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The Social Constructivist FusionPerspective: A Theory forEuropeanizationGamze Tanilaa Department of Politics, Karlstad University, Karlstad, SwedenPublished online: 01 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Gamze Tanil (2014) The Social Constructivist Fusion Perspective: A Theoryfor Europeanization, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 15:4, 483-499, DOI:10.1080/15705854.2014.900988

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The Social Constructivist Fusion Perspective:A Theory for Europeanization

GAMZE TANIL

Department of Politics, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden

ABSTRACT This article seeks to explain the role of identity politics in defining national elites’perceptions of the European Union (EU) and their subsequent foreign-policy choices. It is arguedthat when analysing the foreign-policy choices of national elites, not only interests andpreferences, but also identity questions must be taken into account. In any national context, ideas,identities and perceptions of self and the EU are expected to impact on subsequent policy choicesabout Europe. This article seeks to explain this impact by applying a combination of the fusionand social constructivist approaches.

KEY WORDS: Europeanization, identity, foreign policy, social constructivism, fusion

Some readers may ask ‘why develop theories instead of offering prescriptions?’ Policy-makers and politicians usually expect prescriptions from political scientists, but withouta strong theory, it is not possible to reach prescriptions. Theories provide us with conceptsto organize our knowledge and notions of their relations. Good theory not only helps usunderstand the world we live in, but also gives us certain ideas about likely futures. Forthis reason, since the start of the integration process in Europe in the early 1950s, anumber of theories of integration have been developed and applied to study the various pro-cesses of European integration. This article also attempts to develop a theory with the aimof explaining, understanding and predicting the impact of Europeanization on nationalactors.

The evolution of the European Union (EU) from an intergovernmental economiccooperation into a supranational political one implied the adoption of a common politicalculture, norms, values and working methods. All member-states are building blocks of thiscommon structure, and they contribute to it with their own political cultures, norms, valuesand ways of doing things. In this regard, there has been a mutually constitutive relationshipbetween the member-states and the EU, which means that while member-states haveaffected the composition of the EU structure, the EU structure has also changed the dom-estic structures of the member-states. The uploading part of this process can be called the

Correspondence Address: Gamze Tanil, Assistant Professor Doctor, Associate Fellow, Department of Politics,Karlstad University, Universitetsgatan 2, Karlstad, Sweden. Email: gamzetanil@yahoo.com

Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 2014Vol. 15, No. 4, 483–499, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2014.900988

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deepening of European integration, while the downloading part, or the impact of theEU-level political culture, norms, values and working methods on member-states, can becalled Europeanization.

Theories of Europeanization have tried to explain this impact and to predict its futurefrom different viewpoints. The question they seek to answer is how the EU structurefuels the process of Europeanization of domestic institutions, policy processes andactors. On this question, some scholars focused on the changes at the structural level(the institutional, administrative and legislative impacts of the EU), while others focusedon the changes at the actor level (changes in the role perceptions and loyalties of thenational actors). For example, for Olsen (2001) and Sverdrup (2000), Europeanizationimplies that ‘the integration process in the EU becomes more relevant and important asa factor leading to adaptations and changes in domestic institutional and administrativearrangements’, whereas Larsson and Trondal (2005) argue that ‘the EU and its many insti-tutions and common policies mobilise particular modes of behaviour, identities, and roleconceptions among the actors involved which results in Europeanisation of domestic insti-tutions and policies’. Thus, notwithstanding the different focuses of attention, Europeani-zation theories presuppose that the European integration process leads to changes indomestic structures, actor attributes (ideas, identities, interests) and attitudes (nationalforeign-policy decisions). The institutionalist approach, organizational approach, socialconstructivist approach and fusion approach attempt to reveal how the EU effect is filteredand mediated through pre-existing domestic institutions, rules, norms and cultures.

Two of these theories are under consideration in this article: the social constructivistapproach, which is good at explaining the impact of ideas/identities/structures on theactions of national actors, and the fusion approach, which is good at defining, explainingand formulating the composition of national elites’ interests and the impact of these inter-ests on their EU attitudes. The merger of these two approaches can reveal the impact ofdomestic structure and EU structure on national actors’ attributes and attitudes and, inthis way, demonstrate Europeanization at the actor level (theoretically and empirically).

The aim of this article is to provide explanation, understanding, prediction and prescrip-tion on the impact of Europeanization on national elites’ ideas, identities, interests andforeign-policy choices. The contribution of this study to the existing body of literature isthat, firstly, it demonstrates the Europeanization process not only in the institutionalcontext, which is commonly found in many academic papers, but also in the context ofidentity politics. Secondly, it provides a method for empirical validation of the impact ofabstract notions like ideas, identities, interests, norms and political culture on foreign-policy choices by defining and explaining the causal links and mechanisms between them.

