IT WAS DEVELOPED IN THE MID-1950s

ARGUMENT OF NEO-FUNCTIONALISM: States are not the only important actors on the
international scene.

- Focus: the role of supranational institutions and non-state actors such as interest groups and
political parties, who are the real driving force behind regional integration efforts.

This theory was the first attempt at theorizing the new form of regional cooperation that resulted
from the end of the WWII.

-- Its concepts and assumptions have become part of the Monnet method of European
integration; therefore, it has been difficult to separate the theory of integration from what
happens with the EC/EU. Curse: the success of the theory became tied with the European
integration project.

WHAT IS NEO-FUNCTIONALISM?

It started with Ernst B. Haas' book The Uniting of Europe: political, social and economic forces
(published in 1958). What this book had as a purpose was to explain how six West European
countries came to start a new form of supranational cooperation after the WWII.

Of course, his aim by formulating a theoretical account of the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) was to provide an explanation of regional cooperation that was both
scientific and objective; it would ultimately explain a similar process elsewhere.

-- Even if this was its objective, neo-functionalism became associated with the EC case and the
path of European integration.

-- Some argued that neo-functionalism was secretly associated with pro-integration assumptions,
that the theory did not make explicit.

--- CHARACTERISTICS OF NEO-FUNCTIONALISM.

1. Core concept: Spillover.

-- Cooperation in one policy area would create pressures in a neighboring policy area, placing it
on the political agenda and leading to further integration.
This refers to a situation where cooperation in one field necessitates cooperation in another.

- Even if it is thought that the spillover process is automatic, revising the theory shows that this
process could be guided or manipulated by actors and institutions whose motives are political.

2. Role of societal groups in the process of integration.

- Hass argued that interest groups and political parties would be key actors in driving integration
forward.

-- Governments could be skeptic of joining or pushing forward integration but these groups have
it in their interest to do so, because integration would be posed as a way of solving their
problems.

3. Elitist approach to European integration.

-- It is not apolitical, but it sees little role for democratic and accountable government at the level
of the region.

-- It tends to assume the tacit support of the European people (benign elitism).

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEO-FUNCTIONALISM.

- Neo-functionalism is connected to the case of the European integration but this wasn't the
intention, they wanted to formulate a general theory of international relations based on
observations of regional integration processes.

- Europe was studied because political and economic integration was best developed and most
suited to theoretical and empirical study.

- 1960 and 1970 in neo-functionalism: Europe and European integration as the major focus of the
theory.

CRITIQUES OF NEO-FUNCTIONALISM.

Neo-functionalism has been critized on both empirical and theoretical grounds.

-- EMPIRICAL CRITIQUES: absence (slow pace) of political integration in Western Europe
between 1970 and mid-1980s. Neo-functionalism predicted a pattern of development based on a
gradual intensification of political integration, which by 1970 had not happened.

- Example: French boycott of European institutions in 1960, this led to the recognition of
political leaders as constrains on the process of integration.

- The European Community had so many crises that it is thought a reverse integration process
was happening, this meaning Europe was disintegration.

--- MORAVCSIK: neo-functionalism offered an unsatisfactory account of European integration,

the most common reason for criticism is empirical, since they mispredicted the trajectory and
process of the EC evolution.

- Advances a precondition about the trajectory in the EC over time, it was supposed to be the
technocratic imperative that would lead to a "gradual", "automatic" and "incremental"
progression toward deeper integrating and supranational influence.

- HASS: Disintegrative equivalent to spillover, spillback (Brexit??).

-- THEORETICAL CRITIQUES.

1. Aimed at the theses advanced by neo-functionalists.

- TAYLOR: challenges to the elite socialization thesis and the idea that supranational loyalties
would emerge in institutions such as the Commission. What would happen is that the member
states would be concerned in having "national" civil servants in the Commission. Member states
became aware of the need to have a quota of European civil servants and the need to have their
interests represented.

- Civil servants would become more nationally oriented when critical political issues surfaced.

- RISSE: proposes the case of women and farmers, that in accordance to the neo-functional
theory were assumed to be the most EU-supportive European citizens. (they're not).

2. Aimed at the theories formulated by Hass.

- By 1960 Hass accepted that the prediction that the EU would develop incrementally, propelled
by dynamics such as a spillover, failed to encapsulate the reality of European cooperation. He
shifted to another approach, based on interdependence theories (developed in the 1970s by
Keohane and Nye). Institutions such as the EC/EU should be analyzed in the ground of
international interdependence, not as regional political organizations.

- What was a supranational style, looks now like a regional bureaucratic appendage to an
intergovernmental conference in permanent session (HE ABANDONED HIS OWN THEORY,
SMH).

- One of the factors reducing the level or predictability or inevitability of integration was the
replacement of traditional forms or functional policy links (functional spillover) by deliberated
linkage.

- Political forms of spillover were replacing the original functional logic. Over time, political
linkage of package deals became more and more complex, increasing the uncertainty of the
integration process.

- The theory of regional integration focused on the region as an isolated entity, totally ignoring
the impact of external factors.

3. The theory placed undue (indebido) emphasis on the supranational component in regional
integration.

- Critics: the importance should be attached to the nation state, and regional forms of cooperation
should be analyzed as intergovernmental organizations.

-- MORAVCSIK (under liberal intergovernmentalism).

- Neo-functionalism reinforces the autonomy of supranational officials, liberal

intergovernmentalism stresses the autonomy of national leaders.

- liberal intergovernmentalism: the nation state remains the core element in an understanding of
international relations, including interpretations of the development within the EU.

- Limits on opportunities for political integration: political integration based on aggregate

interests of the single nation state and its willingness to survive. -- this also means nation states
are ONLY prepared to cede formal competence to supranational institutions only if by so doing
they ensure or regain control of specific areas of policy.
-- Other criticism: elitist nature of neo-functionalism.

- Argument: neo-functionalism is not only merely a scientific and objective theory of regional
integration, but an essential part of a model of European integration (Monnet method or
community method).

- The theory does not consider European citizens and is undemocratic, since integration is seen
as a functional or technocritical change, with experts as the main actors.

- Not an appropriate model for the early XXIs century.

-- Neo-functionalism focused on political and administrative elites, and the process that
developed cooperation between different national elites. The assumption was that if the elites
started to cooperate, populations would follow their line of policy.

-- Example: the experience related to different national referenda about EU treaties points to the
fact that the unilateral focusing on political elites is a major weakness in neo-functionalist theory.
--- political and administrative elites at the national and European level agreed upon the
constitution but the voters didn't follow the elites.

--- neo-functionalism has a blind spot in the lack of understanding the need for the EU to
establish legitimacy among the peoples of Europe.

THE REVIVAL OF NEO-FUNCTIONALISM.

- There was a revival in 1990.

1. General developments in the European Community, the Single European Act and the creation
of the Single Market (western Europe).

-- these developments were associated with the spillover theory proposed by neo-functionalists.

- In this revival, the classical theory was taken as a partial theory. Yes, it works, but not for all
cases.

- They now talk about transaction-based, not the spillover. What this means is that there is now a
special attention regarding the increasing levels of transactions (fields of trade, communications,
travel) across EU borders, this needs European-level regulation. These demands generate, at the
same time, a process of institutionalization leading to the establishment of supranational
governance.

--- Example: European Court of Justice.

- autonomy of the EU's supranational institutions and supranational governance.

- Advance political integration by using technical and apolitical arguments in the legal area.

-- New topics: defence, social policy and telecommunications