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European integration and the social science of EU studies: the disciplinary politics of a subfield BEN ROSAMOND This article takes the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome as an opportunity to reflect upon half a century of academic discourse about the European Union (EU) and itsantecedents. In what follows I will resist the rather obvious temptation simply to explain the intellectual evolution of what we now call EU studies in terms of the changing form and character of the EU over time.1 Rather, the intention is to offer a somewhat more complex picture of the relationship between 'theory' and 'practice' in this field of enquiry. While there are obvious-indeed, undeniable-moments at which the academic study of the EU and European integration has shifted markedly in response to discernible changes or emergent trends in its object, the contention here is that this is a partial and largely unhelpful way of thinking about the disciplinary history of the subfield of EU studies. While breaks with earlier modes of enquiry or the opening of new avenues of investigation in EU studies may reflect the impact of real-world trends upon academic purpose, those trends cannot explain the precise forms that intellectual work has taken.At the very least, scholarship requires the choice (one hopes, the conscious choice) of approaches to subject-matter. Intellectual interest may be aroused inductively-that is, through an initial observation that persuades a scholar of the value or necessity of research. Yet the conduct of that research requires the selection of approaches and/or theories which enable the resultant knowledge to be ordered meaningfully. There are, of course, a number of determinants of knowledge production. At one level the choice of a theory or an approach may reflect a 'horses for courses' attitude to social enquiry. This suggests that the investigator's job is to select the 'best' available conceptual toolkit to 1 The term 'EU studies' is used here to describe the totality of academic work from across a range of social scientific fields that has engaged with and theorized about European integration and the institutional, policy-making and governance dimensions of what is now called the European Union.organize research in the domain under scrutiny. It may be that a single theory cannot account for all aspects of a phenomenon; different theories may offer the 'best fit' for different aspects. Similar processes might also emerge from more deductive, disciplinebased reasoning. In this case real-world phenomena are seen as useful sites for the examination of theoretical propositions or for the competitive testing of theories against one another. In some instances it may be that a political event appears to challenge or run contrary to received wisdoms in a discipline or subdiscipline. Its investigation accordingly becomes a matter of urgency for disciplinary progress.In short, social research emerges as a consequence of one or other of these logics (inductive or deductive)-or perhaps, more often than not, throu...

This article suggests that the neofunctionalist theoretical legacy left by Ernst B. Haas is somewhat richer and more prescient that many contemporary discussants allow.The article develops an argument for routine and detailed re-reading of the corpus of neofunctionalist work (and that of Haas in particular), not only to disabuse contemporary students and scholars of the normally static and stylised reading that discussion of the theory provokes, but also to suggest that the conceptual repertoire of neofunctionalism is able to speak directly to current EU studies and comparative regionalism. Neofunctionalism is situated in its social scientific context before the theory's supposed erroneous reliance on the concept of 'spillover' is discussed critically. A case is then made for viewing Haas's neofunctionalism as a dynamic theory that not only corresponded to established social scientific norms, but did so in ways that were consistent with disciplinary openness and pluralism.