Chryssochoou - Theorizing European Integration

Theorizing European Integration

Fully revised and updated throughout, this second edition of Theorizing European Integration provides a comprehensive introduction to the theoretical study of European integration. Combining perspectives from international relations, comparative politics, and social and political theory, Dimitris N. Chryssochoou offers a complete overview of the many competing approaches that have sought to capture and explain the evolving political nature of the European Union (EU) and its qualitative transition from a union of states to a polity in its own right. Contemporary issues, themes and theories addressed include:

the different uses and current state of EU theorizing statecentric accounts of integration and their critics new normative challenges to the study of the EU the political dynamics of European treaty reform new forms of democracy, citizenship and governance the limits and possibilities of EU constitutionalism interdisciplinary understandings of EU polityhood the introduction of a theory of organized synarchy the transformations of state sovereignty in Europe.

This book will be essential reading for all students and academics seeking a deeper theoretical understanding of the nature and evolution of the European polity across political science, international relations and European Studies. Dimitris N. Chryssochoou is Associate Professor of International Organization at the University of Crete. He has held visiting posts at the LSE, Cambridge, Columbia, Athens and Panteion universities, as well as at the Hellenic Centre for European Studies and the Centre for European Constitutional Law in Athens.

This second edition of Theorizing European Integration is much more than an updating of the original. It also develops the authors own special insights into the character of the European Union in particular with regard to the concept of synarchy. Chryssochoou is one of the few contemporary scholars who deal successfully with the overall character of the new Europe. He has created a persuasive synthesis of an increasingly complex entity. The book is a major addition to understanding the regional integration of states. Paul Taylor, Professor Emeritus of International Relations, London School of Economics, UK Chryssochoou approaches theorising as an indispensable tool for understanding the integration of Europe and in this second edition continues his search for reliable theory to help our understanding of the EU and the challenges to its development as a polity. Through conceptual confusion, ontological conundrums, he both does justice to the grand theorists of the past in an historical sweep of the big debates and paradigm shifts while pursuing his own conceptualization of Europe as an organized synarchy of states and citizens. It remains an intellectual tour de force, an exceptionally good guide to theories of integration. Geoffrey Edwards, Jean Monnet EU Professor of European Studies, University of Cambridge, UK This second edition of Dimitris Chryssochoous Theorizing European Integration broadens the big picture that the rst edition had already given us of the formation of both a discipline and a body of substantive research focused on the European experiment. The new edition turns our attention to the way in which European integration studies have come to recognize the importance not only of who governs in Europe and how, but also who is governed. The constitutional crisis of the last few years reinforces Chryssochoous message that the integration project cannot take the European people for granted, and that polity building at the European level requires some kind of vision of how many peoples can make a demos. Chryssochoous book is a sophisticated analysis of the development of integration theory as this has been applied to the European case. Chryssochoou offers a detailed historical analysis of theory development by exploring different conceptions of European integration and their key categories. But his is also an impassionate defense of a particular conception of European integration, which blends together in an original way republican and post-statist categories of politics. Dario Castiglione, University of Exeter, UK Chryssochoou offers an excellent one stop shop of the different theoretical approaches to understanding the EU, indicating the appropriate topics and levels of analysis to which they might be best applied. Richard Bellamy, Professor of Political Science, University College London, UK

Theorizing European IntegrationSecond edition

Dimitris N. Chryssochoou

First edition published by Sage Publications Ltd, 2001 Second edition 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2009 Dimitris N. Chryssochoou All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Chryssochoou, Dimitris N., 1970 Theorizing European integration / Dimitris N. Chryssochoou. 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. European federation. 2. European Union. 3. EuropePolitics and government1989 I. Title. JN15.C467 2008 341.2422dc22 2008010912 ISBN 0-203-94610-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0-415-43750-4 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-415-43751-2 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-94610-3 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-43750-9 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-43751-6 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-94610-7 (ebk)

To the memory of Alexandra Moschonidou Her love will always be a blessing to an innocence preserved

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 The state of a discipline 2 On formative theorizing 3 The confederal phase 4 Discourses on polityhood 5 The consociational analogy 6 Theorizing treaty reform 7 The normative turn 8 Organized synarchy Postscript Notes Bibliography Index

ix xii xiv 1 18 33 49 74 90 105 131 147 151 180 199

Preface

Many a time, and more often than not in transformative periods, integration theory has yielded new insights into processes of social and political change on an international or regional scale. Most prominently and successfully this has been the case with Europes integrative journey. The theme being studied in this book is the changing conditions and routes of this journey and, to be more precise, the scholarly efforts to theorize about the nature and dynamics of the polity that is currently taking shape in Europe. Since the books rst edition, the eld has witnessed an explosion of normative theorizing, often directing its scholarship towards meta-ontological, if at times post-statist, trajectories. Scholarly writing about the question of European polityhood and demos-hood claimed that the recent but unsuccessful attempt to constitutionalize the collectivity through a Constitutional Treaty following the post-Nice euphoria for substantive reforms lacked a genuine constitutive power to bestow the EU with a political constitution proper and thus with a stronger sense of social legitimacy and common destiny. Instead, signs of civic apathy and detachment at the grassroots became manifest after the rejection by the French and Dutch publics of the constitutional project in the respective referenda of May and June 2005. What followed was a reection period, during which the EU challenged its conventional wisdom the statecentric nature of its acquis conferentielle of how best to proceed to the necessary changes in view of its massive enlargement and the considerable disruption this enlargement has caused to the common working arrangements. But the end has been yet another classical treaty-amending process, whose rather moderate outcome was reected in the Lisbon Treaty (2007). In it, most of the Constitutional Treatys intended reforms were rescued, but without its political symbolisms. At the theory front, however, a remarkable profusion of polity discourses had taken place. This book deals with these at some length; especially in the concluding chapter, with what the present author believes to be a primary scholarly challenge today: to sketch out a general image of the EU in order to capture the big picture, which would in turn allow theorists to make sense of the totality of what has been achieved thus far. To start with, theorizing in the social sciences is a path to understanding social reality. This intellectual route is central to the study of European integration, for it reveals the underlying structure of relations among a multitude of state and non-state actors and institutions of governance as being part of an elusive, ambivalent and, as often confessed, essentially contested process of polity formation. Theorizing helps to break down the politico-systemic complexity of the whole, while systematizing its study with a view to deepening our knowledge of its current operations and future evolution, including novel patterns of institutionalized shared rule and instances of formal and informal interaction among distinctive domains of policy action, forms and levels of governance, and arenas of social and political contestation. In a word, theorizing about Europe becomes an indispensable tool for knowledge

