The European Constitutional Compromise and the neofunctionalist legacy

Journal of European Public Policy

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 349-386

  Moravcsik, Andrew ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Compromise; Constitution; Democratic; Legitimate; Stable

Indexed keywords

EID: 18444410735     PISSN: 13501763     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13501760500044215     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. Professor of Politics and Director, European Union Center, Princeton University. More information, and copies of work cited here, are available at www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs.
2. Andrew Moravcsik, 'Striking a new transatlantic bargain', Foreign Affairs 82:4 (July/August 2003): 74-89.
3. Haas is quite explicit. See, for example, the last sentence of his classic book: 'To this extent the vision of Jean Monnet has been justified by events.' Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe 3rd edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 527.
4. Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London: Penguin Press, 2000).
5. This conclusion could also be reached from other theoretical starting points. A 'liberal intergovernmentalist' might argue, for example, that exogenous shifts in functional demand arising from issue-specific interdependence will continue to press for integration. The difference is that neo-functionalists saw this as an inevitable and endogenous process. For further discussion see notes 17 and 18.
6. 'European federalism, an explicit ideology heavily indebted to Proudhon and Sorel, proved a failure largely because its language proved so peripheral to the objectives of a great majority of active citizens.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxix.
7. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxxiii.
8. 'Military threats,' Haas believes, are insufficient to explain the phenomenon of regional integration. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xv.
9. Integration, Haas argued, was launched because it 'offered a multitude of different advantages to different groups' rather than 'identical aims on the part of all the participants.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, xii, xxxiii.
10. The essentially economic nature of such interest groups explains why integration is only likely to progress in a region with 'an industrialized economy deeply enmeshed in global trade and finance,' 'interest groups and parties,' and democratic institutions. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxiv-xxxvi, also xiv, xix.
11. The neofunctionalist view of underlying preferences is ambivalent in only one sense, namely that political entrepreneurs manipulate economic policy, at least early in the integration process, to achieve political ends such as 'peace' as well as 'welfare.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, xx.
12. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xii.
13. Haas, Uniting of 'Europe, xxi.
14. For a succinct overview, see Charles Pentland, International Theory and European Integration (New York: The Free Press, 1973).
15. More up-to-date but less subtle and reliable on major theoretical schools is Ben Rosamond, Theories of European Integration (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
16. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxxiii. Note that the essence of the claim is that new functional challenges arise as an unintended function of the solution of old problems.
17. This is the direction that Haas's later work on international organization would take. See Haas, Uniting of Europe, *xii-*lvi.
18. Though not federal in nature, the consequences [of supranational institutions] are plainly federating in quality merely because it activates socio-economic processes in the pluralistic-industrial-democratic milieu in which it functions, but to which conventional international institutions have no access. And to this extent the vision of Jean Monnet has been clearly justified by events.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, 527.
19. It does not follow, however - as many of Haas's followers incorrectly claim - that theories based on exogenous changes in economic interdependence are incapable of explaining change, which is incorrect on its face. Martin Saeter perpetuates the canard that exogenous theories of preferences, interstate decision-making and delegation are 'predominantly static, 'cannot explain the transformation of the system into a more integrated one,' and 'disregard the transfer of competences⋯ following treaty obligations⋯ i.e. the acquis communautaire. Explaining European integration during the 1990s clearly requires a broader approach. Martin Saeter, Comprehensive Neofitnctionalism: Bridging Realism and Liberalism in the Study of European Integration (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, n.d.).
20. Elsewhere Saeter contradicts himself on this point. 'A supplementary hypothesis would be that the greater the external, or international, challenges are, the more pressing will be the need for deepening.' He then ends up taking refuge in indeterminacy: 'Of course no theory can possibly pretend to provide a basis for prediction about political choices of such a kind.' Saeter, Comprehensive Neofunctionalism, 90.
21. A point often missed in glosses on these theories is that the essential difference between neofunctionalist claims and those of more classically regime theoretical theories - often termed 'liberal intergovernmentalist' - is not that the former explain dynamic change and the latter are static. It is that neofunctionalism explains dynamic change (as opposed to moving to a new equilibrium) primarily through endogenous spillover, while LI explains it as a response to exogenous pressures or intended consequences of previous agreements. For a useful discussion see Ben Rosamond, Theories of European Integration (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2000), 68-73.
