CIAO DATE: 11/00

Integration Policy: Between Foreign Policy and Diffusion

Morten Kelstrup

Copenhagen Peace Research Institute
July 2000

Abstract

This working paper is a discussion of the concept of "integration policy" and its application, in particular to the study of policies of individual states towards European integration. The paper takes its point of departure in traditional studies of foreign policy. It illustrates different approaches to the study of foreign policy. It claims that when we are dealing with policy towards integration, for instance European integration, focus has to be redirected from the study of foreign policy to what we might call integration policy. Different dimensions of integration policy are specified. European integration is interpreted at being somewhere between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational decision making. It is shown how integration policy, as integration become more intense, will develop into a proliferated and multidimensional set of policies and possibly develop further into "diffusion". The overall contribution of the paper is to conceptualise a new, grey area and to contribute to the study of different kinds of integration policy.

The paper is a preliminary to a chapter in the forthcoming book "Denmark’s Policy towards Europe after 1945" by Hans Branner and Morten Kelstrup (eds.). It is the hope it will diffuse even wider. It is followed by another working paper on "Denmark’s Integration Policy: Dilemmas and Options" (COPRI Working Paper 18/2000) which is a draft to another chapter in the book mentioned.

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