Policy-Making in the European Union

Conceptual Lenses and the Integration Process

Laura Cram

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134757718
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Laura Cram takes a fresh view at attempts to conceptualize the process of European integration. Her book explores the impact of the day to day work of policy maker, interest groups and bureaucrats in influencing the environment in which European Treaty formulation and ratification are taken. She sheds new light on the wide range of policy areas in which institutions such as the Commission of the European Union and the European Court of Justice have succeded in expanding the scope of EU competence despite national government opposition.

1 Integration theory and the study of the European policy process

1 INTRODUCTION

In this chapter the development of European integration theory – its roots, development and the current state of the debate – is examined. The chapter presents a critical overview of the key theoretical approaches to the study of European integration. It concludes with the argument that the insights emerging from contemporary studies of the governance of the European Union might usefully be employed to enhance current attempts to conceptualise the integration process.

2 THE EVOLUTION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION THEORY: THE THEORETICAL ROOTS

During the Second World War and in its immediate aftermath, many scholars sought to elaborate a new type of political system which would facilitate cooperation between nations and the preservation of international (or at least Europe-wide) peace. Some theorists focused on the desirable end product of this cooperation (for example federalism and functionalism), while others focused on the background conditions which would be required for the establishment of a new transnational political community (for example, the transactionalist/communications school). Each, in their own way, contributed to the elaboration of later neo-functionalist attempts to explain the emerging process of European integration begun, in practice, with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951.

2.1 Federalism

For many scholars and politicians the solution to the conflict between European nations lay in the development of a European federation of nations. Throughout the Second World War, there were many references to the peace-making potential of a European federal political structure. The federalist movement had strong roots in the European resistance movement, and even further back, for example, in the writings of Coudenhove-Kalergi (1923, 1934, 1938). The development of the post-war federalist movement was championed by committed federalists such as Jean Monnet, Walter Hallstein and Altiero Spinelli (1966) who were to be disillusioned by the slow progress in Europe and the virtual abandonment of any attempt to create a true European federation. The end-product of the European integration process was to fall far short of the ideals of these federalists. While remaining a popular vision today, the ‘federalist approach is more a strategy for fulfilling a common purpose and common needs than a theory explaining how these integrative forces arise’ (Hodges, 1972: 13).

2.2 Transactionalism/communications school

In contrast, the work of Deutsch (1957, 1964, 1966, 1967), and other scholars working within the transactionalist/communications tradition, focused on the conditions necessary for political integration to occur. Mutual transactions or communications were for Deutsch a necessary, but insufficient, prerequisite for the development of a political community. Thus, travel, trade, telecommunications and postal links might, in themselves, lead to mutual relevance but, without creating mutual responsiveness, would fail to generate a sense of community. For Deutsch (1966: 96–97), mutually responsive transactions resulted from a complex learning process from which shared symbols, identities, habits of cooperation, memories, values and norms would emerge. Deutsch's vision of political integration did not insist on the presence of any specified institutional structure but rather depended on ‘a historical process of social learning in which individuals, usually over several generations, learn to become a people’ (Deutsch, 1966: 174).

The transactionalist/communication school approach was widely criticised, not least, for its methodological focus on transaction flow indices which did not provide an adequate picture of the multi-faceted integration process (Inglehart, 1967; Puchala, 1970). However, Deutsch had highlighted the importance of the socio-psychological aspects of community formation (Hodges, 1972: 19) which were to be highly influential on subsequent work in the field of European integration: in particular, on Haas's neo-functionalism.¹

2.3 Funcrionalism

Perhaps the most influential work of this period, both upon the European integration process and upon subsequent attempts to conceptualise this process, was David Mitrany's functionalism. Yet functionalism was not a theory of European integration. Indeed, Mitrany was directly opposed to the project of European regional integration. In his advocacy of a ‘A Working Peace System’, Mitrany (1966a: 68) proposed a universal, rather than a regional, solution to what he saw as the ‘problem of our generation’: ‘how to weld together the common interest of all without interfering unduly with the particular ways of each’.

A central tenet of Mitrany's work was his opposition to nationalism, and the territorial organisation of power which, like his contemporaries, he saw as a threat to world peace. Mitrany (1966a: 82) was vehemently opposed to the divisive organisation of states in the international system which he described as arbitrary ‘political amputations’. Yet, while many of his fellow scholars were searching for European cooperative solutions to the problem of world conflict, Mitrany (1966a: 96) maintained that ‘peace will not be secured if we organize the world by what divides it’. In the pursuit of peaceful, noncoercive, community-building, nationalism at the nation-state level must not, Mitrany argued, simply be replaced by nationalism at the European level.

