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NEO-NEO-FUNCTIONALISM
Philippe C. Schmitter
European University Institute July 2002
[12.031 words]
For publication in:
Wiener, Antje and Thomas Diez, eds. European Integration Theory , Oxford: Oxford University Press (2003, in preparation)
1 Introduction: D JÀ VU, ALL OVER AGAIN?
No theory of regional integration has been as misunderstood, caricatured, pilloried, proven wrong and rejected as often as neo-functionalism. Numerous scholars have rejoiced at having “overcome” the much-decried antagonism between it and inter- governmentalism, presumably by adhering to some version or another of the latter. So much so, that with very few exceptions, virtually no one currently working on European integration openly admits to being a neo-functionalist. Its own creator has even declared it obsolescent – on two occasions!^1 So, why bother to beat this dead horse? Why not celebrate its demise and move on to a more promising and up-to-date approach? There is certainly no shortage of self-proclaimed candidates for the job. Especially since its relancement in the mid-1980s, European integration has become once again a very lively site for theoretical speculation. Hardly a year does not pass that someone does not come up with a new theory and, even more surprisingly, manages to convince a group of other scholars to produce a collective volume extolling its virtues. “International regime analysis,” “the regulatory approach,” “liberal inter-governmentalism,” “the policy-
(^1) Ernst B. Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, Research Series, No. 25, 1975); “Does Constructivism Subsume Neo- functionalism?” in Thomas Christiansen, Knud Erik Jørgensen and Antje Wiener (eds), The Social Construction of Europe (London: Sage, 2001), p. 29.
network approach,” “the Fusion-Thesis,” “multi-lateral governance,” “institutionalism,“ “rationalism,“ “constructivism,” “reflectivism” and “post-modernism” have all followed each other over the past years onto the bookshelves that I reserve for integration theory.
The editors of this volume asked me to review and reflect upon these more recent efforts, presumably from the perspective of a senior scholar whose youthful flirtation with neo- functionalism had long since past. I found this impossible to do. Most of these “novelties” turned out not to be theories at all, but just more or less elaborate languages for describing what the authors thought had taken place in the recent past -- devoid of any discrete and falsifiable hypotheses about where the process might be heading in the future. And when there was some theoretical core it often sounded quite familiar to me.^2 Real-live neo-functionalists may be an endangered species, but neo-functionalist thinking turned out to be very much alive, even if it was usually being re-branded as a different animal.^3
Neo-Functionalism: a theory of regional integration that places major emphasis on the role of non-state actors – especially, the “secretariat” of the regional organization involved and those interest associations and social movements that form at the level of the region – in providing the dynamic for further integration. Member states remain
(^2) I am not alone in this suspicion. Even that “theorist of obsolescence,” Ernst Haas, has observed it – particularly with regard to the work of Andrew Moravcsik. Moravcsik’s alleged “liberal” theory of intergovernmentalism shares a number of core assumptions with neo-functionalism (while making “extraordinary efforts to distinguish his work from these sources”). Haas, “Does Constructivism …”, FN. 10, p. 30. I would go even further. If Moravscik were to concede that the calculation of member-state strategies was affected not only by “domestic interests,” but also (and even increasingly) by transnational firms, associations and movements working through domestic channels, then, his approach would be virtually indistinguishable from neo-functionalism – just much less specific in its assumptions and hypotheses. His epistemology would have to admit that the gradual processes of “low politics” could be unobtrusively encroaching upon “high politics;” his ontology would have to include the prospect that transformation might be occurring, not just successive iterations of the same power game played by rational-unitary national states. (^3) James Caporaso and Alec Stone Sweet are exceptions. In their concluding chapter to Alec Stone Sweet, Wayne Sandholtz and Neil Fligstein (eds.), The Institutionalization of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 224, they acknowledge the intellectual debt they owe to neo-functionalism and admit that they, as well as “some but not all members of (their) group, are quite comfortable being called (modified) neo-functionalists.”
each other, and so forth, had to be incorporated within the theory, not left outside it. The result was a vastly more complex vision of the integration process and one that quite explicitly predicted a wider range of possible outcomes – not only across regional settings but within the same region depending on the evolution over time of institutions, policies and payoffs.
