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Map of Europe |
Journal of International Relations and Development
Volume 2, No. 1 (March 1999)
This article critically evaluates the current state of theorising about the nature of the European integration process and policy-making within it. In particular, it examines key political science approaches to the study of the European Union (EU), and provides an overview of the most recent scholarship. The article suggests that the current study of the EU is paradoxical. First, increasingly complex theoretical models of European integration are being deployed, but at the expense of fragmenting the analysis of the EU into the study of institutional change and policy-making. A second paradox is that, having abandoned the search for a comprehensive theory of European integration, much of the current theory has overlooked the connections between different aspects of European integration. The article concludes by arguing that the challenge of the future is to try and combine approaches from different traditions and disciplines which share similar methodological foundations, in order to reconnect explanations of history-making treaty negotiations with explanations of routine EU decision-making.
When analysing the European Union (EU) from an International Relations theory perspective, it is its divergence from the principles of modern territorial statehood that is most often stressed. By contrast, this article points to a line of continuity by showing that one particularly prominent conceptualisation of the EU as an Economic Community relies in part on dividing inside and outside, and giving privileges to the former over the latter, thereby reproducing a central practice of the modern international system. As a background to this analysis, the article reflects on the interdependence of constructions of threat and order in political discourse. It suggests that legitimisation is the main practice linking the two. The empirical part focuses on the British debate about European integration, where Economic Community conceptualisations have been dominant since the 1970s, and contrasts it with the Federal State-centred German debate. A first reading reveals the differences between the legitimisation practices underlying these two conceptualisations, while a second stresses the inside/outside distinction inherent in both. The concluding critique of the Economic Community focuses on the exclusionary practices necessitated by the latter.
The present article analyses the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as agreed upon in Maastricht and reformed in Amsterdam, whereby the underlying motivation for the inception of the CFSP is also outlined. The author argues that the contradiction between the ambiton of the European Union to assume a role of the world player in international political affairs and the particularism of each member states’ government which does not intend to relinquish its international political room for manoeuvre have decisively influenced the course of reforms in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, there remains a room for cautious optimism concerning positive developments in the CFSP in the future.
European integration affects regions differently. These effects are both economic and political. Regions thus seek to gain influence within the policy-making system of the European Union (EU). They do this by going through their national governments, or by seeking direct access to EU institutions. There has been some official recognition of the role of regions in recent treaty revisions, but hopes for constituting the regions as a third level of government have not been realised.
The article attempts to link three sets of literature: studies of the external relations of the European Union (Common Foreign and Security Policy—CFSP), Diplomatic Studies, and classic metatheoretical issues within the social sciences. The main arguments are that the three sets of literature potentially cross-fertilize and that their linkage can help explore the dynamics of contemporary European foreign policy and diplomacy. The specific nature of CFSP practices is put into perspective when compared to general diplomatic practices, and research of the CFSP becomes potentially enhanced when informed by and therefore conducted within the analytical tradition of the social sciences.