History meets Politics: Overcoming Interdisciplinary Volapük in Research on the EU (original) (raw)
Related papers
The political sciences of European integration: disciplinary history and EU studies
Handbook of European Union Politics, 2007
The task of writing disciplinary history is far from straightforward. 1 Like all history, the composition of a narrative about a field is undertaken at a particular time and in a particular place -from a particular 'subject position' that may reflect certain biases which in turn follow from a multiplicity of concerns that follow from those temporal and spatial coordinates. 'Formal' disciplinary histories in any field are relatively rare, while stock-taking, 'state of the art' exegeses are found rather more often. More common still, though largely unacknowledged as exercises in disciplinary history, are those acts of framing and story-telling about a field's past that routinely pepper scholarship in an area of enquiry. In other words scholarly activity is characterised by the constant flow of stories, which offer claims about routes to progress through the rectification of past errors and classify the field's development over time. Thus interventions in a field's present routinely make arguments about that field's past.
Crossing pillars, crossing disciplines? Comparing institutional logics and evolutions within the EU
2009
This paper confronts established integration scholarship with evidence from CFSP, the EU’s attempt to work together in foreign and security policy. Why does integration theory refrain from analyzing the evolution in this sector? While CFSP experiences a growing popularity amongst researchers from IR and security studies, it seems to be neglected from classical integration theory. Two reasons for this are more closely scrutinized: Either these theoretical attempts are unable or unwilling to cope with CFSP, or CFSP is not integration and thus does not fall into their realm. Whereas I find evidence for ‘intergovernmental integration’ in CFSP, the problem seems to lie within integration theories. The classical dichotomies between supranational/intergovernmental approaches and between ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics can be advanced for this lacunae, as well as the overall diminishing interest of current theoretical approaches to deal with the EU integration process (instead of dealing with pol...
The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Perspective
Many European and American observers of the EC have criticized "intergovemmentalist" ac counts for exaggerating the extent of member state control over the process of European integra tion. This essay seeks to ground these criticisms in a "historical institutionalist" account that stresses the need to study European integration as a political process which unfolds over time. Such a perspective highlights the limits of member-state control over long-term institutional de velopment, due to preoccupation with shorHerm concerns, the ubiquity of unintended conse quences, and processes that "lock in" past decusions and make reassertions of member-state control difficult. Brief examination of the evolution of social policy in the EC suggests the limita tions of treating the EC as an international regime facilitating collective action among essentially sovereign states. It is ore useful to view integration as a "path-dependent" process that has pro duced a fragmented but still discernible "multitiered" European polity.
Europe in Search of Political Order – By J. Olsen
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2008
; xvi + 596pp., £85.00 hb. This volume is a most valuable contribution to the ever expanding list of textbooks on the politics of the European Union. The handbook is an enormously impressive and highly authoritative work in all aspects. It clearly distinguishes itself from competing books by the range of coverage and the clarity of analysis of the state of theory and research on EU institutions, politics and policies. The extensive and inclusive structure of the handbook is organized into four broad chapters: theorizing European integration; the EU as a polity; politics and policy-making in the EU; and the EU and the international system. It includes 28 essays, carefully chosen and meticulously researched by some of the foremost experts in the field. The book opens with a full section on theory, providing broader social scientific context of EU studies, supplemented by chapters on disciplinary history and the academic discourses on EU politics of other disciplines. The second part offers insights into the variety of approaches to the EU as a polity, ranging from traditional categories of empirical political analysis to some fundamental questions of normative political theory. The next section deals with the varied interpretations of the overall character of EU politics, providing a comprehensive picture of how the segmented policy processes in the EU have developed over time, and analyses the complex interaction between the supranational and domestic levels in contemporary European politics. The remaining chapter looks at the questions of the EU's interaction with world politics, dealing more specifically with issues such as development policy, trade policy and comparative regionalism in the context of globalization. Overall, the Handbook of European Union Politics is a most useful book that can be highly recommended. A strong analytical framework coupled with unparalleled coverage of the major issues of the political science research of the EU makes this volume a formidable tool for teaching and a significant input to new scholarly research. It is both relatively sophisticated and very accessible to graduate students and advanced researchers. The clear writing style and the richness of information presented will certainly make this book interesting for non-academic readers.