22. Oddly, Haas remarks in his introduction to the 2004 edition of Uniting of Europe, in which he argues that liberal intergovernmentalism 'conforms exactly to the main ideas of neo-funcdonalism.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, *xvii.
23. This is obviously not the case, as shown by Haas's discussion immediately following, which leaves liberal intergovernmentalism behind and focuses on work by determined critics of LI. For a discussion of the use and abuse of the distinction, see Donald Puchala, 'Institutionalism, Intergovernmentalism, and European Integration: A Review', Journal of Common Market Studies 37:2 (Tune 1999), 317-31.
24. Haas, Uniting of Europe, *xii-*lvi. In his book Haas seeks to explain the deepening of integration from 1950 to 1957, leading to the founding of the EEC. In later work he seeks to explain integration in the 1960s as a consequence of earlier decisions, rather than as a continuing response to external pressures.
25. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxiii.
26. 'Once established,' he argued in 1958, 'the central institution will affect political integration⋯ if it is willing to follow policies giving rise to expectations and demands for more - or fewer - federal measures.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxxiii, also xii. Haas quite arbitrarily discusses integration as if exogenous factors can matter only as preconditions at the time integration is launched, not at any subsequent decision point.
27. There is no reason why an adequate explanatory theory need be predictive. A prediction about the future based on a claim 'If A then B' depends not only on knowing the causal relationship, but knowing the value of A. Often we can measure the value of A in the past, but not in the future. In this sense, most social scientific theories are more explanatory than predictive. Haas, perhaps consistent with his Monnetist ambitions, was the reverse; ne was more interested in prediction than explanation. I am indebted to Philippe Schmitter for pressing me on this point.
28. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, 'International Interdependence and Integration', in Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby, Handbook of Political Science (Andover, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 363-414.
29. Here I follow the analysis in Choice for Europe, Introduction, Chapters 1 and 7.
30. For a summary of a decade of work, seePhillippe Schmitter, 'A Revised Theory of European Integration', in Leon N, Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold, eds, Regional Integration: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971);
31. Leon N. Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
32. Ernst B. Haas, 'International Integration: The European and the Universal Process'. In International Political Communities: An Anthology, 93-130. New York: Doubleday, 1966;
33. Haas, The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing', in Leon N. Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold, eds., Regional Integration: Theory and Research (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1971), 23ff;
34. Haas, 'Turbulent Fields and the Theory of Regional Integration', International Organization 30, no. 2 (Spring 1976): 173-212.
35. Haas, Uniting of Europe, xxvi-xxviii.
36. To be sure, neofunctionalists did analyze other efforts at regional integration - generally concluding that the potential for integration was slight. For a subtle treatment, sec Joseph S. Nye, Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization (Boston: Little Brown, 1971).
37. Donald Puchala, 'Of Blind Men, Elephants, and International Integration', Journal of Common Market Studies 10:3 (March 1972), 267-85.
38. Also Pentland, International, 189-94;
39. Carole Webb, Theoretical Perspectives and Problems', in Helen Wallace, William Wallace and Carole Webb, eds., Policy-Making in the European Community, 2nd edition (Chichester: Wiley, 1983), 32ff.
40. Janne Haaland Matláry, 'Beyond Intergovernmentalism: The Quest for a Comprehensive Framework for the Study of Integration', Cooperation and Conflict 28:2 (1993): 181-208;
41. Linda Cornett and James A. Caporaso, '"And It Still Moves!" State Interests and Social Forces in the European Community', in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds., Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 248;
42. Michael O'Neill, The Politics of European Integration: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1996), 5.
43. Haas, The Uniting of Europe, xii-xiv. The passive voice in the title The Uniting of Europe captures the spirit of the enterprise.
44. See note 18 above.
45. Haas, 'Study', 26;
46. Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory (Berkeley: Center for International Studies, 1975), 86.