This article has been assembled in seven sections. After a brief introduction, it discussesthe theories of Europeanization. This section presents that previous research studies on thesubject have focused either on the structural effects of Europeanization (the institutional,administrative and legislative impacts of the EU) or on actor-based analyses (changes inrole perceptions and loyalties of the national actors), and neglected identity politics.It emphasizes the contribution of the social constructivist approach to the existing literature.The third section explains and discusses the concepts of ideational socialization/sociallearning and the ideational life-cycle, and the fourth section explains and discusses thefusion perspective. After defining the contextual explanatory theories and concepts,I will focus on the delicate and complex question of how to explain, predict andmeasure the impact of norms, political culture, ideas and identities on the EU attitudes

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and foreign-policy preferences of national policy-makers. So, the fifth section elaboratesand discusses a set of theoretical assumptions and causal pathways that will allow research-ers to start empirical research. The sixth part explains the methods that should be appliedfor constructing empirical tools and demonstrates the empirical validation of the hypoth-eses of the social constructivist fusion perspective on a case-study analysis. The aim ofthis part is to show the operationalization of the causal pathways of this approach and togive future researchers an idea about how to carry out empirical research in this context.The last part presents the conclusions of this paper.

Explaining Europeanization

Europeanization has already moved beyond the theoretical statement stage and into thepractical working stage. This section revisits some of its main theoretical explanationsby focusing on the central questions and arguments. It also compares and contrasts themajor theoretical statements that define and explain this concept.

A decade ago, Radaelli (2003, p. 30) defined Europeanization as ‘processes of construc-tion, diffusion, institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy para-digms, styles, ways of doing things, shared beliefs and norms which are first definedand consolidated in the making of European Union decisions and then incorporated inthe logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public procedures’.Because of its evolution from merely an intergovernmental economic cooperation into asupranational one with distinct institutions, rules and norms influencing the member-states, the EU – with its institutions and common policies – is assumed to fuel processesof Europeanization of domestic institutions, policy processes and actors.

Different theories have been used to explain the differentiated processes of Europeaniza-tion of domestic structures and actors.

Institutional approaches analyse Europeanization focusing on the change in core dom-estic institutions of governance and politics, understood as a consequence of the develop-ment of European-level institutions, identities and policies. European-level development istreated as the explanatory factor (Kassim, Peters & Wright, 2000, p. 236) and changes inthe domestic institutions and systems of governance as the dependent variable (Olsen,2001, p. 12). The research tasks are to account for variations in European impacts andto explain the varying responses and robustness of domestic institutions against pressuresfrom the European level (Olsen, 2002, p. 935). The bulk of the empirical literature concernseffects of the EU on member-states, focusing on its impacts on domestic policies.

Europeanization as domestic impact is not limited to structural and policy changes.Social constructivist approaches analyse ‘how European values and policy paradigmsare internalised at the domestic level, shaping discourses and identities’ (Olsen, 2002,p. 935). Wendt (1992, p. 399) argues that ‘an institution is a relatively stable structureof identities and interests; such structures are often codified in formal rules and norms;and they have motivational force only in virtue of actors’ socialisation to and participationin collective knowledge’. As collective knowledge, they are experienced as having anexistence over and above the individuals who happen to embody them at the moment.In this way, ‘institutions come to confront individuals as more or less coercive socialfacts, but they are still a function of what actors collectively know. Identities and such col-lective cognitions do not exist apart from each other; they are mutually constitutive’(Wendt, 1992, p. 399). In this view, institutionalization of new rules and norms occurs

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as a process of internalizing new identities and interests, not as something affecting onlybehaviour. Agents, or elite decision-makers, ‘adopt prescriptions embodied in norms,which then become internalised and constitute a set of shared inter-subjective understand-ings that make behavioural claims’ (Checkel, 2001, p. 57).

In sum, European-level developments do not dictate specific forms of institutional adap-tation, but leave considerable discretion to domestic actors and institutions: ‘Governmentalelites choose specific policies, policy ideas, strategies, and concrete interests because they(or their justifications) are consistent with more general, deeper, collectively held ideas ordiscourses’ (Marcussen et al., 2001; Marcussen, 2000; Checkel, 2005). That is to say,‘adaptation reflects variations in European pressure as well as domestic motivations andabilities to adapt. European signals are interpreted and modified through domestic tra-ditions, institutions, identities and resources in ways that limit the degree of convergenceand homogenisation’ (Olsen, 2001, p. 16).

The fusion approach (Miles, 2002, 2005, 2006) also contributes to the understanding ofthe process of Europeanization for national policy-makers. It focuses on providing insightsinto understanding the attitudes and policy priorities of national policy-makers responsiblefor the formulation of national EU policy. The Fusion Perspective (FP) conceptualized thatsuch policy-makers maintain a specific fusion-based value set (performance fusion, politi-cal fusion and compound fusion) that influences their attitudes towards the EU and theirpolicies towards European integration.

