The Political Economy of European Integration

Theory and Analysis

Erik Jones, Amy Verdun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134297252
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a balanced introduction to diverse political economy perspectives on different aspects of European integration, demonstrating both the importance and the potential of research in this area.

The volume includes three types of chapters: broad literature reviews, narrower applications of existing arguments, and new syntheses of competing claims. The authors also present a critical appraisal of how scholars in the EU and US use theory to understand European integration, and examine issues such as citizens' attitudes, perceptions and preferences of actors, the role of non-state actors, principle-agent questions, and the role and the autonomy of European institutions.This empirically informed and methodologically rigorous volume will be of great interest to students and researchers in the fields of comparative political economy, EU studies, international political economy and international organizations.

1 An American–European divide in
European integration studies
Bridging the gap with international
political economy (IPE)

Amy Verdun¹

Abstract: There appears to be a divide in the literature between American and European approaches to European integration studies. This chapter discusses the differences between the two types of approaches, and what problems occur from having this divide. It is argued that IPE offers a venue for dialogue between those who focus exclusively on the EU (labelled here as ‘European approaches’) and those who see the EU case to be part of more general phenomena and who seek to produce general theories (‘American approaches’). The chapter suggests that IPE offers a useful body of literature to narrow the gap between ‘American’ and ‘European’ studies of European integration.

Introduction

The field of European integration studies has gone through a turbulent fifteen years in terms of its scholarly analysis and its implications for European integration theory. Whereas the origins of European integration theory can be traced back to American International Relations literature, present day theories are inspired by a wide range of approaches and case studies produced on both sides of the Atlantic. Though we see many fascinating theoretical approaches in the literature, the relationship between the empirical case studies and theory is not always clear. Some scholars are mainly interested in describing the phenomenon in which they are interested. They want to reflect on the theoretical approaches available in order to place matters in perspective, but are not necessarily interested in developing or improving existing theories. Others use the case of European integration and policy-making in the European Union (EU) as a way to develop new theoretical approaches or to amend existing theories. As a result there appears to be a gap between these case study-oriented and theory-oriented approaches. Furthermore, it seems to be that the former often comes out of European schools whereas the latter proliferates in the United States. Thus, one could provocatively claim that there is a split between European and American scholarship, which is characterized by how theory and empirics are treated.

This chapter examines why there is a gap between the more theory-oriented American and case study-oriented European scholarship in the field of European integration/EU studies and how the gap can be narrowed. It suggests that the IPE literature can serve as a vehicle to bridge the gap. To develop this argument the chapter is structured as follows. The first section offers an analysis of the split between American and European scholarship in the field of European integration/ EU studies. The second introduces the field of IPE and reviews four of its schools of thought: neorealism, institutionalism, social constructivism and a collection of approaches critical of the status quo referred to here as the critical school. The third section discusses how IPE can contribute to bridging the gap between the two approaches in the field of European integration. The last section draws some conclusions.

The EU as sui generis case? Views from both sides of the Atlantic

The developments in European integration theory mirror the rapid changes that have occurred in contemporary Europe, in particular those that have taken place since the late 1980s. In Europe this sea change has led scholars to being interested in understanding this process, which to many observers seems excessively complex and not easily comparable with other political processes at the national level, or indeed elsewhere in the world. Frustrated with the inability of the traditional integration theories to explain, predict or clarify the outcome of the European integration process, numerous scholars have moved to focusing more narrowly on the EU as a unique case and develop specific theories about the European integration process (for a review of European integration theories, see Verdun 2002).

It has long been questioned whether the European integration process should be considered to be a sui generis case or a case that resembles others (cf. Wallace 1983). A number of scholars – usually Europeans – tend to treat it as the former (see inter alia Shaw 1999). These scholars argue that the integration process is sufficiently distinct that it merits being conceptualized differently and requires specific theories. In doing so, they offer explanations that are often exclusively applicable to the EU. Others do not argue the case quite as forcefully, but argue instead that the European integration process is in-between a sui generis case and a case like many others (see inter alia Kohler-Koch 1997). Scholars on the other side of the Atlantic, however, tend to focus on the European integration process as an example of a process of institution building and policy-making not dissimilar to those in other parts of the world (see e.g. the debate in a 1997 issue of ECSA Review, i.e. Caporaso et al. 1997). They see the European integration process as a reaction to pressures that many countries, also those outside Europe, are facing (see also Cohen 1998; Mattli 1999). Countries in some parts of the world may make different choices than those in other parts, and hence do not proceed towards regional integration in the way that Europe has done. These scholars would argue that the EU is not fundamentally different from other forms of governance. It is just in a different stage of institutionalization (see also Jupille and Caporaso 1999).