47. On the links between interdependence, governance and learning, see Haas, The Web of Interdependence: The United States and International Organizations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
48. Henry R. Nau, 'From Integration to Interdependence: Gains, Losses and Continuing Gaps', International Organization 33:1 (Autumn 1979), 119-47;
49. Keohane and Nye, 'International Interdependence and Integration', 363-414;
50. Stanley Hoffmann, 'Reflections on the Nation-State in Western Europe Today', Journal of Common Market Studies 21:1-2 (September-December 1982), 21-37.
51. James Caporaso and John T.S. Keeler, The European Community and Regional Integration Theory', in Carolyn Rhodes and Sonia Mazey, eds., The State of the European Union: Building European Unity? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 43;
52. Likke Friis, 'Challenging a Theoretical Paradox: The Lacuna of Integration Theory' (Copenhagen: CORE Working Paper 2, 1995), 2.
53. This lies behind the criticisms of scholars like Milward and Ludlow that a 'social history' of integration is required. The neofunctionalists did stress the role of economic transactions. Ernst B. Haas and Philippe C. Schmitter, 'Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections about Unity in Latin America', International Organization 18:4 (Autumn 1964), 707, 709-10.
54. There is a tendency in neofunctionalist theory to argue diat they do not have to engage in any rigorous theory testing against any alternative, since their theory subsumes those alternatives. Yet this sort or relabeling misses die point, which concerns mid-range theory. In order to explain why feedback is important, one needs to know what factors influence static decisions and how they do so - since it is these latter factors that feedback would need to alter. Thus, in order to analyze feedback, we require an explicit micro-foundational theory of how societal pressures, national bargaining power, and transaction-cost incentives are transformed into policy out-comes - a theory whose empirical validity we can test. Similarly, in order to show that the sources of long-term change were endogenous consequences to previous integration decisions, rather than responses to exogenous trends and shocks, one needs to theorize and evaluate (as an alternative baseline theory) the exogenous influences on basic elements of state behavior, such as preferences, bargaining power, and transaction-cost incentives to institutionalize policies.
55. Ernst B. Haas, The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Anguish and Joy of Pre-Theorizing', in Lindberg and Scheingold, eds., Regional Integration;
56. Ernst B. Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory (Berkely, CA: Institute of International Studies, 1975).
57. Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity, 284;
58. Joseph S. Nye, Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 64-75;
59. Philippe Schmitter, A Revised Theory of Regional Integration', in Lindberg and Scheingold, eds., Regional Integration, 232-64;
60. Ernst B. Haas, Technocracy, Pluralism and the New Europe, in Stephen R. Graubard, ed., A New Europe? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), 62-88. Ncofunctionalism failed, Haas argued, to capture the real decisions facing governments, for example the choice - repeatedly critical in the evolution of the EC - whether to engage in regional or global cooperation.
61. Ernst B. Haas, Beyond the Nation State; Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, 1964), 34-5, 81;
62. Haas, Turbulent', 173.
63. Hoffmann, 'Reflections', 31, 33-4;
64. Haas, Beyond the Nation State, 23, 30, 32-5, 77. Ultimately Haas moved in a different direction, seeking to reconceptualize 'learning' through a process of trial and error and the application of expert knowledge, though he conceded a greater role for learning occurred as actors assess whether integration 'enhances the original purposes of the actors.' Late in his career he flirted with constructivism as a means to pursue the research agenda further.
65. For the link, see Robert O. Keohane and Stanley Hoffmann, 'Institutional Change in Europe in the 1980s', in Keohane and Hoffmann, eds., The New European Community: Decision-Making and Institutional Change (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 1-39.
66. Rosamond, Theories.
67. Theoretical analyses of integration theory tend to mistake debate over theory for empirical ambiguity. Ben Rosamond, for example, points out that there are competing positions in integration theory, but makes little sustained effort to weigh them empirically, let alone offer a critical analysis of the empirical evidence. Diversity of opinion, it seems, is more important than empirical progress. Compare, Rosamond, Theories of European Integration.