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Preface

acquisition and, crucially, knowledge development. Having welcomed the new millennium, and nearing six decades of continuous theorizing about European integration, its scholarship is still puzzled as to what exactly the EU is or may come to resemble in the future. Today both process theories of regional integration and others that focused on alternative integration outcomes nd it equally difcult to grasp the emerging social and political ontologies of the EU order. The same is true of the statecentric theories advanced in the 1970s and of recent theoretical insights drawn from normative (or reexive) accounts of integration. Whether or not a good part of these theoretical efforts have been trapped in a process of inventing a series of neologisms to match the apparently unique physiognomy of the EU, no conceptual consensus has been reported thus far over its ontology; its scholarship is still in search of a reliable theory as the basis for the future of the regional polity. But such is the conceptual confusion that laces the EUs ontological conundrum that many promising theoretical departures have conned themselves to the microcosm of sector-specic analyses, often professing an almost explicit antipathy to the construction of a grand theory of regional integration. On its part, the present study aims to do justice to those who have contributed to the grand theoretical debates in the eld, especially with reference to projecting a certain image of the whole. In this context, the book suggests that the current state of union is best captured by the term synarchy. This model entails considerable implications as to how sovereignty relations ought to be re-conceptualized within a hybrid regional polity composed of states as well as citizens. But the changing norms of sovereign statehood in Europe have their own implications for the democratic future not only of the general system but, given the levels of political interconnectedness that prevail within it, of its component parts too. In many respects, the idea of organized synarchy becomes the next step in the evolution of the larger unit, and it builds on the rst editions depiction of the EU as a confederal consociation. Here, one may legitimately raise the question of whether the segments, in the form of distinct politically organized and culturally dened entities, are now a constitutive part of a general system that is in the process of becoming a polity in its own right; or whether they represent an instance of horizontally cooperating states, whose governments retain ultimate political control over the pace and range of the common arrangements. The view taken in this study is that the EU contains elements of both, and that the theory of synarchy itself a reection of the principle of organized co-sovereignty exemplies the EUs nature as a sympolity of states (distinct collectivities that preserve the attributes of sovereignty) and demoi (multiple citizenries that retain their own sense of demos-hood). The general conclusion to be drawn is that the EU is neither a new form of stato, nor have the member publics developed (as yet) a sense of belonging to a union of peoples or for that matter a strong sense of common destiny. Along with this view comes the suggestion that the polity of the EU is still constituted on the basis of multiple national and transnational civic spaces and political arenas, rather than on a single and undifferentiated public sphere akin to those found within the member polities. A few words about the organization of the book are in order. Chapter 1 links the uses of integration theory with the broader exercise of theorizing in the social sciences. It justies the centrality of theory in developing profound understandings over complex phenomena, and identies new challenges facing the task of unfolding Europes socio-scientic puzzle. Chapter 2 focuses on the formative years of theorizing; the emphasis is on the relationship between structure and process (or between form and function). Chapter 3 reviews the dialectics of autonomy and control during the confederal phase of integration through the lens of the second theoretical wave. Chapter 4 recasts the debate on EU polityhood, by shedding light on the paradigm shift from policy to polity and its implications for the interplay

Preface

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between sovereignty and integration. Chapter 5 explores the pattern of relations between state and regional organization, portraying a particular image of the EU as a confederal consociation: a consensual form of union, whose partners to it have established among themselves a symbiotic modus operandi based on the practice of political co-determination; an expression of the idea of strengthening the whole without weakening the parts. Chapter 6 theorizes about the politics of European treaty reform, offering an indication of missed opportunities to democratizing the general system. Chapter 7 recasts the normative turn in EU studies and shifts the emphasis from theory to metatheory and, in particular, from questions of who governs and how? to that of who is governed?. Chapter 8 offers an innovative depiction of the big picture by sketching out a general image of the whole, as a reection of a particular kind of European reality captured by the term organized synarchy. Finally, the postscript, written more as a prelude to further theorizing than as a concluding statement, makes the case for a European demos-cracy inspired by a republican vision of many peoples, one demos, the normative equivalent of a Republic of Europeans based on a notion of civitas that springs from a rich intellectual tradition of European political thought. D. N. C.

Acknowledgements

This second edition of Theorizing European Integration, like its predecessor, owes a great deal to the continuous support of friends and colleagues. For providing unsparingly of time and insightful comments over the years, I am particularly indebted to Paul Taylor, Dario Castiglione, Richard Bellamy, Geoffrey Edwards, Richard Gillespie, Fulvio Attinn, Kostas Ifantis, Christos Paraskevopoulos, Emil Kirchner, Dimitris Th. Tsatsos, George Pagoulatos, Kostas A. Lavdas, Xenophon Kontiades, Constantine A. Stephanou, Evangelos Raftopoulos, Harry Papasotiriou, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, Stelios Chiotakis, Arend Lijphart, Amy Verdum, Loukas Tsoukalis, Ben Rosamond, Jo Shaw, Michelle Cini, Alex Warleigh and Chris Rumford. My sincere thanks extend to Craig Fowlie for inviting me to undertake this task, Natalja Mortensen, Liz Dawn, Dan Wadsworth and Lisa Salonen for their generous editorial support, and their colleagues at Routledge who have worked hard for this publication. I would also like to attribute a special thanks to Michael J. Tsinisizelis and Dimitris K. Xenakis for their unreserved friendship and support. I remain equally grateful to my students at the University of Crete, as well as to those I had the privilege of teaching at the universities of Athens and Panteion, not only for their constructive contributions to our seminars, but also, if not mostly, for putting up with my continued xation on theory! Two research institutions, to which I was afliated from 20078, have had a positive impact on the development of the book: the Hellenic Centre for European Studies, which granted me a Senior Research Fellowship and a most congenial environment for research and debate, and the Centre for European Constitutional Law, which offered me a Visiting Research Fellowship and valuable insights on the intellectual synergies between law and politics. My previous experience as a Visiting Fellow/Scholar at the Institute on Western Europe at Columbia University, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America also at Columbia, the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University and the LSE European Institute, along with my Readership at the University of Exeter, have had an immense impact on the development of the rst edition, carrying with them a particular weight on the preparation of the revised edition. May I also state how grateful I am to colleagues at the University of Crete for granting me study leave during the Fall term of 2007, without which it would have been impossible to complete this project. In these opening pages, I wish to pay tribute to the memory of two individuals, as was the case in the rst edition: Vincent Wright, whose constant encouragement and advice were instrumental in nding my way into British academia, and Peter F. Butler, former head of the Politics Department at the University of Exeter who, within such a short period of time, did so much to make me feel at home in an educational environment that meant so much to

Acknowledgements

xiii

him. His views extracted from his paper on the purpose of a university education Do not go gentle into that Good Night can be read as a blueprint of hope for the future: To provide students with an understanding of the reections that have taken place on such matters as the nature of the best state and on the relationship between and among citizens and subjects and rulers and governments seems to me to offer them both a sense of, and a capacity for membership of a human community one of the primary characteristics of which is its members ability too often latent to reect on the conditions of their common existence. May I wholeheartedly acknowledge my endless gratitude to my mother Karolina and my stepfather Dimitris K. Vardas for their love, which means the world to me, as well as to my father Nikitas for remaining so immeasurably condent about the arrival of my intellectual departures, no matter how long or arduous these journeys may have been. I remain grateful to Panagia Gorgoepikoos for answering my prayers and for sending to my life my wife Eleni and our beautiful daughter Karolina, who has so miraculously changed my life, as daughters do! Finally, a word of ever-lasting love and affection to the memory of the person that this book is dedicated to, Alexandra Moschonidou. She has been by my side from the day I took my rst steps, dedicating her life to mine ever since. I have never stopped missing her, although we both know that she still lives in my heart.

Abbreviations

AMT CFSP COSAC EC ECHR ECJ EMU EP EU IGC QMV SEA TEU

Treaty of Amsterdam (1999) Common Foreign and Security Policy Conference of European Affairs Committees European Community European Convention on Human Rights European Court of Justice Economic and Monetary Union European Parliament European Union Intergovernmental Conference qualied majority voting Single European Act (1986) Treaty on European Union (1992)

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The state of a discipline

Theory mattersTheory and good social science are mutually reinforcing. For theory generates pluralism, pluralism produces choice, choice creates alternatives, alternatives formulate debate, debate encourages communication, communication increases awareness, awareness minimizes dogmatism and, in this way, there is a propensity to develop a deeper understanding of the phenomenon under scrutiny. This is a book about the theory of European integration, rather than the praxis (and assorted praxeology) of it. Reecting on a recent paradigm shift in EU studies from policy to polity (see Chapter 4) and also from process to product (see Chapter 8) the book investigates the political ontology of the regional collectivity at different evolutionary stages, rather than the day-to-day running of its working arrangements or the results of collective regulation. In this study, as in any other essentially theoretical project on European integration, engagement in concept-building and in developing normative claims about the current state of play or about the process that might lead to an end condition are taken as promising departures. The wider methodological claim put forward is that good social science is theoretically informed. It thus follows that attempts at new theory creation, theory development and metatheory or second-order theorizing (see Chapter 7) should be welcomed. But perhaps the strongest case to be made for theory in general and against the raw positivism of self-styled social scientists that conne the art of theorizing to a narrow set of veriable (or falsiable) hypotheses is that the role of theory is to reveal ways of improving the conditions of human governance. The latter can be dened as the art of organizing the production of knowledge about the constitution of social activity. By theorizing is meant the systematic study of the conditions, structure and evolution of that constitution, by explicating, interpreting, understanding and, where possible, predicting individual, small- or large-scale social activity. Although some theories tend to direct their conceptual and analytical tools on one or more or even all of the above categories, what they all share in common is a rm commitment to the search for reliable answers. But theories entail different notions of knowledge as well as cognitive resources for developing working conceptions. Accordingly, they employ different approaches to knowledge acquisition, application, evaluation and critique. In short, theories as distinct knowledge domains allow room for a variety of methodologies and lines of social inquiry to be pursued, the biases and particularistic concerns of the researcher notwithstanding. According to Mjset, there exist four different understandings of theory in the social sciences: law-oriented, idealizing, constructivist and critical. The rst, law-oriented, by avoiding the search for truly universal laws as in experimental natural science, where theory is compact knowledge but without rejecting social scientic claims to generalization, focuses

