Theory, Trade and European Integration: A Comment on Ludolf Herbst’s “Contemporary Theory and the Beginning of European Integration”

Abstract

Lucia Coppolaro Theory, Trade and European Integration A Comment on Ludolf Herbst’s “Contemporary Theory and the Beginning of European Integration” Introduction When grading written exams, any professor of the history of European integration would be more than glad to read a definition of European integration as “the historical process whereby European nation-states have been willing to transfer, or more usually pool, their sovereign powers in a collective enterprise.”1 In fact, the definition is so accurate that the professor could only praise the student and award a positive grade for the answer. What the professor would tend to underestimate is that, as Ludolf Herbst’s article illustrates, “the term ‘integration’ was not particularly widespread” until the 1940s, and that, as a political concept, European integration was established only in the early 1950s, when “use expanded rapidly to include a much broader scope.” With the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950, European integration became both a catchword and a key-word for the post-war period, entering common usage and acquiring a precise meaning that we now take for granted. As Herbst notes, “the success of the term certainly has something to do with its ability to refer to the process of European unification in general, the current state of this development, and the goal of the overall process.”2 A similar story can be told about the word “globalization.” This word became a catchword at the end of the 1990s, but we tend to ignore its origins and meaning. We assume that the semantic meaning has never changed, and we tend to forget that when liberal economic theories and economists referred to globalization in the 1920s, “integration” was the word they used. Herbst’s article traces the origins of the word integration and looks at integration theories. It provides an analysis of “the history of the political reception of these ideas, taking into account those theories that took on political relevance.”3 Adopting this original perspective, the article enables us to gain a better under1 Mark Gilbert, European Integration. A Concise History, Lanham/MD et al. 2012, p. 1. 2 Ludolf Herbst, Contemporary Theory and the Beginning of European Integration, in this Yearbook , pp. 21–70; all quotes are from pp. 22–24. 3 Ibid., p. 23. 72 Lucia Coppolaro standing of the origins and development of European integration. It shows how policy-makers pursued concrete national interests – rather than a theory – and brings out the relevance of trade in the origins of the integration that occurred. By putting the word integration and the theories associated with it into historical perspective, Herbst’s article shows how the Marshall Plan (1947) and the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) were not the result of sudden choices made by US and European politicians, but responded to challenges that had been faced since at least the end of World War I. Thus, the article very usefully sheds light on the many misunderstandings that have come to surround European integration , above all that of seeing European integration as a process or journey inevitably leading to a United States of Europe. This perception of inevitability, curiously enough, again links the words integration and globalization, since both are often perceived as inexorable processes. European Integration: a New Solution to Old Problems Herbst’s article reconstructs the semantic origin and development of the word integration from Terence to the Enlightenment, and then examines its use in the 19th century. The article notes how economists and liberal theories at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century referred to the integration (and its opposite, disintegration) of world markets as economic historians would now refer to economic globalization. Moreover, Herbst shows that the term integration was commonly used in law and economics both in the interwar period and during World War II. Conversely, the word was almost unknown in the political sphere, and there “remained the exception.” Tellingly, the movement seeking European unification used the word “federation” rather than integration to describe its goals.4 The situation changed gradually, but only after World War II, when the term became popularized through adoption by the US government, the establishment of the...