EU Social Policy in the 1990s

Towards a Corporatist Policy Community

Gerda Falkner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134727339
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers an analytical overview of schools of thought on European integration which offer useful insights into EU social politics. Building on this framework, the chapters then examine in detail pre-Maastricht social policy and the 'social partners', the innovations of the Treaty itself, and where EU social policy stands at the end of the 1990s. Case studies of European Works Councils, parental leave, and atypical work, are included to highlight the day-to-day processes at work in social policy formation and the major interest groups and EU institutions involved. This is an up-to-date and accessible study which finds the social policy-making environment in the EU has become increasingly corporatist in the 1990s.

1 Political theory and EU politics

Both the development of EU social policy content and of the social policy-making process will be examined in the empirical parts of this study. Consequently, two strands of political science theory are employed to provide an adequate conceptual underpinning to this empirical research. In order to deepen our understanding of the development of integration in the social policy area, this chapter investigates promising political science approaches to regional integration. In order to analyse developments in the subfield of European integration which is of specific interest here, we need to take up and develop adequate conceptual tools at a more general level (see section 1.1). With a view to the second major interest of this study, i.e. to understand the EU social policy-making process and the role of the main actors therein, extant political science approaches referring to the role of interest groups in the policy process are reviewed (see section 1.2).

1.1 Concepts of the European integration process

Theorising on European integration—the most far-reaching regional integration process among states—has an even longer history than the phenomenon itself (the Coal and Steel Community was founded in 1951). At the beginning of European integration, theory and practice were densely interwoven. This is true at the analytical as much as at the personal level: abstract thinking was often overtly normative, and the most prominent writers were leading actors of the integration movement or, subsequently, of the European institutions (e.g. Jean Monnet and Altiero Spinelli). The earliest approaches to what later developed into ‘integration theory’ are still of some significance today because later ‘grand theories’ included some of their central features. They are therefore briefly outlined here.

Immediately after the Second World War, two approaches to the organisation of Europe which were, strictly speaking, more political than theoretical prevailed within the group of those who preferred a future beyond the nation-state. While the federalists concentrated on prescribing a specific form of European polity (i.e. a federation), the functionalists focused on processes which were thought to facilitate political change.

Central arguments of federalist thinking are the usefulness of a division of power between different levels of government, ideally based on a catalogue of competences for each layer. Altiero Spinelli, the outstanding figure in this tradition, aimed at a European state consisting of the old individual states which would cede their sovereignty to common democratic institutions (for details see e.g. Pistone 1996). Proponents of federalism typically drew on the experiences of national federations such as the United States of America, Canada or Switzerland. However, an obvious difference to the European condition was that none of these federations had initially involved fully-fledged states. Rather, they were founded by former colonies or by small cantons with a long tradition of confederation (e.g. Mutimer 1994:17). Important political events with a view to federalist thinking were the famous speeches of Winston Churchill who called for a union of Britain and France (1940) to form a ‘United States of Europe’ (Zurich speech 1946). Still during wartime, a congress of European federalists in Switzerland (organised among others by Altiero Spinelli) called for a post-war European federation. Unfulfilled hopes that the Council of Europe might bring about a European federal state, and the failure of the European Defence Community project in the French National Assembly in 1954 led to a split within the federalist movement following differences over both strategy and objectives (O’Neill 1996:24ff.; Mutimer 1994:16ff.). One group continued to call for a constituent assembly which should draft a constitution based on the will of the people, while the other realigned with the more pragmatic forces who were campaigning for the ‘Community method’ of kicking off European integration within single rather technical policy areas.

The latter strategy was at the core of functionalist thinking (see e.g. Zellentin 1992). Functionalists focused on specific political and sociological dynamics which might facilitate regional integration between sovereign states rather than on any specific constitutional outcome of such long-term processes. To Jean Monnet, the French founding father of the European Communities, ‘the particular form that integration took was much less important than the requirement to launch the process on a practical footing, and thereby to give it a form that was capable of sustaining transnational cooperation against the opposition’ (O’Neill 1996:27). The most prominent functionalist writer, David Mitrany, envisaged ‘a technical administration of international society, organised into units based upon the provision of functions’ (Mutimer 1994:25). He sharply divided ‘the political’ and ‘the technical’ and is said to have been convinced that ‘politics was intrinsically evil’ (O’Neill 1996:32), regardless of whether practised in nation-states or in regional federations. Consequently, criticism focused not only on the normative aspects of this approach (the same is true for ‘federalism’ as outlined above), but also on the technocratic assumption that politics and ‘technical problem-solving’ could ever be decoupled (see e.g. Haas 1964:23; 30ff; 93). Nevertheless, functionalism was taken as a starting point for one of the major theoretical approaches to European integration, i.e. neofunctionalism.