In terms of their contribution to the literature, the studies that adopt a sui generis approach to the study of the EU tend to move away from contributing to the wider Political Science literature.² Instead, they develop theoretical approaches that are derived from European integration studies, and typically assume that their approaches are not necessarily applicable to studies beyond those related to the EU. Even though there are notable exceptions, this development has had the effect, in particular in American circles, of making European integration studies less important because the connection between it and the broader Political Science literature has become less obvious. As Simon Bulmer has put it: ‘The sui generis assumptions of some political integration theory and the lack of interdisciplinary dialogue have risked confining European integration to an intellectual “ghetto” within the social sciences’ (Bulmer 1997: 8).

As a result of their view of the European integration process as being comparable to processes going on elsewhere, ‘American scholars’ tend to place their study of the EU within a broader framework of theoretical approaches that are of a more general nature. Their aim typically is to show that the European integration process is yet another case with which they can show that a particular theoretical approach can be proven to be right or wrong. In other words, their aim is to contribute to the general theoretical literature using the case of the EU.

By contrast, many ‘European scholars’ seem more inclined to invent a new ad hoc approach, or label, to signal their specific approach, which they have derived from their exclusive study of the European integration process. These European scholars often aim at making a new contribution to the more narrow literature on European integration. In doing so they do not concern themselves too much with questions regarding what European integration studies can contribute to the overall Political Science literature.

The categories ‘American’ and ‘European’, mentioned above, are introduced here for purely analytical reasons and also to be provocative. The terms ‘American approach’ and ‘European approach’ (or ‘American scholar’ versus ‘European scholar’) should be seen as terms that are used to capture a group of scholars that fit broadly into these categories. In this chapter we understand a ‘European approach’ to be aiming at examining the European integration process as separate from processes in other parts of the world. In the extreme case this approach considers Europe to be a sui generis case. The theoretical contribution to the literature that this approach makes applies only to the case of Europe. It does not aim at taking the integration process to be an example of a phenomenon that exists outside Europe. In turn, the ‘American approach’, as we use it here, aims at fitting into the broader approaches of Political Science literature. According to this approach, the European integration process is only one case, and hence one should examine other cases as well. These studies aim at contributing to the wider Political Science literature.

Though the dichotomy is clearly artificial and provocative, the names of these categories are selected to reflect the apparent cultural differences in academia on both sides of the Atlantic. There are of course Americans who contribute to the European approach (Peterson 2001), and Europeans who apply an American approach (Hix 2002).³ Furthermore, let us be clear that there are indeed European integration scholars who adopt approaches that speak to the general Political Science approaches and/or who make broader comparisons in their studies (inter alia Börzel and Risse 2002; Hix 1994; Knill and Lenschow 2001; Majone 1997, 2001a,b; Scharpf 1997). Likewise, there are numerous American-trained scholars who have a keen interest in European integration as such and who have incorporated European scholarship in their research (inter alia Ingebritsen 1998; McNamara 1998; Mattli 1999; Moravcsik 1998; Pierson 1996; Pollack 2001).

The above-mentioned two trends – to examine European integration merely from either a European perspective or an American perspective, that is, too much specificity or too much examining Europe as just another case study – are each unrewarding. A criticism of the American approach is that these scholars are so busy trying to prove to their fellow (American) political scientists that they are eager to make a contribution to the general literature that they are unable to appreciate the complexity, diversity and uniqueness of the European integration process. Also, they often choose their case studies in such a way that they can contribute most easily to that literature, rather than that they are necessarily genuinely interested in the European integration process as such. They shy away from the fact-finding, descriptive, explorative research or research with inductive methodologies designed to gather information about the integration process. By contrast, one can criticize the European approach for being overly inward-looking or for reinventing the wheel. One sometimes wonders to what extent the new approach is really all that new or significantly different from what more general approaches offer. Furthermore, it is often unclear how these theoretical approaches can be falsified or tested, as it is not clear that they could apply to other cases. In fact, the authors of these approaches often state that it is not their intention or ambition that their theories be generalizable beyond the scope of the EU.

So why would authors stick to one or the other trend? Sometimes it appears that scholars are merely signalling to one another to what body of literature they belong rather than fully engaging with one another in a scholarly debate. The process that seems to be going on is one in which debates are happening in distinct academic territories. This behaviour can be found in the way the research problem is identified, the literature to which one wants to make a contribution, the academic references cited, and the theoretical and methodological approaches chosen. It may be that this territorial divide is logical if one takes into consideration the academic criteria in both Europe and North America. In Europe it is broadly felt that one needs to contribute to the overall literature, and preferably find a label/approach that will be associated with one’s name, thus contributing to one’s fame in the field. In North America one’s reputation depends on how well-known one is in the general field study, such as Political Science. In North America the field journals are typically rated lower than general journals (thus American Political Science Review is considered to be a ‘higher ranked’ journal than International Organization). More importantly, contributing to regional studies is considered of even less scholarly value than contributing to a general field journal (thus a publication in International Organization is considered to be of higher scholarly value than a publication in a regional journal, such as Journal of Common Market Studies).