In the book, Fusing with Europe? Sweden in the European Union, Miles explains fusionvalues and provides an empirical validation of the fusion approach by analysing theSwedish national elite’s reactions to the EU. First, he puts forward that ‘most countriesfavour joining the Union not because they have a vision of an integrated Europe, butlargely because they perceive there are substantial output benefits in utilizing EU suprana-tional policy-making. In other words, national governments want to solve domestic andother problems efficiently using EU decision-making procedures’ (Miles, 2005, p. 52).This EU attitude is described as the national elite having performance fusion value. Sec-ondly, the form of cooperation/integration with the EU is under discussion. National gov-ernments seek to maintain the final say within the EU system; however, the results ofintergovernmental cooperation are limited due to the lack of mechanisms to ensure univer-sal compliance. So, dissatisfied with both intergovernmental cooperation and the construc-tion of a federal state, national elites embrace a supranational decision-making process tosecure the benefits of performance fusion. This EU attitude is termed as the national eliteshaving political fusion value. Finally, relations between national and EU policy-makers,institutions and policies are analysed. Miles argues that the ‘national political elites arewilling, albeit to a limited extent, to pool sovereignty if the Union is perceived as providingvalue-added for the member states. Consequently, the joint use of public instruments is per-ceived, where governments, administrations and actors increasingly pool and share publicresources from several levels to attain commonly identified goals’ (Miles, 2005, p. 52).This EU attitude is described as the national elites having compound fusion value.

The relevance of the fusion perspective for this research is that, in an analysis of theimpact of Europeanization on the identities, interests and behaviour of national elites, itprovides insights into understanding the attitudes and policy priorities of nationalpolicy-makers responsible for the formulation of national EU policy. It also contributesto the social constructivist approach by providing an explanation of the interests and EUattitudes of national policy-makers.

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To sum up, previous theoretical and empirical studies of Europeanization either focusedon the structural effects of Europeanization and analysed the institutional, administrativeand legislative impacts of the EU, or focused on the impacts of Europeanization on nationalactors and analysed the change in role perceptions and loyalties of national policy-makers.In the latter, the impact of EU institutions on national civil servants is limited to changingroles or loyalties, which involve non-calculative behavioural adaptation. In other words,they presuppose an agent’s passive, non-calculative acceptance of new roles evoked bycertain environmental triggers. As opposed to that condition, what is offered in thisresearch study is a situation ‘where agents go beyond role playing and accept communityor organisational norms as the right thing to do, meaning that agents adopt the interests, oreven the identity, of the community of which they are a part’ (Checkel, 2005, p. 804). Thisprocess is drawn from cognitive and social psychology, where ‘individuals, when exposedto the prescriptions embodied in norms, adopt new interests’ (Checkel, 2001, p. 58).Through social learning or ideational socialization, national actors actively and reflectivelyinternalize new understandings of appropriateness in the EU atmosphere.

Ideational Socialization

Scholars of European studies distinguish between two forms of Europeanization: adap-tation and learning. For Rieker (2004, p. 372), ‘adaptation refers merely to instrumentaladjustments, while learning tends to lead to a more stable and enduring policy change’.Similarly, for Haas (1992, p. 3), ‘the difference between adaptation and learning is thatwhile the former refers to behaviour changes as actors add new activities without examin-ing the implicit theories underlying their programs and without questioning the underlyingvalues, the latter refers to behaviour changes as actors question original implicit theoriesunderlying programs and examine their original values’. This distinction is the main differ-ence between the institutionalist approach and the social constructivist approach since thelatter emphasizes that EU institutions have thick socializing effects on actors, which gobeyond the adaptation of institutions and procedures to include the internalization ofnorms and rules into self-conceptions.

Employing a social constructivist approach, this article argues that participation in EUinstitutions and meetings transforms and re-directs the ideas, identities and interests ofnational experts about themselves and about the EU. More precisely, it asserts that nationalgovernment officials who participate in EU institutions and meetings become re-socialized,thereby changing their ideas, identifications and actions (foreign-policy choices).

The mechanism through which new European norms diffuse into particular national set-tings and socialize agents is identified by social constructivists as social learning. As such,‘social learning constitutes an agency-centred mechanism to induce transformation inactors’ interests and identities’ (Risse, 2001, p. 12). However, we need to distinguishbetween instances in which actors merely adjust means and strategies to achieve theirgiven goals and preferences, called single-loop learning, and situations that lead actorsto change their goals and preferences, called double-loop learning or complex learning.In complex social learning, ‘agents – typically elite decision-makers – adopt prescriptionsembodied in norms, which then become internalised and constitute a set of shared intersub-jective understandings that make behavioural claims’ (Checkel, 2001, p. 57). This processis drawn from cognitive and social psychology, where ‘individuals, when exposed to theprescriptions embodied in norms, adopt new interests’ (Checkel, 2001, p. 58). In this

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respect, social learning is different from individualist/rationalist accounts of simple learn-ing because agents acquire new information, alter strategies, but then pursue given, fixedinterests.

To be precise, socialization/social learning refers to two different types of social learning(Checkel, 2005, p. 804): adoption of new roles (Type I internalization) and change ofvalues and interests (Type II internalization). Type I internalization implies that ‘agentsmay behave appropriately by learning a role: knowing what is socially accepted in agiven setting or community, agents act in accordance with expectations’ (Checkel, 2005,p. 804). To exemplify, Trondal (2007) analyses the change in institutional affiliations ofnational government officials due to intensive contact with EU institutions, and Beyers(2005) analyses whether domestic factors or European-level conditions affect politicalactors’ adoption of supranational role conceptions.