68. with superior treatments that sees to incorporate empirical data, such as John Peterson and Elizabeth Bomberg, Decision-Making in the European Union (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999).
69. Characteristic is Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, 'Neofunctionalism: Obstinate or Obsolete. A Reappraisal in the Light of the New Dynamism of the EC', Millennium 20:1 (Spring 1991);
70. Wayne Sandholtz, High-Tech Europe: The Politics of International Cooperation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992);
71. Paul Pierson, 'The Path to European Union: An Historical Institutionalist Account', Comparative Political Studies 29:2 (April 1996), 123-64.
72. See Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2000); Moravcsik, Choice for Europe.
73. Moravcsik, Choice for Europe, Chapter 1, supersedes Andrew Moravcsik, 'Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach', Journal of Common Market Studies (30th Anniversary Edition) (December 1993).
74. Moravcsik, Choice for Europe, Chapter 7, finds that in eight of fifteen cases geopolitical concerns and federalist ideology played an important secondary role, and in three cases, all including Germany, agreement might have been impossible without them. He concludes also that certain elements of the EU, perhaps even including the agricultural policy and the quasi-constitutional structure, may have reflected geopolitical and ideological concerns.
75. This is not to say, of course, that all cooperation in the EU is economic. The essence of the LI position is not that economic issues dominate political ones. It is that: (1) states pursue national interests formulated as preferences across outcomes; (2) these national preferences reflect concrete issue-specific concerns more than general ideological concerns or linkages to other issues. This does not exclude, of course, that bargains would be reached across issues.
76. He did glimpse, however, that the founding of the EEC was in most respects a repudiation of tne ECSC, which was viewed by European businessmen, notably in Germany, as unacccptably dirigiste, and by policy-makers as a noble failure. For the latest historiography, see Gunnar Skogmar, The United States and the Nuclear Dimension of European Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
77. Exogenous is used here in the social scientific, not geographical sense. I do not mean pressures from outside Europe, but pressures causally independent of prior integration.
78. Here is the passage in its entirety: 'One plausible explanation [for the success of cooperation among the Six and not in the OEEC] is that France, in ECSC, is face to face with four governments committed to common market thinking, while Italy is equally sympathetic in principle though sometimes desirous of arguing the case of her defensively-minded heavy industries. In OEEC, by contrast, the German and Benelux position enjoys no clear and consistent majority. But this fact alone does not suffice to explain the French refusal to use the veto power, and the good record of eventually complying with ECSC orders. It is suggested that the concept of "engagement," already introduced in connection with the Messina conference, provides a convincing explanation, combining institutional and ideological causes. The concept of "engagement" is developed as an adaptation from a similar principle in small-group psychology.' Haas, Uniting of Europe, 522. Haas provides no evidence that this shirt is endogenous to past integration, nor any reason why exogenous interests cannot explain the French veto. For his prior evidence of the positions of national governments at Messina, consistent with the political economy approach, see also pp. 268-70.
79. Haas, Uniting of Europe, 512-27. This implies that any sort of interstate agreement demonstrates the 'supranational principle' at work.
80. See the discussion in notes 17 and 18 above.
81. See Jeffrey A. Frankel, Ernesto Stein, Shang-Jin Wei, Regional Trading Blocs in the World Economic System (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1999).
82. Haas neglects the quiet but essential role of agriculture in the founding of the EEC. Concern about agriculture, and the notion that agricultural problems could be solved by finding neighboring export markets, were not created by the EEC. There is overwhelming evidence that French leaders would never have secured the votes to ratify the treaty without the votes of the agricultural bloc. François Duchêne, Jean Monnet: First Statesman of Interdependence (New York: Norton, 1995), 291.
83. Craig Parsons (in an interesting and informed, if one-sided, analysis) seeks to defend the even more radically neofunctionalist thesis that French policy-makers did not think about agriculture in the context of Europe until induced to do so by EEC discussions in 1962 or 1963. See A Certain Idea of Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). Empirically, this is an utterly unsustainable position, as the evidence above suggests. It gains credibility only because it conflates a state having a preference with an item being prominent on international agendas. Agriculture was not discussed in detail in the EU before the early 1960s, for tactical reasons, but it played an important role in French thinking throughout.
