (Forster 1998a; Anderson 1995:448). LI also underplays the role of the Commission, European Parliament, but especially the Presidency and the Council Secretariat, in shaping outcomes beyond simply changing preference at the margin. The price LI pays in its aspiration to advance a general theory of domestic and international politics is to sacrifice the sui generis nature of the EU (Forster 1998b). The methodological implication is serious. LI might be modified to better account for the particular EC bargaining dynamics, but only at the cost of a liberal theory of international politics.
In the face of this criticism, Moravcsik has substantially abandoned many of the ambitious claims of LI. In his own testing of LI across five intergovernmental bargains (three aimed at trade liberalisation and two at monetary co-operation), LI’s claims are more modest. Renounced are its claims at explaining institutional and non-economic forms of integration, with a retreat to a more limited explanation of why states co-ordinate their core economic policies. In this reformulation, LI sadly eschews an explanation of the exact nature of the institutional structures. LI thus side-steps the crucial issue as to why a particular set of institutional arrangements and policy choices were made. Gone is the claim that LI is ‘predictive’ and gone too are its aspirations to offer a theory of integration, rather it is a synthesis of mid-level theory knitted together by rationalist assumptions (Moravcsik 1998). However, LI still retains its aspiration to provide generalisations to be applied to other regions of the world and to subsume European integration under general theories, rather than treating it as sui generis (Moravcsik 1995; 1997; 1998:500).
Notwithstanding a lowering of the aspirations of LI, it clearly contains important analytical advances and methodologically remains the most sophisticated variant of the classical theories. LI clearly sets out its assumptions, defines key concepts, identifies causal relationships and offers testable hypotheses. LI also correctly refocuses attention back on the motivations of governments and highlights the role of domestic interests in government preference formation, the fact that domestic constituencies both constrain but also empower governments and is a valuable reminder of some of the limitations of the supranational bargaining style in intergovernmental conferences.
The New Theoretical Agenda
Despite the significant advances in knowledge brought about by debate between the supranationalists and the neo-intergovernmentalists, there has been a discernible trend in the current theoretical literature which has tired of the IR debate concerning the EU and opened up a new theoretical agenda centred on three discernible schools. First, the governance school, which challenges the conceptualisation of integration as either supranational or intergovernmental; second a comparativist school, which argues that the study of the EU should move away from the dominance of the IR paradigm and be supplemented by comparative politics based on the same ontological and methodological approaches; and finally, a constructivist/reflectivist school which criticises traditional interpretations of identity and interest formation.
The Governance School
Branch and Øhrgaard (1999) have been at the forefront of the governance school, arguing that neither neo-functionalism nor intergovernmentalism explains the most important issue of European integration, which to them is the uneven pace of integration in policy sectors. They argue that both supranational governance and intergovernmental explanations are limited by their focus on whether the most important actors and institutional settings are supranational or intergovernmental. To them, this leads to a focus on actors at the expense of processes, something that is misleading and fails to capture the complexity of the integration process. They term this the ‘supranational-intergovernmental dichotomy’, which has two related aspects.
First, these approaches confuse the process of integration with its outcome and assume that particular forms of integration result in particular institutional outcomes. Second and of more importance, both theoretical approaches inevitably bias the role of certain actors in the process of European integration. While supranational approaches over-emphasise the role of EU level actors, intergovernmental approaches under-value their role; where supranational approaches ignore the importance of governmental actors, intergovernmental approaches over-privilege them; where supranational accounts do not differentiate between different phases of the integration process, intergovernmental approaches over-differentiate between them, failing to identify linkages between informal and formal phases of integration. In short, focussing on particular actors leads each theoretical approach to focus on certain issues. Supranational approaches emphasise everyday developments, while intergovernmental approaches focus on grand bargains as the place of key ‘choices for Europe’. For supranationalists, treaties are the result of integration, while for intergovernmentalists they are the cause of it. For Branch and Øhrgaard, the supranational-intergovernmental dichotomy has skewed research towards secondary issues. For the governance school, the key questions and the current research agenda should focus on why and how rather than who governs (Branch and Øhrgaard 1999).