On the other hand, Type II internalization implies that ‘agents go beyond roleplaying and accept community or organisational norms as the right thing to do,meaning that agents adopt the interests, or even the identity, of the community ofwhich they are a part’ (Checkel, 2005, p. 804). Bringing the two levels together,Egeberg (1999) seeks to uncover how identities and role perceptions evoked by dom-estic government officials are affected by participation in EU bodies. It is this Type IIinternalization, or changes in the ideas, interests and identities of national actors, whichthis article mainly deals with. In other words, this study presupposes that institutionaland normative environments have transformative effects on basic actor properties,including how individuals see themselves (conceptions of the self) and how they con-ceptualize their interests.

To summarize, ideational socialization or social learning can be defined as ‘a dynamicprocess whereby individuals are induced into the norms and rules of a given community,and in this process [the] socializator educates, indoctrinates, teaches or diffuses his/hernorms and ideas to the socialised individual’ (Trondal, 2007, p. 1117). As a result, theideas, interests and identities of national officials may change due to enduring exposureto EU institutions, accompanying new perceptions of appropriate and inappropriatebehaviour.

A general step-by-step process of socialization is developed by Marcussen (2000,pp. 15–17) in his ideational life-cycle thesis, which helps us to understand how newideas develop and institutionalize over time.

The ideational life-cycle starts with an ideational equilibrium – a stage in which nationalelites share a set of uncontested knowledge structures. At some point, this consensuallyshared knowledge is challenged when actors confront a radical changing environment (pol-itical, economic, social or other crisis or development), which tends to challenge prevailingnorms and ideas. This situation is what Marcussen (2000) terms perceived external shock.In this regard, Goldstein (1993, p. 12) speaks about ‘a period of policy delegitimizationwhere a policy window opens because exogenous shocks or endogenous politicalchange render old causal beliefs incapable of meeting the requirements of political entre-preneurs’. In other words, when policy-makers are exposed to an external shock whichis perceived to undermine stable and consistent beliefs about causal relationships, theyfind themselves in a state of cognitive dissonance which they seek to reduce; as a result,cognitive frames are rearranged. The situation that policy-makers face, a puzzle/problemthat has no clear answer or is new and unknown, is called ideational vacuum by Marcussen(2000). The ideational vacuum situation constitutes a window for opportunity because, at

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this stage, the political elites no longer know what to believe in, which instruments theyshould use to cope with the problem. In such a situation of knowledge insecurity, theelites are sensitive to new ideas from outside resources which can help them to emergefrom their collectively-felt cognitive dissonance. Goldstein and Keohane (1993, p. 12)interpret this situation thus: ‘ideas contribute to outcomes in the absence of a unique equi-librium. They may serve as focal points that define cooperative solutions [between dom-estic and EU institutions and policies] or act as coalitional glue to facilitate the cohesionof particular groups [national and EU policy-makers and technocrats]. In any case,policy varies because of the choice of some ideas rather than others.’

Thus, an ideational vacuum situation is a crucial period in which the choice of one ofseveral ideational paths is made, and this choice is facilitated by three ideational transfermechanisms (Marcussen, 2000, p. 28). Ideational modelling takes place in periods ofideational flux, when policy-makers search around for successful examples to be mod-elled in their own polity. It provides policy-makers with a level of cognitive stabilityand a set of immediate solutions to the problems by which they feel themselves over-whelmed. Ideational socialization takes place when elites meet in international forums.In such instances, the process of socialization – or the transfer of a set of ideas fromone person to another and the internalization of new ideas – can take place easily. Idea-tional leadership takes place through transnational political elites who have achieved arelatively powerful position to promote their ideas in the policy-making process. Whenelite policy-makers find themselves in an ideational vacuum and do not know in whatto believe, they are sensitive to the influence of this powerful and highly respectedgroup of people. Börzel and Risse (2003, p. 67) refer to these ideational leaders aschange agents or norm entrepreneurs who ‘mobilise in the domestic context and per-suade others to redefine their interests and identities’. These ideational leaders use‘moral arguments and strategic constructions in order to persuade national actors to rede-fine their interests and identities, engaging them in processes of social learning’ (Börzeland Risse, 2003, p. 67). Thus, persuasion and arguing are the mechanisms by which normentrepreneurs try to induce change.

As a result of these ideational transfer mechanisms, once a choice is made, the process offull institutionalization begins. The final stage of this process is the creation of formal pro-cedures, rules, norms and organizations that replicate the old ones – the firm institutiona-lization of the new ideas (Marcussen, 2000, p. 22). The stage can also be called theideational diffusion of new ideas and identities and the result is that a new ideational equi-librium is created.

Fusion Perspective

The main concern of the fusion perspective is to understand the priorities of nationalpolicy-makers when formulating and implementing national policies. It seeks to explain‘how national political elite can value membership of the European Union, and describeaccurately the ways in which policy-makers often view the benefits of European integrationper se’ (Miles, 2005, p. 29). It largely focuses on using fusion as a set of values that under-pin the domestically derived assumptions of national policy-makers when devising andimplementing national EU policy. According to Miles (2005), national policy-makersview European integration in different yet complementary forms, defined as performancefusion, political fusion and compound fusion.