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on regularities that apply only within specic contexts: in this light, theory takes the form of a collection of lawlike regularities or quasilaws. The second, idealizing, accepts that social science laws are ideal types, focuses on the conditions which establish the ideal situation: theory, in this sense, is capable of yielding predictions in an idealized (or model) world and, to that end, perfect knowledge must be assumed. The third, constructivist, questions any foundation for the social sciences, implying that no alternative ethical foundations can be found: Social science theory is not in principle different from everyday knowledge . . . [thus] social processes dene (construct) certain realms of knowledge as science with theory itself taking the form not of axiomatic models, but of contextual understanding of interacting motives. The fourth, critical, rests on an internal linkage between theoretical and ethical reection, with social science being dened by its commitment to universal ethical principles: this notion of theory focuses more on ethical foundations and less on concrete paradigms involved in the explanatory efforts of applied social sciences.1 In sum, the rst notion focuses on theory testing, the second on modelling, the third on theory formation and the fourth on ethical reection.2 In discussing the epistemological underpinnings of social science research, one has to take into account Laskis assertion that Political Science has not the axiomatic quality of mathematics. In its equations the variables are human beings whose uniqueness prevents their reduction to law in the scientic sense of that much abused word.3 To borrow from Lieber, we are all forced to acknowledge that water freezes at 32 Fahrenheit;4 yet, how can we accept, least of all axiomatically, that a given social phenomenon or the essence of a given political process can only be subjected to a single pattern of systematic inquiry, resulting in an impersonal form of knowledge driven by the explanatory power of formal rationality? As problems of recognition, classication and denition are still to be solved in the social sciences, theory is not dened by its ability to prove, but rather by its ability to illustrate. Moreover, crass positivism in the social sciences is also untenable, for the meanings and understandings of the concepts themselves are affected by the cultural context of both the researcher and the subject being studied.5 Given the difculties in relying on a tightly controlled experimental design to study social phenomena and to establish relations among variables that are consistent and generalized across time and space (through the generation and testing of hypotheses), explanation through the employment of vigorous causal mechanisms i.e., the mechanistic approach is but one element of the feasible end of social inquiry. More importantly perhaps, it remains highly doubtful whether too much social science inspired by rationalist explanations can help to uncover the alleged coherence that underlies the apparent chaos of contemporary life through the operations of deductive logic (as the apparatus of social scientic theory) and modelling (as an expression of empirical observation). As Tilly writes, three styles of explanation generally compete in those portions of social science that seek explanations of social phenomena: The rst expects social life to exhibit empirical regularities that at their highest level take the form of laws . . . The second accounts for particular features of social life by specifying their connections with putative larger entities: societies, cultures, mentalities, capitalist systems, and the like . . . The third regards social units as self-directing, whether driven by emotions, motives, interests, rational choices, genes, or something else.6 Each style corresponds to a different account of explanation. In the rst style, explanation consists of subsuming particular cases under broadly validated empirical generalizations or even universal roles; in the second, it consists of locating elements within systems; in the


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third, it consists of reconstructing the state of the social unit . . . and plausibly relating its actions to that state.7 Tilly adds a fourth style, whereby explanation consists of identifying in particular social phenomena reliable causal mechanisms [events that alter relations among some sets of elements] and processes of general scope [combinations and sequences of causal mechanisms].8 The emphasis here is on the nature and range of social mechanisms; explanation being assigned the task of locating robust cognitive, relational, and environmental mechanisms within observed episodes.9 But a useful if more ambitious theoretical enterprise has to incorporate a sense of understanding as a valued claim in unfolding the puzzling features of complex social processes, organizations, episodes or system-steering events, and even to allow for an intuitive organization of perception.10 This strategy should be able to identify parallels or suggestive analogies among comparable case studies (even if these have come under the scrutiny of adjacent disciplines); to focus on schemes of understanding the evolutionary nature of political processes as constitutive of wider social phenomena; to trace the broader intellectual environment within which concepts are used to facilitate the production of explanatory patterns i.e., the genealogical method; and to make advances in the realm of social inquiry itself, by being prepared to take risks as well as to respond to criticisms from methodologically competing domains in the making and framing of hypotheses that state the general conditions of the social phenomenon under scrutiny. All the above suggests that integration scholarship should not exhaust its efforts in nding ways of applying the logic of strict science to the study of such an essentially political and profoundly dynamic phenomenon as the European Union (EU). This is not a negation of disciplined social inquiry, nor is it an attack on empirically grounded social research. It is only to make the point that the value of theory is not determined by any rigid criteria,11 and that narrow training, rationalist rule application and the employment of an overtly scientic procedure based on the illusion of ethical neutrality are not the most appropriate methodological blueprints for studying the EU. All the more so if one takes into account the patterns of human behaviour, institutional interaction and societal mobilization integration has produced in such diverse elds as norm-setting, value allocation, demos formation, polity-building, etc. Thus, theorizing integration is not only about explaining the causality of multiple interactions, but also about the meaning and nature of its social and political constitution, and the inevitable normative questions to which its study gives rise. From this angle, one could argue that the highest educational purpose integration theory can serve is to understand the conditions of human association within the larger polity, the forces that shape the range and depth of its evolution, as well as the possibilities of improving the quality of the debate on such self-inquiring questions as where we are now, from where we have come and to where we might go.12

Nebulous settingsHalf a century of uninterrupted theorizing about Europe has produced a situation where one would except that little remains to be said. This is not intended to offer an apology for theoretical inaction or a justication for designing a methodological blueprint inspired by atheoretical observations. Likewise, it should not be seen as an attempt to escape the intellectual challenge to develop an insightful understanding of the multiplicity of forces (and causes) that constantly form and reform the regional system. It is only to state that the study of such a polycemous and elusive polity seems to have reached a high plateau in the early twenty-rst century. Similarly, this is not to imply that theorists should start looking for new

