To summarize, the post-2008 crisis era saw a sort of “institutional and policy explosion” of the EU, as a series of new measures were proposed, debated, adopted, and implemented so as to address the EU member states’ fiscal, financial and economic crisis after 2008 as well as to strengthen EU economic governance. Then the research question is naturally posed: Along with the EU’s new measures and developments to counter the eurozone sovereign debt crisis after the 2008 global financial crisis, what path are the EU and EMU embarking on? This is the main research question (MRQ) of this dissertation, and five sub-research questions (SRQs) are put forward to study different parts of the MRQ. To unravel the development of the EU, this dissertation resorts to three main EU integration theories — neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism and HI — whose propositions are expected to explain the EU’s recent developments and give predictions about the EU in the future. This leads to another specific SRQ of this dissertation, focused on theories of European integration: What is the explanatory and predictive power of three different European integration theories when studying the EU’s recent developments after 2008 (SRQ6)? That is, do
62
the causal mechanisms offered by the three EU integration theories account for EU recent developments well? Are there any other variables or new causal mechanisms that should be added to the existing theoretical frameworks? What sort of light do the academic discussions shed on the current crisis and on the various measures adopted by the EU to combat this crisis? Relying on the congruence method and the process-tracing technique, hypotheses derived from the three theories on the EU’s developments after 2008 will be tested, based on which new variables might be added, new hypotheses formulated, and predictions made. The acceptance, rejection or revisions to the hypotheses, on the one hand, make a possible contribution to the on-going debated EU studies and the ever developing European integration theories, and on the other hand, provide answers to the SRQs of this dissertation, which finally lead to the answers to the MRQ.
Accordingly, apart from the introduction and conclusions, the main body of this dissertation is divided into three parts: chapter two, chapter three and chapter four each present the literature review and hypotheses derivation for the three integration theories; chapter five first gives a summary of the hypotheses formulated and to be tested in this dissertation, then it illustrates the relationships among the hypotheses and their sub-hypotheses, and finally it offers a general description of the three selected cases; chapter six, chapter seven and chapter eight carry out case studies and hypotheses tests, each chapter for each theory with research results, new findings and predictions presented in Propositions; lastly, chapter nine draws conclusions of the research in this dissertation and answers the SRQs and MRQ, as well as points out research limitations and considers possible research for the future. One of the main findings of this dissertation is that the crisis is also an opportunity for the EU to develop and mature, and to address collective issues and challenges from holistic approaches is a tendency of EU economic governance in the future, which, tending to cut across different policy areas, requires effective communication, coordination and cooperation among EU institutions and national agencies. The rationale behind collective EU-level solutions is to achieve more than the sum of individual parts, bringing about maximal synergistic effects among each individual member state as well as individual EU institutions and policies.
63
2
Chapter Two: Neo-Functionalism
Neo-functionalism is often considered as the first theory to account for European integration (Jensen 2010). Starting from Ernst B. Haas’s book The Uniting of Europe:
Political, Social and Economic Forces 1950-1957 published in 1958,
neo-functionalism made its debut on the stage of international relations (IR) theories; it differs from former IR theories by giving prominence to supranational institutions and non-state actors (such as interest groups and political parties), which are held as the important driving forces behind regional integration, besides national states (Jensen 2010, 71-73). Initiating the first theorizing of European regional cooperation, Haas’s book of 1958 is regarded as “the founding moment” of EU studies (Rosamond 2005, 238). Originally, via constructing a theoretical framework to explain the process of European integration starting from the ECSC, Haas aimed at formulating a scientific grand theory which was capable of accounting for regional cooperation elsewhere after the Second World War.32 But as soon as neo-functionalism took the European integration project as its case study, the fate and evolution of this theory was inextricably bounded to the vicissitudes of this enterprise in practice (Jensen 2010, 72).
Neo-functionalism contends that economic integration leads to political integration, and supranational institutions will gradually develop and gain their own political agenda, which over time will “tend to triumph over interests formulated by member states” (Jensen 2010, 75). Compared with traditional IR approaches which stress the gains and losses among national states, such as realist “zero-sum” games, neo-functionalism claims that there should be a win-win situation for all that involve in processes of economic and political integration (Jensen 2010, 74-75). Though neo-functionalists like Haas (1971) would say that neo-functionalism does not support
32
See also Niemann and Schmitter (2009, 47). Haas once hoped that his findings could “serve as propositions concerning the formation of political communities” (Haas 1958, xv) which share similar economic patterns and political ideologies with open industrial economies, pluralist societies, and democratic political systems (1958, xv-xvi). As for his theory’s potential application, he stated clearly: “Hence, I would have little hesitation in applying the technique of analysis here used to the study of integration under NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the Scandinavian setting, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, or Canadian-United States relations. I would hesitate to claim validity for it in the study of regional political integration in Latin America, the Middle East, or South-East Asia” (Haas 1958, xvi).
64
a political agenda of federalism similar to that of the US, to argue that economic integration will lead to political integration obviously demonstrates neo-functionalists’ pro-integration assumptions (Jensen 2010, 72; 78), and such a pro-integration stance has been criticized by interdependence theorists as neo-functionalist “teleological and regional orientation” (Tranholm-Mikkelsen 1991, 8-9).