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1. Performance Fusion

Most countries faced increasing difficulties during the post-war period in using domesticpolicy solutions to fulfil the basic economic and social expectations of their citizensbecause such policies had become gradually ineffective due to growing internationalinterdependence. The needs emanating from domestic politics and imperatives set byinterdependence pushed states to consider deeper European integration and a gradualpooling of sovereignty, for the EU can deliver political and economic results that canno longer be produced using traditional national strategies and policies. Governmentperceptions of European integration, ever conscious of domestic viewpoints, remainlargely rational and state-centric in orientation. Thus, the elites of most countriesfavour joining the EU not because they have a vision of an integrated Europe, butlargely because they perceive that there are substantial output benefits in utilizing EUsupranational policy-making.

Nevertheless, countries also accept as part of the deal that EU participation will trans-form the role of the nation-state in those policy areas where the EU has competencies.Above all, EU governments sell full membership to their citizens on the basis that theEU will deliver concrete – usually economic – welfare gains for the citizens of thenation-state. Thus, popular support for the EU – according to performance fusion – isoutput related. Citizens are willing to accept perceived reductions in national autonomyprovided that such constraints are balanced by accrued benefits deriving from membershipof the EU. If these are not delivered, then doubts set in about European integration ingeneral (Miles, 2002, p. 193, 2006, pp. 84–85).

2. Political Fusion

Domestic actors perceive that in order to lessen the potential erosion of statehood arisingfrom performance fusion, there are two alternative exit strategies for EU policies: strength-ened intergovernmental cooperation and the construction of a federal state. In practice,

Figure 1. Ideational life-cycle

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however, domestic actors are dissatisfied with both. They dislike the limitations of intergo-vernmental cooperation because the effectiveness of common decisions is reduced by lackof mechanisms to ensure universal compliance. On the other hand, national elites andpublics are wary of federal solutions since they are perceived to threaten the existing con-stitutional and national character of Western-European states. They are searching for a thirdway for European integration in which a more ambitious policy agenda can beembraced through supranational decision-making – and thereby secure the benefits ofperformance fusion – without resorting to a radical new constitutional arrangement forEurope. Thus, the future path of the EU can be seen as supranational (Miles, 2002,p. 193, 2006, p. 86).

3. Compound Fusion

Given performance fusion and political fusion, domestic actors regard the EU as a com-pound polity where governments, administrations and actors increasingly pool and sharepublic resources from several levels to attain commonly identified goals. From thefusion perspective, the EU encompasses a process in which political institutions havefused their competences and powers – on a broadening scale and with growing inten-sity – for preparing, making, implementing and controlling binding decisions forpublic policies through the use of state-like instruments. The EU is thus viewed as akind of state-like politico-administrative system that works in conjunction with, ratherthan serving to replace, the existing nation-states. Therefore, compound fusion suggeststhat the EU represents a multilayered environment where decision-making competenciesand, indeed, the roles of national policy-makers are increasingly fused (Miles, 2002,p. 194, 2006, pp. 87–88).

In this approach, the presupposition is that preferences of political actors are formu-lated on the basis of the values held, and that they, in turn, determine an actor’s sense ofinterest. Founded on neo-functional theoretical grounds, the fusion perspective neglectsthe ideas/identities of the national elites and the influence of broader structures (norms,political culture) on actors’ interests. At this point, the social constructivist approach canmake a contribution to the fusion perspective by providing insights into the impact ofideas, identities and structures on the interests and attitudes of national actors. Indeed,Miles also agrees that ‘in recent years, there have been greater attempts at understandingthe role of identity politics in determining national enthusiasm for a country’s partici-pation in European integration’ and that ‘social constructivist approaches help us tounderstand a country’s overall attitude towards European integration’ (Miles, 2005,p. 24). As a conclusion, social constructivism can make a contribution to the neo-func-tionalist fusion perspective by taking its utilitarian–individualistic actors and transcend-ing them into societal ones in a mutually constitutive relationship with broader structuralenvironments.

The Social Constructivist Fusion Perspective

This article aims to bridge the existing gaps between the social constructivist approach andthe fusion perspective and to create an encompassing theory to explain, understand andpredict the impact of Europeanization on national policy-makers. The merged approach,the social constructivist fusion perspective, helps us understand the change or robustness

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in national EU policies of any member- or non-member-state by analysing the impact ofnational and EU structure on national policy-makers’ ideas, identities, interests, EU atti-tudes and behaviour (foreign-policy choices). In this new framework, it is argued that‘embedded identity constructions define the boundaries of what actors consider to be legit-imate ideas; perceived interests define which ideas actors select in their struggle for power’(Marcussen et al., 2001, pp. 103–104); fusion values define the EU attitudes which areavailable to actors; and national policy-makers define their foreign-policy choices as aresult of this process.

