Uses and Abuses of the Concept of Integration

Uses and Abuses of the Concept of Integration

A reassessment of the European Union (EU) studies in recent years has seen an increasing interplay among disciplines, resulting in increased breadth and depth of conceptual development. The need for sustained dialogue between EU studies and international relations (IR) has been persuasively argued by scholars, such as, Warleigh (2006), while the need to break down the barriers between disciplines and subdisciplines and particularly what Peterson regards as phoney wars between IR and comparative politics (CP) has, for some time, been a theme in the examination of the state of the study of the EU (Hix, 1999; Peterson, 2001; Pollack, 2001; Rumford and Murray, 2003a). In addition, the study of the EU has often been confined to the study of European integration (EI). European Studies is now becoming more broad and therefore, should include more than EI studies. In particular, it should be more interdisciplinary.

This chapter examines the ways in which the concept of integration has been utilized and politically misused by scholars and the EU alike. As long as the term ‘integration’ is utilized to mean a political objective, a theoretical model, a policy process, a set of theories and a paradigm for regional bodies, then overuse of the term will take place. European integration has become increasingly contested as both a concept and a process and it is incumbent upon scholars to subject the EU to analytical treatment that does justice to its contemporary complexity of governance and its evolving nature (Murray, 2000).

The chapter argues that the core issues of power and of the direction of the EU's integration project remain unclear. In particular, it examines how newer and fresher perspectives on ‘integration’ can assist us in understanding the transformation of Europe. It seeks a clear differentiation of studies of the nation state from those that seek to move us forward conceptually in our understanding of the EU's transformative role in — and impact on — the nation state and in the international arena. It calls for caution in attempts to utilize terms of the past in our study of the present and in forming our pathways to future research.

The study of integration theory is not only about EI and the EU but also concerns comparative regionalism and inter-regionalism for example (Breslin and Higgott, 2003; [Page 228]Hettne and Soberbaum, 2000; Murray 2004a, 2008a). Further, if the study of the EU is to be an intrinsic part of IR, the transformation of the EU and, in turn, its transformative impact on the state require finer analysis.

The study of the EU can be introspective, with respect to the EU's internal process and conflicts, for example. Examinations of the EU in an international context often tend to deal with its relations with individual countries and, occasionally, regions, such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) or Mercosur, the Common Market of South America. From outside the EU, some analyses portray the EU as a rather successful economic entity but do not necessarily understand the transformative nature of the EU in political or normative terms. For example, Jachtenfuchs (2001: 256) has argued that ‘the most exciting and most important aspect of European integration — namely the transformation of traditional nation-states into constituent units of a new transnational political system that is not going to become a state — is largely overlooked from the outside’.

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