In his 1943 edition Mitrany deals specifically with what he calls the ‘perplexities of federalism’. Mitrany had a number of problems with this, the most frequently proposed, solution to the problem of conflict in Europe. First, he argued that the ‘problems which now divide the national states would almost all crop up again in any territorial realignment; their dimensions would be different, but not their evil nature’ (Mitrany 1966a: 46). Second, while he agreed with the federalists that ‘cooperation for the common good is the task’ (Mitrany 1966a: 97–98), he argued that it would be ‘senseless’ to tie this cooperation to a territorial authority. The number of necessary cooperative activities for Mitrany (1966a: 98) would remain limited while, he argued, ‘their range is the world’. Further, as all proposed federal solutions were limited, either territorially or ideologically, there was no guarantee that the necessary political consensus could be achieved to create the new constitutional framework which a federation would require. A federation, by its very nature, would prove divisive: ‘federation like other political formations, carries a Janus head which frowns division on one side in the very act of smiling union on the other’ (Mitrany 1966a: 93).

A key factor in understanding Mitrany's functionalist vision is the distinction which he draws between political/constitutional cooperation and technical/functional cooperation in his advocacy of a new international society. For Mitrany (1966a: 58), the task was clear: ‘our aim must be to call forth to the highest possible degree the active forces and opportunities for cooperation, while touching as little as possible the latent or active points of difference and opposition’. The political/constitutional route had clearly failed to rise to this challenge. Mitrany was all too aware of the failings of recent peace pacts, international treaties and of international organisations (which retained states as members) like the League of Nations. In contrast, Mitrany advocated the development of technical international organisations, structured on the basis of functional principles,² which would perform collective welfare tasks. Internal political conflict and interminable debates about the boundaries of national sovereignty were to be sidestepped. The function to be carried out would determine the type of organisation best suited for its realisation. This ‘technical self-determination’ would, in turn, mean that there would be ‘no need for any fixed constitutional division of authority and power, prescribed in advance’ (Mitrany 1966a: 73). Indeeed, ‘anything beyond the original formal definition of scope and purpose might embarrass the working of the practical arrangements’ (Mitrany 1966a: 73).

For Mitrany, it was rules, experts and the principle of ‘technical self-determination’ (1966a: 72), rather than territorial structures or national politicians, which would facilitate the decline of ideological conflict, the demise of nationalism, and would allow peaceful cooperation to develop on a world-wide scale. In Mitrany's words: ‘It is no longer a question of defining relations between states but ofmerging them – the workday sense of the vague talk about the need to surrender some part of sovereignty’ (Mitrany 1966a: 42). If the needs of society were revealed, Mitrany (1966a: 99) argued, ‘quite starkly for what they are, practical household tasks’ it would ‘be more difficult to make them into the household idols of "national interest" and "national honor"’.

While not entirely opposed to some kind of formal international union in the future, Mitrany (1966a: 97) cautioned that, as yet, the ‘political way was too ambitious’. Indeed Mitrany feared that the political/constitutional approach might even hamper progress towards a working international system. Only through cooperation in technical/functional organisations might it be possible to ‘set going lasting instruments and habits of a common international life’ (Mitrany 1966: 58). Without these habits, political/constitutional action could not be contemplated: while with these learned habits of integration such political/constitutional action may ultimately prove superfluous (Mitrany 1966a: 97). Although somewhat vague on the processes by which functional action would lead to international society, Mitrany (1966a: 58) argued that the ‘growth of new habits and interests’, as a result of functional cooperation, would begin to dilute persisting or emergent ideological divisions. Ultimately, ‘every activity organised in that way would be a layer of peaceful life; and a sufficient addition of them would create increasingly deep and wide strata of peace – not the forbidding peace of an alliance, but one that would suffuse the world with a fertile mingling of common endeavor and achievement’ (Mitrany 1966a: 98). With the ‘working peace system’ up and running, nationalism could, at last, be replaced by allegiance to the world community.

In the context of European integration, Mitrany's functionalism remains important not least because of its influence on two of the key architects of the European Coal and Steel Community: Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. Monnet and Schuman, in creating the ECSC, borrowed key aspects of what might be termed the functionalist method, without adopting Mitrany's central goal: the dissolution of territorially based authorities. Thus Monnet and Schuman employed Mitrany's focus on technical, sector specific integration, and his emphasis on avoiding political debates about the surrender of national sovereignty, in order to facilitate the incremental establishment of a territorially based organisation and the creation of a new regional authority structure. For Schuman, the pooling of resources in the European Coal and Steel Community was ‘a first step in the federation of Europe’.³ Clearly, this was a very different end from that proposed by Mitrany.

