UNDERSTANDING INTEGRATION

States and Nations Academic debate about the origins and history of the EU have been dominated by theories of international relations, which portray the EU as an international organization driven by decisions taken by the governments of the member states. How we think about the EU depends in large part on how we think about states and their changing role and powers in the world since 1945. Our understanding of European states also demands an understanding of nations, which have played a key role in determining political and social relations among Europeans since at least the French Revolution.

States and Nations

States and Nations

International Organizations In the wake of the Second World War, scholars began to study the dynamics of relations among states. Realists talked of an anarchic world system in which states were driven by self-interest. Surveying the ruins caused by World War II, federalists argued that states had lost their political credibility because they could not guarantee the safety of their citizens. Functionalists argued that the best way to achieve global peace was through the creation of functionally specific interstate institutions, which would bind states into a web of cooperation.

International Organizations Neofunctionalists argued that integration had its own internal expansive logic. Pressures to integrate would grow through a process of spillover so that governments would find themselves cooperating in a growing range of additional and related areas. Intergovernmentalists took the focus back to the deliberate decisions of governments and argued that the nature of integration has been ultimately driven by states pursuing state interests.