84. For a summary of evidence, see Milward, Rescue
85. Moravcsik, Choice, Chapter 7.
86. This case is argued in detail in Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe.
87. Fritz Scharpf, 'The Joint-Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration', Public Administration 66 (Autumn 1988): 239-78.
88. Fritz Scharpf, 'Europäische Demokratie und deutsche Föderalismus', Staatswissenschaft und Staatspraxis 3: 296-306.
89. See the discussion in Moravcsik, Choice for Europe, Chapters 2-3, 7
90. and Andrew Moravcsik, 'A New Statecraft? Supranational Entrepreneurship and Interstate Cooperation', International Organization 53(2) (Winter 1999): 267-306. This is not the result of short time horizons, as the lack of any subsequent effort to reverse these subsidies, as well as the similar behavior in this period of non-EU members like Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Ireland and most of Scandinavia illustrate.
91. Here I summarize the findings from Moravcsik, 'A New Statecraft?' which develops the theories presented here, and tests them using data in The Choice for Europe.
92. Wayne Sandholtz and John Zysman, '1992: Recasting the European Bargain', World Politics 42 (Winter 1989): 95-128;
93. George Ross, Jacaues Delors and European Integration (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995), who writes: the political lucidity of the Commission's proposals and the shrewdness with which they have been presented have been central variables in Europe's forward movement⋯ In contrast to ordinary international organizations, the EC was set up to contain a supranational "motor" which would constantly press forward towards more integration - the Commission was not designed simply to be a "delegated agent" of EC member states' (pp. 3-4).
94. Most studies, even those that seek to establish neofunctionalist claims, concede that exogenously motivated state behavior explains most of the outcome. For an overview of more recent cases, see Andrew Moravcsik and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, 'Explaining the Treaty of Amsterdam: Interests, Influence, Institutions', Journal of Common Market Studies (March 1999);
95. Finn Laursen, ed., The Amsterdam Treaty: National Preference Formation, Interstate Bargaining, and Outcomes (Odense: Odense University Press, 2002);
96. Paul Magnetic and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, 'The European Convention: Bargaining in the Shadow of Rhetoric, West European Politics 27(3) (May 2004): 381-404.
97. Milward, Rescue of the Nation State, Chapter 6.
98. Even his sympathetic (and best-documented) biographer, former Monnet collaborator François Duchêne, attributes to Monnet the idea of regional integration in 1949-50, but little in subsequent years. See his First Statesman of Interdependence. Haas also underestimates the independence of mind of Dutch diplomats, led by Willem Beyen, who were far more skeptical of sectoral integration than Haas's account suggests. See Haas, Uniting of Europe, 269-70.
99. Cf. Moravcsik, Choice, 139-50.
100. Moravcsik, 'A New Statecraft?'.
101. Here I do not address neofunctionalism's presuppositions about institutional delegation, which imply: (1) centralization will occur across the board, and notably in areas of the most intense national regulation; (2) evidence that governments are overruled by central authorities is evidence for 'supranationalization' of politics. Neither is adequate. The first claim is not empirically accurate. Modern theories of international regimes assume that delegation to international institutions is a rational means of making credible commitments to further cooperation. This implies that centralization of authority is required primarily to manage the transaction costs. It would be interesting to test these claims against one another. The second claim is underspecified, since regime theory also predicts that governments will sometimes be outvoted or overruled. For further discussion of delegation see Moravcsik, Choice for Europe, pp. 67-77, 485-489.
102. Consider, for example, Simon Hix's uncommonly intelligent and sophisticated advanced introductory textbook on the EU, designed to reflect 'state of the art' theory and research. Hix devotes nearly dozens of pages to the Parliament, Court, and autonomous actions of the Commission, far less to the Commission in the legislative process and the Council of Ministers, and only a handful to the European Council and to national implementation. This strikes me as a distribution that perfectly reflects current scholarship on the EU, but also one inversely proportional to the respective importance of these institutions in shaping the overall trajectory of European integration. Simon Hix, The Political System of the European Union (New York: Palgrave, 1999). Cf. for a more balanced presentation.