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examples of comparable integrative potential. Rather, the new challenges facing the study of European integration do not take place in a theoretical vacuum: they are an extension of previous theorizing, necessitating the striking of a balance between explanation and understanding; or between rst- and second-order theorizing. Yet, EU scholarship is still in search of a reliable theory as the basis for the future of Europe and thus of a convincing response to the challenges of its polity development. Legitimately though, one may wonder whether Puchalas cynical prophesy that integration theory will amount to a rather long but not very prominent footnote in the intellectual history of twentieth century social science will prove as accurate as the author would have us believe.13 A rst response is that theory matters, whether its conceptual ndings and qualications are to be evenly appreciated by scholars and practitioners alike (the latter being in principle much less interested in theoretical purity than operational reality). For familiarity with theory helps to test our analytical tools and appreciate their relevance in real-life situations. As Taylor puts it: Each theory . . . leads to unique insights which are valid starting points for the purpose of comparison and evaluation.14 Or, in the words of Keohane and Hoffmann: Attempts to avoid theory . . . not only miss interesting questions but rely on a framework for analysis that remains unexamined precisely because it is implicit.15 Therefore, Church asserts, awareness of theory is a necessary ground-clearing measure.16 True, a great deal still remains to be accomplished in the eld. But as long as theory-building activities remain at the top of the academic agenda, there are good grounds for thinking that important possibilities are deemed to be explored. Rosamond explains: Theorizing intellectualizes perceptions. It is not that theory just helps us to identify that which is signicant.17 As Groom asserts: Theory is an intellectual mapping exercise which tells us where we are now, from where we have come and to where we might go.18 But more than that, theory is a means of linking the order of ideas (as conceptual entities) to the order of events (as actual occurrences),19 without being created merely in response to the latter. Church explains: Theories have a life of their own related not just to what happens outside but to general intellectual changes, and, especially, to who supports them and why. Political commitment and self interest like academic investment all play a part in keeping theories going in altered circumstances. Hence theories keep re-appearing and debate between them is continuous.20 What might constitute such possibilities? How are they to be explored? What is the appropriate methodological line to that end? To start with, substantive progress in the eld requires the transcendence of purely narrative or descriptive approaches about the form and functions structure and dynamics of the regional system, and the settlement of fundamental ontological issues within a discipline that has become subject to diverse interpretation. This requires structured ways of understanding changing patterns of interaction,21 free from the inherently fragmented boundaries of micro-analysis, as well as a macroscopic projection of integration based on systematic conceptual explanation. Church writes: We need to be aware of the conceptions we use since they determine our perception of things.22 The locus classicus for this contention is found in Allisons inuential Essence of Decision: different conceptual lenses lead analysts to different judgements about what is relevant and important.23 After all, Hamlyn reminds us, one cannot get at reality except from within some system of concepts.24 Groom concurs: Our conceptualization does . . . give a context to the activities of practitioners and provides them with an opportunity of learning from the experience of others . . . And different


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projections show us different worlds so that we may nd what we are looking for in the sense that we impose meaning on facts rather than speaking for themselves. There is a sense in which one can be pragmatic, but behind every pragmatic approach lies a theory of conceptualization no matter how inchoate. All social activity requires choice and that choice cannot be exercised without some criteria for judgement in short, a theory, a conception, a framework.25 This methodological pathway offers a higher access to reality and the conceptual infrastructure from which a hierarchy of realities might emerge.26 The hypothesis in the latter case is that a continuum of accessible knowledge domains might bridge the distance between the study of specialized issue areas or the understanding of collective conduct and the making of specic political choices. As a result, important connections will be established between knowledge acquisition and knowledge evaluation in the process of theorizing the regional system: integration theory may thus be seen as a system of interdependent principles and ideas, relationships between concepts and practices, as well as links between wholes and parts or, alternatively put, between universals (totalities) and particulars (substructures). But there exists considerable variation in the way in which integration scholars ascribe different meanings and interpretations to concepts whose examination remains crucial for furthering our understanding of what the EU really is and how it actually operates. Also, there are those interested in the larger picture (the hierarchy, to borrow from the above metaphor); others who aim at capturing only part of the overall image (a particular reality); others who focus on the relationship (or interplay) among different realities; and others who concentrate more on the process of theorizing and its underlying antinomies and dialectics. As Rosamond tellingly writes: Theories are necessary if we are to produce ordered observations of social phenomena.27 This view is in full harmony with Stokers understanding of the uses of theory in the social sciences, in that Theories are of value precisely because they structure all observations.28 The validity of these suppositions is justied further when trying to establish a link between continuity and change within a system of shared rule; when attempting to identify the common values of distinct polities and the prospects for the emergence of new ones; when aiming to elucidate the dialectical harmonious and contentious union between a highly interactive society of states and new sources of legitimacy; and when engaging in a process of investigating the allegedly sui generis nature of a hybrid union of states and citizens based on a system of interlocking and overlapping authority structures: a composite polity, lacking a single locus of decision-making. But theory also helps to conceptualize the latter by assessing the changing nature of sovereignty (dened not only as ultimate responsibility but also as a unit of participation) and its implications for the governance of the parts.29 The argument here (see Chapters 5 and 8) is that state sovereignty has not been superseded by a new political centre as part of a self-standing higher constitutional order, but that the delegation of competences to common institutions passes through, rather than escapes, the capacity of states to exercise considerable control over the depth and range of the regional process. In accordance with this argument comes the view that the question of sovereignty has to be placed within a context that takes account of the consensus-seeking norms embodied in joint decision-making that affect state behaviour in the general system. These norms promote neither the retreat of the state nor its capabilities at the expense of the centre in a realist zero-sum fashion. Rather, a symbiotic relationship has emerged between state and international organization: Any assertion of the former was likely, in the pattern of the historical evolution of the latter, to be accompanied by its countervailing force.30 The strengthening of the whole does not represent a direct challenge to the sovereign statehood

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of the parts, for the conditions of the latter have adapted to the challenges for developing collective modes of governance. At the scholarly level, even more challenging is to evaluate critically an ever expanding corpus of literature dealing with such a rich kaleidoscope of relations, whose investigation dees our traditional methods of analysis, while at the same time trying to make sense of a hidden agenda concerning the future of the European state system; the viability of democratic arrangements within and across borders; novel forms of co-governance; multiple citizenship and identity-holding; formal and informal processes of constitutional engineering; the locus of sovereignty in relation to a fast-growing array of shared competences; the relationship between the functional scope, territorial scale and integrative level of the common arrangements; new avenues of communication across a plurality of demoi and their identication with emerging governance structures, and so on. And yet, Pentland notes with an apparent optimism, we need not be routed by the apparent diversity and chaos of the eld.31 In this light, whatever lessons are to be drawn from the process of uniting a cluster of polities and their publics within a larger political unit, this study contributes to the eld by considering the major concerns underlying the nature of European polity formation in relation to the process of theorizing its dening properties. This is a pragmatic task, implying the transformation of international rule-based behaviour and the assertion of a new set of principles, norms and values in the organization of EU politics. In the context of integration theory, the ordering of relations among the member polities amounts to what might be described best as the practice of political co-determination: the forging of new cooperative arrangements for jointly managing their internal and external affairs. The question to beg here is whether or not the EU will strike a positive balance between its becoming the main locus of collective decision-making for the participating units and the dominant focus of popular political identication. Chapter 7 addresses this question, by linking the implications of EU polity-building to the search for legitimate forms of shared rule within the larger political unit.

A social scientic puzzleOne does not have to be a specialist in international or comparative politics to reach the conclusion that, more than any other organization, the EU has contributed to the systematization of regional politics in such diverse elds of activity as solving issues of collective action, satisfying conditions of stability, managing complex interdependencies and striking a balance between collective governance and self-rule. Crucial in this context has been the sharing of experience among the involved actors in developing a cooperative culture through a common learning process of peaceful social and political change. Cooperative culture should not be confused with a form of diplomatic accommodation based on quid pro quo practices of interstate bargaining, but rather should be understood as stemming from participation in a purposive forum that is capable of impinging upon the behaviour of the participating units. Elements of this multifaceted experience, a clear manifestation of which is the EUs institutional sophistication, provide the intellectual and cognitive capital needed for integration theorists to capture the transformation of a community of sovereign states into a regional pluralist polity, or the dynamics of system-wide structural change from a diplomatic to a domestic arena, if not from diplomacy to democracy. Although no shortage of available theory exists to inform and guide integration scholarship, the eld is embroiled in theoretical controversy compounded by conceptual complexity and a propensity to adopting the logic (and tactics) of methodological individualism. In some interpretations, the EU system is called complex, not because it is seen as evolutionary or as