1.1 Neo-functionalism in Relation to Other Theories of Integration
Some critics of neo-functionalism mourned the loss of its original faith in automaticity and uni-directionality and complained about the proliferation of potential trajectories, but this was a logical and desirable result of its comparative application and its conversion of “taken-for-granted” constants into “should-be-taken-into-consideration” variables. Any comprehensive theory of integration should potentially be a theory of disintegration. It should not only explain why countries decide to coordinate their efforts across a wider range of tasks and delegate more authority to common institutions, but also why they do not do so or why, having done so, they decide to defect from such arrangements. Unfortunately, almost all of the other so-called theories of regional integration are only theories of European integration and this has deprived them of most of their capacity for self-reflexivity – except to the extent that inter-temporal comparisons of the same case allows for some questioning of the endogenous and exogenous status of explanatory variables and causal processes.^4
[Insert Table One Here]
Before I offer an up-dated target for criticism, I propose to try to place neo-functionalism within the present context of contending theories of regional/European integration. In my opinion, all these theories can be placed within a two-dimensional property space.
(^4) An exception is Walter Mattli, The Logic of Regional Integration (Cambridge University Press, 1999) where a wide range of integration efforts inside and outside of Europe and over a long period of time are compared. The approach, however, is “parsimonious” and “rational,” i.e., diametrically opposite to the one taken here.
(1) Ontology: whether the theory presumes a process that reproduces the existing characteristics of its member-state participants and the interstate system of which they are a part, or presumes a process that transforms the nature of these sovereign national actors and their relations with each other; and
(2) Epistemology: whether the evidence gathered to monitor these processes focuses primarily on dramatic political events , or upon prosaic socio- economic-cultural exchanges.
Figure One represents my first attempt at filling that property space with real-live “isms.” Since I am confident that individual contemporary theorists of regional integration will not agree with where I would have placed them, I have prudently not done so.
Appropriately, we find functionalism with its neo- and neo-neo-versions in the bottom right-hand corner of the plot. Its ontology is transformative in that it assumes that both actors and the “games they play” will change significantly in the course of the integration process; its epistemology is rooted in the observation of gradual, normal & (by and large) unobtrusive exchanges among a wide range of actors. Its historic opponent, realism with its pure intergovernmental and liberal intergovernmental modifications, is diametrically opposite since its key assumptions are that dominant actors remain sovereign national states pursuing their unitary national interests and controlling the pace and outcome through periodic revisions of their mutual treaty obligations. Federalism is another transformative option, but it too relies on episodic “moments” at which a multitude of actors (and not just their governments) agree upon a new constitutional format. Its diametrical opposite is what I have labeled “regulation-ism,” as best exemplified in the work of Giandomenico Majone. It shares with intergovernmentalism the presumption of fundamental continuity in actors with only a shift upward in the level at which regulation occurs. The member-states, however, remain the same as does their motivation and their predominant influence over the process. The empirical focus differs in that, like functionalism, it emphasizes almost exclusively socio-economic exchanges and the “normal” management of their consequences.
I prefer to stress the “poly-centric” as well as the “multi-level” nature of the EU in order to include the functional dimension along with the territorial one. A system of Poly- centric Governance (PCG) can be defined as an arrangement for making binding decisions over a multiplicity of actors that delegates authority over functional tasks to a set of dispersed and relatively autonomous agencies that are not controlled – de jure or de facto – by a single collective institution.^5.
MLG has become the most omnipresent and acceptable label one can stick on the contemporary EU. Even its own politicians use it! My hunch is that its popularity among theorists can be attributable to its descriptive neutrality and, hence, its putative compatibility with virtually any of the institutionalist theories and even several of their more extreme predecessors. For politicians, it has the singular advantage of avoiding the controversial term: “state” (especially, “supra-national state”) and, therefore, sounds a lot less forbidding and threatening. For example, the emergence of the MLG+PCG from the process of European integration can be explained (in part) by almost all of the theories in Figure One. The EU (and, if they existed, all analogous arrangements for the integration of previously sovereign states) became and will remain an ML&PC polity for the following reasons:
- It is the product of successive treaties between formally (and formerly) sovereign national-states.
1.1. Ergo , it is the outcome of a gradual and incremental process whose institutions were not modeled on any previous polity and, hence, whose eventual configuration could not be imagined in advance.
1.2. Ergo , since formal revision of treaties requires unanimity, their provisions are virtually impossible to change and tend to accumulate over time –
(^5) Unfortunately, no one seems to be following me in this usage. Either the concept of MLG+PCG is just too “indigestible” or the user assumes that territory always trumps function and, hence, PCG is redundant.
creating overlaps and inconsistencies that can only be revised by informal negotiations – which in turn reinforces MLG & PCG. 1.3. Ergo , if it were to be “constitutionalized” and, thereby, its finalité politique defined, it would have to transform its MLG & PCG properties and become a polity more similar to an orthodox federal state with a democratic government – probably of the parliamentary/consociational genus.