103. Mark Pollack, The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the EU (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
104. See Mark Pollack, Engines of European Integration.
105. Anne-Marie Burley and Walter Mattli, 'Europe before the Court: A Political Theory of Legal Integration", International Organization 47: 1 (Winter 1993): 41-76.
106. Karen J. Alter, Establishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
107. For further empirical testing, see Alec Stone Sweet and Thomas Brunell, 'Constructing a Supranational Constitution: Dispute Resolution and Governance in the European Community', American Political Science Review 92(1) (March 1998): 63-81.
108. One would not want to make a rigid distinction here, as many forms of policymaking combine the two. Yet we can still usefully discuss how centralized European policy-making is.
109. Some - including reviewers of this article - find it surprising or objectionable that I compare the EU to a state rather than to an international organization. One hears this sort of dichotomy - often expressed as a spurious distinction between conceiving of EU politics as 'comparative polities' and 'international relations,' or conceiving the EU as a 'state' and the EU as an 'international organization.' But is this distinction helpful? In social science there are fundamental theories of political economy, non-coercive bargaining, and institutions. Properly specified and applied, they explain politics regardless of the level or sub-discipline; any restrictions follow only from the precise institutional setting. This sort of misunderstanding would be less important but for the fact that it dovetails with 'paradigmatic' formulations such as a tension between 'liberal intergovernmentalism' and 'multi-level governance.' In my view, these sorts of dichotomies are unwelcome legacies of the parochially EU-specifk 'grand theoretical' language Haas and others introduced to the study of the EU (and carried on today in some textbook writing on the EU). In fact such claims are not mutually exclusive. Far from denying that the EU is a multi-level governance institution, 'liberal intergovernmentalism' (LI) dictates that it must be such an institution. Recall that LI models interstate negotiations to amend the EU's constitutional treaty basis as a three-stage process of national preference formation, interstate bargaining, and institutional delegation. In the third step, governments delegate to EU institutions as credible commitment mechanisms, within which further decisions are taken. This in turn implies that there is substantial uncertainty about precisely what decisions will be taken within the treaty arrangements, otherwise governments would simply negotiate the subsequent agreements ex ante. Such delegated institutions empower national governments to outvote their counterparts; social and bureaucratic actors to act as litigants, lobbyists or representatives; European citizens to vote for elected representatives; and supranational actors to render decisions. All this is implied by LI itself. If institutions were unimportant, then governments would not need to negotiate over the delegation to them set down in treaty-amending negotiations, and LI would not need to theorize how they do so. All this, moreover, is utterly consistent with the transaction-cost basis of the 'regime theory' developed by Robert Keohane and others, now a quarter-century old and the explicit basis of LI. To draw a contrast between liberal intergovernmentalist' and 'multi-level governance" frameworks as stark alternatives is, therefore, profoundly misleading. For a more nuanced approach, see Pollack, Engines of European Integration.
110. Martin Saeter's reformulation, for example, is cited approvingly by Haas. He sets up the central issue as follows: 'European integration is seemingly moving along a continuum, without any logical end stage, leading from the present, predominantly confederal, type of system towards increasingly federal-type, supranational mechanisms and structures. Saeter, Comprehensive Neofitnctionalism, 90.
111. This is not to say, as Niall Ferguson, Martin Feldstein and others have speculated over the past decade, that the EU will decay or dissolve. See Niall Ferguson, The End of Europe' (address at the American Enterprise Institute).
112. 'En 1988, Jacques Delors avait annoncé que "dans dix ans, 80% de la législation économique, peut-être même fiscale et sociale, applicable dans les Etats-membres seront d'origine communautaires"', Michel Barnier, 'Le grand secret de la présidentielle', Libération (12 February 2002): 15.
