European Integration: From Nation‐States to Member StatesBickerton, Chris J.Oxford, Oxford University Press (2012), 240 p., ISBN 978‐0‐19‐960625‐2

Abstract

European integration is best understood not by focusing on the development of the EU as such but rather by focusing on what has happened to the states of which it is composed. Those, argues Chris Bickerton, have since the 1950s undergone a profound transformation from nation states engaged in old-school inter-national politics to member states, whose political elites derive a good part of their understanding of themselves and their roles from interaction with fellow member state elites, as opposed to interaction with their national constituencies. “Integration”, i.e. institutionalized cooperation with other member states, externalizes constraints upon popular sovereignty and serves to buffer policy-making against demands by domestic constituencies and their representatives – in this sense it involves a self-limitation by national elites. Unlike traditional inter-national relations, member state politics are characterized by a dominance of the role of technocratic expertise and pragmatism over that of ideological contestation as well as by a strong orientation towards consensus and compromise. Historically, the shift from nation to member state was heralded by the economic crisis of the 1970s, which brought with it the destruction of post-war models of national corporatism and a progressive technocratization of politics. Before this moment the Keynesian consensus had posed national limits to European integration, protected social democratic principles, and maintained domestic state-society relations as the focal point of national elites, even as certain elitist and bureaucratic features of corporatism served as stepping stones to the later member state model. With the unraveling of the Keynesian consensus national elites, apparently convinced of the impossibility of national solutions, became free to pursue their preferred (neoliberal) policy course by shackling themselves to European-level imperatives. This is, in a nutshell, the account of the movement from nation to member state presented by Bickerton, which is illustrated in the second part of the book with reference to the two empirical domains of economic and foreign policy. In Bickerton's portrayal we can see in both of these domains how European politics has evolved towards the member state paradigm, which supports committee-based governance with a focus on technical expertise and consensus. The argument is provocative, in fact more provocative than Bickerton himself lets on. Its most provocative aspect is the suggestion that member states’ political elites strategically opt for integration to disempower their electorates at home. The picture being painted here is one of European integration as we know it as an inherently anti-democratic process. This goes well beyond usual complaints about a democratic deficit attached to EU institutions and in fact accuses the European project of undermining democracy not just at the European but in fact at all levels. If this is so, then who is to blame? This question is left open by Bickerton, as his account of European integration equivocates between attributing causal precedence to the strategic considerations of elites or to the momentum of European integration itself. At times it is very clearly the rational agency of elites which is driving the process of Europeanization for the sake of control over policy and power at home. At other times, such as when a tendency to cooperate suffuses EU foreign policy-making even in times of institutional standstill, when “European integration became a key agent (emphasis added) in the attempt by national governments […] to dismantle [the Keynesian] consensus […]” (p. 125), or when initial “strategic responses” to the problems of the 1970s and 80s became “steadily institutionalized and coalesced into” the member state paradigm (p. 100–1), it is the integration momentum doing the work. This equivocation is partly due to the fact that, while explicitly opposing functionalist accounts, the argument never fully leaves functionalism behind. One reason is that its critique of functionalism is not fully convincing. The observation correctly made in chapter 4 that there is still not much of an integrated European economy is not in fact a legitimate critique of the explanatory logic of functionalism. The latter nowhere implies functionality, or integration success. It is perfectly feasible to explain the development of later stages of European economic integration through the perceived needs created by the former, even while the former have not (yet) led to the envisioned results. A second reason for the residual functionalism in Bickerton's argument is the importance he attributes to compromise-seeking and consensus in the way in which the EU has functioned since its inception. Because the EU functions on the “presumption of consensus”, he writes, it “must be shielded as much as possible from the main source of conflict, namely the unpredictability of public debate and public expectations” (p. 33). This clearly suggests an internal logic to the integration project that drives its evolution above and beyond the rational calculations of elites or the Sachzwang of neoliberal policy. Bickerton's argument is not only provocative but also, in places, beautifully counter-intuitive. He has national elites consciously binding their own hands by entering into agreements with other national elites, for the sake of pushing certain policies past their electorates. “Limiting power through the imposition of external constraints upon national governments is the guiding idea of member statehood” (p. 61). Why would national elites behave in such a way? This flies in the face of conventional wisdom in realist IR and has a decidedly idealist spin. Not only do elites in this vision actually seem to care about the content of the policies they promulgate – an expectation which is hardly universally shared. They are predisposed to cooperate (p. 166); their behavior is characterized by “a search for consensus and a willingness to compromise” which Bickerton does not further explain. This is hard to swallow, not only for rational choicers. This part of the argument in fact only becomes plausible if we acknowledge a strong inspiration from constructivist logic which permeates the book alongside its residual functionalism. It becomes especially visible in the manner in which Bickerton portrays national elite interests to be “defined through interaction” (p. 37) with other national elites. Only by conceptualizing elite (policy) interests as endogenous to the process of European policy making can it be explained why they would not only share an orientation to avoid conflict, seek compromise and consensus, and pragmatically solve problems, but even definitions of