Integration Theories in the European Union Politics

First, states may be brought together by force, as they were in Europe by Napoleon and Hitler. Second, they may become together out of the need for security in the face of a common external threat, as the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did during the Cold War. Third, they may share common values and goals and agree to cooperate or share resources in selected areas, as the Nordic states on transport, education, and passports have. Fourth, they may decide that they can promote peace and improve their quality of life successfully by working together rather than separately, as the members of the United Nations (UN). Interstate relations in Europe were long influenced and driven by the first two motives, but since 1945 there has been a shift to the third and the fourth. In other words, compulsion has been replaced by encouragement. There are still debates about whether the regional integration like in the EU is beneficial or harmful for states taking part in the regional blocks. 

The Advantages of Regional Integration
✓ Cooperation makes war and conflict less likely.
✓ The single market offers European businesses a larger pool of consumers.
✓ Mergers and takeovers create world-class European corporations, helping the EU better compete in the global marketplace.
✓ There is greater freedom of cross-border movement within the EU.
✓ It pools the economic and social resources of multiple member states.
✓ Member states working together enjoy new global power and influence.
✓ Less advanced member states rise to standards maintained by more progressive states.
✓ Funds and investments create new opportunities in the poorer parts of the EU.
✓ Democracy and capitalism are promoted in less advanced member states.
The Disadvantages of Regional Integration
✓ Loss of sovereignty and national independence.
✓ Loss of national identity as laws, regulations, and standards are harmonized.
✓ Reduced power of national governments.
✓ The creation of a new level of distant and impersonal ‘big government’ in Brussels.
✓ Too little reference to public opinion regarding key decisions on integration.
✓ Increased competition and job losses brought by the removal of market protection.
✓ Progressive states are handicapped as standards are reduced to help integrate state with lower
standards.
✓ Increased drug trafficking, crime and illegal immigration arising from the removal of border controls.
✓ Problems related to controversial initiatives such as the Common Agricultural Policy

For Federalism, the aim of the EU is to integrate different entities but not to assimilate them. Within the Union, although bodies are working in partnership, difference and diversity are acknowledged. In practice, “previously discrete, distinct, or independent entities come together to
form a new whole- a union- in which they merge part of their autonomous selves while retaining certain powers, functions, and competencies fundamental to the preservation and promotion of their particular cultures, interests, identities, and sense of selfdefinition” (Wiener and Diez 2004: 29).

The classic functionalist approach to world order is based on the assumption that states can
create a peaceful world society through gradualist and pragmatic cooperation with one another in technical and economic sectors of activity. Functionalism offers an alternative model of the international order to the power politics approach to international relations which is the characteristic of realism. The idea is to eliminate nationalism which is seen as the root cause of any war by attacking national sovereignty. Functionalist theory argued that cooperation between states in economic areas, such as agriculture, will undermine national sovereignty in an anarchic world.

Transactionalism differs from federalism and functionalism as it does not presume the need to establish federal bodies or functional agencies in order to ensure peace between nations. Transactionalism was pioneered by Karl Deutsch and his colleagues which focuses on the social rather than political or economic dimensions of integration in the 1950s. In other words, transactionalism seeks to ensure sufficient integration at a social level to make conflict unthinkable (EilstrupSangiovanni, 2006: 29).

Three characteristics of neofunctionalist theory help to address the question of what neofunctionalism is. First, Haas discussed how cooperation in specific economic policy sectors leads to a greater economic integration and then to a wider political integration. The question
is answered with the concept of spillover. The concept of spillover in the neofunctionalist theory
is considered as the most important driving process of integration. It simply suggests that deepening of integration in one sector is expected to create pressures for a further economic integration within and beyond that sector, leading to functional needs for a European authority. It was hoped that economic and technical cooperation would “spillover” into European politics. Spillover is a process where political cooperation conducted with a specific goal in mind leads to the formulation of new goals in order to assure the achievement of the original goal. 

The second point which helps to explain neofunctionalism concerns the role of societal groups in the process of integration. This suggests that over time, people involved on a regular basis in the supranational policy process will tend to develop European loyalties and preferences (Jensen, 2013). 

The final point is that neofunctionalism is often characterized as a rather elitist approach to the
European integration. Although it sees a role for groups in the integration process, integration tends to be driven by functional and technocratic needs. Though not apolitical, it sees little role for democratic and accountable governance at the level of the region (Jensen, 2013). Neofunctionalists believed that interest groups would put pressure on governments to force them to speed up the integration process. These groups were expected to develop their own supranational interest in political and economic integration, which would ally them to supranational institutions, such as the European Commission (Jensen, 2013).

Functional spillover implies that economies are so interconnected that if states integrate one sector of economies, it will lead to the integration of other sectors.

Technical spillover implies that disparities in standards will cause states to rise (or sink) to the level of the state with the tightest (or loosest) regulations. For example, Greece and Portugal—which had few if any environmental controls before they joined the EU—were encouraged to adopt such controls because of the requirements of EU law, which had in turn been driven by economic pressures from states with tight environmental control, such as Germany and the Netherlands. 