The Comparativist School
A second school of thought has similarly been disillusioned with the existing debates, but from a slightly different perspective. From a comparative politics paradigm, Sbragia (1992) was among the first to argue that neo-functionalism and intergovernmentalism have unfairly dominated the study of the EU. Sbragia argued that it is unhelpful to think of the EU as unique, especially when the comparative approach offered significant analytical gains, and she set out a range of alternative approaches to the study of the EU, calling for more work to be done. Hix (1994; 1998) took up and further developed this challenge, drawing many insights from previous policy-making studies, especially the works of H. Wallace, W. Wallace and Webb (1977; 1983; 1996), but presenting them in a systematic challenge to neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist scholarship.
Hix deploys a twofold argument: first, he accepts the common ground between most classical theories—that the EU should no longer be considered sui generis. Pursuing this logic further, Hix argues that since ‘the EC is more than an international organisation’ and more like a political system, the EU can and should be studied using the comparative method for systematic comparison (Sbragia 1992; Andersen and Eliassen 1993; Greenwood et al. 1993). Second, because the EU has developed into a political system, there are now socio-economic conflicts concerning the allocation and distribution of resources, and IR theories are therefore of limited value in studying the internal politics of the EU. Richardson persuasively summarised the comparativist case when he argued “...the stuff of European integration is as much about detailed, often technical, Euro-legislation (and especially Euro-regulation) as it is about his high politics issues such as monetary union or the creation of a European superstate” (Richardson 1996:5). For Hix, the “stuff of European integration” can only effectively be studied on a left-right continuum using comparativist methods. He concluded that while IR approaches are valid for the study of the EU as an international organisation, comparative approaches are more relevant to understanding the “politics” of the EU (Hix 1994:1).
By taking the institutional framework as given, this allowed four new approaches to be developed. First, Hix identifies pluralist theoretical approaches, which share the same ontological and methodological assumptions of the pluralist IR theories. However, comparativist pluralist approaches are concerned with analysing the nature of decision-making at the European level, the nature of interest representation and intermediation, while IR approaches focus on the role of interests in shaping national positions (Haas 1992). Second, comparativist rational choice approaches have been employed to develop important qualitative insights hitherto overlooked by IR approaches (Garrett 1992; Maor 1995). These rational choice approaches have identified the importance of ideological constraints, relative strengths of actors in decision-making and the impact of the institutional environment and agenda-setting (Hix 1994:15). Third, sociological approaches have provided the foundations for analysing the development of the EU and its various elements as a political system. For example, cultural theory highlights a twofold conflict between nationalism and supranationalism on the one hand, and economic and social regulation on the other—what Hix terms “group” and “grid” conflict (Hix 1994:17). Finally, a variety of old and new institutionalist approaches have analysed the EU. ‘Old’ approaches focus on formality and objectivity (Mancini 1991), while Hix argues that ‘new’ approaches utilise contemporary decision-making theories (Bulmer 1994).
The argument that different theoretical paradigms are appropriate for particular aspects of the EU system—hence that IR approaches will retain relevance where the issues concern national versus supranational integration and where member-states remain sovereign; and comparativist approaches will be relevant where socio-economic issues are at stake—has found some support amongst an emerging ‘synthesis’ school. In an important contribution to the debate, Peterson (1995:71) has lent support to Hix by arguing for a sort of intellectual détente with political science methods, notably network analysis applied to sectoral policies in the EU and IR approaches such as multi-level governance and LI predominating in the study of history-making decisions (Moravscik 1993; Marks et al. 1996).
Others scholars led by Hurrell and Menon (1996) have been unwilling either to embrace this division of labour or brush important differences under the carpet. For this group, the EU is now so complex—addressing day-to-day politics and policy-making, as well as constitutional issues concerning the institutional structure in which this takes place—that a broader, more inclusive approach is necessary. This argument operates at three levels: firstly, an understanding of the EU cannot be limited to either policy-making or constitutional issues, since both are necessary for a complete understanding of the EU (Anderson 1995; Hurrell and Menon 1996:387). Focus on different levels of analysis cannot therefore be allowed to obscure the link between different types of decision-making, in order to have a “rounded understanding of the integration process” (Cram 1996:54). Second, that the EU does not function like any other democratic system, since member-state governments remain central actors and pursue important interests in the process; and third, suggesting that the European public policy can be understood solely in terms of comparative politics approaches is to ignore the systemic and international pressures which shape policy (Hurrell and Menon 1996:387). For this group of scholars, the EU is about ‘politics like no other’.