which problems need solving and what constitutes an appropriate range of solutions. None of the above points constitute weaknesses of the overall argument. More problematic is the suggestion that the strong backing for neoliberal policies among European elites reflects “fatalism” in the search for alternatives (p. 96) paired with the perceived urgent necessity to return to growth. Bickerton paints a picture of enlightened, if perhaps somewhat unimaginative elites that found it “necessary to embed the decisions of national executives within a wider, depoliticized framework of rules and norms” in order to stay in power while not being able to deliver on their electorates’ expectations. The argument skirts the possibility that at least parts of these elites may also have had interests better served by catering to capitalist lobbies than defending social democracy. For the same reason it may well be misleading to label the shifts in European state forms and politics since the 1950s “depoliticization” (p. 101) or to characterize rules at EU level as inherently less ideological than those at the domestic. Externalizing policy constraints, empowering technocrats and bureaucracies, and weakening ties to domestic societies may insulate European politics from domestic public spheres, yet hardly from politics. These processes disempower certain interest groups, but by the same token empower others. This may go without saying, but not saying it detracts from the pertinence of the book's political analysis. Interestingly, while the argument made is theoretically partly underspecified and perhaps normatively incomplete, the empirical account presented as well as other available evidence seem to largely bear it out. Bickerton's historical and empirical account is strong. It is, for example, evidently quite true that, key to the book's core claim, in EU policymaking conflicts between member states are increasingly “treated as problems to be solved rather than as competing interest to be balanced” (p. 51). There is just one tension in the empirical account which would have benefited from close attention: To some extent the stories told in chapters 4 and 5 about developments in economic and foreign policy cooperation, respectively, seem to conflict. In chapter 4, economic crisis works as an impetus for further integration and neoliberalization, in chapter 5 it brings out “national elements of social democracy more forcefully” and prevents closer cooperation (pp. 171 and 180). Both may well have been true, but the book leaves open how and why. Bickerton poses very few empirical claims with which one can outright disagree on the basis of preponderance of evidence, although some aspects of the argument are pushed far for the sake of setting us to thinking. For example, while we may doubt that every single member of the European political elite is consciously in the business of “separating popular will from the policy making process” (p. 67), the accusation can serve as a wake-up call to resist this tendency. Secondly, the claim that in European politics ideology has been displaced as a political resource and that left-right disagreements have given way to an unholy marriage of technocratic governance and populist packaging is exaggerated but beneficially uncomfortable. While Bickerton usefully draws on the work of Nadia Urbinati to connect the tendencies towards populism and technocracy, claiming that “populism and technocracy are two sides of the member state coin” (p. 188) is overstating the case. There are other types and practices of populism under foot in Europe, which do not form part of this unholy marriage. Neither do technocratic tendencies everywhere couch themselves in populist justifications. That being said, it is true that, as Bickerton points out, technocrats in Europe and elsewhere share their skepticism of representative democracy with protest movements like Occupy. The conclusion that addressing the democratic deficit in Europe “must pass through a revival of representative democracy at the national level” (p. 189) remains persuasive and important. In sum, Bickerton's intelligent, thoroughly researched, and unusually perceptive book is a very welcome innovative intervention in what is otherwise a largely stale debate on the nature and telos of European integration. It is beautifully and accessibly written and should be obligatory reading for all students and teachers of European politics, member state foreign policy, and international relations more broadly. In making a convincing case that the development of an international organization might best be understood via examining the evolution of its member states it possesses relevance far beyond the study of Europe. Each reader will find that it contains a number of extremely evocative observations. For this reader, one important point is that closer integration might not be synonymous with more supranationalism. Bickerton sees the former, but not the latter occurring in Europe. A second important point concerns European foreign and security as well as defense policy, which, contrary to the manner in which they are usually perceived and evaluated, are truly not in first instance “tools with which the EU can pursue its interests or export its norms” but rather end products in the shift to member states and as such “ends in and of themselves” (p. 154). A last important point is the warning that, while the structural shift, the damage done to representative democracy at the national level in Europe has been profound, the transnational ties of elites are not (yet) so strong as to safeguard the European project. This amounts to the idea that while we have already paid the price for technocratic integration, we are by no means ensured of remaining in a position to reap its benefits. Even while the recent (and continuing) crisis has, according to Bickerton, further strengthened the member state paradigm, the worries it has raised among perceptive observers are in part explained by the intuition that precisely this insecurity remains in place. To be sure, opt-outs or asymmetric integration of any variety do not only not have to threaten European integration but may well be, as Bickerton suggests, precisely the way it works: As member states have to juggle their domestic constituencies with their commitments to European Union, and they all know it, the occasional nod in the direction of domestic audiences has become an accepted part of the game among European elites. At the same time, Bickerton at least implies that we may expect economic and ideological conflict to reemerge in states whose state-society relations and domestic unity are weakened. In this way member state national elites would come under increased pressure from below, with potential risks for European integration. It is for this reason that “member statehood is inherently unstable” (p. 69). It is even paradoxical.