5. Governance Approaches

This chapter examines the European Union’s capacity to govern effectively. It argues that the creation of governance capacity for the institutions within the EU is the goal of much of the process of integration. While European integration is to some extent an end in itself, it may also be the means for attaining the capacity to govern a large territory with complex economic and social structures. The chapter first explains what governance is before discussing various criticisms levelled against it and how governance works in Europe. It then outlines a number of propositions about European governance, focusing on multilevel governance, the role of governance in output legitimization, and the claim that European governance remains undemocratic, is highly segmented, and is transforming. The chapter proceeds by looking at changes in European governance styles and policy issues, along with their implications for European integration. Finally, it explores the consequences of enlargement for EU governance.

11. Normative Theory and the EU: Between Contract and Community

This chapter examines the input of normative theory to European integration theory. It first provides a historical background on social contract theory in Europe, followed by an analysis of John Rawls’s work as a way to explore the contribution of contractarian thinking to the normative dilemmas confronting the European Union. In particular, it considers Rawls’s two principles of justice. It also discusses three approaches that emphasize the centrality of democracy and have informed normative assessments of the democratic credentials of the EU, focusing on the writings of Jurgen Habermas, the national limits to the EU, and the normative position that makes sense of the EU’s character as ‘betwixt and between’ the nation state and a supranational institution. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how enlargement illustrates both the appeal of the normative approach and the difficulties it faces.

3. Neofunctionalism

This chapter focuses on neofunctionalism, one of the earlier theories of regional integration. Neofunctionalist theory was first formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but began to receive increasing criticism from the mid-1960s, particularly because of several adverse empirical developments, the culmination of which was the Empty Chair crisis of 1965–66 when French President Charles de Gaulle effectively paralysed the European Community. With the resurgence of the European integration process in the mid-1980s, neofunctionalism made a substantial comeback. After providing an overview of neofunctionalism’s intellectual roots, the chapter examines early neofunctionalism’s core assumptions and hypotheses, including its central notion of ‘spillover’. It then considers the criticisms that have been levelled against it before turning to later revisions of the theory. It also evaluates some most-likely cases and concludes with an analysis of the case of European Union enlargement.

2. Federalism

This chapter examines the relationship between federalism and European integration, with the goal of demonstrating the relevance of the federal idea to the building of Europe. It first clarifies some fundamental concepts such as federalism, federation, confederation, the modern state, and European integration. It then considers federalist theory and practice, along with three strands of federalism that emerged after the Second World War: Jean Monnet’s ‘federalism by instalments’, Altiero Spinelli’s ‘democratic radicalism’, and ‘integral’, ‘personalist’, or Proudhonian federalism. The chapter proceeds by exploring comparative federalism and the insights it provides on the future shape of the European Union, the implications of liberal intergovernmentalism for federalism, and the ramifications of the evolution of the EU Constitution for federalism. Finally, it assesses the questions that the challenge of EU enlargement poses for federalism and the federalists.

13. Taking Stock of Integration Theory

This volume has examined the state of the art in European integration theorizing with chapters which have presented and reflected upon the core theoretical contributions that have been developed since the early stages of studying European integration and governance. This concluding chapter provides a historical overview of the type and focus of each theoretical approach to European integration. It compares the respective strengths and weaknesses of each approach according to the definitions of ‘theorizing’ and ‘integration’ developed in the introduction. It also considers the first edition’s outlook on constitutional development and identifies current challenges that lie ahead. It argues that the different theoretical perspectives discussed in this edition demonstrate an emerging robustness of European integration theory. It suggests that the variation in approaching the respective ‘test cases’ of European enlargement reveals the need for both rigorously prescriptive and normative approaches to European integration.

12. Critical Political Economy

This chapter examines European integration from the perspective of critical political economy. It first situates the belated arrival of political economy in integration studies within the context of the division of the social sciences in the late nineteenth century. It then considers the crisis of the Bretton Woods system and how it served to revive the study of political economy through the establishment of a subdiscipline of international political economy. It also explores the key strands of political economic analysis as they were imported into the study of the European Union, focusing on the ‘varieties of capitalism’ perspective, neo-Marxism, and regulation theory. Finally, it discusses from the perspective of critical political economy the causes and consequences of the economic and monetary union as a case where such an approach seems particularly useful, along with Eastern enlargements of 2004 and 2007.

9. Discursive Approaches

This chapter examines discourse analysis as an approach to the study of European integration. It first provides an overview of the basic idea(s) underlying discourse analysis before tracing its philosophical roots. It then considers when and how discourse analysis entered political science, international relations, and European integration studies. It also explores three examples of bodies of work that have each operationalized discourse analysis in a particular way in order to make it speak to European integration: the first covers governance and political struggle; the second approach posits the configuration of concepts of nation, state, and Europe as the basis for building theory of discourse as layered structures able to explain foreign policy options for a given state; and the third focuses on the project of European integration as a productive paradox. The chapter concludes by discussing the application of discourse analysis to the nature of the European Union enlargement process.

8. Social Constructivism and European Integration

This chapter examines social constructivism as an approach to the study of European integration and a challenge to more rationalist approaches such as liberal intergovernmentalism and versions of neofunctionalism. It first defines social constructivism before discussing the constructivist emphasis on the mutual constitutiveness of agency and structure, along with communicative and discursive practices, in the context of the study of European integration. It then considers the question of European identity as a particular subject area to which research inspired by social constructivism can contribute, paying attention to the contested nature of European identity, ‘Europeanness’ and national identities, and contested meanings of Europe and the European Union. The chapter also analyses constructivist contributions to the study of EU enlargement and concludes with reflections on the future of European integration research inspired by social constructivism.

1. Introducing the Mosaic of Integration Theory

This edition explores integration theory, its various approaches, and how they have developed. It consists of three parts. Part One includes approaches that explain European integration. Part Two deals with approaches that try to understand and analyse the European Union as a type of political system. Part Three focuses on more recent approaches that add a critical dimension to studying the EU. The approaches covered in this edition include federalism, neofunctionalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, the policy network approach, social constructivism, normative theory, and critical political economy approaches. This introduction makes the case for the relevance of theory when studying European integration. It also discusses the phases of theorizing European integration, along with the comparative framework that provided the guide for the chapters. It also provides an overview of the pattern of each chapter and the volume's general organization.

10. Gender and European Integration

This chapter examines gender approaches to the study of European integration and their ontological claim that gender matters when probing the process of European integration. European integration is part of a sociopolitical world that is fundamentally structured by understandings of femininity and masculinity and contributes to reconstructing these understandings. Proponents of gender approaches argue that one can only fully understand and explain large parts of the European integration process with the help of a gender-sensitive perspective. The chapter first considers feminist explanations of gender equality policies at the European Union level before illustrating the contribution that gender and feminist analysis can make by presenting empirical case studies on trafficking in women and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It also discusses EU enlargement from the perspective of gender politics, emphasizing the EU’s validation of hegemonic masculinity in the process of enlargement.