Liberal Intergovernmentalism, spillover and supranational immigration policy

Abstract

That the Lisbon Treaty lays the foundation for a supranational asylum and immigration policy is surprising, even more so for Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI), whose founder Andrew Moravcsik predicts that no such development will take place. While the article uses LI as its point of departure, it shows that it runs into problems with regards to the policy area of asylum and immigration. The article therefore turns to the (neo-)functionalist concept of spillover. While working with the concept, it was deemed necessary to create a more coherent typology of different spillovers. The article suggests that the concept of spillover may be both descriptive and explanatory. With regards to descriptive spillover, it seems valuable to differentiate between widening and deepening spillovers, but concerning explanatory spillovers, more options became visible: there are unintended or intended functional spillovers, as well as unintended political, cultivated and social spillovers. The argument is illustrated through a detailed study of Sweden – a ‘reluctant European’ that within the area of asylum and immigration made a fundamental U-turn with regards to a supranationalism, a change that can be described as a social spillover.