For many years, the academic study of the European Communities (EC), as they were then called, was virtually synonymous with the study of European integration. The initially modest and largely technocratic achievements of the EC seemed less significant than the potential that they represented for the gradual integration of the countries of western Europe into something else: a supranational polity. When the integration process was going well, as during the 1950s and early 1960s, neo-functionalists and other theorists sought to explain the process whereby European integration proceeded from modest sectoral beginnings to something broader and more ambitious. When things seemed to be going badly, as from the 1960s until the early 1980s, intergovernmentalists and others sought to explain why the integration process had not proceeded as smoothly as its founders had hoped. Regardless of the differences among these bodies of theory, we can say clearly that the early literature on the EC sought to explain the process of European integration (rather than, say, policy-making), and that in doing so it drew largely (but not exclusively) on theories of international relations.
In the first edition of this volume, Carole Webb (1977) surveyed the debate among the then dominant schools of European integration, neo-functionalism, and intergovernmentalism, drawing from each approach a set of implications and hypotheses about the nature of the EC policy process. Similarly, here we review neo-functionalism and its views about the EU policy process, and then the intergovernmentalist response, as well as the updating of ‘liberal intergovernmentalism’ by Andrew Moravcsik in the 1990s.
In addition, we examine more recent bodies of integration theory-institutionalism and constructivism-which offer very different views of the integration process and very different implications for EU policy-making.
In 1958, on the eve of the establishment of the EEC and Euratom, Ernst Haas published his seminal work, The Uniting of Europe, setting out a ‘neo-functionalist’ theory of regional integration. As elaborated in subsequent texts by Haas and other scholars (e. g. Haas 1961; Lindberg 1963; Lindberg and Scheingold 1970), neo-functionalism posited a process of ‘functional spill-over’, in which the initial decision by governments to place a certain sector, such as coal and steel, under the authority of central institutions creates pressures to extend the authority of the institutions into neighbouring areas of policy, such as currency exchange rates, taxation, and wages. Thus, neo-functionalists predicted, sectoral integration would produce the unintended and unforeseen consequence of promoting further integration in additional issue areas. George (1991) identifies a second strand of the spill-over process, which he calls ‘political’ spill-over, in which both supranational actors (such as the Commission) and subnational actors (interest groups or others within the member states) create additional pressures for further integration. At the subnational level, Haas suggested that interest groups operating in an integrated sector would have to interact with the international organization charged with the management of their sector. Over time, these groups would come to appreciate the benefits from integration, and would thereby transfer their demands, expectations, and even their loyalties from national governments to a new centre, thus becoming an important force for further integration.
At the supranational level, moreover, bodies such as the Commission would encourage such a transfer of loyalties, promoting European policies and brokering bargains among the member states so as to ‘upgrade the common interest’. As a result of such sectoral and political spill-over, neo-functionalists predicted, sectoral integration would become self-sustaining, leading to the creation of a new political entity with its centre in Brussels.
The most important contribution of neo-functionalists to the study of EU policy-making was their conceptualization of a ‘Community method’ of policy-making. As Webb pointed out, this ideal-type Community method was based largely on the observation of a few specific sectors (the common agricultural policy (CAP), and the customs union, see Chapters 4 and 15) during the formative years of the Community, and presented a distinct picture of EC policy-making as a process driven by an entrepreneurial Commission and featuring supranational deliberation among member-state representatives in the Council. The Community method in this view was not just a legal set of policy-making institutions but a ‘procedural code’ conditioning the expectations and the behaviour of the participants in the process. The central elements of this original Community method, Webb (1977: 13-14) continued, were four-fold:
1.governments accept the Commission as a valid bargaining partner and expect it to play an active role in building a policy consensus.
2.governments deal with each other with a commitment to problem-solving, and negotiate over how to achieve collective decisions, and not whether these are desirable or not.
3.governments, the Commission, and other participants in the process are responsive to each other, do not make unacceptable demands, and are willing to make short term sacrifices in expectation of longer term gains.
4. Unanimity is the rule, necessitating that negotiations continue until all objections are overcome or losses in one area are compensated for by gains in another.
Issues are not seen as separate but related in a continuous process of decision such that ‘log-rolling’ and ‘side payments’ are possible.