- The actors/principals (i.e. the member states) that form the EU do not trust each other to respect mutual agreements faithfully and accurately.
2.1. Ergo , they require an authoritative and independent agent to monitor and, when necessary, enforce these agreements – hence, the intrinsic role for a supra-national secretariat and judiciary, i.e. the Commission and the ECJ.
2.2. But, they are wary of delegating too much authority to this supra-national agent, hence, the dispersion of these monitoring and enforcing tasks to multiple sites (and the reluctance to provide it with the two key independent powers of any state, namely, taxation and security).
2.3. And, even when they delegate this authority, they surround it with mechanisms of “inter-level” representation/accountability that restrict its autonomy.
2.4. But, the actors/principals do trust that none of the others will use force or the threat of force to impose an arrangement/outcome, hence, they are less concerned with relative benefits than in a traditional inter-governmental system.
- The actors/principals that form the EU do not have a common identity or politico- administrative culture.
expansion to contraction, but will seek to disperse its effects across a multiplicity of EU institutions – each with its surrounding system of inter- level negotiation.
- The member states of the EU were of uneven size, varying capability and different socio-economic composition at its point of departure and, thanks to enlargement, this diversity has increased over time – despite considerable convergence in their macro- economic performances.
5.1. Ergo , their initial governance arrangements reflected this diversity, as have subsequent ones – only more so.
5.2. Ergo , the main consequence of this is the systematic over-representation of smaller member states – and the average member state has tended to get even smaller over time.
5.3. Ergo , smaller (and, to a lesser extent, less developed) member states tend to prefer greater delegation of authority to common institutions in general (and the Commission, in particular), but they also insist on their (disproportionately) “fair share” of voting weights, structural funds, institution sites, etc.
- The integration strategy initially chosen (the so-called Monnet Method and the only viable one at the time) was based on segmented interaction between a privileged set of actors – mostly, upper-level national bureaucrats, Commission officials and business interest representatives.
6.1. Ergo , those institutions that might have represented larger numbers of citizens and a wider range of their interests were excluded from the process and have subsequently found it difficult to gain access.
6.2. Ergo , those most closely involved tended to represent highly specialized (and relatively less visible) constituencies and this was reflected in a highly compartmentalized decision-making structure within and across EU institutions.
6.3. Ergo , those political mechanisms that led to the break-up of MLG & PCG in previous federations or confederations – namely, the formation of national party systems and comprehensive nationalist ideologies – have had little opportunity to emerge in the EU (not to mention, revolutions).
6.4. Also, the non-decision to include security issues from the initial (and, so far, subsequent) stages of the integration process, deprived the emerging EU-polity of the coercive mechanisms that elsewhere promoted greater administrative uniformity and concentration of governmental authority at the national level – namely, military mobilization and centralized taxation.
- The EU may be unique as a polity – precisely, because of its extreme reliance on MLG & PCG – but it is sensitive to broader trends in government and governance that are affecting the “domestic democracies” of its member states. Indeed, one could describe the EU as the reductio ad absurdum of such trends.
7.1. Ergo , the trend toward delegating tasks to “guardian institutions” (central banks, regulatory commissions, autonomous agencies, etc.) at the national and sub-national levels of member states will be imitated at the supra- national level.
7.2. Ergo , the observed decline in partisan identification and electoral turnout in its member states will make it even more difficult to create a viable party system in the EU.
variables in the form of a model does not mean that only these are relevant to understanding integration outcomes. Variation in other variables can also cause variation in the caused variable without falsifying the causal law. Any given dependent variable may be involved in a large number of causal laws.^7 …
With these caveats protecting me I would, however, readily concede that if the specified operative conditions were to prove irrelevant in a given integrative context (for example, if transactions increased but were not associated with any change in perceived inequalities or the formation of regional interest groups) or that if actor strategies were to change significantly in the absence of variation in the specified variables (such as would occur if regional institutions were permitted to augment their authoritative control over member policies without any prior variation in perceived inequalities, regional group activity, common identitive appeal, deliberate manipulative attempts by regional technocrats, or sensitivity to deterioration in international status), something is very likely wrong with the made!