Another important predecessor of neofunctionalism was transactionalism (also referred to as communications theory) whose proponents assumed that with a view to integration, a great deal of relevant change happens outside of organisations and formal decision-making. They considered anybody who does business or communicates as relevant to the creation of integrative or disintegrative trends:

[C]ommunications theory suggests—it does not assert or prove—that an intensive pattern of communication between national units will result in a closer ‘community’ among the units if loads and capabilities remain in balance…. It does not explain when and how trust and responsiveness among actors, elites as well as masses, are to occur.

(Haas 1971:22)

Transactionalist empirical research focused on measuring communication on the basis of mail flows, telephone calls and tourism (see also Haas 1958:284 and footnotes 1 and 5). What ‘a federalist or neofunctionalist would consider as integration is conceived by Deutsch as fine tuning of an already integrated whole’ (Mutimer 1994:35). For R.van Wagenen and Karl W.Deutsch,⁶ integration had depended on the probability that conflicts will be resolved without violence. Their central concept of ‘security community’ referred to a group of people who have become ‘integrated’. This means that they have attained a ‘sense of community’, and ‘institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a “long” time, dependable expectations of “peaceful change” among its population’ (quotations from Nelson and Stubb 1994:101; see also Haas 1964:27).

People’s attitudes, notably those of the political elites, also played a great role in the first ‘grand political science theory’ on European integration, i.e. neofunctionalism. Some of the central features of neofunctionalist writing, notably the stress on the role of European institutions and the concept of ‘spill-over’, still play a role in contemporary analyses of the integration process. They also represent promising analytical lenses for understanding the development of EU social policy⁷ and will therefore be outlined in some detail below.

1.1.1 Neofunctionalism

In his seminal book on the Coal and Steel Community, The Uniting of Europe (1958), the founding father of neofunctionalism, Ernst B.Haas, gave his much quoted definition of political integration as

the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities towards a new centre, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the pre-existing national states. The end result of a process of political integration is a new political community, superimposed over the pre-existing ones.

(Haas 1958:16)

In opposition to earlier writing e.g. by Deutsch, Haas urged the distinction between situations prior to and during integration, and encouraged the study of the process of social change itself (Haas 1958:11; Haas 1964:29; for an overview of the debate see e.g. Lindberg 1963).

Conceived not as a condition but as a process, the conceptualisation [of political integration] relies on the perception of interests and values by the actors participating in the process. Integration takes place when these perceptions fall into a certain pattern and fails to take place when they do not.

(Haas 1958:11)

Haas suggested investigating the process of integration by raising certain identical questions at regular intervals (ibid.: 15). The questions should not be submitted to the general public but to the political elites, i.e. ‘the leaders of all relevant political groups who habitually participate in the making of public decisions’ (ibid.: 17). Political party leaders, top civil servants, and particularly⁸ lobbyists were seen as the crucial political actors with a view to integration.

During the 1960s, a second feature was added to the definition of the neofunctionalists’ main object of study:

political integration is…the process whereby nations forgo the desire and ability to conduct foreign and key domestic policies independently of each other, seeking instead to make joint decisions or to delegate the decision-making to new central organs.

(Lindberg 1963:103)

The notion of integration henceforth consisted of two closely related parts, pointing to cognitive factors and patterns of elite behaviour in the widest sense, on the one hand, and to a mode of decision-making, on the other. Only in later neofunctionalist publications, a consensus seems to have emerged that integration should be perceived as increasing the range and importance of joint decisions and transferring greater powers and competence to common institutions (see Lindberg and Scheingold 1971; Mutimer 1994:31 with further references).