7

being composed of multiple interactive actors, processes and institutions, but because it dees any easy notions as to how it might be compared with other systems of domestic or international governance. This issue questions the validity of the core integration theories, even when taken in a complementary manner, to capture the dominant character of the relationship between the whole and the parts. Mitranys functionalism, Haass revised version of it conveniently labelled neofunctionalism and a variety of federalist approaches, ranging from the US model of dual federalism to the cooperative federalism of the German polity, nd it difcult to reconcile two apparently contradictory principles: the preservation of segmental autonomy within a nascent, yet uncrystallized, system of shared rule. From this angle, the challenge to scholarly inquiry is to capture the relationship between the strengthening of distinctive constitutional orders through the institutionalization of the principle of joint sovereignty. The intellectual problem here is rooted in the different treatments of general concepts like sovereignty and integration, government and governance, policy and polity, order and fragmentation, unity and diversity, autonomy and interdependence. Which of the many interpretations these concepts entail ought we to utilize so as to improve the reliability of our understanding of such a macro-level political phenomenon? All the more so given its dynamic character and its capacity for self-renewal; both of which are of importance when employing different lines of (theoretical) inquiry to rise above [mere] observation of specic events.32 As Kuhn pointed out four decades ago, absent a theoretical model, all facts are likely to remain equally relevant.33 Whatever the mixture of evidence and method embedded in existing models of European integration, whether their emphasis is on conict or equilibrium, and irrespective of their preference for the familiar (concrete) or the unique (unidentied) in describing or prescribing a possible end point toward which the EU may be developing, their systematic examination becomes a prime theoretical requisite for the crossing of a qualitative research threshold in the eld, while serving the purpose of suggesting potentially fertile questions for further research. Both normative and narrative interpretations of integration, purporting to identify the logic of a distinct form of regionalism and its implications for the subunits, often tend either to underestimate or to overemphasize the role of states or the central institutions in setting the integrative agenda and then acting upon it. Much theoretical writing on Europe has been trapped in the classical supranationalintergovernmental dichotomy, leading to an unhelpful focus on the formal characteristics of the actors at the expense of the processes which characterize, and ow from, their interactions, making the latter entirely dependent on the former.34 From a different angle, competing theories tend to disagree on background conditions and process variables, on the locus of sovereignty in the larger system, on the need for more or less integration, on the impact of formal or informal rules, on the feasibility or desirability of ascribing a political telos to the process, and so on. This battle of theories has often led to zero-sum notions of interstate bargaining, coupled with unjustied condence about how the EU system actually works and how it might develop. The elephant, however, to recall Puchalas colourful metaphor, is not easy to manipulate in theoretical terms: it often turns into a chameleon adjusting itself to the very requirements of the day. It may not only be the case that the various integration theorists are aware of a rather limited picture of a hardly describable and, hence, conceptually evasive political animal, but also that the creature itself may indeed change so rapidly as to render the whole process of its study (including both sector-specic analyses and system-wide theorizing) an exercise that is ultimately misleading. Be that as it may, the EU remains an unresolved social scientic puzzle with an open nalit politique.35 It is a form of regionalism that more than any other form of deep

8


regionalism . . . has displaced the potential to alter the relative congruence between territory, identity and function which characterised the nation state.36 All of the above properties of statehood are subject to change: national territories are embedded in a wider socio-political space; identity displays the potential of multiple loyalties; while state-controlled functions are inuenced by the emergence of new strains generated by a dramatic increase in the levels of interdependence and internationalized governance.37 As Laffan et al. have asserted, the EU is more than an expression of modied interstate politics: it is the focus for processes that bring together new varieties of identity and need.38 But let us now turn to the question of dening this elusive political formation. Such theoretical concerns are compounded further by the fact that, on the basis of classical typologies, the EU remains a half-way house a via media between federal state (federation) and federal union of states (confederation).39 Although it is taken to imply something more than the mere aggregate of its parts, even in the form of a higher normative order, sovereignty has not yet moved towards a new regional centre. From this view, the EU is neither an international organization as conventionally understood, nor is it becoming an ordinary state with a monopoly of law-making and law-enforcing powers. As Majone notes, the EU has no legislature but a legislative process in which different institutions . . . have different parts to play.40 But equally puzzling is its legal ontology; for some it rests on a dynamic system of international treaty rules, while others speak of an incipient constitutional system driven by aspirations akin to classical state-building: a constitutional order in statu nascendi, if not ex proprio vigore.41 Also, although the EU exceeds the Deutschian notion of pluralistic security-community, it has failed to meet the socio-psychological conditions identied by the older functionalists for a substantive, albeit not tout entire, transfer of public loyalties to a new political centre, or those linked to the making of neofunctionalist-inspired political community as suggested by Haas.42 In most scholarly writings, the EU is an integrative venture whose nal product the end condition of the process is yet to become discernible. Attributes like partial polity and part-formed political system demonstrate the lack of any condent scholarly assertion,43 often rendering the whole enterprise a challenge to the continuing separation of international relations from political science [especially the domain of comparative government].44 But even without bearing in mind the series of neologisms invented over time to capture the unique properties of the EU, the intermeshing of federal principles, confederal structures and consociational processes render its political ontology far from comprehensible. To simply argue, on the other hand, that the EU is a phenomenon sui generis the n = 1 problem45 and should thus be examined through the lens of new conceptual paradigms or ad hoc theoretical interpretations runs the danger of complying with undisciplined and often ill-founded formulations. But there also exists the danger of perpetuating its present stance in the grey, in-between area of normal interstate and normal intrastate relations as the two extreme poles of a continuum on which polities are conventionally located.46 Hence the intellectual challenge to transcend the dichotomy between statecentric and statist approaches to integration and concentrate on more likely intermediate outcomes, whose format may differ from the forms of political domination that we are used to dealing with.47 The aim is to conceptualize the transient results of an ongoing process, rather than the [imagined] denitive product of a [presumed] stable equilibrium.48 For what is more likely to emerge from this complex, historically unprecedented and contentious process will differ markedly both from the constitutional properties attributed to a conventional state, however decentralized its structures may be, and from the type or range of competences delegated to an average international organization.


9

But what terminology can we best employ to arrive at a realistic image of the EU, given that the latter qualies, according to Ruggie, as a multiperspectival polity?49 Of what conceptual and analytic value, or indeed continuity, would such a vocabulary be, given that events outstrip theory or, in Hallsteins words, that as language precedes grammar, so politics precedes political theory.50 As Wessels succinctly put it: In debating controversial views on the nature, legitimacy and prospects of the EU, one sensation might become more and more dominating: we are confronted with realities and challenges that might be outside our traditional categories. We may be in a situation similar to how de Tocqueville described the United States of the nineteenth century: The human mind invents things more easily than words; that is why many improper terms and inadequate expressions gain currency . . . Hence a form of government has been found which is neither precisely national or federal; . . . and the new word to express this new thing does not yet exist.51 Keeping in mind Schmitters view of the EU as the most complex polity that human agency has ever devised,52 the question remains as to where the present European polity ts in the range of (pre)existing forms of political organization. In the hope of linking this question to the systemic complexity of the EU, the following is in order. To start with, Wallace notes that the constituent governments have now created a constitutional system which has some state attributes, but which most or all of its constituent governments do not wish to develop into a state, even while expecting it to deliver outcomes which are hard to envisage outside the framework of an entity which we would recognise as a (federal) state . . . The retreat from a federal objective for the European Community [EC], while retaining a constitutional agenda which implied the need for a federal state-framework, has left a shadowy area at the centre of EC construction.53 Likewise, Adonis observes: It is fashionable to talk of a democratic decit, but that is but one aspect of a more chronic malaise: constitutional chaos.54 In this context, Sbragia asserts that it is more useful to think of the larger entity as an ongoing experiment in fashioning a new structure of governance, one that accepts a great deal of cultural diversity as well as incorporating politics based on the state-society model and politics based on relations between governments.55 Behind this statement lies the notion of symbiosis between the whole and the parts, which gives credence to those who ascribe to cooperative federalism as a model for conceptualizing the EU political system, and to Taylors account of the implications of the symbiotic process for state sovereignty.56 Drawing on federal theory, McKay writes that regional integration in Europe is a movement towards federation which has indigenous rather than external roots, over which there is near unanimity among elites and which has already produced real results in terms of the delineation of power between national and supra-national (or federal) authorities.57 Moravcsik, on his part, proposes a liberal intergovernmentalist approach that takes the EU as a regime within which interstate bargaining becomes more efcient, enhancing the autonomy of national leaders;58 a denition close to Puchalas earlier view of the Community as a multilevel system of managed interdependence.59 Further, while Wallace places the regional polity between an international regime and a fully edged political system,60 Webb takes it to denote a partially-integrated policy-making system at the regional level.61 Writing on the inadequacy of classical statist, intergovernmental and federal forms of polity,