(2) The theory proposed ‘herein is—like all social theories—composed of variables and hypotheses about variable relationships. A variable is a concept which can have various values and which is defined in such a way that one can tell by means of observations which value it has in a particular occurrence.^8 As such, variables are observer-invented orderings of facts and perceptions, not the physical occurrences themselves. Nor are they necessarily the categories with which actors order and explain their behavior. … Even more confusingly, these concepts are usually summations or aggregate evaluations of complex, interrelated behaviors. Such classifications, rankings or scorings pose a major operational difficulty for this (and many other) theories. Unclear definitions and failure to specify how the multiple observations are to be collapsed into a single assessment have plagued comparative research and made intersubjective reliability poor and my perception is that this problem has gotten worse rather than better as the integration
(^7) Arthur L. Stinchçombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), pp. 32. (^8) Ibid ., pp. 28—29.
process itself has become more complex.
(3) The basic causal imagery … is functionalist. As Arthur Stinchcombe has so cogently exposed, the structure of such an explanation is one in which “the consequences of some behavior or social arrangement are essential elements of the causes of that behavior.”^9 In this conception of the integration process national units originally adopt strategies of action which converge in the establishment of some permanent regional institution(s) for the purpose of attaining certain common objectives. The attainment of these objectives is made difficult by the presence of certain tensions or, better, contradictions. The latter are a specific sort of tension-producing conditions that are generated by the integration process itself, i.e., by the collective attempt to obtain the initial objectives. Summarizing (and hypothesizing), these basic contradictions are:
(a) uncertainty with regard to the capacity to guarantee relative equality of perceived benefits once new productive and distributive forces are unleashed ( equity );
(b) impossibility of maintaining prolonged separability of different issue areas in a complex, interdependent policy matrix ( engrenage );
(c) difficulty in isolating joint regional deliberations from a context of global socioeconomic dependence ( externalization );
(d) heightened sensitivity to the comparative performance of one’s “partners” generated by higher transactions and available information ( envy ).
The consequences produced by this “competition” between regional institutions and exogenous tensions or process-generated contradictions “feeds back” to the regional institutions. In the event that the policy-making forum originally established is suffi- ciently resourceful and flexible to handle the consequences and sustain satisfactory
(^9) Ibid ., p. 80
of this theory: the selection of the dependent variable. All its effort focuses upon an attempt to specify for the past and predict for the future the conditions under which the consequences generated by prior joint decisions will lead to a redefinition of actor strategies vis-à-vis the scope and level of regional decision-making. Whether member states will expand or contract the type of issues to be resolved jointly (scope) or whether they will increase or decrease the authority for regional institutions to allocate values (level) are the two basic dimensions of the dependent variable, and … they are by no means always covariant.
Neo-functionalism (and neo-neo-functionalism) … is an eminently political theory of integration which asks not whether “artificial” barriers to exchange are decreasing, resources being more efficiently distributed, or peoples growing to like each other more and more, but what kind of a strategy politically relevant actors are likely to adopt in a given context. These other conditions of economic and social integration do, of course, form important elements in the model, but as independent and intervening, not dependent, variables. (4) Certain variables have been deliberately excluded. These have been historically operative in integration processes and, in fact, play a prominent role in other theoretical formulations.^10 Their presence is regarded to be either unlikely in contemporary settings or so disturbing as to call for a very different conceptual formulation. (a) The first of these is the postulated or assumed absence of conquest or organized physical violence on the part of one member or group off members to enforce compliance with regional decisions or to compel changes in the strategy of other participants. This, in other words, is a model pertaining to the peaceful and voluntary transformation of international systems. It does not, of course, exclude the relevance of “‘bluff, bombast and brinkmanship” in actor styles, but physical coercion to enforce regional decisions would make the model irrelevant.
(^10) For example, Karl Deutsch,et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1957); Amitai Etzioni, Political Unification: A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965) were two contemporaneous works that both had stressed the importance of violence or the treat of it in international integration movements.
(b) “Irrational” postures or strategies – whether for dogmatic/ideological or personal/emotive reasons – are never absent from social action, even at the in- ternational level, but they are from this theory. They fit very uncomfortably within it. “Instant brotherhood” as a motive and “all or nothing” as a strategy make its operation exceedingly difficult. Unless some policy area can initially be separated out as jointly manipulable and unless some possibility of subsequent compromise involving tradeoffs or side payments exists, international integration, as conceived herein, is not likely to occur. The model assumes that integration is basically (but not exclusively) a rational process whereby actors calculate anticipated returns from various alternative strategies of participation in joint decision-making structures. More recently, this has been called the “soft rationality” assumption by Ernst B. Haas.^11
(c) None of this excludes integration movements from “infringing” upon the symbolic and emotional areas of so-called “high politics.” Nevertheless, … the margin for peaceful maneuverability in these “indivisible” arenas is very limited and most international organizations …are likely to get encapsulated long before they reach such sensitive issues.