The Constructivist/Reflectivist School
A third and more nascent (and diverse) school is that of the constructivists/reflectivists (Keohane 1988:389; Wendt 1992:392). From a methodological perspective, post-modernists, critical theorists and social constructivists take issue with the dominant positivist approaches to the study of the EU and European integration, whether from the IR or comparativist traditions. This school poses a challenge to what Woods terms “meaning and knowing”, by arguing that reality is socially constructed and theories which identify objects and subjects and create hypotheses are therefore questionable. For them, “no category of knowledge is stable enough to yield knowledge” (Woods 1996:25). These approaches draw our attention towards many of the hitherto silent assumptions underpinning the dominant theories discussed so far. For example, it challenges the use of the concepts of national interest, identity formation and sovereignty and reminds us that these are both contested and changeable (Norgaard 1994; Jachtenfuchs 1995). Constructivists/reflectivists also question linear approaches to bargaining, for example challenging LI’s three-stage approach to preference formation, negotiation and institution-building and question what might appear at any particular time as “observable patterns” of co-operation (Keohane and Hoffmann 1990:277). Finally, some innovative research has been undertaken highlighting the importance of discursive structures as a factor in explaining national approaches to European integration (Jørgensen 1997; Larsen 1997). Most scholars working in the field have yet to pay much attention to this school, though the issues they raise, such as governance, identity, democracy, are an important part of the current research agenda—especially as the comparative politics bridgehead expands beyond policy-making to normative issues and the pace of integration forces academics and citizens to confront the issues of identity, democracy and legitimacy which have hitherto been avoided (W. Wallace 1990; Smith 1992; Soledad 1993).
Conclusions
As the integration process has gathered momentum, and the EU has become more complex in terms of its institutional density and the range of its policy-making activities, theoretical thinking has been left playing catch-up. To address the rapid change which has taken place since the 1980s, increasingly sophisticated theoretical models have been developed to explain parts of the EU and the integration process: some focus on the politics of EU policy-making while others focus on how institutional change occurs. The comparativists, who focus on the sectoral and sub-sectoral nature of policy-making as well as the need for policy co-ordination, have sparked off a range of interesting debates focussed more on public and private actors and relationships between them, than institutions. Within this debate there has also been a recognition that different stages of the policy-making process, for example agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-taking and implementation, require new conceptual tools (Richardson 1996:5). This is in the process of being supplemented by a new research agenda, examining the relationship between policy-making and normative issues such as identity, citizenship and democracy.
However, preoccupations with what might be termed the ‘old agenda’ issues have not gone away and interest remains in whether the EU is best conceptualised as intergovernmental or supranational; the extent to which the EU has strengthened or weakened the autonomy of the state; and interest concerning which actors dominate the integration process. Academic engagement and criticism between different theoretical offerings concerned with these issues are undoubtedly methodologically more rigorous than forty or even twenty years ago and have delivered important advances in our knowledge and understanding of the EU. In the mainstream IR approaches, it has led to a partial synthesis, the dropping of the more unsubstantiated elements, the incorporation of insights from different approaches and more modest claims to have predictive value.
The charge of Keohane and Hoffmann at the beginning of this decade that previous theoretical accounts had been discarded and in its place scholars had sought refuge in “ [...] mere description of processes and events” is no longer true. Their argument that “attempts to avoid theory ...rely implicitly on a framework of analysis that remains unexamined precisely because it is implicit” (Keohane and Hoffmann 1991:9) is widely accepted and is the conventional wisdom of today. However, the study of the EU remains paradoxical. Increasingly sophisticated theoretical approaches are being deployed, but at the expense of fragmenting the analysis of the EU into a study of policy-making and institutional change. A second paradox is that as theoretical concerns have become more focussed, most scholars have preferred to overlook the connections between policy-making in the EU, its institutional structures and the international system. While it is right not to expect a comprehensive theory of European integration, the challenge of the future is to try and combine approaches from different traditions and disciplines which share similar ontological foundations in order to reconnect explanations of history-making treaty negotiations with routine decision-making.
January 1999
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Endnotes
*: Dr. Anthony Forster is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Nottingham, School of Politics. Back.