The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis

What is European Integration Really About? A Political Guide for Economists

“…For example, the 1963 case of Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (26/62) was decided in favor of a Dutch importer of German chemical products that had objected to a tariff charged by the Dutch authorities in violation of article 12 of the Treaty of Rome, which forbids member states from raising customs duties between themselves or introducing new ones. The aggressive interpretation of its role by the European Court of Justice in this and other cases went beyond the legal framework that had been formally agreed with the Treaty of Rome, and, according to some scholars, brought Europe close to a federal system from a legal perspective (Weiler 1991;Krasner 1999), expanding supranational powers beyond the control of national governments (Pierson 1996;Stone Sweet 2000). However, these new legal doctrines were established to enforce norms consistent with national governments' own collective objectives, such as trade liberalization.…”

“…The theory is called "functionalism" because it is about the dynamic effects of transferring specific "functions" to supranational institutions -for example, regulation of coal and steel production to the European Coal and Steel Community or monetary policy to the European Central Bank. Although this integration starts in economic areas, integration in one area may well lead to further integration in many other areas, not only economic but also political (Haas 1958(Haas , 1964Pierson 1996;Sandholtz and Stone Sweet 1998). In sum, while intergovernmentalists believe that European integration is rooted in the pursuit of national economic interests, functionalists believe that it is about economic integration as a path towards political integration.…”

“…In those matters, national politicians and voters are much less informed than technocrats, political elites, and supranational entrepreneurs. Hence, it is difficult for them to monitor these agents and anticipate the consequences of their actions (Pierson 1996; see Eichengreen 2006 for a discussion). A third, even less flattering reason why the mechanism may work is that European supranational institutions and bureaucracies have been set up (on purpose?)…”

Rational Choice and EU Politics

“…Scharpf's (1988) pioneering study of the 'joint-decision trap' in EU policymaking, for example, demonstrated how, under certain conditions of intergovernmentalism, unanimity voting and a status-quo default condition, inefficient EU policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy could persist and resist reform for extended periods. Similarly, Pierson's (1996) study of EU social policy argued that EU member states had effectively lost control of the policy, thanks to a combination of short time horizons, unintended consequences, change-resistant decision rules and policy adaptation by the beneficiaries of existing EU policies. Generalizing from these studies, we might hypothesize that, ceteris paribus, EU institutions and policies will be most resistant to change (a) where their alteration requires a unanimous agreement among member states or the consent of supranational actors like the Commission or the Parliament; and (b) where existing EU policies mobilize cross-national bases of support that raise the cost of reversing or revising them.…”

“…Second, these feedback effects may be positive, thus promoting a reinforcement of institutionalized cooperation, or they can be negative, undermining institutions and policies and possibly leading to their demise. Existing studies of the EU -drawing from theoretical sources including neofunctionalism, historical institutionalism and constructivism -have generally emphasized positive feedback, in which an initial integrative act can lead to functional spillover (Haas 1958), gaps in member-state control (Pierson 1996;Pollack 2003), long-term socialization of elites (Haas 1958;Checkel 2005a) and the negotiation of informal agreements that are subsequently codified over time (Farrell and Héritier 2005). The notion that EU institutions might have negative or self-undermining feedback effects has been explored less systematically, 9 yet the Union's ongoing constitutional crisis and the long-term decline in public support for further integration suggest that negative feedback should be the focus of greater attention in future studies of institutional change.…”