Europeanization and European Integration

From Incremental to Structural Change

R. Coman, T. Kostera, L. Tomini, R. Coman, T. Kostera, L. Tomini

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137325495
• eBook ISBN: 9781137325501
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After two decades of research into the impact of the EU on domestic politics and policies, this book explores the relationship between Europeanization and EU integration. It argues that Europeanization should be considered as a stage in the development of EU integration as well as questioning the notion of incremental Europeanization.

1

Concordia Discors from Cumulative Europeanization to Deeper European Integration

Ramona Coman

Still in search of Europeanization

The literature on Europeanization has developed impressively in recent years. Since the late 1990s, this concept has brought together scholars from different disciplines with a common interest in the process of change induced by the European Union (EU). Political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and even scholars of legal studies have focused on agency and the influence of actors on the course of events. The integration process has provided them with a fertile testing ground for comparative theorizing on many questions of key importance for our understanding of complex processes of change across time and space. By trying to better understand how Europe ‘hits home’, scholars have opened two black boxes, one domestic and one European. Historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists have looked at changing institutions, policies, practices, experiences, norms and values (Milward, Brennan and Romero, 1992; Borneman and Fowler, 1997; Favell and Guiraudon, 2011). As Jensen and Kristensen (2013, p. 1) recently pointed out, ‘scholars coming from different theoretical traditions touch upon different parts of the elephant and thus portray a different beast. None of them are mistaken, but none of them have the complete picture either.’ Thanks to this lively academic debate, our theoretical and empirical understanding of the impact of the Union on its member states and on candidate and third countries has improved.

This book seeks to build on previous generations of studies on Europeanization and to discuss a new avenue for research. Since the literature has extensively explored the impact of the EU on domestic systems and revealed how domestic actors seek to shape the policy agenda of the Union, the aim of this book is to explore the relationship between the outcomes of Europeanization (whether incremental change, structural change, accommodation, inertia or transformation) and the process of integration itself. The ontological and epistemological arguments in favour of this approach are set out below.

As Linz (in interview with Munck and Snyder, 2007) once stated, ‘our knowledge … is cumulative only until you have a political earthquake. Then some of the relationships among the variables no longer hold.’ In the context of the economic crisis, the EU faces various challenges. Policy-makers and citizens are all concerned with the effects of differentiated integration and their consequences for the relationship between member states and for the EU as a political and economic project. For many, we are in the midst of an economic crisis which is not only the crisis of the impact of the EU – the crisis of Europeanization – but also the crisis of the Union as a political project: the crisis of European integration. Scholars, decision-makers and public opinion alike are faced with consequences of the economic crisis and the differential impact of the EU. How can we explain the fact that, generally speaking, the emphasis on Europeanization has obscured the resistance to it (see Chapter 4)? While this question concerns the socio-economic aspects of integration, it could also be posed about the rule of law and the enforcement of European rights and values. The state of the Union and its economic, social and political development give impetus to questions not only about the outcomes of Europeanization, but also about the effectiveness of the EU’s compliance mechanisms. In many fields, policy-makers and high-level officials are confronted with major dilemmas: how can they maximize impact and minimize inconsistency? How can they strike a balance between effective and legitimate instruments of compliance? How can they conciliate diversity and flexibility while avoiding risks of collapse? Empirical, normative, prospective, prescriptive, theoretical and methodological questions are at the centre of a lively political and academic debate.

Against this background, the book aims at exploring the paths leading from incremental to structural change and the implications of limited Europeanization for the process of integration. It addresses the following questions: while the process of Europeanization is one of incremental change, is it characterized on occasion by profound, sudden and rapid institutional transformation? Or is the nature of the process better captured by some combination of the two types of change? How can the relationship between these two intertwined types of change – the outcomes of Europeanization and their implications for European integration – be reconsidered?

Theoretical arguments and the structure of this book

The core theoretical argument of this book can be summarized as follows: the existing literature suggests that while European integration advances, and opportunities for agency change, structures nevertheless remain resilient. It follows that Europeanization is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for structural change. While European integration has made a leap forward, Europeanization has remained limited to the strategies of particular actors, leaving national structures intact. Europeanization is gradual, incremental and cumulative. Yet, both in times of tranquillity and in times of crisis, Europeanization can soon find itself interrupted or reshaped.¹ As a result, incremental Europeanization gives rise to contention, which in turn can lead to actors demanding either increased or decreased supranational governance. Following this argument, the book is organized in two parts.