To start with, this theory is based on the social constructivist approach, which holds thatthe structure in which agents take action is social as well as material, and the identities andinterests of the agents come through mutually constitutive processes between the agentsand the social environment (structure). Finnemore (1996, p. 15) explains this argumentthus: ‘Socially constructed rules, principles, norms of behaviour, and shared beliefsprovide states, individuals, and other actors with understandings of what is important orvaluable and what are effective and/or legitimate means of obtaining those valuedgoods. These social structures supply actors/states with both preferences and strategiesfor pursuing those preferences.’ Furthermore, Wendt (1999, p. 139) argues that ‘the struc-ture of any social system contains three elements: material conditions, interests, and ideas.In this definition, shared ideas (or culture) make up norms and institutions, and constituteagents’ perceptions, identities and interests’. Adler (1997, p. 324) argued similarly that‘interests cannot be pursued without a particular identity, and the identities, interests andbehaviour of political agents are socially constructed by collective meaning, interpretationsand assumptions about the world’.

Taken together, the first theoretical assumption is that: (1) structure is made of normswhich can be described as shared, collective understandings about the appropriate

Figure 2. Causal pathways of the social constructivist fusion perspective

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behaviour of actors; (2) this social structure is in a mutually constitutive relationship withactors’ identities and interests; (3) actors’ interests are mainly made of ideas; and (4) actors’behaviour (foreign-policy preferences) is determined by their ideas and identities, whichare in a mutual relationship with their immediate structural constraints (norms).

The second theoretical assumption is that the building blocks of this research are (1)ideas/interests and identities; (2) the national elites; and (3) foreign-policy practices.First, ideas are significant because actors’ interests are mainly made of ideas. With thisfeature, they define the universe of possibilities for action. Second, the national elites areof significance here since they select, frame and institutionalize the ideas once they are con-vinced that these ideas match their country’s institutions and political culture. Third,foreign-policy practices are the result of this process, and provide the empirical analysisof the ideational life-cycle. In other words, identities and identity differentiations matterin international politics since identity changes produce interest changes and changes inforeign-policy behaviour.

The third assumption is that the fusion perspective helps to explain the making of theinterests of the national elites. It is clear that the ideas and identities of the national eliteinfluence how they perceive the EU – in other words, based on their ideas and identitiesabout self and Europe, the national elites’ EU attitudes tend to change. Marcussen andRisse (2001, pp. 103–104) argue that ‘on the one hand, embedded identity constructionsdefine the boundaries of what actors consider to be legitimate ideas – thereby constitutingtheir perceived interests; and on the other hand, perceived interests define which ideasactors select in their struggle for power among those available to actors’. This assumptionholds that performance fusion, political fusion and compound fusion values do exist amongthe national policy-makers of any country and, depending on the time period or a specificpolicy, actors’ fusion values may change from one stage to another or all of these percep-tions may exist at the same time. The fusion values of national policy-makers can also beempirically tested.

The fourth assumption is that Europeanization impacts on the ideas, identities, interests,EU attitudes and behaviour (foreign-policy preferences) of national elites through the idea-tional socialization process. This assumption holds that institutional and normativeenvironments have transformative effects on basic actor properties, including how individ-uals see themselves (conceptions of the self/identity) and how they conceptualize theirinterests. Inside EU institutions, national officials are subject to a shared system of rules,norms, principles and codes of conduct which they induct, internalize and take forgranted. Socialization or social learning implies ‘a social process through which agentproperties and preferences change as a result of interaction’ (Checkel, 2003, p. 211).‘Agents – typically elite decision-makers – adopt prescriptions embodied in norms,which then become internalised and constitute a set of shared intersubjective understand-ings that make behavioural claims’ (Checkel, 2001, p. 57).

Mechanisms of social learning are classified as ideational modelling, ideational leader-ship and ideational socialization (Marcussen, 2000). However, these mechanisms aremodified for the sake of the clarity of this research study because they are too complicatedto prove empirically. Since, empirically, we cannot break down the differences betweenthese mechanisms, they are simplified in this research into only one mechanism. So, thefifth assumption of this research is that although, theoretically, there are three mechanisms,empirically, there is only one working mechanism, which is defined generally as ideationalsocialization.

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Empirical Application

The aim of this theory is the demonstration of the impact of Europeanization not only atthe structural level or in the institutional context, which is commonly found in many aca-demic papers, but also at the actor level and in the context of identity politics. Social con-structivist studies maintain and explain such an impact, but most of them find it difficult tovalidate it empirically. This failure stems from the fact that the concepts of social con-structivism – ideas, identities, interests – are mostly abstractions that are difficult totest empirically. This is why social constructivist studies are usually criticized forhaving few testable propositions. Moravcsik (1999) argues that ‘hardly a single claimof constructivist studies is formulated or tested in an empirical way’. For him, ‘thisfailure stems fundamentally from the near absence of two critical elements of socialscience: distinctive testable hypotheses, and methods to test such hypotheses’ (Moravcsik,1999, p. 670).

The social constructivist fusion perspective is developed taking into account such criti-cisms. The merger of the social constructivist approach and the fusion perspective, and theinclusion of causal pathways and testable hypotheses, offer a new way of testing the impactof Europeanization in the context of identity politics. The social constructivist fusion per-spective, used in this article, provides researchers the means and methods for empiricalvalidation by including some concrete, measurable concepts in the analysis: the nationalelites’ perception of the identities, interests and policies of their own country and theEU, their fusion values, their foreign-policy choices, and the changes initiated by the EUstructure on actors’ ideas, identities, interests, EU attitudes and behaviour by means of idea-tional socialization. Thus, what is attempted here is to find evidence of identity politics inoperation. In this way, the social constructivist fusion perspective contributes to knowledgeon how social constructivist approaches can be utilized in empirical studies of nationalelites.