10


Keohane and Hoffmann have visualized the European reality as an elaborate set of networks, closely linked in some ways, partially decomposed in others, whose results depend on the political style in the ascendant at the moment.62 Another interesting classication is Scharpfs conception of the Community as a joint-decision system, where the pathology of public policy-making is conditioned by a systemic tendency towards sub-optimal substantive solutions.63 Recognizing that the effectiveness and implementation of common policies are inuenced by what Taylor had earlier called an interdependence trap, Scharpf argues that the common system seems to have become just that middle ground between cooperation among nations and the breaking of a new one . . . .64 Although this issue is examined later in this volume (see Chapter 7), it is important to note that progress towards the formation of an EU polity or towards the making of a composite demos as its principle legitimizing referent should not be equated with the possibility of a new form of regional statehood, let alone nationhood. At this point, three further attempts at conceptualizing the EU warrant attention, for they reveal the difculties in projecting alternative outcomes. They include: Wesselss fusion thesis, Caporasos international state thesis and Schmitters notions of condominio and consortio. Wessels projects a macropolitical view of integration characterized by an ever closer fusion of public instruments from several levels linked with the respective Europeanization of national actors and institutions.65 By stressing the importance of institutionalized patterns of joint problem-solving between national and EU governance structures, he takes the integrative project as part of the evolution of European statehood: it is a crucial factor and dynamic engine of the fundamental changes in the statehood of western Europe;66 a role far more complex than that of rescuing the nation-state as suggested by Milward.67 Likewise, by fusion is meant more than a horizontal pooling of sovereignties as understood by Keohane and Hoffmann;68 rather, it means a merger of public resources located at several state-levels for which the outside world, i.e. the average European citizen but also many experts, cannot trace the accountability, as responsibilities for specic policies are diffused.69 This notion of fusion as a merger process chimes well with the German system of interlocking federalism; the latter being part of Wesselss explanatory variables for the patterns of EU political systemic growth. Wessels does not deny the impact of common institutions on integration outcomes, or their inuence in shaping the perceptions of national actors, but states that the rational pursuit of changing national interests is a major driving force for the stable growth of the EU from a dynamic macropolitical view.70 As Church writes, Wesselss thesis seeks to explain how states failing to control their situation, turn to supra-nationality to do so . . . The result is a fusion of internal and external affairs into a messy federalism.71 In an illuminating macro-institutional analysis that ts a post-ontological stage of EU studies i.e., the emphasis being on explaining process and outcome, rather than categorization Caporaso examines the EU from the perspective of different forms of state, taking it to denote an international state: an international structure of governance based on the extrusion of certain political activities of its constituent units.72 Being critical of the view that equates the emergence of European authority with a direct loss of state autonomy, Caporaso encourages EU scholarship to focus on the ongoing structure of political authority and governance, that is to say the complex interaction of economic and political relations among the component states that are mediated by the central institutions.73 Drawing on three stylized state forms the Westphalian, the regulatory and the postmodern as conceptually possible expressions of political authority organized at the national and transnational levels,74 he argues that each form captures a part of the evolving EU reality. After clarifying that his


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analysis is a comparative exploration of three metaphors rather than a test of three theories, he notes that the rst ideal state form takes regional integration as a re-enactment of the traditional processes of state-building from the seventeenth through to the twentieth centuries; the second denes the EU as a supranational state specializing in the control and management of international externalities; the third perceives the EU as a polymorphic structure that lacks a strong institutional core, is increasingly fragmented, has no clear public sphere, and where process and activity become more important than structure and xed institutions.75 Caporasos post-ontological account of the EU as a novel instance of social formations, interests and interactions embedded in an international structure of governance is closer to the regulatory and postnational state forms, rather than to the Westphalian state model. Schmitters exploration of alternative integration outcomes through the projection of novel forms of political organization has been a welcome contribution to the debate.76 Rejecting the idea that the EU will be a re-run of the processes and policies that earlier made the nation state the predominant political institution of Europe, he argues that the EU, presently lacking, inter alia, a locus of clearly dened authority, a central hierarchy of public ofces, a distinct sphere of competence, a xed territory, an overarching identity, a monopoly over legitimate coercion and a unique capacity to impose its decisions, is well on its way of becoming something new.77 What might this new entity be? Schmitter offers two possible suggestions. The rst is the idea of consortio: a form of collective action . . . where national authorities of xed number and identity agree to co-operate in the performance of functional tasks that are variable, dispersed and overlapping.78 In it, the segments retain their respective territorial identities and accept positions within a common hierarchy of authority, but pool their capacities to act autonomously in domains they can no longer control at their own level of aggregation.79 A less imaginative, but most probable trajectory of the EU polity is the idea of a condominio based on a variation in both the territorial and the functional constituencies: Instead of a Eurocracy accumulating organizationally distinct but politically co-ordinated tasks around a single centre, there would be multiple regional institutions acting autonomously to sole common problems and produce different public goods . . . their dispersed and overlapping domains . . . could result in competitive, even conictual, situations and would certainly seem inefcient when compared with the clear demarcations of competence and hierarchy of authority that (supposedly) characterize existing nation states.80 More than thirty years ago, Haas came to a conception of Europe similar to the condominiotype outcome, which he termed asymmetrical authority overlap. In it, authority is not proportionately or symmetrically vested in a new centre; instead it is distributed asymmetrically among several centres, among which no single dominant one may emerge, though one might imagine subtypes of this dependent variable involving various degrees of centralized authority. The ensemble would enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens though it would be difcult to pinpoint the focus of the legitimacy in a single authority centre; rather the image of innitely tiered multiple loyalties might be the appropriate one.81 This view resembles Lindbergs and Scheingolds understanding of a possible end state along the lines of an ambiguous pluralistic system,82 as well as Streecks projection of the

12


European polity developing into a collection of overlapping functionally specic arrangements for mutual coordination among varying sets of participating countries.83 In their effort to capture the hybridity of the EU, Bellamy and Castiglione have employed a neo-republican approach under the heading of democratic liberalism that rests on a pre-liberal conception of constitutionalism that identied the constitution with the social composition and form of government of the polity.84 This form, by bringing the constituent groups of a polity into an equilibrium with one another, aims to disperse power so as to encourage a process of controlled political conict and deliberation [as a way of ltering and channelling preferences] . . . moving them thereby to construct and pursue the public good rather than narrow sectional interests.85 Under this neo-Roman conception, the EU is dened as a mixed commonwealth along the lines suggested by MacCormick, where the subjects of the constitution are not homogeneous, but rather a mixture of political agents that share in the sovereignty of the composite polity.86 Bellamy and Castiglione note: The polycentric polity that is therefore emerging is a denite departure from the nation state, mainly because it implies a dissociation of the traditional elements that come with state sovereignty: a unied system of authority and representation controlling all functions of governance over a given territory.87 Informed by an associative understanding of EU governance, this pluralist depiction of Europe as a heterarchical order, where sovereignty is dispersed across and between a variety of actors and public domains, and where a balanced constitution emerges as the ultimate protective mechanisms against the danger of domination, accords with Tarrows view of the EU as a composite polity (a system of shared sovereignty and partial policy autonomy among different governance levels),88 as well as with te Brakes idea of a composite state (a system of overlapping, intersecting and changing political spaces).89 Reecting on the differentiated character of the European polity, Schmitter offers a general justication for applying the political terminology presented above to its study: We are familiar with the properties of states and intergovernmental organizations . . . but we would have to go far back in European history to recapture a more diverse language about political units.90 Indeed, scholars often turn to the past for insights and categories of analysis to get their bearings in a present that is in ux. Rethinking the present in light of the past not only is a productive way of sparking scholarly imagination, but also of searching for intriguing questions. This is especially true when the question of time is addressed in a creative manner, as in the logic of analogical reasoning for the study of processes that evolve through different phases not dissimilar to those that other processes have previously undergone.91 Analogical reasoning permits the transfer of ideas from a familiar phenomenon to a less familiar one, providing the necessary cognitive resources for theoretically informed comparative investigations.92 By using the more familiar as a representational base for the less familiar, we acquire a hypothesis to be tested.93 Past experiences can thus be taken as functional analogies of more recent events. Even though this line of inquiry may lead to some approximation of EU reality with images of pre-existing polities, thus helping theorists to simplify an otherwise nebulous image of the whole, it is instructive to recall King et al.s advice that scholars would learn a lot if they could rerun history with everything constant, save for an investigator-controlled explanatory variable.94 Some further methodological points are in order here. When conducting comparative research we are advised to select cases that are as similar as possible (rather than merely familiar to the researcher), and then nd a crucial difference between them in order to set the limits of comparison. Harris explains: We should not compare apples with oranges just because both are fruits, but apples of one sort with apples of another sort.95 Inevitably though, there exists a trade off between similarity and differentiation.