2.1 Some Critical Afterthoughts
Now that we have almost fifty years of experience with European integration, i.e. since the founding of the Coal and Steel Community in 1952, it is possible to discern where specific neo-functionalist assumptions proved weaker than expected and where “non- assumptions” were made about phenomena that nonetheless contributed to the outcome as we know it today. [These numbers serve a purpose in separating different arguments and should not be jumbled together in an overly long sentence/paragraph] (1) he processes of functional interdependence took more time to emerge and, especially, to assert themselves than initially anticipated. (2) One reason for this is that collective
(^11) “Does Constructivism .. (FN 1), p. 25 et seq.
(8) Although they anticipated resistance from national authorities, neo-functionalists may have underestimated its strength in some cases and they definitely failed to anticipate the extent to which Heads of State and Government would play an increasingly direct role by creating the European Council.(9) Finally, neo-functionalism misjudged the role of politicization. Not only did it come much later than it “should” have, but when it did, it proved to be more anti- than pro-integration. Moreover, instead of strengthening the role of pan-European political parties, it has weakened them and had a disintegrative impact upon national party systems. Needless to say, if this theoretical approach is to be up-dated and re-equipped to deal with the contemporary EU, the neo-neo-version will have to take a serious look at these issues.
2.2 The Ontology of Neo-Neo-Functionalism
As befits a transformative theory, functionalism and its neo-versions are themselves transformative, that is to say, they specify conditions under which the identity of actors and their relationships change in the course of the integration process. When these conditions are favorable (admittedly, not often the case), it even predicts its own “obsolescence,” i.e. its transformation into a revised version of itself.^13
In the early Mitrany version, the model was quite simple. As the result of expert cooperation across borders to solve a growing set of common problems, the loyalty of beneficiaries would shift – thereby, making cooperation easier and more efficient over time. Eventually, there would come a moment of “ transcendence ” in which the sum of loyalties and expectations in trans-national functional arrangements would greatly exceed those lodged in national political authorities and a new global (for Mitrany) or regional (for his successors) polity would assert its supremacy.
The neo- and the neo-neo-versions insert many more stages or levels of transformation
(^13) This not, however, the sort of “obsolescence” that Ernst B. Haas had in mind in the articles cited in FN 1.
and are much more sensitive to the likely resistance of national politicians and citizens whose careers and loyalties are at least as determined by emotions and symbols as by functional satisfactions. Nevertheless, these neo-versions postulate an underlying sequence (admittedly of indeterminate length) whereby organizational roles, efforts at collective action, and actor conceptions of interest shift from the national to the supra- national level. This does not happen “automatically,” as in the original model, but requires a considerable amount of political action and that is usually associated with a crisis in the integration process. Its previous functioning has failed to meet expectations, generated a distribution of benefits that is not voluntarily acceptable and/or produced negative externalities that can no longer be ignored. Regardless of their initial intentions (and what they have placed in the documentary record), the national actors have to reassess the level and scope of their regional institutions. They can, of course, decide to withdraw from joint obligations (“spill-back”) or they could try to survive without changing institutions (“muddle-about”), but the macro-hypothesis of neo- and neo-neo- functionalist theory is that, under certain conditions, they will prefer to resolve these crises by expanding their mutual obligations (“spill-over”), rather than contracting or just reasserting them.
From such a perspective, the process whereby an emerging regional center gains or loses in the scope or level of its authority vis-à-vis preexistent national centers is best conceived as involving a series of crisis-provoked decisional cycles. These recurrent cycles of activity, generated by endogenous contradictions and/or exogenous tensions, compel national and regional authorities to revise their respective strategies and, collectively, to determine whether the new joint institution(s) will expand or contract. The basic structure of the neo-neo-model, therefore, consists not of a single continuum or even of a multitude of continua, nor does it involve any assumptions about automatic, cumulative and irreversible progress toward a single goal. Successive cycles of induced decision-making may involve complex movements “upward” and “downward” simultaneously in different issue areas. Various strategies, national and regional, may be adopted and various outcomes or endpoints are possible and even likely. Once, however,
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