Based on the aforementioned theoretical assumptions, the social constructivist fusionperspective can empirically validate four hypotheses by means of interviews, question-naires, surveys and observations:

H1: Domestic structure (norms, values, political culture and traditions) impacts onnational elites’ ideas, identities and interests about that policy area.H2:National elites’ ideas, identities and interests impact on their EU attitudes (fusionperceptions) in that policy area.H3: Europeanization impacts on national elites’ ideas, identities, interests andforeign-policy choices (through ideational learning).H4: Idealization socialization takes place through an ideational life-cycle, and itsideal condition is the ideational vacuum situation for national policy-makers.

A model empirical study based on this theoretical argument was carried out in the period,2008–2010, on Norwegian national policy-makers. The book, Europeanisation, Inte-gration and Identity (Tanil, 2012), analyses the impact of domestic and European structureson the identities, interests, EU attitudes and foreign-policy practices of Norwegianpolicy-makers. The empirical study compares two categories of national elite: the nationalministerial elite, or the top-level civil servants who are active in European Economic Area /European Union (EEA/EU) work, and the transnational elite, or the civil servants working

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in Brussels at the Norwegian Delegation to the EU. It also compares these actors in fivedifferent policy areas to shed light on whether the existence of different degrees of identityand interest elements impact differently on policy choices. In the book, empirical testing ofthese four hypotheses is carried out by using primary sources of data: interviews, question-naires, observation and secondary sources of data such as official documents and reports.

H1: The composition and impact of the domestic structure on national actors’ ideas,identities and interests about that policy area is analysed. The empirical findings showthat the Norwegian domestic structure in energy, agriculture and fisheries policies ismade up of both normative and material elements combining Norwegian/Nordic values,political–cultural traditions, national identity and national/sectoral interests. In theforeign and security policy (FSP) and justice and home affairs (JHA) policy areas, identityelements and national/sectoral interests are considerably limited, even non-existent, and thevalues, political–cultural traditions and national interests in Norway and in the EU are verysimilar and compatible (Tanil, 2012, p. 154). Different perceptions of structures lead actorsto hold different ideas and interests about EU policies. That is to say that the perception thatNorwegian and EU structures are similar and compatible in FSP and JHA policy leadsNorwegian policy-makers to define FSP and JHA policy objectives as similar and compa-tible as well. However, in the energy, agriculture and fisheries policies, the perception offundamental structural differences lead Norwegian policy-makers to define Norwegianand EU policy objectives as fundamentally different and not compatible (Tanil, 2012,p. 154).

H2: The influence of national elites’ attributes (ideas, identities, interests) on their EUattitudes is analysed by using fusion values (performance, political, compound fusion per-ceptions). The empirical findings show that in FSP and JHA policy, where similar and com-patible identity and interest perceptions are found, performance fusion value (outcomebenefits of the EU membership) is to have voting rights in EU decision-making.However, in energy and agriculture policies, there is either no expected benefit from EUmembership or the only desirable is political influence in EU decision-making. In the fish-eries policy, negative performance fusion value is dominant. These findings validate thatstrong national identity and national/sectoral interests in a policy area influence nationalcivil servants’ EU attitudes. The political fusion perceptions of all the actors interviewedare intergovernmental cooperation with the EU in all policy areas. However, there is stilla difference between policy areas. National control over national policy is the most impor-tant argument in the energy, agriculture and fisheries policy areas; however, there was nomention of national control in the FSP and JHA policy areas. Compound fusion perceptionsare highly positive in all policy areas. Good relations, cooperation and dialogue betweenNorwegian and EU institutions and actors are perceived by all respondents (Tanil, 2012,p. 155).

H3: The impact of Europeanization on national elites’ ideas, identities, interests andpolicy choices through the ideational socialization process is analysed. The empirical find-ings show that there is discernible ideational learning only in two policy areas: FSP andfood safety policy. In these cases where a good degree of ideational socialization isfound, there is also change of identity/interest definitions and policy perceptions.

In FSP, there are similar political–cultural values and traditions, similar policy objectivesand methods, and similar national interests, but there is no formal agreement. The EU atti-tudes are mostly for intergovernmental cooperation with close dialogue, interaction andcooperation, and the expected outcome benefit of EU membership is political influence

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in EU decision-making. The impact of EU methods and ways of doing things on Norwe-gian national and transnational civil servants is mostly positive. Working in Brussels alsohas a positive impact on transnational civil servants in this policy area. These empiricalfindings demonstrate ideational learning for Norwegian national actors working in FSP(Tanil, 2012, p. 152).

