The roots of today’s European Union can be traced to the creation in 1952 of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). With this event began a complex process by which national interests came to be overlaid with collective European interests, leading to today’s EU. How and why this happened has been the subject of much debate. Multiple theories and approaches have been proposed, ranging from federalism to neofunctionalism and constructivism, but while they offer valuable insights, they have all been criticized in their own way, and no grand theory of European integration has yet won approval.

The earliest explanations came mainly out of the discipline of international relations (IR), and portrayed the European Community either as a process with its own internal logic or as an international organization with the governments of the member states as key actors. These theories are reviewed in this chapter. But as the reach of European integration expanded, so the focus switched to explanations coming out of comparative politics and public policy, which see the EU as a political system in its own right, and pay more attention to the character of its institutions, processes and policy dynamics. These approaches are reviewed in Chapter 2.

At the same time, how we think about the EU depends mainly on how we understand the changing role of states. Once the dominant actors on the European political stage, states have changed in the wake of the growing interstate cooperation brought on by political and economic pressures. Some argue that the EU has developed many of the features of a European superstate, or a new level of government and authority working above the level of the traditional state. Others, however, are not so sure. Either way, we need to be clear on the parameters of the debate, which is where this chapter begins.

  • Academic debates about the origins and history of theEU have been dominated by theories of internationalrelations, which portray the EU mainly as aninternational organization driven by decisions taken bythe governments of the member states.
  • How we think about the EU depends in large part onhow we think about states and their changing role andpowers in the world since 1945.
  • Our understanding of European states also demandsan understanding of nations, which have played a keyrole in determining political and social relations amongEuropeans since at least the French Revolution.
  • Since the Second World War there has been a markedgrowth in the number of international organizations, setup to promote cooperation among states, and basedon the principles of communal management, sharedinterests and voluntary cooperation.
  • Realists argue that humans are self-centred andcompetitive, that we live in an anarchic global systemlacking an authority above the level of states that iscapable of helping them manage their interactions, andthat states must use conflict and cooperation to ensuretheir security.
  • Liberals believe in the possibility of cooperationto promote change, view states and internationalorganizations as key actors in the global system, andstress their mutual interdependence.
  • Functionalists argue that the best way to achieve globalpeace is through the creation of functionally specificinterstate institutions, which bind states into a web ofcooperation.
  • Neofunctionalists argue that states, supranationalinstitutions, interest groups and political parties all playa role in integration, which is driven by a process ofspillover through which governments find themselvescooperating in a growing range of policy areas.
  • Intergovernmentalists take the focus back to thedeliberate and conscious decisions of governments, andargue that the pace and nature of integration has beenultimately driven by state governments pursuing stateinterests.