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci., 2005
■ Abstract The study of the European Union (EU) has been transformed during the past decade, and three distinct theoretical approaches have emerged. The first approach, which seeks to explain the process of European integration, has largely abandoned the long-standing neofunctionalist-intergovernmentalist debate in favor of a rationalistconstructivist debate reflecting broader developments in international relations theory. A second approach, however, has rejected the application of international relations theory in favor of comparative politics approaches which analyze the EU using offthe-shelf models of legislative, executive, and judicial politics in domestic politics. A third and final approach sees the EU as an emerging system of multi-level governance in which national governments are losing influence in favor of supranational and subnational actors, raising important normative questions about the future of democracy within the EU.
The 'State of the Art' in EU Studies: From Politics to Interdisciplinarity (and Back Again?)
Politics, 2006
This article explores the disciplinary (political) and interdisciplinary characteristics of the field of EU studies from a UK perspective. It makes the claim that, although EU studies has been dominated by political/IR approaches, it has not been well integrated into the discipline of politics. However, one cannot assume that this is because EU studies is an interdisciplinary research area. Retaining, at least in the UK, much of its original 'area studies' character, which has built upon the UK academic culture of empiricism, EU studies remains somewhat inward looking. The article argues that addressing this problem by strengthening EU studies' ties to the discipline may not be helpful if the aim is to create a more outward-looking research field. Rather, interdisciplinarity, or even a post-disciplinary approach, may be a preferable way forward.
This review of Moravcsik, “Negotiating the Single European Act: national interests and conventional statecraft in the European Community” (1991) will look upon its arguments in favour of intergovernmental institutionalism. That being said, the paper is not intended to go into a discussion of whether institutional intergovernmentalism, neofunctionalism, or if any other (European) integration theory is better at explaining the outcome of the Single European Act (SEA). However, the paper will present three parts. Firstly, it will briefly discuss Moravcsik’s key points, theoretical status and conclusion. The second part will provide a critique of Moravcsik; bring in other theoretical points of view, and journal articles. Lastly, the third part will draw perspectives to the current situation in the EU, exemplified with the Greek crisis. It will be looked upon how the leadership and governance can be evaluated from this perspective.
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2009
This volume serves as another addition to the plethora of introductory EU textbooks currently occupying the marketplace. Like most of its competitors, this book offers chapters concerning the historical evolution of the EU, its institutional infrastructure, the nature of EU policy-making and broader political attitudes towards integration processes. The strongest part of the book is that covering the machinery of governance where students are offered a succinct overview of the key governing institutions and their respective roles. Later chapters also provide useful coverage of decision-making and legislative processes and there is also discussion of a range of individual policy areas. A glossary of terms at the end of each chapter should provide a useful introductory key to the uninitiated and there is some reference to further reading at the end of the book. The latter is, however, relatively brief and its utility is compromised by the author's reference to earlier editions of standard texts which have subsequently been published in revised editions (for example, George and Bache's volume Politics in the European Union is referred to as being 'rather dated' but in its 2001 rather than updated 2006 edition!). Although the book offers much in the way of useful detail on specific issues it is unfortunate that a source published in 2008 should refer, on its back cover, to '25 member governments' when there have been 27 since January 2007. Although the actual content of the volume does offer coverage of the post-2007 enlargement, this initial blip does engender an air of caution in the reader. There are certainly areas of the substantive content which might have benefited from reappraisal. For example, the early chapters on historical evolution are somewhat uneven; whilst some detail is provided on the origins of the integration project, its progress through the 1960s and key developments from the 1980s onwards, coverage of the 1970s is rather scant. Similarly, whilst some introductory material on integration theory is included, this remains arguably underdeveloped (for example, no effective distinction is made between Hoffman's intergovernmentalism and Moravcsik's liberal variant). The chapters making up section 5 on 'Attitudes' are arguably the weakest in structural terms. Although these seek to examine Member State attitudes towards integration processes, the opening heading 'Eligibility for Membership' suggests a discussion on enlargement. The subsequent analysis does indeed consider national attitudes but framing this within the context of successive waves of membership expansion perhaps limits the scope for cross-comparative study of attitudes. It also leads to the