13

As Dogan and Pelassy argue, at times comparativists will tend to look for differences in contexts that are roughly similar, or . . . will try to nd analogies in contrasting political systems.96 Central to the above is what Teune calls the equivalence across systems for the purposes of construct validity and measurement.97 The components and properties of the systems compared should at least indicate some equivalence to avoid the danger of engaging in creative comparisons that are nevertheless meaningless due to their initial lack of equivalence. This applies to a methodological issue dened by Sartori as the travelling problem98 when concepts in cross-systemic comparisons travel a very long distance.99 Be that as it may, McKenzie is right to argue that the problem is not whether to compare but how to organise comparison.100 All the above point to different uses of language and traditions of conceptual history; to diverse approaches to concept-building and ways of interpreting concepts that rest on different normative qualities; and to distinct means of determining our perceptions of reality. Other terms to be found in the acquis acadmique as means of conceptualizing the EU include: proto-federation, confederance, concordance system, quasi-state, Staatenverbund, meta-state, market polity, managed Gesellschaft, nascent Gemeinschaft, regional regime, federated republic, sympolity, confederal consociation, synarchy, etc. Most of these attributes mark a shift away from vertically dened end products of integration such as political community, federal state, constitutional union, supranational centre and the like, whose inadequacy, according to Haas, lies on the fact that they foreclose real-life developmental possibilities.101 Writing on the heuristic nature of neologisms as a means of approximating an existing reality to non real-life counterparts, Harrison notes that such hypothetical integration outcomes are mere provisional points in the future on which analytical attention may be xed.102 Accordingly, whether these attributes are trapped in a state-oriented mode of thinking103 and let us immediately note that statist analogies are partly justied on the grounds that, at some stage, one cannot but employ concepts that originally aimed at explaining the ontology of the state they capture part of a more complicated reality, suggesting that the question of what exactly the EU is (and is not), is still to be sorted out. This does not obviate the question why a conceptual consensus is yet to emerge over the EUs ontological conundrum. A plausible answer is that conceptualizing the European polity rests on different polity ideas incorporating different visions of order, as it does on contending normative orders suggesting different ideal-type orientations the result being that such a discursive and substantive differentiation and variability account for different structures of meaning.104 Hardly surprisingly, then, it is likely that the task of constructing a reliable theory as the basis for the future of the EU will result in a polygamous affair encompassing different strands in the literature compounded further by its in-between character, in that it hovers between politics and diplomacy, between states and markets, and between government and governance.105 This, Sbragia writes, will stimulate scholars of politics within unitary states and federations to rethink what they have so far taken as givens.106 But Puchala is less inclined to share such optimism. He states: European integration will for the foreseeable future continue to be an ongoing social scientic puzzle.107 What follows supports the latter prophecy. Although from a statecentric view the EU rests on the separate constitutional orders of states, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the formal treaty framework already represents a Constitutional Charter.108 Further, consensus-seeking in the Council of Ministers is the norm, even when the treaties formally require resort to majority rule; the latter thus has served only to lubricate a consensus system.109 Similarly, the European Parliament (EP) performs functions that even state legislatures would be jealous of,

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yet the lack of its controlling and legislative powers vis--vis EU executive bodies supports the thesis of a democratic decit. Also, European citizenship has been hailed by some as a step toward a sense of demos-hood in the EU, while others have argued that it had more to do with the free movement of people within a single economic space, rather than with the making of a common civic identity based on a substantive corpus of democratic rights. Also, while an increasing array of competences are being brought into the general system, impacting upon domestic institutions, their locus decidendi remains closer to the domain of states. A nal point: enshrined in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) (1992) as a mechanism for the allocation of shared competences, subsidiarity has opened the way for two separate lines of development. These are the protection of state autonomy against the perils of excessive regional centralization, and the extension of EU legislative authority (see Chapter 5). Let us then pose the same question Puchala did some three decades ago: Where do we go from here? A plausible answer here might be that, instead of placing undue emphasis on the uniqueness of its dening features, it might prove more protable to examine those aspects of its internal organization that can be paralleled with already familiar models of governance. This is the view taken in Chapter 5, where the EU is dened as a confederal consociation. A new thesis should not only take account of pre-existing classications, but should also use them constructively in order to substantiate its ndings. Groom notes: There must be acknowledgement of the old Europe, but also a realisation that in building a new one, there are many original aspects that do not t easily into the customary conceptual frameworks of integration theory.110 The general point to make is that we are witnessing the reversal of the Mitranian logic to integration: instead of form following function, the structural properties of the general system dictate increasingly the pace and range of the regional process.111 Thus, the extension of the scope and level of integration do not necessarily coincide. Since the coming into force of the TEU, there is evidence to suggest that the functional scope (new policy domains) and territorial scale (enlargement) of integration have been extended without altering the locus of sovereignty, or having a dramatic effect on how the central institutions exercise political authority. The extension of majority rule in the mid-1980s on largely non-conict-prone areas the completion of the single market and, later on, the introduction of a co-decision procedure illustrate this point well. And so do the reform packages agreed in subsequent treaty revisions from Amsterdam to Lisbon (via Nice) which, taken together, resemble an exercise in system consolidation (or regime maintenance) rather than polity transformation (see Chapter 6).

Theorizing integrationThere are various ways of examining an interdisciplinary object of study arguably as many as the constitutive bodies of theory that compose it. European integration is a good case in point. For since the early days of the process, its students have applied a variety of approaches in order to develop a better understanding of what the larger entity looked like in the different stages of its evolution. And yet, Church writes, there has been no resolution of the theoretical enterprise.112 Indeed, despite the many promising theoretical departures over the years, only a few concrete theoretical arrivals have been achieved. Drawing on the genealogy of EU theory-generation its intellectual context different traditions of international theory (ranging from pluralist paradigms of interstate behaviour to neorealist interpretations of statecentric preferences), coupled with the meso-theorizing of comparative and public policy analysis (seeking to link the domestic and international arenas of European governance) seem to have exhausted the analytical spectrum within which the study of European integration can