Central to neofunctionalist reasoning is the ‘spill-over process’. This concept stems from the functionalist tradition but was also held by many economists and politicians (e.g. by the first Commission President Hallstein, see Schneider 1986:45ff.) at the time of Haas’ Uniting of Europe. In an early and simple formulation by Haas, spill-over refers to a situation where ‘policies made in carrying out an initial task and grant of power can be made real only if the task itself is expanded’ (Haas 1964:111). Thus, integration was perceived to have the potential to move on from one decision to another, from one sector to another, and even from less salient matters to issues which are traditionally perceived as touching the core of national sovereignty and identity (see O’Neill 1996:44ff.; Mutimer 1994:28ff.).

Several variants of spill-over were developed over time. Most contemporary accounts of neofunctionalism (e.g. Tranholm-Mikkelsen 1991:4ff.; Lewis 1995:14; O’Neill 1996:43; Burley and Mattli 1993:55) present the following types (or a selection of them, see Haas 1958:313):

• Functional spill-over: due to the interdependence between sectors or issues in modern economies it is impossible to treat them in isolation (action in one area begets action in another one); a classic example is the implementation of the common market necessitating accompanying measures (e.g. in social policy) which were not anticipated by the founding fathers of the EC.

• Political spill-over: according to any author’s definition of ‘integration’ as such, this label referred to either shifts in political expectations and loyalties or to an increased decision capacity for the supranational level.

• Geographical spill-over: ever more states want to join the integration area.⁹

• Cultivated spill-over: the EC institutions as ‘midwives for the integration process’ (Tranholm-Mikkelsen 1991:6) succeed in pushing for the upgrading of common interests instead of ‘splitting the difference’ or lowest common denominator bargaining.

• Cultural spill-over: the expectations and loyalties of the elites shift towards the higher level political entity.

Over a long period the bifurcated perception of ‘integration’ seems to have led to a blurring of the related concepts of neofunctionalism, i.e. mainly the ‘spill-over process’. Some of the above-mentioned notions of spill-over which are still mentioned in contemporary integration literature seem to relate to older, hybrid definitions of integration. In an analytically sharp conceptualisation, both cultural and cultivated ‘spill-over’ should, however, be seen as factors that facilitate such a process rather than as spill-over proper.¹⁰

For example, Philippe C.Schmitter’s concept of spill-over is unequivocally based on an institutional understanding of ‘integration’:

Spillover refers…to the process whereby members of an integration scheme—agreed on some collective goals for a variety of motives but unequally satisfied with their attainment of these goals—attempt to resolve their dissatisfaction either by resorting to collaboration in another, related sector (expanding the scope of the mutual commitment) or by intensifying their commitment to the original sector (increasing the level of mutual commitment) or both.

(Schmitter 1969:162, emphasis in original)

The level of commitment to joint policy-making included both continuity (the frequency of meetings and evaluation enterprises, etc.) and techniques (i.e. what we nowadays call supranationality of decision-modes, notably qualified majority voting [QMV]). Scope referred to the number of social groups or policy sectors involved and the importance of these policy sectors for the attainment of national actor-defined goals (two dimensions which were thought to be highly correlated). If we include what Schmitter called an ‘externalisation hypothesis’ (ibid.: 165; i.e. geographical spill-over), there are three possible dimensions of spill-over: scope, level, and area of commitment (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Dimensions of spill-over

	increases	dimensions
functional	scope of commitment	• number of groups or sectors
spill-over		• importance of sectors
political	level of commitment	• continuity/frequency
spill-over		• techniques
geographical	area covered by commitment	• joining of new member states (‘widening’)
spill-over		• side-effects on non-members

Note: Extending the logic of Schmitter 1969

According to Schmitter, contributing to the expansiveness of this spill-over process were, first, the underlying interdependence of functional tasks and issue areas, and, second, ‘the creative talents of political elites, especially the administrators of regional institutions, who seize upon frustrations and crises in order to redefine and expand central organizational tasks’ (Schmitter 1969:162). This conception seems preferable to others because it properly distinguishes between facilitating conditions and forces working in favour of spill-over, on the one hand, and the very dime...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Series editor’s preface
• Preface and acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Political theory and EU politics
• 2 Social policy from Messina to Maastricht
• 3 Social policy in the Maastricht Treaty
• 4 Policy-making under the Social Protocol
• 5 The evolution of social interest intermediation
• 6 Conclusions and the future
• Notes
• References
• Index