Theories of European Integration

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.

Intergovernmentalism

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.

Liberal intergovernmentalism

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.