Course Plan

• What is the European Union?

• What is supranationalism?

• How does integration take place?

• What is deepening and widening?

History of the European Union

● European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) (1951) - union for coal and steel

● European Economic Community (EEC) (1957) - established Customs Union by the Treaty of Rome

● European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) (1957) - cooperation in nuclear energy by the Treaty of Rome

● European Community (EC) (1967) - ECSC+EEC+Euratom merged together by the Merger Treaty

● European Union (EU) (1993) - established by the Maastricht Treaty

Levels of European integration

• 1. enlargement (January 1974): Denmark, Great Britain, Ireland

• 2. enlargement (January 1981): Greece

• 3. enlargement (January 1986): Portugal, Spain (Iberian enlargement)

• 4. enlargement (January 1995): Austria, Finland, Sweden (Nordic enlargement)

• 5. enlargement (May 2004): Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Malta (Eastern enlargement)

• 6. enlargement (January 2007): Bulgaria, Romania

WIDENING=ENLARGEMENT

• Main Requirements

-a functioning democracy

-a market economy which is able to compete

-adoption of the EU Acquis Communautaire (Copenhagen Criteria)

DEEPENING=INSTITUTIONALIZATION

• Supranationalism

- Creation of the institutions

- making the EU law (treaties)

- Decision-making mechanisms (the procedures)

THEORIES OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

• Classical Theories:

- Functionalism

- Neo-functionalism

• Contemporary Theories:

- Classical intergovernmentalism

- Liberal intergovernmentalism

Functionalism

• Functionalism :

• a theory of international relations that arose during the inter-War period (1919-1939) principally from the strong concern about the role of the State as a form of social organisation.

Functionalism

• proposed to build a form of authority based in functions and needs, which linked authority with needs, scientific knowledge, expertise and technology, i,e, it provided a supraterritorial concept of authority.

David Mitrany

• (1888 – 1975), a Romanian born, naturalized British scholar

• A Working Peace System (1943)• Father of “classic functionalism”• represents a theory of interstate cooperation. • The necessity of common solutions to

comprehensive problems within international relations is one of the arguments used to explain cooperation of state actors.

Neofunctionalism

• a reaction against functionalism which was the name given to the first theoretical attempt to understand European Integration.

• economics and politics can be kept separate and thus integration can be transfered to the areas of low politics

Ernst Haas

• The Uniting of Europe (1958)

• studied the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).

• neo-functionalism remains the most comprehensive and sophisticated attempt to provide a general theory of European Integration.

Ernst Haas

• political integration is ‘the process whereby actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations, and political activities toward a new center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over preexisting national states

Haas

• saw the EEC as spillover from the ECSC.

• ‘the expansive logic of sector of integration’.

• Functional spillover : Since many different sectors of a modern industrial economy are higly interdependent, changes in one sector can be easily spilled over to other sectors.

Haas, 1958

• Liberalization of trade within the Customs Union would lead to humanization of general economic policies and eventually spillover into political areas and lead to creation of some kind of political community.

• the concept of ‘spillover’ to explain the motivation of states to cooperate with their neighbours.

Main important assumption

• the neo-functionalists’ central prediction was that

“European economic integration would be self-sustaining i.e. İndependent of the political problems or national interests.”

Leon Lindberg

• The process of ‘spillover’ refers to situations when a initial decision by governments to place a certain sector, such as coal and steel, under the authority of central institutions created pressures to extend the authority of the institutions into neighbouring areas of policy, such as currency ,exchange rates, taxation, and wages.

For Neofunctionalists

• European Commission - the most important non-state international actor: the Commission was believed to be in a unique position too manipulate both domestic and international pressures on national governments to advance the process of European Integration.

• Commission represented supranationalism

• Political spillover is the ‘the incremental shifting of expectations, the changing of values, and the coalescing at the supranational level of national interest groups and political parties in response to sectoral integration.’

• Yet not automatically cumulative integrative process.

Main Critics of Neo-Functionalism

• Classical intergovernmentalism (Stanley Hoffman)

• Liberal intergovernmentalism (Andrew Moravscik)

Intergovernmentalism

• 1960s: the turn of the tide with the “Empty-chair crisis”

Stanley Hoffman: “national situations and role perceptions are still too diverse”.

• Logic of diversity sets limits to logic of integration

• Members still hang on to sovereignty

Liberal Intergovernmentalism

Andrew Moravscik:

• Intergovernmental institutionalism BUT adds national preference formation grounded in liberal theories of international interdependence.

Liberal Intergov’talism

• 3 essential elements:

1. Assumption of rational state behaviour

2. A liberal theory of national preference formation

3. An intergovernmentalist analysis of interstate negotiation

National preference formation

• Fundamental influences on foreign policy:

1. Identity of important societal groups

2. Nature of their interests

3. Their relative influence on societal groups

Difference between classical and liberal intergovernmentalism

According to Moravscik,

• the state is not a black box.

• State-society relations are important (governments respond to shifting pressures from domestic social groups)

• İnterstate bargaining is important

Moravscik

• Neo-functionalism- Domestic technocratic

consensus- Opportunities and

common interest- Active role of

supranational officials in shaping bargaining outcomes

• Liberal Intergovernmentalism

- Domestic coalitional struggles

- Role of relative power- Passive institutions and

autonomy of national leaders.