Part I seeks to discover whether and in what way incremental Europeanization leads (or does not lead) to new ways of changing national policy paradigms and European positions. It endeavours to identify new ways to conceptualize the interplay between the outcomes of Europeanization and European integration. It also aims at complementing theories of integration with the cumulative knowledge resulting from previous waves of research on Europeanization. Empirically, this implies that we have to examine the combined effect of outcomes and processes, of actors and structures, rather than examining each process one at a time. The relevance of conceiving Europeanization as a stage of European integration and the implications of this are examined in the four following chapters.

Part II explores incremental Europeanization, domestic obstacles and structural constraints. It is theoretically and empirically linked to the initial research agendas on Europeanization as top-down and bottom-up processes (Vink and Graziano, 2008; Radaelli and Exadaktylos, 2012), but it tries to capture more accurately the path from incremental to structural transformation. The existing literature has demonstrated that cognitive and normative adaptations to Europe through socialization and learning are thought to alter domestic structures. Hence, various research designs have tried to capture this ability of actors to realize their intentions, whether through transformation, adaptation or resistance to change. Following classical theoretical approaches (i.e. rational choice assumptions, new institutionalism or constructivist claims), existing conceptualizations have put forward attributes such as rationality (the ability of the actors to select modes of conduct best likely to achieve their aims), reflexivity (the ability to monitor and to reflect upon the consequences of their actions) and motivation (the desire and passion with which actors approach the attempt to realize their actions) (Hay, 2002, p. 95). Although more structuralist authors have emphasized the limited autonomy of actors and the extent to which they are constrained by structural domestic factors, the authors in Part II argue that the research agenda on Europeanization has neglected the quest for profound structural transformation. There is a first-order change attested by the bulk of studies. This takes the form of cognitive and normative adaptations to Europe, but has not yet been followed by a more radical and profound transformation.

Contribution to the literature

This book seeks to contribute to the existing literature in EU studies. By exploring the interplay between Europeanization and European integration, it highlights the need to reconsider existing ontological and epistemological understandings of the relationship between these two complex processes of change. The new generation of studies on Europeanization to which this volume belongs contends that these processes are not one sided, but are interdependent. In this respect, the volume points out new directions for empirical research and raises a series of topics for theoretical and methodological discussion.

From an empirical point of view, the book raises questions about the implications of incremental change at the domestic level on EU integration and vice versa. For different but interrelated reasons, in recent years this topic has given rise to increased political and academic interest. While policy-makers are concerned with the political, social and economic implications of differentiated integration, academics endeavour to explain it. This volume shows that Europeanization generates outcomes in terms of differentiated integration which feed back into the European policy cycle. In times of tranquillity or in times of crisis, these outcomes may move the Union towards greater integration or, alternatively, may deter further integration.

This understanding of Europeanization as a stage in integration challenges the research agenda in EU studies. From a theoretical and methodological standpoint, it means that Europeanization does not mark the end of the processes concerned. This ontological statement has concrete epistemological implications: it requires diachronic empirical investigation and comparison across time and space.

The methodological challenge lies in how to consider these processes together. Over the last decade, there have been several attempts to improve the theoretical basis of Europeanization, in some instances by proposing new theoretical assumptions and in other instances by proposing new methodologies. This variety of ways to approach the impact of the EU – top-down, bottom-up and horizontal – has tended not only to improve our knowledge of domestic politics and policies but also to evaluate the accuracy of Europeanization from a theoretical point of view. However, it is only in recent years that Europeanization has started to receive the sustained theoretical reflection that its centrality in the literature warrants. The ontology and epistemology of Europeanization have been reviewed in order to find solutions for a series of intellectual dilemmas and methodological problems such as causality, endogeneity, context conditionality, ambiguity, temporality, cross pressure, conflict, measurement, observation, instruments and outcomes (Bache, Bulmer and Gunay, 2012, p. 65; Exadaktylos and Radaelli, 2012, p. xi). This book is also a contribution to this debate in the sense that the authors try to shed more light on what to look for and what counts as significantly explanatory when exploring Europeanization and its relationship with integration.

The chapters

The book explores these tensions between Europeanization and European integration in a wide range of areas including enlargement, health-care policies, employment, food safety policies, the Economic and Monetary Union and promotion of the rule of law. The cases selected show variation not only across time and space but also with regard to their degree of policy integration.

In Chapters 2–5, Robert Ladrech, Marie-Eve Bélanger, Ramona Coman, Amandine Crespy and Luca Tomini provide theoretical and methodological arguments for considering Europeanization and European integration together.