In many ways this deracination⁴ of Mitrany's approach to international cooperation (later perpetuated in many respects by the (mis) categorisation of neo-functionalist theory as a direct descendant of functionalism)⁵ has led to Mitrany's vision surfacing in the literature on European integration more often as a caricature of itself than as a true reflection of Mitrany's functionalist ideal of an international society.⁶ Mitrany directly opposed the re-creation of territorially based state structures at the European level except in so far as they represented unrelated responses to technical self-determination.

2.4 Neo-functionalism

Functionalism met with many criticisms: not least because of the rather naive belief that a neat division between technical/functional issues and political/constitutional issues could be sustained. Increasingly political scientists argued that the division between technical, non-controversial, economic issues, on the one hand, and political issues, on the other, was untenable: ‘economic integration, however defined, may be based on political motives and frequently begets political consequences’ (Haas 1958: 12). Likewise, while Mitrany had prescribed the necessary development of a new world community, quite how the transition from functional action to international society would take place was never clearly specified and relied on a rather organic process of expansion which was not consistently observable in practice. By the late 1950s Ernst Haas (1958: 4), in The Uniting of Europe, described western Europe as a ‘living laboratory’ for the study of collective action between European states. A wide range of organisations, which required the collaboration of European governments, operated in western Europe.⁷ Yet, as Haas (1958: 4) noted: ‘detailed data on how – if at all – cohesion is obtained through these processes is lacking’. It was this very process which Haas set out to investigate with the development of neo-functionalism.

In many ways the title neo-functionalism is something of a misnomer or ‘a case of mistaken identity’ (Groom, 1978). Developed, in part, to address the gaps in existing functionalist theory and practice and, in part, as a pluralist critique of the realist school,⁸ which had hitherto dominated the study of international relations, the neo-functionalist approach is of very mixed intellectual parentage. Neo-functionalism, as well as addressing some of the shortcomings of Mitrany's functionalism, also represents a clear divergence from some of the central tenets of Mitrany's functionahsm in a number of important respects. Although incorporating many elements of the ‘functionalist method’, as practised by Monnet and Schuman on the basis of their deracinated version of functionalist theory, neo-functionalism also draws upon some of the central tenets of both the communications school and of the federalist school of integration theory.

Focus on the process of developing a new political community in Europe

Neo-functionalism, in its early articulation, focused specifically upon the integration project in Europe. It sought to explain what was happening in Europe, and to provide a conceptual framework within which developments in Europe could be understood.⁹ For Haas, it was not the necessary background conditions nor the end product of cooperation between the nation-states which were the focus of his study.¹⁰ Rather, the focus of study for neo-functionalists was the process of political integration itself. For Haas

Political integration is the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new centre, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the pre-existing national states.

(Haas 1958: 16)

In terms of the relationship between Mitrany's functionalism and the neo-functionalism developed by Haas, it is important to note that for neo-functionalists the basic unit of analysis remained the territorially based state system so vehemently opposed by Mitrany (Groom, 1978: 21). There was no concept in neo-functionalism of transcending the traditional territorial division of states: these were simply to be supplemented/replaced by new territorially based organisations at the European level.

The role of supranational institutions

In terms of the intellectual parentage of neo-functionalism, Haas viewed a central government as ‘essential institutionally’ and a national (in this case European) consciousness as ‘essential socially’ (Haas, 1958: 8). The links with the federalist and communications schools respectively are clear.¹¹ Although recognising the importance of the insights developed by Deutsch, and in particular of the importance of an emergent European-centred belief system, for Haas (1958: 7), ‘the existence of political institutions capable of translating ideologies into law [is] the cornerstone of the definition’. The contrast with Mitrany's functionalism is stark. Mitrany specifically warned against the creation of territorially based supranational authority structures: ‘for an authority which had the title to do so would in effect be hardly less than a world government; and such a strong central organism would inevitably tend to take unto itself rather more authority than that originally allotted to it’ (Mitrany, 1966: 75). In contrast, in Haas's neo-functionalist approach, the very propensity of organisations to maximise their powers is an important element of the process through which a political community is formed. Indeed, the supranational institutions are allotted a key role as potential ‘agents of integration’ (Haas 1958: 29). The supranational institutions were expected both to facilitate the transfer of elite loyalties to the European level and to play the role of ‘honest broker’ facilitating decision-making between recalcitrant national governments (Haas, 1958: 524).

In...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• European Public Policy Series
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Series editor's preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• List of interviews
• Summary
• Introduction
• 1 Integration theory and the study of the European policy process
• 2 The development of European Union social policy
• 3 The development of European Union information and communication technology policy
• 4 Policy types and policy instruments in the European Union policy process
• 5 Collective action at the EU level: implications for the integration process
• 6 The institutional dimension of EU policy-making: breaking down the monolith
• Conclusion: institutions, purposeful opportunism and the integration process
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index