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Regional Integration: The Neo-Functional Versus a Configurative Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Kenneth A. Dahlberg
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Type
Notes on Theory and Method
Information
International Organization , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Winter 1970 , pp. 122 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1970

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References

1 Recent critiques and commentaries include Hansen, Roger D., “Regional Integration: Reflections on a Decade of Theoretical Efforts,” World Politics, 01 1969 (Vol. 21, No. 2), pp. 242–271CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Nye, Joseph S., “Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement,” International Organization, Autumn 1968 (Vol. 22, No. 4), pp. 855–880CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Barrera, Mario and Haas, Ernst B., “The Operationalization of Some Variables Related to Regional Integration: A Research Note,” International Organization, Winter 1969 (Vol. 23, No. 1), pp. 150–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Philippe C. Schmitter, “Three Neo-Functional Hypotheses About International Integration,” ibid., pp. 161–166; and Schmitter, Philippe C., “Further Notes on Operationalizing Some Variables Related to Regional Integration,” International Organization, Spring 1969 (Vol. 23, No. 2), pp. 327–336CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With one exception, discussed in footnote 6, these research notes start from the same neo-functional assumptions and they will consequently be discussed together.

3 See Schmitter, , International Organization, Vol. 23, No. 2Google Scholar, for an indication of the extent of differences of opinion regarding the best indices for operationalizing various neo-functional variables.

4 In 1961 Haas, Ernst B. in his article “International Integration: The European and the Universal Process,” International Organization, Summer 1961 (Vol. 15, No. 3), p. 389CrossRefGoogle Scholar, felt that

it is also true that if regional integration continues to go forward in these areas [the Soviet bloc and Latin America], it will obey impulses peculiar to them and thus fail to demonstrate any universal “law of integration” deduced from the European example.

However, by 1964 (in the article developing the basic theoretical model for the notes discussed in footnote 2) Haas and Schmitter had modified this stress on the uniqueness of the integrative process in each area (and at the international level) as follows:

We are concerned not with the cultural uniqueness of this or that region but with investigating the generality of the integration process. This emphasis, however, grants that specific regions may well possess unique cultural or stylistic attributes which are able to serve as functional equivalents for important traits isolated in some settings but lacking in others.

Haas, Ernst B. and Schmitter, Philippe C., “Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections about Unity in Latin America,” International Organization, Autumn 1964 (Vol. 18, No. 4), p. 726CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Barrera, and Haas, , International Organization, Vol. 18, No. 4, p. 152Google Scholar. A panel of experts was used to estimate both the maximum possible and the actual points for each variable.

6 Schmitter, , International Organization, Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 164fnGoogle Scholar, indicates certain doubts on this point:

One, as yet unresolved, issue is the significance of different “mixes” of variables and their changing relevance. This has, so far, led to an inductive search for “structural equivalents” or conditions which might compensate for “low” scores in different settings.… Further empirical work may lead to the specification of more such “equivalents” or to appropriate “weighting procedures.”

7 See Joseph S. Nye, “Central American Regional Integration,” andWionczek, Miguel S., “Requisites for Viable Economic Integration,” in Nye, Joseph S. (ed.), International Regionalism: Readings (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968), pp. 421–428Google Scholar and 287–303, respectively.

8 See Dahlberg, Kenneth A., “The EEC Commission and the Politics of the Free Movement of Labour,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 06 1968 (Vol. 6, No. 4), pp. 331–333Google Scholar, for a discussion of the relationship between the constellation of political forces within a given sector, the specificity of the treaty, and the spillover potential.Scheinman, Lawrence points out in “Some Preliminary Notes on Bureaucratic Relationships in the European Economic Community,” International Organization, Autumn 1966 (Vol. 20, No. 4), pp. 750–773CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that in addition to the factors above, the psychological orientation of the community officials in a given sector—whether they are “ideologists” or “pragmatists”—has significant bearing on the degree of integration achieved.

9 For a typology with three “game frameworks” that is based on different bureaucratic patterns and their relation to the political system see Riggs, Fred W., “The Dialectics of Developmental Conflict,” Comparative Political Studies, 07 1968 (Vol. 1, No. 2), pp. 197–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 On the latter point there is general consensus that regional integration must be perceived as—and presumably in the long run result in—a variable sum game with positive results for all members.

11 The success of the Barrera-Haas-Schmitter model in dealing with European integration may be largely due to the much greater factual, cultural, and theoretical knowledge that we have from the European orientation of comparative politics throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

12 Similar differences can be seen between the neo-functional approach and the comparative historical approach ofDeutsch, Karl W., and others, in Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press [for the Center for Research on World Political Institutions], 1951)Google Scholar. In discussing the background conditions necessary for the growth of “amalgamated securitycommunities” Deutsch is concerned with basic societal changes that occur over long periods of time.

15 Barkun, Michael, Law without Sanctions: Order in Primitive Societies and the World Community (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., pp. 16–17 and 116–117.

15 Ibid., pp. 103–115.

16 Ibid., pp. 70–74 and 150–166.

17 This idea may be implicit in the neo-functional definition of integration. Haas, , International Organization, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 366–367CrossRefGoogle Scholar, gives the following definition:

the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations, and political activities toward a new and larger center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the pre-existing national states.

However, it is not clear whether neo-functionalists are talking simply about shifts in levels or in changes between basically different patterns of relations.

18 Halpern, Manfred, “Conflict, Violence, and the Dialectics of Modernization,” paper presented to the American Political Science Association, 09 1968Google Scholar.

19 Halpern defines these as continuity, change, collaboration, conflict, and justice. Ibid., pp. 1–3.

20 Ibid., pp. 11–19.

21 Ibid., p. 19.

22 Nye, , International Organization, Vol. 22, No. 4, p. 880Google Scholar.