Political spillover assumes that once different functional sectors are integrated, interest groups will switch from trying to influence national governments to try to influence regional institutions. The groups would appreciate the benefits of integration and would act as a barrier to a retreat from
integration, and politics would increasingly be played out at the regional rather than the national level.

Euroscepticism “expresses the idea of a contingent, or qualified opposition, as well as incorporating outright and unqualified opposition to the process of European integration” (Taggart, 1998: 366).

Neofunctionalist has formulated theories that they have used to predict the behavior of European
institutions.
• The European Commission is expected to act as a political entrepreneur as well as mediator. The
Commission will, according to neofunctionalist theory, try to push for greater cooperation between
member states in a direction that leads to more and more supranational decision making.
• The European Court is expected not only to rule on the basis of legal arguments but also to favor political
integration. In this way, the Court will seek to expand the logic of Community law to new areas.
• The European Parliament is expected to be a supranationally oriented institution and to be the
natural ally of the European Commission. Although the Members of the European Parliament
(MEPs) are elected by the nationals of their home country, they are divided politically and
ideologically in their daily work. Neofunctionalists expect MEPs to develop loyalties towards the
EU and the European idea so that they would often (though not always) defend European interests against national interests.
• The EU Council is expected to be the institution where national interests are defended. However,
neofunctionalists would also expect member states to be influenced by the logic of spillover, which
would lead them to argue for greater economic and political integration, despite their national interests. The member states are also expected to be influenced by the fact that they are involved in ongoing negotiations in a supranational context. This makes it difficult for a member state to resist proposals that lead to further political integration.

In a pluralist system, interest groups lobby the formal institutions to try to get their preferred legislative options. It is a competitive system of seeking influence, but although early pluralist theories suggested that there was a level playing field of competition, it is now generally accepted that some groups have greater resources than others, and so benefit more from this form of interest representation.

Intergovernmentalists view the European integration from the standpoint of national states searching for mutually advantageous bargains. Whereas neofunctionalism explains integration as the outcome of cooperation and competition among societal actors, intergovernmentalism explains integration as the outcome of cooperation and competition among national governments (Hooghe and Marks, 2019: 1115).

It relates all issues back to the state. Its influences are strongly embedded in the realist perspective which poses state sovereignty as a core issue and regards the international system as a theatre of anarchy where states battle for the ultimate acquisition of power, which then leads to their own security.

Stanley Hoffman who laid the foundations of the intergovernmentalist approach rejected the neofunctionalist theory and offered “a systematic contextualization” (Rosamond, 2000: 75) of the events of the mid-1960s, drawing on empirical studies of French presidential politics under President Charles De Gaulle. According to Hoffman, it is clear that there are actors other than national governments who are influential in the process of integration. In national politics,interest groups could affect government decisions, but he pointed out that they were not the only bodies to do so, as the party in office or officials from within the government would also assert pressure. Hoffman acknowledged, however, that national governments were the key people who made the decisions, and that they could be seen to be especially powerful for two reasons.  Firstly, as they gained the legal sovereignty of their country, and linked to this, that had legitimacy in the form of being the only elected officials in the integration process. This opinion explains how it was the pursuit of national interest that led to supranational bodies gaining power

The first is that states are the critical actors in the context of international anarchy. It means that
states seek to achieve goals primarily through intergovernmental negotiation and bargaining, rather than through a centralized authority that makes and enforces political decisions.

The second basic assumption offered by liberal intergovernmentalist is that states are purposive and at least boundedly rational (Moravcsik and Schimmelfenning, 2009). Here, rationalism refers to an individualist or agency assumption: actors calculate the utility of alternative courses of action and choose the one that satisfies (or maximizes) their utility under the circumstances

Stage One (Forming National Preferences): National governments are pursuing national interests tha re formed domestically, aggregated through political institutions and shifting in response to outcomes of domestic competition for political influence. National preferences must be distinguished from temporary positions in the form of strategies or tactics. National preference formation plays a vital role in liberal intergovernmentalist tripartite framework as national preferences are the major determinant of state behavior on the international arena.

State Two (Reaching a Substantive Bargain): This stage is also considered as interstate bargaining. It is a stage when states work out strategies and engage in mutual bargaining to achieve realisation of their national preferences with the aim to do it more efficiently than through unilateral activities.

Stage Three (Creating Regional Institutions): Once states are prepared to strike a substantive agreement to coordinate policy, liberal intergovermentalism theory moves into a third stage, in which it seeks to explain the establishment and design of international institutions. The idea of states delegating powers on international institutions is not in conflict with principles of liberal intergovernmentalism. To the contrary, states decide to empower institutional structures insofar as these help them to strengthen control over domestic affairs.

The MLG holds a middleground between (neo) functionalism and (liberal) intergovernmentalism by not overstating or downgrading the role that subnational levels play within the day-to-day European politics. What it suggests is the transformation of states because of the independent role of EU level institutions and the participation of sub-national administrations in the implementation and monitoring stage of the regional policy-making process. The interplay between subnational and supranational actors does not address the sovereignty of states directly. Instead, it simply argues that a multi-level structure is being created by various actors at various levels MLG acknowledges that there is a change in the mode of EU governance without assuming that the power of member states is in terminal decline.