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bear fruit. Far from it though! Especially if one subscribes to Rosamonds optimism about the current state of theorizing in the eld: There is no doubt that integration theory (if it can be called that any more) is in a good state of health. It was not always so, and the recent phase of theoretical reexivity and innovation owes much to the spillover into EU studies of creative thinking across the political sciences . . . European integration may well be a totally unique enterprise without either historical precedent or contemporary parallel, but it is a ready source for comparative study in some of the most emerging and lively social science currently going on.113 Despite, however, the recent comparativist turn in EU studies (see Chapter 4),114 intergovernmentalism or modied schemes of statecentrism such as confederance, co-operative confederalism and confederal consociation115 has survived the tides of regional centralization. A crucial implication from this is that the EU political system has not developed its own sovereignty with a view to transcending the sovereignty of its parts, contrary to earlier neofunctionalist predictions. The current interplay between coordinated interdependencies and diffused political authority suggests that the EU, despite the fact that it has long outreached mere international organization status, is not part of a linear process toward a federal end. Rather, its working arrangements are about the preservation of those state qualities that would allow the subunits to survive as distinctive polities, while engaging themselves in a process of polity formation that transforms their traditional patterns of interaction. In both historical and political terms, such a process amounts to the qualitative structural transformation of a system of sovereign states into the most advanced scheme of voluntary and peaceful regional integration the world has ever witnessed, without carrying with it the assumption of the end of the nation-state. The joining together of distinctive political units through a politics of accommodation, institutionalized compromise and an informal culture of consensus-building at the highest political level all of which correspond to the EUs consociational nature is part of a wider evolution that poses no direct challenge to the constitutional conditions of state sovereignty (see Chapters 5 and 8). The latter has simply acquired through intense formal and informal interaction a new cooperative dynamic of its own within highly institutionalized frameworks: it is by no means subsumed either by a new political centre, or by a new hierarchy, where the dominant form of regulation is authoritative rule,116 or even by a quasi-governmental structure that approximates a realistic image of a modern state.117 The EU has not taken us beyond the nation-state and towards a new kind of state. Whether or not its logic of powersharing is best explained through a theory of institutional delegation (sovereignty-sharing) or through a federal surrender of state powers (sovereignty transfer), the most compelling evidence for the lack of a European sovereignty per se is that the member publics are recognized as sovereign only in the context of their national spheres. This begs the question of developing effective European civic competence to counterbalance the state-controlled forms of exercising political authority within the general system (Chapter 7). As a general description of the EUs modus operandi an unambiguous statement that appeared in The Economist at the turn of the millennium: Inter-governmentalism, as the jargon goes, is what counts.118 Doubtless, schemes of supranational integration were of considerable potential during the formative years of the process, dominating the domestic policy arena of the then Community. That was a period when Hallsteins progressive presidency of the newly founded Commission aimed at projecting a new structure of managing integration. Later, however, such trends were replaced by a more balanced relationship between the Communitys expansionist ambitions and intergovernmental realities. That was the beginning of what has been termed after the

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Luxembourg Accords in the mid-1960s as the Second Europe: a transition stage leading to The Hague Summit of December 1969, in turn hailed as the rst signicant relance of integration after a period of hard intergovernmentalism. The third integrative stage came about a few years later, with the institutionalization of the European Council at the 1974 Paris Summit. This top political institution was expected to provide the leadership needed to move the whole towards higher levels of integration, while also acting as a protective mechanism for sensitive, and often non-negotiable, national interests. These developments signalled the inception of what Taylor described as the Third Europe: a qualitatively different phase from the pre-1974 one, characterized by a rather moderate version of intergovernmentalism as a method of promoting integration. The nal product of this stage itself a compromised structure between federal, confederal and consociational governance (see Chapters 3 and 5) projected a symbiotic arrangement between domestic and regional dynamics. This brings us to another question contemporary theorists ought to raise: To what extent, if any, are the formative theories of integration still capable of offering any sense of future direction? Functionalism focused on the role of international functional agencies as a means of establishing a working peace system based on the notion of technical self-determination within an aterritorial policy setting; neofunctionalism on the dynamics of a self-regulated pluralistic society of organised interests, multiple spillovers and patterns of elite socialization; and federalism on regional constitution-making. They all focused on questions of who governs? and how?, that is on the relationship between national and regional dynamics, joint decision rules, control of the agenda, how policy is being pursued at different governance levels, and so on. These formative theories failed to ask an equally important question: who is governed? a question that prompted a normative turn in EU studies that, in many respects, followed developments in international relations theory.119 The EU was taken as an entity of interlocking normative spheres, none of which was privileged over the other.120 Or, as Laffan et al. put it, a harbinger of trends in political and economic order, locked as it is between modernity and postmodernity.121 From a combined neo-constitutionalist and post-statist perspective, what amounted to a normativist meta-discourse (see Chapter 7), the EU has been portrayed as a heterarchical space that combines unity and multiplicity, transcends pre-existing boundaries and projects a pluridimensional conguration of authority.122 Such theoretical accounts reveal a striking paradox: although the EU is taken as a rmly enough established form of polity where traditional notions of democracy are losing their once powerful appeal, it does exhibit a notable potential for democratic self-development. Since the mid-1990s, the EU has transcended issues of market integration and regulation, touching upon sensitive areas of state authority, to the point that such trends have been described as the only regionalism in the international system where there is an attempt to democratize politics above the level of the state, to mark a decisive shift from diplomacy to politics.123 Hence, the depiction of the EU as a polity casts doubt on what Dahl calls the continuing adequacy of the conventional solution.124 This view chimes well with a point made by Kohler-Koch that EU governance is not just determined by the structural properties of the EC system but also inuenced by actors perceptions of legitimate organising principles.125 Interestingly, the idea of a network arrangement or of governing through networks, which embraces governments, subnational authorities and the Commission, adds credence to those who understand the EU as a multilevel policy arena. Even though some of these issues are explored in Chapter 4, it is worth noting that the greatest challenge facing the model of network governance and its combinations of policy synergies among public and private actors is the level of systemic support it will enjoy by the general public and the


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means through which the institutions of the larger unit will open up new participatory structures. For the Europeanization of domestic policy to enjoy a meaningful level of social legitimacy, it is imperative that the emerging forms of EU governance are accompanied by civic-oriented processes of EU polity-building: effective governance for the management of a regional liberal economic order based on output-oriented legitimacy determined by the systems problem-solving capability126 will be but a poor substitute for the democratic norms embedded in the political constitution of good governance in relation to a demos. Technocracy and integration may have started as mutual reinforcements during the formative years, but have ended in conict, if not in an acute discrepancy, between the strategic choices of Europes elites and public sentiments. The many different phases of integration and subsequent theories devoted to their explanation point to the assumption that the polity of the EU, as distinct from a regional state or, conversely, from a classical union of states, resembles an asymmetrical synthesis of academic (sub)disciplines. As a result, different perspectives on the role and inuence of state or central institutions have become sites of intellectual contestation. Writing on the growing antithesis between intergovernmentalists and institutionalists, Puchala has noted that EU theorizing has recently evolved into a full-scale, hard-fought debate . . . with contenders jumping upon one anothers attributed weaknesses while disregarding one anothers insights.127 Forty years earlier, Lindberg reached a similar conclusion: As a contributor to the European integration literature I have more and more come to feel as if I were excavating a small, isolated portion of a large, dimly-perceived mass, the contours of which I could not make out. I know that there are others digging there too, for I can sometimes hear them, but we seldom meet or see each other, and we have seldom organized so as to combine our efforts.128 This is reective of what Jrgensen calls my discipline is my castle, and resembles the kind of tribalism depicted by Knudsen in his portrait of the parochial scholar in EU studies: so my project has been, in part, an imperfect search through a jungle of small specialities in different disciplines. Most of us are in reality victims of this kind of incomplete communication . . . The European tendency is for each specialist to stick to his own corner.129 Two decades ago, Bulmer expressed a similar concern: We may end up with a bewildering set of policy cases explained by a further array of analytical frameworks so that the big picture of integration is lost from view.130 A rather different account was offered by Pentland, by making the case against the integration of integration theory: it would seem potentially more useful to identify, acknowledge and sharpen the fundamental differences between various approaches, so that they can be tested through confrontation in the empirical world. Through this procedure scholars may in time converge on the most useful approach . . . by drawing the disorderly collection of approaches we now have into recognizable lines of battle, we can at least suggest where the most important points of contact will be.131 But how ought we to appreciate the relevance of the theoretical acquis to the study of European integration in the early twenty-rst century? A good suggestion is to start from the formative discourses on the form and functions, structure and process, scope and level of integration. For it is this rst wave of theorizing that produced an archetypal laboratory of ideas on which subsequent theories could draw and expand.

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On formative theorizing

IntroductionThis chapter reviews the principal intellectual tools employed by integration theorists to examine the at that time n

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Chryssochoou - Theorizing European Integration