This Community method, Webb suggested, characterized EEC decision-making during the period from 1958 to 1963, as the original six member states met alongside the Commission to put in place the essential elements of the EEC customs union and the CAP. By 1965, however, Charles de Gaulle, the French President, had precipitated the so-called ‘Luxembourg crisis’, insisting on the importance of state sovereignty and arguably violating the implicit procedural code of the Community method. The EEC, which had been scheduled to move to extensive qualified majority voting (QMV) in 1966, continued to take most decisions de facto by unanimity, the Commission emerged weakened from its confrontation with de Gaulle, and the nation-state appeared to have reasserted itself. These tendencies were reinforced, moreover, by developments in the 1970s, when economic recession led to the rise of new non-tariff barriers to trade among EC member states and when the intergovernmental aspects of the Community were strengthened by the creation in 1974 of the European Council, a regular summit meeting of EU heads of state and government. In addition, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper), an intergovernmental body of member-state representatives, emerged as a crucial decision-making body preparing legislation for adoption by the Council of Ministers. Similarly, empirical studies showed the importance of national gatekeeping institutions (H. Wallace 1973). Even some of the major advances of this period, such as the creation of the European monetary system (EMS) in 1978 were taken outside the structure of the EEC Treaty, and with no formal role for the Commission or other supranational EC institutions.
Reflecting these developments, a new ‘intergovernmentalist’ school of integration theory emerged, beginning with Stanley Hoffmann’s (1966) claim that the nation-state, far from being obsolete, had proven ‘obstinate’. Most obviously with de Gaulle, but later with the accession of new member states such as the UK, Ireland, and Denmark in 1973, member governments made clear that they would resist the gradual transfer of sovereignty to the Community, and that EC decision-making would reflect the continuing primacy of the nation-state. Under these circumstances, Haas himself (1976) pronounced the ‘obsolescence of regional integration theory’, while other scholars such as Paul Taylor (1983), and William Wallace (1982) argued that neo-functionalists had underestimated the resilience of the nation-state. At the same time, historical scholarship by Alan Milward and others (Milward 2000; Milward and Lynch 1993) supported the view that EU member governments, rather than supranational organizations, played the central role in the historical development of the EU and were strengthened, rather than weakened, as a result of the integration process.
By contrast with neo-functionalists, the intergovernmentalist image suggested that ‘the bargaining and consensus building techniques which have emerged in the Communities are mere refinements of intergovernmental diplomacy’ (Webb 1977: 18).
And indeed, the early editions of Policy-Making in the European Communities found significant evidence of intergovernmental bargaining as the dominant mode of policy-making in many (but not all) issue areas.
The period from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s has been characterized as ‘the doldrums era’, both for the integration process and for scholarship on the EU (Keeler 2004; Jupille 2005). While a dedicated core of EU scholars continued to advance the empirical study of the EU during this period, much of this work either eschewed grand theoretical claims about the integration process or accepted with minor modifications the theoretical language of the neo-functionalist/intergovernmentalist debate. With the ‘relaunching’ of the integration process in the mid-1980s, however, scholarship on the EU exploded, and the theoretical debate was revived. While some of this scholarship viewed the relaunching of the integration process as a vindication of earlier neo-functionalist models (Tranholm-Mikkelsen 1991; Zysman and Sandholtz 1989), Andrew Moravcsik (1993a, 1998) argued influentially that even these steps forward could be accounted for by a revised intergovernmental model emphasizing the power and preferences of EU member states. In other words, Moravcsik’s ‘liberal intergovernmentalism’ is a three-step model, which combines: (1) a liberal theory of national preference formation with; (2) an intergovernmental model of EU-level bargaining; and (3) a model of institutional choice emphasizing the role of international institutions in providing ‘credible commitments’ for member governments. In the first or liberal stage of the model, national chiefs of government (COGs) aggregate the interests of their domestic constituencies, as well as their own interests, and articulate their respective national preferences toward the EU. Thus, national preferences are complex, reflecting the distinctive economics, parties, and institutions of each member state, but they are determined domestically, not shaped by participation in the EU, as some neo-functionalists had proposed.
In the second or intergovernmental stage, national governments bring their preferences to the bargaining table in Brussels, where agreements reflect the relative power of each member state, and where supranational organizations such as the Commission exert little or no influence over policy outcomes. By contrast with neo-functionalists, who emphasized the entrepreneurial and brokering roles of the Commission and the upgrading of the common interest among member states in the Council, Moravcsik and other intergovernmentalists emphasized the hardball bargaining among member states and the importance of bargaining power, package deals, and ‘side payments’ as determinants of intergovernmental bargains on the most important EU decisions.
Third and finally, Moravcsik puts forward a rational choice theory of institutional choice, arguing that EU member states adopt particular EU institutions-pooling sovereignty through QMV, or delegating sovereignty to supranational actors like the Commission and the Court-in order to increase the credibility of their mutual commitments.