In food safety policy, there are similar policy objectives, similar methods and similarnational interests. The EEA Agreement provides complete policy harmonization in thispolicy field. The EU attitudes are mostly intergovernmental cooperation maintainingclose dialogue, interaction and cooperation, and the expected outcome benefit of EU mem-bership is political influence in EU decision-making. The impact of the EU methods/waysof doing things and the EU ideas/values on the Norwegian national civil servants are posi-tive. These empirical findings demonstrate ideational learning for Norwegian nationalactors working in food safety policy (Tanil, 2012, p. 153).

H4: Whether the situation of an ideational vacuum is the ideal condition for structuraladaptation, harmonization and actor-level ideational socialization is analysed here. Theempirical findings show that the existence of an ideational vacuum situation and a fitbetween objectives, methods and interests in that policy area are the main initiators of idea-tional learning and structural change. In the energy, agriculture and fisheries policies, thereis significant pride and trust in the success of the domestic policy (lack of ideationalvacuum), so the policy-makers do not search for new ideas and solutions from outsideresources. This decreases their chance of ideational learning from the EU. In the FSP,JHA and food safety policy areas, an ideational vacuum situation exists to a certainextent: there is need for common solutions to common problems extending borders, sopolicy-makers cooperate with each other to find common solutions and learn from eachother. This increases Norwegian policy-makers’ ideational learning from the EU (Tanil,2012, p. 155).

The book, Europeanisation, Integration and Identity (Tanil, 2012), is an example of howto operationalize the social constructivist fusion perspective. Future studies on EUmember-states by using the same theoretical assumptions would reveal interestingresults and comparative data for this case.

Conclusion

Previous research on national civil servants active in EU work have mostly addressed ques-tions such as whether government officials become regular participants at the EU level ofgovernance and whether they changed their institutional affiliations due to their protractedand intensive work in EU institutions. However, these studies neglected how and whynational and transnational civil servants are affected by the forces of Europeanization.This article introduces a new research avenue – the impact of domestic and EU structureson the identities, interests, EU attitudes and foreign-policy choices of national and transna-tional civil servants.

The contribution of this study to the existing literature is that it offers a merger of thesocial constructivist approach and the fusion perspective to explain and account for Eur-opeanization at the actor level. The purpose of this merger is to fill the existing gaps inboth approaches. While the social constructivist approach is able to link identities andforeign-policy choices, it neglects the making of interests and attitudes. The fusion

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approach fills this gap and traces the composition of national elites’ interests by employingfusion values, whereby it is able to link national elites’ interests and EU attitudes. However,it neglects the ideas/identities of the national elites and the influence of structures (norms,political culture). In other words, the social constructivist approach is good at explainingthe impact of ideas/identities/structures on the actions of national actors, while thefusion approach is good at defining, explaining and formulating the composition of thenational elites’ interests and the impact of these interests on their EU attitudes. Therefore,the merged approach, the social constructivist fusion perspective, provides explanation,understanding and prediction about the role of Europeanization on national elites’ ideas,identities, interests, EU attitudes and foreign-policy choices. This new approach canprovide answers to such questions as: what is the role of domestic structure (rules,norms, values) in enabling or disabling the forces of Europeanization? Which factors con-tribute to or hinder Europeanization? How can Europeanization be measured and testedempirically at the actor level? In other words, how can the social constructivist andfusion approaches be operationalized?

The theoretical assumptions, causal pathways and methods of empirical validation of thesocial constructivist fusion perspective defined and discussed in this article can be appliedto all EU member- and non-member-states. The assumption here is that both domesticstructure and EU structure have an inevitable impact on national elites in any nationalcontext, although the level of this impact may vary. Given the diversity of the differentstates, the complexities of asymmetrical EU participation, and the different domestic con-ditions (affecting national policy-makers in different ways), not all aspects of this approachmay have the same resonance in all cases. Empirical analyses of national elites’ ideas, iden-tities, interests and EU attitudes might cause empirical difficulties in certain cases becausethe researcher has no choice but to accept that the given answers are correct and to therespondent’s best knowledge. Evasive responses or, in some cases, unwillingness torespond to some or all questions, may jeopardize the integrity and reliability of the empiri-cal investigation. However, given that all EUmember-states have mature democracy, trans-parency, open dialogue, freedom of speech and so on, such drawbacks should notdiscourage future researchers. Finally, it should be noted that a working theory is onewhich is applied in many different instances and which is still able to provide reliableand comparable empirical results. The social constructivist fusion perspective has beenapplied only on the Norwegian national elite and only in five different policy areas. Itneeds to be applied in other case-study areas, such as other countries, other policy areasand other types of national elite, in order to be declared a theory with working and reliablecausal pathways, working hypotheses and empirical methods. After a few more appli-cations in different case-study areas, there would also be a good amount of data tocompare and contrast. Only in this way can we analyse the real value of the impact of Eur-opeanization at the actor level in different national contexts, in different policy areas and indifferent time periods.

In conclusion, this article offers the social constructivist fusion perspective as atheory that may inform future empirical investigations of both member- and non-member-states of the EU. The strength of the social constructivist fusion perspectiveis that its concepts are built on the specific acknowledgement of diversity and differ-entiation in driving national adaptation and perspectives towards European integration.This approach has something to offer for future research and calls upon fellow

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researchers of European integration to give due consideration when conducting theirown investigations.

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