Does the Europeanization of member states impact upon the European integration process itself? By addressing this question in Chapter 2, Robert Ladrech examines whether or not the cumulative effect of Europeanization across member states introduces an additional dynamic to the process of European integration itself. Taking a broad historical view, the chapter discusses the duality of the process by looking at the role of member states as drivers of change and as actors in EU policy-making. Drawing on recent contributions in EU studies, this chapter puts forward theoretical arguments – supported by empirical illustrations – for reconsidering the relationship between Europeanization and EU integration. Ladrech argues that ‘theories of European integration have not … taken into consideration that the transformed or Europeanized member states have implications for integration’ and that ‘European integration theory is challenged by the distinctiveness of a “mature” European Union and the role of (member) state in its development’. In his view, these two phenomena ‘have developed a reflexive or dependent relationship, necessitating a reconsideration of the research agenda for both’.

In Chapter 3, Marie-Eve Bélanger argues that Europeanization is deeply rooted in discourse instead of a series of isolated events. By addressing the question ‘what initiates Europeanization and where does it come from?’, the author takes a historical view and draws on a comparative discourse analysis of past European enlargements, seen as vital manifestations of the Europeanization process. The novelty of this approach lies in considering Europeanization as a ‘discourse that creates a surplus of meaning’. According to the author, ‘Europeans are inventing themselves as political actors, and Europe as a political space, by talking to each other’. By exploring the political motivations of Europeanization, the chapter emphasizes constructivist understandings of Europeanization and underlines the relevance of intersubjectivity. Bélanger shows that the European order is created through Europeanization. The chapter demonstrates that Europeanization is necessary to shape and to legitimate a new political order, including further steps towards deeper integration. Europeanization discourse – she concludes – shapes the way political Europe is constructed. Hence, Europeanization is the foundation and ‘the measure of political integration’, not only the consequence of the integration process. The chapter thus reconsiders the epistemological and ontological relationship between Europeanization and European integration and proposes a constructivist framework which goes beyond existing research designs.

While Ladrech focuses on the politics of European integration and Bélanger on polity and its foundations, Chapter 4 by Ramona Coman and Amandine Crespy examines the pressures generated by incremental Europeanization on the process of integration. The chapter shows that the outcomes of Europeanization lead to contention which can in turn create demands for an increase or decrease in supranational governance. To illustrate this duality, the article draws on the development of both Economic and Monetary Union and democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. The authors argue that the literature on Europeanization has not sufficiently taken into account the limitations of legal and political European integration in attempting to explain the differential impact of the EU. These limitations, combined with structural domestic factors, are both a cause and a consequence of the incremental and limited change induced by the EU. The chapter mainly points at the ambivalent role of crises, politicization and particular junctures as conditions for a shift from limited towards structural change and from Europeanization towards European integration. This argument is also illustrated empirically in Chapter 5 by Luca Tomini. Coman, Crespy and Tomini conclude that critical junctures do not necessarily open up new, diverging paths for integration. Politicization may impede further integration in quiet times but this does not necessarily hold true in times of crisis, when functional pressures may challenge post-functional politics.

Chapter 5 by Luca Tomini examines the enlargement policy. He focuses on the evolution of the political criteria and on the redefinition of the EU’s approach to democracy. This chapter illustrates the duality between Europeanization and European integration by looking at the feedback effects generated by incremental and limited Europeanization in the new member states on the policy tools established by the EU in this policy field. The author emphasizes the role of crisis and critical junctures in redefining the policy core of the Union’s approach to democracy and promotion of the rule of law. The chapter shows that the differentiated impact of Europeanization during negotiations led to a further development of conditionality and to a strengthening of the European approach towards political criteria. Conversely, after accession, although the fine-tuning of strategy and instruments is going forward, according to the author, ‘this process increasingly resembles Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise’, in the sense that the EU’s strategy and tools are always lagging behind the course of events.

The chapters in Part II of the book take as a starting point the assumption of previous generations of studies which have too quickly assumed that the mere existence of mechanisms of Europeanization will lead to deep transformation. One explanation lies in the domestic resistance to this process, and another in the transformative power of the Union and hence its capacity to steer chan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Concordia Discors from Cumulative Europeanization to Deeper European Integration
• Part I: Europeanization as Stage of Integration: Reshaping European Politics, Polity and Policies
• Part II: Incremental Europeanization: Breaking Existing Resistances and Path Dependencies
• Index