The divide in European integration studies seems to have also been taking place in the area of International Political Economy (IPE). Scholars in this field study the processes that lie in the broad intersection of international politics and economics. IPE deals with questions such as why actors (states, sub-state actors and international institutions) collaborate. Research questions include regional integration, financial market integration, regulation (deregulation and re-regulation), transfer of sovereignty, multilateralism and so on. We shall argue below that IPE offers a venue for dialogue between those who focus exclusively on the EU and those who see the EU case to be part of more general phenomena. It is, of course, not the intention to profess that IPE is the only body of literature that can be of use to studies of European integration, nor that others would be less valuable.

Rather the aim is to address how we can make sure the various approaches continue to have a dialogue together. IPE is seen as ‘one’ route to get there. Let us now turn to a brief introduction of that literature.⁴

The field of IPE

The IPE literature has typically been composed of work by authors at the crossroads of international politics and international economics, and as such the field contributed importantly to the understanding of the integration process (Lawton, Rosenau and Verdun 2000). Throughout the early post-war period IPE was not yet developed as a field of study of Political Science, but rather was occupied by scholars in the Economics discipline. With the increasing quantification of the Economics discipline and the increasing use of mathematics and formal models in that discipline, the study of the intersection of international politics and economics slowly became abandoned by Economists and increasingly occupied by Political Scientists. They included in particular scholars who studied the realm of international trade, finance and regional economic cooperation. Among the early scholarly work we find Baldwin (1971), Cooper (1968), Keohane and Nye (1972), Kindleberger (1970) and Strange (1970, 1971, 1972).⁵ IPE continued to grow, particularly as the world experienced global recession and hyperinflation in the 1970s, the debt crisis, and increasing international interdependence. Before the word ‘globalization’ had gained popularity, IPE scholars were already studying the effects of increasing interconnectedness of international economics and politics (Gilpin 1987). Topics that remained of interest to IPE scholars were in particular international finance, monetary policy, exchange rate policy, trade, economic cooperation, regional economic integration and so on.

In the 1980s IPE became more attractive as a field due to the eagerness of scholars to understand prominent processes in the international domain: the debt crises, increasing interdependence, policy learning, and slowly but surely regional integration, together with changes in policy-making signalled, for example, by the prominence of neoliberal politics and its accompanying processes of liberalization, deregulation and financial market integration. The growth of financial markets was another important characteristic that had taken off in the 1970s and continued to influence world politics throughout the 1980s and beyond. In the 1990s, after the end of the cold war and with the rise of ‘globalization’, IPE obtained yet more popularity amongst Political Scientists. The concept of globalization emerged even though it is often argued that the world may not be quite as globalized as it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Though the concept is often not carefully defined, it is generally accepted that it includes three things: (1) internationalization, (2) the information and technological revolution, and (3) liberalization. States, markets and non-state actors reacted to these phenomena in a number of ways. Increasingly national governments have been moving towards further opening up of their economies to selected other countries and markets, whilst at the same time not wanting to open up completely. The easiest way to open up whilst protecting is by creating an institutional framework which includes some states and/or markets, but excludes others. Non-state actors, such as large corporations, have also gained importance in recent years. They too have been keen to have an institutional framework of this nature (see Maria Green Cowles, Chapter 2 below). IPE deals with these topics, and the European integration process is a typical example of a response to these challenges posed by globalization and financial market integration. But before IPE started to take off in European integration studies it was the field of IR that made the first major contribution to the theorizing about the European integration process.

As is well known, IR theories developed by scholars in the United States lay at the heart of the two most widely cited traditional integration theories: neofunc-tionalism (Haas 1958, 1964, 1968) and intergovernmentalism (Hoffmann 1966). Neofunctionalism tried to offer an alternative to the Realist school of thought. It saw the European integration process as a direct response to functional needs of states. It also foresaw...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. An American–European Divide In European Integration Studies: Bridging the Gap With International Political Economy (IPE)
• 2. Non-State Actors and False Dichotomies: Reviewing IR/IPE Approaches to European Integration
• 3. The Principal–Agent Approach and the Study of the European Union: Promise Unfulfilled?
• 4. Idiosyncrasy and Integration: Suggestions from Comparative Political Economy
• 5. Home Alone: Integration and Influence In National Contexts
• 6. The Purpose of the European Union: Framing European Integration
• 7. Agency, Structure and European Integration: Critical Political Economy and the New Regionalism In Europe
• 8. The EU and Inter-Regional Cooperation: In Search of Global Presence?
• 9. Understanding New Forms of European Integration: A Study In Competing Political Economy Explanations
• 10. The Political Economy of European Integration In a Spatial Model
• Bibliography