In this view, sovereign states seeking to cooperate among themselves invariably face a strong temptation to cheat or ‘defect’ from their agreements. Pooling and delegating sovereignty through international organizations, he argues, allows states to commit themselves credibly to their mutual promises, by monitoring state compliance with international agreements and filling in the blanks of broad international treaties, such as those that have constituted the EC/EU.
In empirical terms, Moravcsik argues that the EU’s historic intergovernmental agreements, such as the 1957 Treaties of Rome and the 1992 Treaty on European Union (TEU), were not driven primarily by supranational entrepreneurs, unintended spillovers from earlier integration, or transnational coalitions of interest groups, but rather by a gradual process of preference convergence among the most powerful member states, which then struck central bargains among themselves, offered side-payments to smaller member states, and delegated strictly limited powers to supranational organizations that remained more or less obedient servants of the member states.
Overarching the three steps of this model is a ‘rationalist framework’ of international cooperation. The relevant actors are assumed to have fixed preferences (for wealth, power, etc), and act systematically to achieve those preferences within the constraints posed by the institutions within which they act. As Moravcsik (1998: 19-20) points out:
The term framework (as opposed to theory or model) is employed here to designate a set of assumptions that permit us to disaggregate a phenomenon we seek to explain-in this case, successive rounds of international negotiations-into elements each of which can be treated separately.
More focused theories-each of course consistent with the assumptions of the overall rationalist framework-are employed to explain each element. The elements are then aggregated to create a multicausal explanation of a large complex outcome such as a major multilateral agreement.
During the 1990s, liberal intergovernmentalism emerged as arguably the leading theory of European integration, yet its basic theoretical assumptions were questioned by international relations scholars coming from two different directions. A first group of scholars, collected under the rubrics of rational choice and historical institutionalism, accepted Moravcsik’s rationalist assumptions, but rejected his spare, institutionfree model of intergovernmental bargaining as an accurate description of the EU policy process. By contrast, a second school of thought, drawing from sociological institutionalism and constructivism, raised more fundamental objections to the methodological individualism of rational choice theory in favour of an approach in which national preferences and identities were shaped, at least in part, by EU norms and rules.
The rise of institutionalist analysis of the EU did not develop in isolation, but reflected a gradual and widespread re-introduction of institutions into a large body of theories (such as pluralism, Marxism, and neo-realism), in which institutions had been either absent or considered epiphenomenal, reflections of deeper causal factors or processes such as capitalism or the distribution of power in domestic societies or in the international system. By contrast with these institution-free accounts of politics, which dominated much of political science between the 1950s and the 1970s, three primary ‘institutionalisms’ developed during the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, each with a distinct definition of institutions and a distinct account of how they ‘matter’ in the study of politics (March and Olsen 1984, 1989; Hall and Taylor 1996).
The first arose within the rational-choice approach to the study of politics, as pioneered by students of American politics. Rational choice institutionalism began with the effort by American political scientists to understand the origins and effects of US Congressional institutions on legislative behaviour and policy outcomes. More specifically, rational choice scholars noted that majoritarian models of Congressional decision-making predicted that policy outcomes would be inherently unstable, since a simple majority of policy-makers could always form a coalition to overturn existing legislation, yet substantive scholars of the US Congress found considerable stability in Congressional policies. In this context, Kenneth Shepsle (1979, 1986) argued that Congressional institutions, and in particular the committee system, could produce ‘structure-induced equilibrium’, by ruling some alternatives as permissible or impermissible, and by structuring the voting power and the veto power of various actors in the decision-making process. More recently, Shepsle and others have turned their attention to the problem of ‘equilibrium institutions’, namely, how actors choose or\ design institutions to secure mutual gains, and how those institutions change or persist over time.
Shepsle’s innovation and the subsequent development of the rational choice approach to institutions have produced a number of theoretical offshoots with potential applications to both comparative and international politics. For example, Shepsle and others have examined in some detail the ‘agenda-setting’ power of Congressional committees, which can send draft legislation to the floor that is often easier to adopt than it is to amend. In another offshoot, students of the US Congress have developed ‘principal-agent’ models of Congressional delegation to regulatory bureaucracies and to courts, and they have problematized the conditions under which legislative principals are able-or unable-to control their respective agents (Moe 1984; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991). More recently, Epstein and O’Halloran (1999), and others (Huber and Shipan 2002) have pioneered a ‘transaction-cost approach’ to the design of political institutions, arguing that legislators deliberately and systematically design political institutions to minimize the transaction costs associated with the making of public policy.