113. For example, sec Simon Hix, 'A Union that is a System, not a State', Financial Times (9 May 1998), 10;
114. 'The Omnipotence of Brussels', Financial Times (8 August 1995), 13;
115. Martin Walker, 'Walker's World: The New Enfeebled EC', United Press International (5 August 2004);
116. Briony Warden, The Floundering Fathers of Europe', The Sun (1 March 2002);
117. Bernard]. Mulholland, 'Personally Speaking', Global News Wire - Europe Intelligence Wire (26 February 2002);
118. Eric Zemmour, 'La fin d'une fiction franchise', Le Figaro (17 June 2004), 9;
119. Thomas Ferenczi, 'Plus de la moitié de la législation française est d'origine européenne', Le Monde (14 June 2004). One leading government minister, who often uses the EU as an excuse for legislative proposals, has recently argued that 60 percent of domestic legislation originates with the EU. Barnier, Le grand secret', 15.
120. For example, Annette Toller, 'Dimensionen der Europäisierung - Das Beispiel des Deutschen Bundestages', (unpublished paper, Hamburg, 2003).
121. Giandomenico Majone, Regulating Europe (London: Routledge, 1996).
122. Virginie Guiraudon, 'Immigration and Justice' (Paper presented at conference on The European Union and the New Constitution - A Stable Political Equilibrium?, Princeton University, November 2004).
123. Gráinne de Búrca, The Constitutional Challenge of New Governance in the European Union', European Law Review 28 (2003): 814.
124. Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, 'Active Welfare, Experimental Governance, Pragmatic Constitutionalism: The New Transformation of Europe' (May 2003, available at http://www2.law.columbia.edu/sabel/papers.htm).
125. Jürgen Habermas, 'Why Europe Needs a Constitution', New Left Review 11 (September-October 2001).
126. For a leading and very optimistic scenario, see Paul Pierson and Stefan Leibfried, eds., European Social Policy (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995).
127. For a recent empirical assessment that, despite the strongest possible effort, finds little evidence of progress, see Jonathan Zeitlin and Philippe Pochet, with Lars Magnusson, eds., The Open Method of Coordination in Action: The European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies (Brussels: PIE-Peter Lane, forthcoming).
128. Fritz Scharpf, Governing in Europe: Effective and Legitimate? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
129. For a critique of Scharpf addressing this and other points, see Andrew Moravcsik and Andrea Sangiovanni, 'On Democracy and Public Interest in the European Union', in Wolfgang Streeck and Renate Mainz, eds., Die Reformierbarkeit der Demokratie. Innovationen und Blockaden (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2002), 122-48.
130. Ferguson, The End of Europe'.
131. Scharpf, Governing in Europe.
132. For full citations see Moravcsik, 'In Defense of the Democratic Deficit: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union', Journal of Common Market Studies 40: 4 (November 2002);
133. 'Federalism in the European Union: Rhetoric and Reality', in Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Robert Howse, eds., The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the US and the EU (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
134. Majone, Regulating Europe.
135. This does not imply, as Majone has argued and others have incorrectly attributed to me, that EU policies have no important redistributive consequences. Obviously they do.
136. Here again I follow the analysis in Moravcsik, 'In Defense of the Democratic Deficit', which provides full citations.
137. In a curiously anachronistic reading of EU history, Siedentop sees the EU as a scheme imposed by France - in the manner of Louis XIV and Napoleon - to propagate the French administrative state across the continent. Siedentop, Democracy in Europe.
138. Thomas Zweifel, 'Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone: The EU's Democratic Deficit in Comparison', Journal of European Public Policy 9(5) (2002): 812-40.
139. More recent Commission administrative slip-ups generally stem from the Commission's lack of staff, which requires many tasks to be outsourced to semiprivate groups. They have triggered an immediate public and parliamentary response.
140. Again, this analysis follows Moravcsik, 'In Defense of the "Democratic Deficit'", and 'Is there a Democratic Deficit in Global Governance?', where full citations are provided.
141. See Peter Norman, The Accidental Constitution (Brussels: Eurocomment, 2004).
142. Norman, it is fair to note, believes that the consequences of the convention were unintended and represent a sort of spillover. For a contrasting view, which makes the most positive case for spillover that is empirically sustainable, and nonetheless falls short, see Magnette and Nicolaïdis, 'The European Convention'.
143. Phillippe Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union⋯ and Why Bother? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).